New Party: Reform Barbados enters political arena

A new political party, Reform Barbados, has entered the island’s political landscape, positioning itself as an alternative to the two dominant parties.

Steve Prescott, a British-born employment rights attorney with Barbadian roots, on Friday announced the formation of the country’s latest political organisation.

Prescott disclosed that he already has a small group of supporters, but his goal is to recruit candidates to contest all 30 seats in Parliament. He said he will certainly be running in the upcoming election, even if he has to do so alone at this stage.

Although he has not yet settled on a constituency, the most likely one would be in the Parish Land, Christ Church area, where his late Barbadian father lived before relocating to the United Kingdom in the 1960s, Prescott explained.

But he is adamant that he is not daunted by the historic failings of third parties, stressing that he is ready to face any challenges in that regard.

“I will face that by having a message and a real policy change that Barbadians have been crying out for… because when you are in a desert and you are thirsty for something, you will drink anything. I don’t believe that because we are a third party, and there may be several of them, that we can’t succeed.

The reason why they haven’t succeeded in the past is because the messaging was not there. The longevity wasn’t there,” Prescott told Barbados TODAY in an interview.

“The heart might have been there, but you have to have a cohesive policy and ecosystem that shows how you can change Barbados and actually make sure it works.”

The Reform Barbados leader then shared what he would do for Barbadians, arguing that his party intends to be a serious challenge to the two decades-old major parties — the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP) and the opposition Democratic Labour Party (DLP).

“What I will try and do, all the policies I have developed over the past two years, I am not just going to put it out yet. I am going to have it ratified by an economist. I want to know… this is my idea… will it work? If so, do I have to tweak it, change it? What do I have to do to make it work? Because policy execution is the big number one. You can have all the ideas in the world, and you don’t know how to execute properly, you are not going to make any change,” contended Prescott, who is a Barbados citizen.

He said he already has a manifesto, and it is the plans contained in that document which he will have vetted first before publishing.

The party leader said he has already been campaigning on social media and in conversations with Barbadians as he moves around. However, he will soon stage spot meetings as well.

Since his first visit to Barbados at age 16 and at various times thereafter, he has felt a deep urge to do something about the island’s social and economic conditions, Prescott said.

He said: “I have been looking back at our history since Independence, and looking at our economic picture; looking at our infrastructure picture, our living systems, looking at how my own family has evolved since 1984; and would you believe, there has not been much evolution 40 years on. So, I am fortified in the view that, as a country, we need to do better.

I don’t say that disparagingly about successive governments, but people are struggling in Barbados.”

Reform’s slogan is: “We’ve got to do better at being better… we’ve got to be better at doing better.”

Its logo is a broken trident above a crown, which Prescott said was inspired by a similar image painted on a stained-glass window in a church in the UK by his late father.

The party will be launched officially soon, he said.   emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb