BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Challenging Barbados’ long-standing two-party dominance, a new political movement has entered the fray with ambitions to contest every seat in Parliament. This comes ahead of the upcoming February 11 election, that was announced late Saturday by Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
Steve PrescottReform Barbados was formally announced on Friday by Steve Prescott, a British-born employment rights attorney with Barbadian roots, who says the party aims to offer voters a credible alternative to the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP) and the opposition Democratic Labour Party (DLP).
Prescott disclosed that while he currently has a small base of supporters, his objective is to field candidates in all 30 constituencies at the next general election.
He confirmed that he will be contesting a seat himself, even if he has to run alone at this early stage.
Although he has not yet finalised a constituency, Prescott said he is most likely to contest a seat in the Parish Land, Christ Church area, where his late father lived before migrating to the United Kingdom in the 1960s.
Undeterred by the historical struggles of third parties in Barbados, Prescott said he believes Reform Barbados can succeed where others have failed.
“I will face that by having a message and a real policy change that Barbadians have been crying out for,” he told Barbados TODAY. “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 they haven’t succeeded in the past is because the messaging was not there. The longevity wasn’t there. 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.”
Prescott said his party is positioning itself as a serious political force, stressing that policy execution will be central to its appeal.
“All the policies I have developed over the past two years, I am not just going to put them out yet,” he said. “I want them ratified by an economist. I want to know—will this work? What do I need to tweak or change? Because policy execution is the number one issue. You can have all the ideas in the world, but if you don’t know how to execute them properly, you won’t make any change.”
He said Reform Barbados already has a manifesto, but its proposals will be professionally vetted before being released publicly.
The party leader noted that he has begun campaigning through social media and informal discussions with Barbadians, with plans to hold spot meetings in communities in the near future.
Prescott said his motivation stems from long-standing concerns about the island’s social and economic progress.
“I’ve been looking at our history since Independence, our economic picture, our infrastructure, our living systems, and even how my own family has evolved since 1984,” he said. “And there hasn’t been much evolution 40 years on. That fortifies my 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 Barbados’ slogan is, “We’ve got to do better at being better… we’ve got to be better at doing better.”
Its logo features a broken trident above a crown, inspired by a similar image designed by Prescott’s late father for a stained-glass church window in the United Kingdom.
Prescott said the party will be officially launched in the coming weeks.
