NEW: Reform Durham tells Home Office where to stick their asylum dumping racket

The Whitehall wonks picked the wrong county to treat like Britain's overflow dumping ground

A month into the job and we've already done what the previous shower couldn't manage in years: told the Home Office and their property-grabbing mates at Mears to do one. Not bad for a bunch of supposed "far-right extremists," eh?

You should see the state of the data Mears finally coughed up. Over 100 HMO requests in my ward alone. ONE HUNDRED. That's not dispersal, that's carpet bombing. In a small town. And why us? Because some Whitehall wonk spotted our affordable housing prices and thought "Bingo! Let's turn County Durham into Britain's dumping ground while keeping the Home Counties pristine."

The sheer brass neck of it. Tunbridge Wells? Sorry, we're full. Guildford? No room at the inn, old chap. But Durham? Fill your boots, lads. Stack 'em high in Ferryhill and Stanley - communities already on their knees after decades of being ignored by Westminster.

Here's what really boils my blood: when our officers and Durham Police flagged properties as unsuitable - actually did their jobs and said "hang on, this won't work" - Mears just ploughed on regardless. Because meeting Home Office targets matters more than community cohesion or public safety, apparently.

And now we've pulled the handbrake. Three months minimum, but let me be crystal clear: this is just the opening salvo. We're not planning some temporary gesture to grab headlines before rolling over. This is about permanently establishing that County Durham is nobody's overflow dumping ground.

I can already hear the howls of outrage brewing in North London dinner parties. The Guardian's probably commissioning weepy op-eds as we speak. The BBC will be dispatching film crews to find the one person in Stanley who thinks unlimited immigration is marvellous. The diversity and inclusion brigade will be sharpening their lawfare pencils.

Bring it on.

Because here's what they don't get: we were elected to represent the people of County Durham, not to make life easier for London-based Home Office mandarins. Those working-class communities that Labour abandoned long ago? They're ours to protect now. And we will.

The metropolitan elite picked the wrong county and they definitely picked the wrong party. We're not some mealy-mouthed council that'll cave at the first legal letter or diversity training ultimatum. When Tarquin and Clarissa come back with their threats and their BBC camera crews, they'll find we haven't budged an inch.

It's about fairness. It's about protecting our own who are struggling in ways in which they haven’t for many decades. It's about standing up for communities that have been treated like doormats for too long. In the wake of the Baroness Casey audit which revealed recent arrivals engaging in the abuse of girls, how can we not act? One act of child sexual exploitation is surely enough to question the imposition of men we know next to nothing about being placed in our ex-pit villages.

So yes, we've secured a moratorium. But that's just the start. The real fight begins now - making it permanent, despite every dirty trick the establishment will throw at us. They thought Durham would be a soft touch. They thought wrong.

The revolution starts here, in County Durham. And we're just getting warmed up.