To not see the appeal of Reform

People are struggling and are looking for people to blame. It's easiest to blame immigrants because they are obviously different. Reform are amplifying the xenophobic rhetoric because explaining the real reasons is far more complex.

Where would the shock factor be there? The greens/lib dems are hardly ‘out there’ are they?

Me neither. They're a bunch of fucking losers and wrong 'uns. As far as I can tell.

Reform will not reduce immigration. Just like the Tories didn't. And Brexit didn't.
They may reduce small boats and shut down asylum hotels, but those are hardly the U.K's biggest problem.

They will privatise the NHS, decrease spending on public services and demolish welfare, then blame it on the immigrants who are still around. " You can't get a GP appointment because of all the brown people on benefits. ( even though your actual doctor/ nurse/ carer is a brown person)." This will work very well because a country in distress needs someone to blame.

Then when all that is done, Farage and his friends will flee for the US/ Dubai/Spain.

Maybe they have got sod all experience...

Did the fact that, at one stage you had sod all experience, prevent you from learning to drive? Or becoming a parent? etc.

Let's face it - when we're born, we've ALL got sod all experience of everything.

Fortunately, people give us the chance to gain experience.

Well they are not in the public eye are they ,not on social media,not on the news , reform seem to be quoted and filmed regularly.

Not sure why being “fed up of Con/Lab” means we need to vote for an extreme right-wing alternative.

Centre ground contains Lib Dems and The Green Party - what’s the issue there ?

No ,but they have 4 years to get some decent ones in place
Just as labour has 4 years so sort out this shit show ,and make a success of the their time in government.

These are good points

With your elevated sense of your own who do you vote for?

I’m not sure the insults to get people to vote for whoever you do does much anymore.

returning anyone who arrives here on a boat, without following due process and considering their application, would see the country subjected to international sanctions, that we cannot afford

Who the fuck would sanction you? International law isn’t real, you can just ignore it.

Maybe so, but I still wouldn't vote Reform. They're divisive and have no cohesive policies.

The BIG issue with all of this is lack of perception. People genuinely don't realise how bad the UK has become. Go into your local supermarket, I guarantee that you will notice two things. Firstly, the lack of stock, just one or two varieties of each product available. Secondly, the empty spaces on the shelves, in some cases almost whole aisles. People think this is some hangover from Covid, it isn't, it's all down to Brexit.

I was in Ireland recently, my fucking god! the difference!

The shelves were heaving, I had forgotten just how sparse our stores have become here. It was striking, but I had forgotten that what I was seeing was normal, just not for here. People need to wake the fuck up! It's not normal for a supermarket to run out of milk, or bread.

Our public services are broken. Police, Courts, NHS, Councils, all being run with a reductive mindset, cutting services just leads to more cost, not less. For example, your local council cuts back on street cleaning and cutting the grass in the park, the result is dirty streets and an park People don't use anymore. When public spaces aren't used for good things, people will use them for bad things instead. It's the Broken Window theory. The end result of all this cost saving are filthy streets, a disused park, with ASB and crime increasing, causing more pressure on the police, the courts, and local people. It's a delusional policy.

People are just fed up with it all now.

They say bad times create strong people, and strong people create good times, good times create weak people and weak people create bad times. We are just now entering the bad times, which were created by the delusion that the UK was somehow special, and that there is "enough" here for everyone, there isn't.

There isn't even bread on our shelves.

Yawn - see my reasoned post above. You are just showing your own lack of intelligence and critical thinking (I know this post will prob be deleted as mn doesn't like people pointing out individuals stupidity even if they insult others).

You are assuming a level of intelligence and critical thinking in Reform voters OP that very clearly doesn’t exist.

I know a few people who are fans and plan to vote Reform.

The main points seem to be -

1. Reform have said there are too many boat people.

The people I know who are Reform allies live in very white areas. Many of them have grown up working class and aren't wealthy. Many of them have also earned quite well - none of them live in poverty but also aren't in a position to leave their children substantial inheritances. They've seen house prices rise to a level where their young adult children can't afford to buy. Their elderly parents have had winter fuel allowances cut but they read stories of 'immigrants' being given mobile phones whilst living in hotels and they imagine them all be be staying in the hotels they'd choose to holiday in playing on their brand new iPhones at the expense of their own families who have worked and paid in to the system.

Many of them are also angered by reports of rape and sexual assault. They forget that the majority of rapes and sexual assaults are carried out by white men born here but it doesn't matter to them anyway because the rapes committed by the asylum seekers wouldn't have happened if they hadn't been living here oh and it's not a problem generally because theyre white men and they've never raped anyone.

They don't necessarily believe that 'immigrants' are responsible for the downfall of/problems in the country but that the government should be focusing on sorting out the country for those who already live here (whatever their origins) rather than allowing thousands of undocumented people in when we have no idea why they are here or what their intentions are.

1. Of those, some of them also believe that Muslims are all interested in imposing Sharia law in the UK. That they hate 'us' for eating bacon sandwiches. That 'they' want to ban Christmas and Easter eggs. That none of them have any respect for women and that they are offended by British flags. None of those things are true..

None of them (I've asked) have any Muslim friends, neighbours or colleagues and many of them have never even spoken to a Muslim.

But stopping 'immigration' would solve that too (in their eyes).

1. While the other parties were getting their knickers in a twist about what a woman is, Reform stated quite clearly that there are two sexes and if you're born one, you can't become the other.

Some people believe that makes Reform a friend to women but most were just impressed they'd stood up and publicly said what was blindingly obvious to most people.

And that's the bottom line.

Nature abhors a vacuum and when the main political.parties are obfuscating and shutting down discussions much of the electorate wants to have, Reform is filling in the blanks.

People I know who are planning to vote Reform are scared. Scared for their futures, scared for their children's futures, scared for the state of the country and they don't think that stopping the boat people will make us all rich and happy but that it would be one 'simple' way of beginning to address some of the issues.

Farage hasn't said how they would do this any more than he said how Brexit would work, but the soundbites make the disenfranchised feel heard.

To answer your question as most of these posters seem to just be answering why they WOULDNT vote Reform or signal their superiority to people who would it is:

1. Immigration - they have said they would massively reduce immigration which people know is a big problem. At the moment we are importing c. 500,000 pa to do low skilled jobs (which is a net cost and puts massive strain on housing,NHS etc) while paying 5m plus people to be unemployed just because Labour won't get a grip -crazy.
2. Small boats.
3. Scrapping net zero - we have the most expensive energy in the world while exporting all our manufacturing to China. No country can have any growth when industrial energy costs are so high.
4. Stopping the perceived war on eg small businesses (through high taxes, energy costs etc) and farmers. Maybe less high tax paying people would then emigrate meaning MORE govt revenue. See also the Laffer curve - if you haven't heard of it it explains that if taxes are too high people lose all incentive and tax revenue is actually lower - we are at that point now. This is just a few examples but is all in their manifesto. There are ALOT of vested interests they would also have to tackle and may not succeed. Unlike the failures in Labour who have just worked in the public sector some of Reform have run successful businesses so this also appeals to people. Hth.

I believe that Horatio Nelson said the same when asked if he was having an affsir with Lady Hamilton.

I’d certainly agree with this. The location of the hotel riots in Rotherham isn’t to be ignored. That holiday inn was built in Manvers. What did this very particular area of Manvers used to be? The colliery. The very site of the Colliery, where thousands of men in the 1980s worked to feed their families, jobs which they then lost and often, never managed to replace. Do you know what the local Labour government built to replace those lost jobs? Call centres. For men who had spent from 15 years old down a pit, using their hands. There was nothing for them. Now, their children and their children, who have lived through generational poverty and unfairness, haven't received the education they deserved at underfunded and run down schools picked a place, wrongly, to protest that unfairness. I am NOT defending the actions of those rioters, their actions were horrific, but to prevent things, you need to understand things and it’s all very well for people who don’t live in areas like that, who have not seen social injustice their entire lives, to point ‘right wing thug’ at people but that will not fight to correct anything.

The thing is, what will they do once they’ve finished bullying the immigrants and realise that their problems Maybe aren’t the £48 a week as opposed to the billions of pounds lost to tax avoidance by billionaires and corporations that Nazi Nige plans to give more tax breaks to?

That Reform supporters somehow think a privately educated millionaire stockbroker who is the son of a privately educated millionaire stockbroker is somehow a man of the people says volumes about their intelligence. Not to mention he rails against the EU but married a German and made sure his children had EU passports and tried to get one for himself, and is very happy to help himself to a massive EU pension. Then there’s the fact he claims he’ll do things differently and represent his constituents but has voted against their interests including no to improving employment rights, and has the worst attendance record of any MP.

The trouble is they offer a ‘none of anything’ option. They have no solutions, policies or plans.

When your very wealthy and live in a nice expensive area ,and see illegal immigrants on media getting hotel/phone/3 meals a day /days out / dentist/ doctor/ hmo / bills paid ect ..it doesn't bother you , because you already have more .it doesn't bother you because you don't see it because the area is very expensive so government isn't buying up hmo ,to house non English speaking males in, because your area is to expensive,walking down your street every day,nothing much changes ..you can afford to assume it's racist to object.

When you live in a run down area ,your school was shite ,you have few qualifications,you've spent years with your family in one room in temporary accommodation ,no garden for your children,your on limited benefits that keep getting sanctioned and removed,your kids have no chance of getting on the housing ladder ,you can't afford a new phone,you can't remember the last time you had a night in a hotel .you certainly can't afford the amount of food seen arriving in the migrants hotels ,your local area has changed massively with non English speaking people hanging around with spending money to gamble, you don't have because it all goes on bills ,and you basically feel forgotten by all politicians ,you see the boat people, getting housed , getting bills paid , getting their families brought over and housed by the council before you ....

Then along comes reform,and they seem to speak for you ,they care about the change in your local area ,and claim they will be the ones to stop it .
It's not difficult to see why they are so popular.
Is it worth loosing the NHS over ...well I guess those that vote them seem to think so
However
Plenty of labour politicians take donations from private health care companies, shouldn't be allowed but it is ..make of that what you will

Other than the obvious Reform voters I think many people are using a ‘reform’ vote as a very simple message. Perhaps catastrophically so, who yet knows. Whether you are aligned with the Conservative Party or are happy with how things are going under Labour MANY, normal, hardworking voters are not and it’s often these people who feel ignored and pushed aside by consecutive governments and feel a controversial vote for Reform is a ‘fuck you’ to the two parties that they have been consistently let down by.

It’s very very easy for us all to label Reform voters racist knuckle draggers and I don’t dispute that a lot of them are. But not all and the Government could learn from the old saying of ‘Ignore them at your peril’.

Vote green Party as a protest then

I'm not sure why people blame Farage for Brexit being a disaster - that was down to the people who actually had power (the useless Tories) and Labour to a large extent who blocked their minimal efforts to take it through Parliament. Farage can legitimately say that he then stepped out of politics as thought the politicians would work to make Brexit work (as politicians in Norway did when they had a similar vote). Brexit had exposed just how useless both the main parties are as when they got power back they were incompetent so has been a blessing if it destroys them both (imo the Tories won't be coming back).