Darren Grimes: Has feminism gone too far?

Well, hey, folks, since I was last on-air, it feels like the world has gone to hell in a handcart. We're into the second week of Putin's invasion of Ukraine and continue to receive a painfully slow feed of news on the advance of Russian forces towards Ukraine's capital Kyiv.

During his State of the Union address, we've seen President Biden accidentally say he stands with the Iranian people, with his Vice President Kamala Harris appearing to mouth the word 'Ukrainian', clearly recognising the cock up just made. In another interview this week, he said Putin had decided he's going to invade Russia, proving folks that the White House is the most luxurious retirement home in the world, no, it turns out, the House of Lords.

We've seen the complete trashing of the legacy of Angela Merkel, the 16-long-years chancellor of Germany, often hailed as a bastion of liberalism in Europe, only to have ushered in an era of reliance upon a revanchist Russia. Stupidly, naively, moronically, allowing a pipeline to connect the two nations economically. We're now about to witness the painful untangling of the two.

Speaking of gas, we've seen European gas prices hit record highs, exacerbated by green taxes, yet the Government still won't countenance making use of the rich seam under our feet. A golden opportunity is royally squandered in not exploiting the high-quality gas we know is there. Meanwhile, Americans can still keep their gas prices low because of the shale gas revolution under Presidents Obama and Trump. The cost of natural gas in Europe is a whopping 13 TIMES what the yanks are paying. At least we're listening to teenage truant Greta and her clan on energy policy, eh?

The zealots of the Remain cause told us that Britain would be smaller, isolated, and mean-spirited post-Brexit. The one thing that this horrendous war has shown, with crystal clarity, is how very wrong they were. I feel immensely proud of the British response and the leadership we've shown in our response to Russian brutality—the Ukrainian military views Britain as its strongest proponent. Training 20,000 snipers and our training on how to use anti-tank weaponry have proven invaluable to the defence of Ukraine.

But, I've said it before, and I'll repeat it now, this war, the threat of nuclear holocaust, the sky-high bills as a consequence of weening Europe off of Putin's gas, and of course the tragic loss of life, including that of civilians, has called into question the self-indulgent, narcissistic, self-loathing that activists in Britain have obsessed over in recent years. One such event is coming up on Tuesday, folks; it's International Women's Day. A chance for groups that like to paint a picture of women as victims in modern Britain to get together and tell us just how rotten men are.

Now, folks, I was brought up exclusively by women and let me tell you, the two of them responsible for bringing me up are anything but victims of life or society. And actually, I think the message from the two of them would be that we don't need to convince boys that masculinity is toxic. We don't need to teach boys that their sex means they're naturally evil. We don't need to persuade boys that they're just intrinsically a threat to women.

Society needs more men like my late grandad, a man who fought for his country, worked down the pits, then as a plumber, and raised five children—doing it all whilst remaining well-dressed, smart and tidy, polite and all-round decent bloke and heroic grandfather. We need men like that who won't leave women when the going gets tough, who won't flee once a baby is on the scene. We need to create resilient men that don't waste their lives playing video games in their boxer shorts.

We need to recognise that celebrating the differences between men and women isn't bad. We need to drop this narrative around toxic masculinity. Because I tell you what folks until we do, I reckon we'd be hard-pressed to win any war were the Russians or the Chinese to catch the Eurostar over the Channel to invade these shores. But what do you think? Has this whole equalities agenda and feminist movement gone too far? Or do you think I'm talking rubbish and women do have it wrong in modern life?