AIBU to be utterly baffled at how many people are falling for Reform after the Brexit mess?

Heaven help us all if that’s “normal”!

Our local council is now being led by Reform. This morning I noticed we have had a big pot hole filled in on a busy roundabout. Also our new Reform leader has refused to fund the Pride march and additional policing. He said if they want to march they must cover the cost of the march. Very sensible imho. All these matches cost a lot of money and those who want to do them should be paying to fund them including any additional policing they need.

To simple people, everything is simple. I think this sums up the average Reform voter

Most MPs come across as deeply weird. Farage comes across as a relatively normal bloke. I'm sure it's an act but at least he's capable of putting on a normal facade.

Farage.

Thinking Reform voters are thick has got fuck all to do with wanting people to vote Labour. Vote Labour, vote Lib Dem, vote Tory even (if they ever get their act together again), I couldn't give two shits.

Farage has been selling the same snake oil with different labels for nigh on two decades. He starts a new "party", it all falls apart after four or five years, then he just rebrands the wagon, changes his tie, and rolls back into town.

His latest grift is pretending—despite being a lifelong Thatcherite—that he's all for nationalised industry and wants to reopen blast furnaces. Like anyone actually wants to work in a fucking coal mine. People won't even work on farms, they're hardly going to be queuing up to get a job in heavy manufacturing.

Thinking this nonsense is real is as idiotic as getting an email from a Nigerian prince and thinking "I'm going to be a millionaire!"

By the way, Nigel thinks you're all stupid too. A good snake oil salesman can sniff out credulity a mile away, and Farage is the best.

They also proposed to exempt all frontline healthcare workers earning less than £50k from income tax. Small wonder there’s a £100 billion hole in their “budget”.

I work in Whitechapel in London, which has a huge Mulim population. I've never seen a burqa here.
Who is this ban supposed to affect, appart from appeasing the gammons?

Look, I know I keep referring to the US but because it's such a striking example of that: they re-elected an insurrectionist and convicted felon who was impeached twice and said he would be dictator on day one. How can anyone be surprised when the guy behaves exactly according to type? So the conclusion is: those voters wanted just that. They'll still go with the criminal provided he's gobby and a male. They'll go for it again and again and again.

There are people who want Boris back. He's been found guilty of misleading Parliament but let's not mind that. People don't care.

Starmer is so unpopular. And he cant seem to help it, he’s just not a good communicator or likeable. And there’s so much criticism of Farage but who’s any better?!

if Starmer banned the burqa he might garner some attention from all the people that respect Farage, he needs to do something that shows he respects British culture.

My experience is the opposite. Of the people I know who voted Reform (again, I didn’t vote and am not aligned to any party) they are all intelligent and can back up their arguments.

Whereas the people I know who have voted labour did so because they always have done, and so has their family going back generations. The people I have asked to explain to me why they’re so horrified about reform getting in can’t explain it to me, they don’t even know what Reform’s policies are and are just parroting what they have heard.

I don’t care who anyone votes for or if they choose not to vote. I just wish people would put SOME thought in to it.

How many people fail for Tory lies.
How many people fail for Labour lies.
Therefore I believe people will fall for Reform lies.
They're all as useless as each other, make false promises in their manifestos and look after themselves.

Completely true. However I have examined the people I know who voted for Reform and they are indeed... thick. I have tried to have rational conversations about policies with them and it's simply not possible - they barely understand the word policies and are voting based upon the cult of personality which, let's be honest, is the only reason Farage is where he is. The same people voted Brexit and couldn't give me a decent reason for that either - one cousin, genuinely, told me he was voting Brexit because he felt there were too many Indians around him... I wish I were lying.

I don't want to believe such a vast swathe of Britain could effect such a potential disaster simply by being stupid but the evidence is against me. I understand and largely agree with the argument for disruptors and a protest vote etc., but again, examining those around me, that's not what's going on. I'm absolutely prepared to accept that many Reform voters are playing strategically, I hope they are, but yet again, among the people I know that's NOT what's happening. I don't want to just call all my cousins Harry and Lloyd but when I try and have a sensible conversation about it, they're metaphorically trying to light their farts. So no, I'm not entirely convinced that a strategic Reform vote to persuade the traditional parties to pull their socks up is going to save middle England from evil Albanian shopkeepers selling Monster and vapes to teenagers etc. Or from Trump.

On the other hand I am an eternal optimist and what I do see is a gap in the market for something new and different. Something to fill the hole between the existing parties, something run by smarter people than those currently in charge (because there surely must be plenty out there - what we currently have available simply aren't the best of the best). Maybe there are even some people with brains and integrity who may consider becoming politicians?! How novel that would be.

@MyHeartyCoralSnail 1 in 5 NHS workers are immigrants. Do you consider them low skilled? Have you looked at the list of jobs on the Immigration Salary List? None of them look particularly low skilled to me.

Many of those people in the UK who are long term unemployed do not have any of the skills to fill the jobs that we currently allow immigrants to apply for from overseas. How are you going to train the long-term unemployed to do them? Where will the funds for that come from and how long will it take? The other main reasons for long term unemployment is ill health and caring responsibilities. Any thoughts on how those two issues could be addressed?

People criticise Farage for exploiting his position whilst neglecting his duty as an MP. He did the same as an MEP but it seems people don't care.

@MyHeartyCoralSnail your posts make alot of sense. We have 5-6 million people on out if work benefits costing a fortune so the idea we need to import yet more low skilled people (many of whom are not culturally compatible) is ridiculous. And a very % of the Boris wave were actually workers anyway. Also the idea that tory/Labour mps and councillors are highly competent as opposed to amateur Reform ones is also ridiculous, many/most mps have never done a day's work in the real world whereas Reform mps/councillors seem to be more small business owners etc. In fact people criticise Farage for having outside earnings when reality is most Labour MPs would earn alot less in the business world.

So people were apparently turning away from the parties that had previously run the councils (often Tory) by voting for Tory councilors who re-stood as Reform candidates! What a mess.

But voting for Reform is only going to invite an even more incompetent lot to take power, with possibly catastrophic consequences -as we can see across the pond. The notion that change = hope is completely irrational. There's no guarantee that change will be for the better and judging by the failure of brexit to bring about any positives, giving Reform the benefit of the doubt seems especially illogical.

Don't forget

dismantling the NHS
restricting abortion rights
getting rid of the local government pension scheme

And I'm sure they'll be great.

People said the same when computers became widely available in businesses. Didn't happen then either. Yes, some jobs will disappear, but others will appear, some of which we don't even know exist yet. Look at social media influencers, web designers, etc - jobs which didn't exist 30 years ago!

In our county, the new "Reform" leader is the same guy who was the "Tory" leader until about six months ago before he resigned from the party, so if he was good and experienced enough to run the council upto last year, I presume he's still good and experienced enough to run it from now until the next election. They're not all novices at all. Several of our current Reform councillors have experience from being councillors in the past.

@ThePhantomoftheEcobubbleOpera @MargoLivebetter yes completely a joke, but with the addition of someone who doesn't understand the badger issue would be more upset about killing of a badger than an MP - its the whole upside downness of it all!

And if you cant get the irony of it then I apologise.

Again, missing the point of my previous posts, a slight joke, someone takes the wrong idea and then jumps on it - rather than reading the whole narrative, grab the bit, go out of context and get all upset.

I've been mentioning grown up thinking, working together, create proper infrastructure etc..,

AI will help but it won't solve the fundamental economic. issue. Plus I remember when the internet meant we would all have more free time 😆