Reform banging on about the “establishment” constantly

It's the one thing they have in common with their left leaning opponents. Both cry about the establishment while using it to further their careers and push their ideals.

Ah! You are right. My mistake.

He's anti establishment when the establishment isn't acting in his personal interests and when it presents a barrier to his personal gain.
If he ever gained power he'd continue with the same established orders, just with him dictating it.
He has nothing new at all, just extreme forms of what we have already and and a regressive ideology that wants to take us back to an older form of establishment.

Count Binface being asked about ‘establishment’ before the votes had been counted

www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c62x1edjyy5o

It makes him above the law. He is the super elite, not even the establishment.

I thought it was the people with the money who ultimately shaper society so that they can profit more.

I thought the 'establishment' was the BBC as an example

'Establishment' is just the latest cynical sound bite that Reform are so obviously trying to ram home to the poor sods who support them. And it works because they all have GB News on loop and begin to chant the set phrases like demented sheep.

An enquiry will now be held into the £5m gift and other corruption surrounding Farage and his cronies. I'm afraid no amount of hysteria-baiting or smoke and mirrors distractions about 'the estsblishment' will stop this. Watch Farage attempt another sympathy stunt in the next week or so. Probably he will claim he is experiencing escalating security / death threats blah blah blah. Anything to deflect the media narrative basically. He is up to his neck in corruption - why else did he panic and call this charade of an election?

So what if "the good people of Claction' (how patronising) voted for him. They do not represent the U.K. as a whole - not by a long way. They are 95% white, 40% unemployed and only 12% have a degree ffs! Many of them barely finished school. The demographic is also skewed towards elderly people.

The man is so 'establishment' he actually despises his voters - he just uses them as fodder and sadly he has their measure. He is all about exploiting the worst sentiments in society for his own nasty agendas.

How can you be 'anti-establishment' when you're constantly banging on about 'the British Commonwealth' and the 'Empire' ffs? He may not be 'woke,' but so what? He's as establishment as they come and he's so absorbed in his public school educated, white male stockbroker privilege that he can't even see his own hypocrisy. He literally couldn't care less about poor people. He can't relate to them at all - but he knows that poverty and lack of education mean people are more easily manipulated. So that's where he goes and that's what he exploits. That's it really. All the while his agenda is to siphon wealth upwards towards people like him and his corrupt, like-minded international friends. He will do nothing for the poorest and least educated in the U.K. - ie. his voters. He despises them, nearly as much as despises immigrants.

How can either of them lead or commission a formal enquiry without being in power?

Wasn’t it Restore who had an inquiry into the rape gangs?

Reform have carried out an inquiry into the Pakistani rape gangs. Those crimes were pushed under the carpet by the establishment for more than 20 years. Even now, the establishment media (BBC) does not report on the inquiry’s findings, while other media (The Guardian) peddled the line that most SA is carried out in the home by white men as if this made the rape gangs issue less important.
This is the single issue that has changed my mind about immigration in this country - it is really, really important.
So I agree Reform are not part of the establishment.

I think we're due a regeneration soon, new right wing will emerge and reform will be done

But - the right wing are going nowhere

As all of Reform have long links with the Conservative party they are the very definition of the establishment.

Farage hob nobbing with the hunt, posing beside Trump's gold doors, ex public school boy in his red trousers and blazer. Poster boy for the anti-establishment.

@Bringemout

Ok yeah I see what you are getting at, I think the problem is that many ethnic minorities don’t like DEI if we perceive it as undermining the idea that we attained positions on merit. I think there is a difference between saying “we would like more of xy and z group to apply so please do and we will ensure your environment is conducive to your working at your best as a gay person/ black person/ woman etc and actively setting quotas for example. I don’t think I have heard much on MP’s denying that racism exists tbh, if I have missed it thats my fault.

I completely agree with this and I'd feel the same as a (white) woman about any role which had actively set quotas about hiring women.

I don't think this issue is solely limited to discussions about DEI. I think there was a deliberate campaign by the Right to hijack the trans debate (among other things) to shift the discourse so any kind of progressive views are regarded with suspicion and it's had a negative effect on our public discourse. The word "progressive" itself has been tarnished and is now associated with bonkers left wing single issue causes (such as trans rights), instead of being a broader commitment to moving society forward in a way that benefits as many people as possible. I would like to reclaim it from the clutches of the far left and the far right. But that's another story.

Sadly some people believe the lie, just as some voted for Brexit on the basis of lies (at least enough to get over the line as it were).

If ‘the establishment’ is ‘powerful people running institutions to their own benefit and liking’ then Farage would certainly fit the bill. Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss. Normal people are still the losers at the bottom of the pyramid while the people at the top get rearranged.

”we’re going to overturn the old way of doing things where power and money were in the hands of that group of people. It’s now going to be in the hands of this group of people” <gestures to self>.

Orwell wrote about this…

Those reforms would give the ruling party more power. How is that anti establishment? It’s a move to a more authoritarian system of government.

Ok yeah I see what you are getting at, I think the problem is that many ethnic minorities don’t like DEI if we perceive it as undermining the idea that we attained positions on merit. I think there is a difference between saying “we would like more of xy and z group to apply so please do and we will ensure your environment is conducive to your working at your best as a gay person/ black person/ woman etc and actively setting quotas for example. I don’t think I have heard much on MP’s denying that racism exists tbh, if I have missed it thats my fault.

The judge who recently ruled that the met was guilty of indirect discrimination because it automatically paused promotions for people under investigation for misconduct and that disproportionately impacted black police officers I think is an example where people think it’s got out of hand. To me I don’t care what colour you are if you are being investigated for misconduct you definitely should not be put forward for a promotion. The question of whether the met disproportionately investigated black police officers is a different one and should be looked at.

I think people believe in fairness, sometimes it is fair and just to give one group something you don’t give others. Sometimes it’s not, I think it’s reasonable to discuss that. If someone disagrees the best way to tackle it is to demonstrate that someone is wrong, not that they are just a bad person.

@Bringemout

Which ones? For me it wasn’t overstated, every single female in the UK would be affected by the loss of those rights, every single one and most would have only found out when it became a problem from them. Changing the civil rights position of 50% of the population is not minor imo.

To be clear: I don't disagree with this position at all. I was also troubled by the trans position on "gender", I agree that it posed a threat to the rights of women, and I'm relieved the Supreme Court took the position it did. I'm also grateful that feminists fought on this point.

But I also think this has been used by the right as a kind of "gotcha" to invalidate other progressive positions and to shift the Overton Window so dismissal of other progressive views is considered much more acceptable than it would have been in the past.

The right has yoked the trans issue into a basket of topics which supposedly demonstrate the hollowness of progressive and left-wing causes. This has had an impact on how people discuss a host of other areas where there is institutional inequality in society. Including, ironically, prejudice against women.

Any discussion of how women or people of colour are negatively impacted by institutional racism, at work, in politics, in society is now waved away as "woke" by association.

DEI is much more than just about finding niche jobs for men pretending to be women. It's a premise that assumes that a diverse (in the proper sense of the word, not the box-ticking one) group of people will function more efficiently and more fairly than one in which people hire and promote other people who look and think like them.

There's tons of data to demonstrate that diversity (again, of the proper sort) improves on many hard financial metrics: companies with diverse boards make more money than ones with less diverse boards. And that's before you even get to the discussion about how that benefits equality in the wider society. Of which women are of course beneficiaries.

But the whole flap about trans ideology and "woke" has left an environment so febrile that is impossible to have a sensible conversation about this without going down rabbit holes about men in women's toilets. And I find it frustrating that many feminists are unable to see past the trans issue as if it was the only threat we face.

Sorry, I digress, but this is a classic example of where people like Farage have manipulated our perspective.

They want to reform the judiciary and curb it’s powers. You may think thats a good or bad thing but it would be a change to the way or institutions function.

Changes to civil service hiring and firing allowing more political appointments. Again you may think this is good or bad but it’s a big departure from how our civil service functions today.

Tbh I don’t think academy educated poc women would be doing a better job.

I would also point out that when people keep saying fringe groups are establishment, it gives them more of a route to power and radical changes. I mean how many people really want political interference in our judiciary. Yes people may want for example for MP’s to legislate ore harshly on xy and z but do you really want any given government to have more power or do you want our judiciary to be truly independent. This is the kind of thing people should be discussing, but no it’s “farage went to private school” honestly thats not the worst thing about him lol. Or he’s grifting, yeah well people think Angela Rayner grifted too. Discuss the ideas because this isn’t going to work.

If you can’t discuss ideas rationally and acknowledge radicalism then it’s going to be hard to communicate where the danger is. The “HE’S A WHITE MAN” is hardly going to be effective given that most of the other parties also seem to like having white men from privileged backgrounds as leaders too.

As I said I’m an ethnic minority and I’m getting bored of the identity politics now. It’s going to rapidly stop working on people and you are going to have to get into the weeds on ideas at some point.

I was responding to this point: it’s anti-establishment to want to dismantle the way existing institutions function.

I’d agree that’s anti establishment, but what has that got to do with Reform? What have Reform said that indicates anything about dismantling the way institutions function?

It’s not about the policies. That’s the whole point of this thread. It’s an idea. This is what people never got about Brexit. It wasn’t about the polices (it should be!).

Farage is basically saying - people like us. You cannot view it through identities (black, gay, rich, poor). It’s about attitude/ view.

Yes - we have to have common language. So important.

I noticed For Women Scotland had their 15th victory against the Scottish Goverment today.