Imagine if Reform won the election, and the next one.

The country would carry on vaguely as it is now, the civil service would maintain their current policies and PMQs would be a little bit more interesting. Farage might get one or two of his policies implemented but they wouldn’t be the most damaging ones. The conservatives and Labour would have a big shake up, start listening to the electorate a little bit and return to government at the next election.

If you find the rise of fascism in UK amusing, you've got a srange sense of humour.

Well, Farage certainly is a fraud. And the Reform lot are clearly racist, but we knew it really, anyway. Obviously, John Crace's column is a weekly satirical column, intended partly to amuse.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/27/the-farage-faithful-know-hes-a-but-they-dont-carewww.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/27/the-farage-faithful-know-hes-a-but-they-dont-care" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/27/the-farage-faithful-know-hes-a-but-they-dont-carewww.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/27/the-farage-faithful-know-hes-a-but-they-dont-care

" People like him because he legitimises their anger. Gives voice to their discontent. He tears things down with no thought for a rebuilt future. Next week he will be in parliament. Don’t say you haven’t been warned."

Economic problems inevitably lie ahead, A populist fascist who gives voice to people's anger. And wants to see paramilitaries take over policing. What could possibly go wrong? Where have we seen this before? The future belongs to..

Given that yet another Reform party member has been filmed making extremely racist comments - racial slurs about Rishi Sunak, vowing to turn all mosques into Wetherspoons, advocating shooting asylum seekers on the beach and shooting everyone in Bradford (he used a racist version of the city's name), laughing with another party activist about gay people being 'nonces' and saying that police under Reform will be 'paramilitaries' and the noose will come back...

...a Reform-led country would be a racist, fascist dictatorship with no money.

Of course, Farage has distanced himself but isn't it funny that so many Reform members turn out to be incredibly racist? I wonder what on earth is drawing them to the party?

It doesn't bear thinking about. Did anyone else see Channel 4 news earlier? They had infiltrated the Reform canvassers in Clacton and it was jawdropping. One man referred to Sunak by a four letter racist term and said the way to deal with illegal immigrants was to shoot them as they come off the boats. I'd like to think that the decent people of Clacton will respond to this by going out in droves and voting for whoever has the best chance of beating Farage - the Tory?

I'd stay put. Yes to Trussonomics x2 and all that entails [checks stocks of tinned food and candles] But based on Farage's previous as an MEP, he wouldn't actually do very much, except presumably a few Trumpian horrors. I would bet on him promoting an elected judiciary for example, and the TV licence would be gone instantly as a surprising number of people think thats a good idea.

Overall it would be like having a constant headache plus chronic constipation, with endless splits, alliances and rows in Parliament while any actual governing never gets done.

a lot of people would voluntarily leave

and given how the nhs is propped up by immigrants.... that would not go down well

I think I would start to take steps to find people to come with me to colonise Mars.

Well it would be terrifying.

The main parties all need to pull their socks up, or this could become reality.

It would be a huge economic implosion - Liz Truss x100. Britain would immediately lose any international standing we have left. Imagine, a country voting for the self harm of Brexit and then voting for a private company to run the country instead of a political party. No one in Reform knows what they're doing, no one has parliamentary experience (except Lee Anderson, is he the only one?). A Cabinet staffed by people with absolutely no idea what they're doing. I know the Tories have been a talentless, embarrassing shit-show so it's hard to imagine worse but it would be an unmitigated disaster that even Reform don't want. Farage has zero intention of ever working a day in his life so he doesn't want to win any more than he wanted Brexit. He likes to be an agitator but he never wants to step up and act.

Yeah I think the same, it's not going to happen but... but brexit did and Donald trump became president so you really never know

Chaos I imagine. They'll sell everything off and spend their time bathing in money.

Given his support for hunting and the 'country sports mean country jobs' line in their manifesto type thing I imagine they will lift the fox and stag hunting ban.

Quite!

OMG yes I'd forgotten about that!

IIRC he has had an Irish wife and a German wife, then he left the German for a Frenchwoman.

You couldn't make it up.

Ashes and ruin, I imagine.

I think Reform would implode very quickly and there would be another election within months. But it would take years for the country to stabilise.

Isn’t it!

Didn’t know about the French girlfriend!

Yup - if he won he'd shit himself. Who would be Chancellor? Home sec/foreign sec? Oh yes, probably Farage because Reform is set up as a business, not a political party?

And his girlfriend is French.

Yes, if you're young enough and have the rights skills. Farage would be stuck with all the old useless ones like me who can't leave because nobody will have'm.

The Dutch far right party leader Geert Wilders also has a foreign wife, Hungarian I think. Although in his case he mostly seems to be against anyone with more melanin than him (but is also against the EU).

It’s quite bizarre, isn’t it?

I wouldn't be sticking around either. I imagine quite a lot of people would go... which would help them get to net zero migration, I suppose, but perhaps not in quite the way that they had intended!

Always amazes me that his wife is German.