David Kurten
The Heritage Party
I am the Leader and one of the founding members of the Heritage Party, We stand for free speech and liberty, traditional family values, national sovereignty, and financial responsibility.
London Assembly
I was a London Assembly from May 2016 to May 2021, and sat on the Education, Environment, Fire & Emergency, Housing and Transport committees at City Hall.
Writer
I have written over 50 articles on topics from knife crime to free speech to the transgender agenda for titles such as Breitbart, The Bruges Group, The Salisbury Review and The Conservative Woman.
Educator
Before entering politics, I was a Chemistry teacher for over 15 years and taught in both state and private schools in Hampshire, Botswana, London, Hertfordshire, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New York and Bermuda.
Public Speaker
I give lectures on Cultural Marxism and political correctness among other topics, as well as after-dinner speeches.
I have spoken at public events for the Bow Group and the Freedom Association, and at a number of conferences on Education and Free Speech.
Celebrating our Heritage
Our nation is a wonderful country with a great history and heritage which is worth celebrating. Our public spaces should be full of beautiful buildings and reminders of our great historical figures who built our nation and gave so much to the world over the centuries.
Yet there are people in the out-of-touch liberal metropolitan elite who have infiltrated our institutions and are using their positions to attempt to dismantle our culture and heritage from within and sever our roots by tearing down our history. This is particularly the case in education where children and students are being taught wrongly by activist teachers that our country is bad, when in fact it is very good! Education must be re-purposed to teach children of our full history and literature. They should be taught how to think, not what to think by cultural Marxist activists.
Such activists, exemplified by Sadiq Khan’s ‘Diversity Commission’ which wants to remove statues and rename our streets, have no place in re-writing our history. Organisations like these should be defunded and disbanded – it is abominable that public money is being used to work against us. Social conservatives, traditionalists and patriots need to come together to fight to re-establish our heritage and Make Britain Great Again.
End Politically Correct Policing
Violent crime is spiraling out of control in the UK, particularly in London. In 2019, violent crime fell in all the regions of England except London where it continued to rise inexorably. London used to have a reputation as a safe and pleasant city to live and work in. No longer. It now has a reputation as the knife crime and acid attack capital of Europe, and a place where police harass citizens for opening their businesses and exercising their fundamental rights of freedom of assembly. This must end.
Theresa May cut the police force to the bone when she was Home Secretary. Sadiq Khan supported her in calling for an end to stop-and-search but opened a unit to investigate 'hate crime' on the internet. This is the pattern of policing around the country.
Police officers need to be free to patrol the streets rather than being forced to pursue the false narratives of the illiberal woke brigade, or fining and arresting people for meeting their friends.
The country needs an end to politically correct policing: stop and search is an effective tool for preventing crime; it should be increased. We need more police officers on the streets to fight real crime, not people's opinions.
In London, the victims and perpetrators of knife crime are mainly young black men and teenagers. Many of the perpetrators are not afraid of the police, with some knife offenders being arrested and released over and over again. There must be far tougher penalties for carrying knives or other weapons like machetes.
It is also true that cuts to youth services have exacerbated the problem, but the root of many of the problems of feral teenagers is fatherlessness. This must be acknowledged. Boys need strong and good fathers to bring them up in the right way. Without good fathers and male role models, teenage boys turn to social media and gangs to make up for the yawning chasm of a lack of masculinity in their lives, which leads to individuals and communities spiraling downwards. No solution to rapidly rising crime will be effective without supporting families, and in particular, fathers.
Finally, we must acknowledge the failure of successive governments to control our borders. Hundreds of illegal immigrants enter the UK every week. Nobody knows who they are, and whether or not they have criminal intent. It is known that there are hundreds of returning ISIS jihadis roaming free on the streets of England. There are also thousands of young men from war zones where there are levels and methods of violence completely alien to communities in the UK, and who have introduced new levels of violence to the streets of the UK. This must be dealt with, but most politicians and police chiefs are too politically correct to mention it let alone tackle it.
Stop Overcrowding
Unaffordable homes, packed trains, lack of school places, and hospital beds all result from uncontrolled immigration. We need an end to the rapid, mass, uncontrolled immigration of the Blair/Brown/Cameron/May/Johnson years. A controlled immigration policy is the only way to stop the UK population from growing unsustainably.
London's population grew from 7 million in 2000 to over 9 million in 2020, yet fewer than 500,000 homes were built in the last 20 years out of the 1,000,000 needed to accommodate such a large population rise.
London's population has declined significantly in the last year due to the Johnson government’s overreaction to Covid and destruction of our economy. We must end unnecessary and disproportionate lockdowns immediately, but we must not return to the failed policies of mass, immigration which lead to ever greater overcrowding.
It is not possible to build more than a few thousand homes a year in London without densification and the loss of green space, industry, car parking and vital public services like police stations – many of which have been sold off to make flats. That is the wrong future for London. Net immigration must be reduced to balanced levels in the long-term so that the supply of new homes is greater than demand.
Education and Skills
Education in the UK needs a complete overhaul to tackle the red blob which currently controls it. This is vital as the UK leaves the EU. I will make the implementation of a tripartite education system a top priority with grammar schools for the academically talented, technical schools to train young people with an aptitude for practical and vocational skills, and general schools to ensure that all children have the personal and entrepreneurial skills and employability to succeed in the world of work if they leave formal education at 16.
The UK must become self-sufficient in skills rather than relying on importing skilled and unskilled labour from abroad. We must train enough of our own young people to succeed and thrive in professional and technical careers, particularly as nurses, doctors, teachers, engineers, construction workers and IT professionals. Universities need to become lean and mean again and focus on delivering high-quality academic courses. It is not right to encourage too many young people to go to University, particularly those who will benefit more from following a non-academic route and would be better off getting a job at 16 or 18 and learning a trade.
There should be free tuition for STEM degrees, and grammar & technical schools in every area, so excellence is rewarded at all levels. Let's train British youngsters to do skilled jobs so that we are self-sufficient in skills, and don't need to depend on an unsustainable flow of workers from abroad.
Economy and Finance
Government must become fiscally responsible, and will stop wasting vast amounts of money on HS2, wasteful 'overseas development' and 'green subsidies'. Governments easily forget that they do not have their own money; the money raised from taxation belongs to the people and should be spent wisely: on public services in the UK such as schools, the NHS, the police and border force and honouring the military covenant rather than running down our armed forces.
We must also continue to reduce the deficit and get the nation's finances back into balance otherwise there will be a heavy price to pay in the future. Countries which consistently rack up debt always end up with a debased currency and/or hyperinflation which disproportionately harms the middle and working classes. We must also separate run-of-the-mill high street banking from high-stakes high-risk investment banking so that everyday people and small and low-risk businesses are protected if there is another banking crisis.
Freedom of Speech
Freedom of speech is under attack. Everyone must have the right to discuss and criticise all ideologies and texts without fear of being harassed by the state for their opinions, provided that they are not inciting violence. This is especially the case with extreme Islamist sects like al-Muhajiroun, Tablighi Jamaat and Hizb ut-Tahrir which promote a violent interpretation of certain Islamic texts as being literally true and to be applied in all times and all places: not just in 7th century Arabia, but 21st century Britain as well. It is also the case with transgenderism: it is a fact that there are two sexes - male and female, determined by anatomy and chromosomes, but people are now being thrown out of their jobs for speaking this self-evident truth!
The false narratives of 'hate crime' and 'hate speech' are being used to erode freedom of speech, where people are harassed by the state for expressing legitimate opinions and concerns about certain ideologies.
The culture of political correctness endemic in many of our once fine institutions has allowed the problem of grooming and raping of tens of thousands of girls under the age of 16 to fester in dozens of towns of cities across the country. This is a grave injustice and must be top of the list of the priorities to set this country right again. There is no need for any new laws; there just needs to be the political will to enforce the laws we already have. It is time to drain the swamp of political correctness in our institutions, so that the British people can be safe in our own country.
All decent people must stand against the sexualisation of children in schools and block teaching materials and lessons which encourage early sexual activity in children before they reach the age of consent. ‘Relationships Education’ is due become compulsory in all schools both primary and secondary from September 2020. While many schools will use the subject to teach traditional family values, the door is open for sexual propaganda which is grossly age-inappropriate to confuse and damage young children.
The age of consent is 16. It is appalling that after the grooming gang scandal where teenage victims of rape gangs were ignored and blamed, that highly sexualised lesson content is being allowed into schools.
LGBT activists are also aggressively pushing gender ideology into schools, including primary school and pre-schools. Children should not be exposed to unscientific nonsense like gender identity theory, gender fluidity or materials detailing non-reproductive sexual acts. There should always be freedom of speech to support the traditional family and traditional marriage.
Unblocking Our Roads
It is not possible to engineer a rapid population increase, narrow road space for vehicles and expect to cut congestion all at the same time. Yet this is precisely what has happened in London and many other cities. London’s population has increased from 7 million in 2000 to over 9 million in 2020, but cycle superhighways have been built on many of the most important trunk routes into the city and in the city centre, narrowing road space for emergency, goods and service vehicles, buses and taxis, and vastly increasing road congestion. Now also, the current Mayor has added pop-up cycle lanes and StreetSpace road barriers which have narrowed main roads and caused congestion all over London. They need to be removed immediately.
Cycle superhighways should be dug up and returned to motor vehicles. There is nothing wrong with dedicated cycle lanes, but they should be on quiet back roads so that they do not interfere with traffic flow on trunk routes.
The idea of blocking off one side of busy roundabouts and gyratories and turning them into two-way streets is madness. It has caused massive congestion in places like Elephant and Castle and Old Street in London. These areas need to be returned to their original state.
Emergency powers given to local boroughs and the Mayor under the Coronavirus Act have seen ‘Low Traffic Neighbourhood’ schemes mushroom all over London which block cars, tradesmen, delivery vehicles, taxis and emergency vehicles from being able to get where they need to go. They are a disaster for ordinary Londoners who need to get around. They actually increase congestion as journey times are increased many times over. LTN road blockages all need to be removed.
Along with congestion-creating schemes, local politicians across the UK have introduced exorbitant charges to drive in cities like London’s ULEZ and LEZ, which now charges £300 per day for lorries, buses and coaches to drive in Greater London. These are just the precursor to plans to introduce pay-as-you-go road pricing for all vehicles, where every vehicle movement will be monitored and recorded by big brother vehicle surveillance systems linked to drivers’ bank accounts. For the sake of freedom, these plans must be resisted and reversed.
