To hope all the reform voters take a hard look in the mirror?

It’s like you know you’re awful people, not just filled with spite and hate but also motivated by it.

But also.....

I’m a complete dickhead to everyone around me but want everyone to hand everything to me on a spoon’

Just fuck off.

It's the irony I struggle with.

Keep going with the insults and they will make gains at the next election. "Fuck off", says I don't care what your concerns are, I have decided they don't matter so I'm not listening. It's really not hard to see why people vote for a party like Reform.

I didn't vote Reform

This - I find that people like the OP are so entrenched in their hatred of those who 'do not think like her' that it must blight her life in any area.

OP - I mean this 'gently' but get some help for your bigotry and hatred of others. You are not some important person who gets to judge others for how they live or vote.

I just wonder what the residents of Clacton are hoping Nigel Farage will do for them. Listening to a political commentator on LBC yesterday, it was pointed out that when he was an MEP his attendance record at the European Parliament was far from brilliant.

And does he have any particular connection with Clacton?

Farage is a on-trick pony. He focuses totally on immigrants and nothing else - you can afford to ignore everything else if you're rich.

I think he and his fellow Reformers need to look at the SNP - they've spent years banging the Independance drum. And that's all they seem to have done, so much so that the electorate of Scotland have given them their marching orders this time.

Just glad I don't live in Clacton.

I'm not a reform voter but this doesn't even make sense. Voting reform isn't the same as being Nigel Farage.

Vote shaming?

politics almost always directly aligns with someone’s morals/ethics. It is very normal to judge others for their shitty views, (of which reform have plenty).

Would you judge someone for voting trump? BNP?

I wonder how the OP would talk to my neighbours kids, a young gay lad of 21 and his sister who is 18, both voting for the first time and both voted Reform.

You have a young guy who seeing the demographics of his city change at ever faster rates. The places he grew up feeling safe to be openly gay no longer feel this way, and he is seeing "independents" get elected in his area who support an ideology that would happily fling him from a rooftop, and he knows if he voices any concerns he would be met with shrieks of racist and bigot.

Going back to the Jess Phillips thread, his sister sees similar changes in the world around her, and as young woman is as equally concerned for the future of certain areas. She has seen the way Jess Phillips has been treated, as well plenty of other female politicians. She is not a bigot to be horrified by this, but where are the main parties speaking up against this behavior. Where are the main parties standing up for the teacher in Batley, who had to go into hiding for teaching basic stuff such her brother just being a normal person.

When no mainstream political party is speaking for her, or her brother, is it really so hard to wonder why Farage (who has a zoomer running his TikTok) can gain traction among switched on young voters.

So are they bigots? Are they racists? Should a young gay man get some conversion therapy? Should his sister let the men in her family tell her how to vote and how to dress? Should they do this in the name of tolerance of social cohesion?

Not wanting to be represented in parliament by people who would celebrate you getting murdered for your sexuality, or oppress you because of your sex is not bigotry.

Well a lot of the nice little safe bubblies will be burst in the next four years. Jess Phillips will not win next time the non UK independents will win her seat and probably a lot more.

I’ve always wondered this. Some of the most bigoted people are on the left

I think movements like Reform et al is a worldwide phenomenon - as can be seen in the recent European elections and mostly likely a return back to Trump in the US later this year. People believe these movements are going to fix their problems.

It reflects the misdirected stress levels of ordinary people who are battling cost of living, being priced out of home ownership, not being able to rent in their communities and so on. They are encouraged by the right wing owned media and right wing parties to blame immigrants for their problems. Blaming immigrants is as old as time and it almost always happens in times of world stress.

I think the deeper problem is the slow and gradual transfer of wealth from ordinary people to the super rich, which has been happening for the past several years. We are slowly losing the middle class. Many countries are pursuing low tax regimes, which means cuts to infrastructure to afford it. Wealth creation is now shifting much more outside of the traditional wages based tax system and is based on acquisition of assets which are passed down in families.

This is happening in Australia too - ordinary people are still stressed even though we have virtually no “illegal” immigration with offshore camps and legal immigration is based on skills needed in Australia. The immigrants we get are highly educated, young and healthy. Immigration needs to be carefully controlled to promote social cohesion but fundamentally it’s a red herring.

Does no one here remember Gillian Duffy? Ordinary woman concerned about immigration. Calling her a bigoted woman when he thought he was off-mic did for Gordon Brown. Turns out she reflected the concerns of very large numbers of ordinary, even middle class people. Being seen as a smug out of touch snob did for Brown, unfortunately for us all. We might never have had austerity and the hell that followed if Brown had won that election. I live in a smug middle class area and reform got 25% of the votes here, reflected across the country. So all you smug snobs, it's not just those left behind areas and people who are so easy for metropolitan elites to dismiss and patronise , it's your friends and neighbours too. They're not all bigots. But if that's your starting point how will you ever know or be able to understand, discuss, challenge or change minds.

It’s this sort of attitude, only looking around your own neighbourhood, not talking to anyone outside your own little bubble and thinking that anyone who voted for something different is a thick racist that gave us Brexit and the 4million who voted reform.

Instead of trying to understand the reasons people did vote the way they did.

You might not agree with the reasoning but if parties tried to understand why Reform got so many individual votes and addressed some of the concerns these people had they might find that it would show up in the ballot box

@Tukmgru

You sound exactly like the MAGA people in the US.
Crude, rude, and nobody is rushing to join them in their crusade to demonize “the other.”
Good luck with that. You’re gonna need it.

I don't expect anyone will care. People can vote for whoever they wish. They don't need your approval and actually it's none of your business.

I agree. Ranting gets you nowhere, just raises your blood pressure.

This.

Plus you have to understand where people are coming from. That their lives may be, but may not be, as privileged as yours.

This morning, for the first time ever, I fell for a scam. It was the twitter thing - Graham Norton show cut off because someone was talking about this AI boosted money trader that I could lodge £200 with and sit back as it grew at a ridiculous rate. I have never fallen for anything like this before. It was cleverer than I'm making it sound. But hey, I'm not as clever as I think.

I did some "due diligence" (googling) then put my phone number in the online form, which at that point ceased to work. I swear I have had more than 50 nuisance spammy calls today (all blocked now) as a result.

I fell for it because I need money and I wasn't concentrating. it's exactly the same with Reform - yes there's the grievance stuff with immigration but most of their manifesto is uncosted promises for things that everyone would want - no NHS waiting lists within two years, raise income tax threshold, scrap stamp duty, nationalise utilities (yeah, why won't Starmer nationalise utilities?)

So while I would never vote for Reform I appreciate that people who I think are less informed than me (who actually think they are better informed than me) would vote for them.

Hey ho. That's democracy.

Be quiet

Do Reform voters think NF is a decent man or a dangerous, misogynistic bigot?

I defend my right to be intolerant of intolerance.

Society at large needs to retain that right or the paradox of tolerance emerges.

So if you call a bigot a bigot you're a bigot too? So we should never call out bigotry?

"Ah yes" those words used far too liberally by self-righteous pomposities who think themselves intellectually superior and can't possibly be racist bigots because they're 'only saying commonsense facts'.

Like Nigel, good ole patriotic man of the people that he is.

What I don't understand is how they don't realise that all Reform will do is make things worse? There was a £100bn black hole in their "contract". They can spout the bile that they do and promise the earth because they know they'll never have to deliver it.

Worst of all, much of what they propose isn't even the interest of their average voter. Tice has made it quite clear in the past that they would like to privatise the NHS. Can the average Reform voter pay for private health care? I highly doubt it!!

Those who I've seen be attracted to Reform tend not to be particularly politically aware. You'd have to be to buy the horse shit that they're selling.

You see I totally get that & some of this has been caused by the Conservatives & their imaginary ' Super Majority' rhetoric!

But protest votes are really dangerous, look what happened with Brexit, lots of people voted Leave, not because they actually wanted to leave but because they wanted to protest .

Some of last nights results were won or lost on as little as 15 votes, every vote really does count.

And im sure that the country will be far nicer without your sneering, patronising, arrogant, intolerant self!

Absolutely

Its idiotic, superior, patronising like this that pushes people towards Reform! The shutting down of debates about immigration by screaming racism! Labour under Blair started this sneering and intolerance of anyone who doesn't conform to their views and if this carries on you will see a far far greater turn out for reform next time! When will people learn that instead of people calmly explaining the facts about Brexit the sneering and calling people thick and uneducated was what caused people to vote for it! This type of behaviour tends to be worse under a Labour government so i expect the next election will get a huge turn out and labour will get absolutely thumped!