Reform party seems to be ahead in my area.

I agree that we need mature and nuanced debate but it goes for all, and doesn’t just come from the left. I do, however, think that there are lines that need to be drawn around racism and sexism/misogyny. Freedom of speech and accepting and respecting different views is good but not when they harm others.

Can anyone voting for Reform say how they think Reform will fulfil their promises?
There are actually things in their contract that I would support but I don't see how they can afford to make the changes without cutting services or raising taxes. And the suggestion seems to be that they won't be raising taxes on wealthier people.
I would not vote for a party set up the way Reform is set up, even if I did support all their policies, but I think that some voters (not all), see the headlines and then vote without thinking about the financials.
I've also asked above if there are any particular candidates that people are impressed with (apart from Farage). I know nothing about any of them (and honestly, those that I have read about have not impressed me).

This seems disengenuous. Debate raged fiercely during Brexit on immigration and regaining our sovereignty. Now many are voting for Reform on immigration and threats to our identity.

I'm not seeing a lot of difference. And the man behind it all is Farage.

Brexit vote - a referendum, of the simplest kind. The General Election is a constituency based FPTP election with all the constraints in term of how strong and strongly distributed support for a party is. As electoral processes they are not remotely comparable.

Reform are not sidelined from the media in general but the BBC do exclude them as much as they can. I've noticed when other TV stations all reported that poll when Reform got 1 percent more than the Conservatives, the BBC did not report it, just ignored it.

@cupcaske123 There is a national debt, which is an absolute amount and needs as many people as possible to pay it off. That is a major issue.
Ideally, people would be having plenty of kids, but that drops with financial insecurity. As long as the economy is about hoovering as much money as possible to the very rich, this is unavoidable and immigration is required.
The point of Reform is to keep money being sent to the very wealthy.

Yes, I think any normal person would have assumed that.
An issue is that people will not feel the emotional impact of how it hits people they cannot see.
Inequality is bad for the economy* (a point that seems less controversial now than 20 years ago), but we are often mainly concerned with how we are doing against the people around us. If people in jobs are getting worse off, many of them will want disabled people etc to have their standard of living lowered too.

*Some people use the word "economy" to mean rich peoples' yacht money. This is not how I mean it here.

https://news.sky.com/story/reform-uks-tax-plans-disproportionately-benefit-high-earners-analysis-shows-13156776

What is the answer to immigration in your opinion? Reform have said they'll address 'non essential' immigration. They've obviously realised that their former promise of net zero was unrealistic.

The NHS for example, is one of the biggest organisations in Europe. There are tens of thousands of vacancies and we're not investing in training people in the UK. Without immigration, how are we going to fill those vacancies? A lot of immigration is for students. Should we stop students coming in?

If multiculturalism doesn't work, and many countries believe it doesn't, what should we do to promote integration?

I am not sure that "fuck you" is as nuanced as you give it credit for.

Dear

I think many parties have underestimated the strength of conviction in immigration over a period of time to their cost. The main stream parties have been happy to label those that are anti immigration as racist and bigoted and all this has done is to inflame opinion and push voters towards what was once a fringe party that aligns with their values.

For many I know there is a perceived as threat to British culture, history and values through continued immigration and yet they feel scared to articulate this as they would be labelled.

Islam in particular has been noted as having a value set and culture that to many does lie at odds with a British way of life people hold fear so it is unsurprising when a politician is open about this, yes, some will vote for him. You will not see this feeling openly articulated elsewhere as no one wants to be 'that person' who is an alley d racist or Islamaphobe. However the feeling does exist under the radar in many especially working class communities and they feel they have been ignored.

Major institutions including the BBC cling slavishly to the idea that multi culturism has been an unbridled success and any critique is met with cancellation or hectoring about bigoted views. I think this a approach hasn't worked and in retrospect major institutions should have paid attention to this growing public view.

If you look at France where the National Rally could take power I think we could find lessons for major established parties about ignoring what might seem unpalatable public opinion.

Perhaps we need more safe spaces to discuss immigration and it's impact on culture (and perhaps the nature of democracy) without demonisation?

Polls have come a long way in 32 years. The Tories won by a slim majority, which was down to zero by the time of the 1997 election.

EDIT: I quoted the wrong post?!? So sorry!!!!

Agreed, anonym00se. Farage literally OWNS reform. There are no members who vote to choose leaders, he makes all the decisions and all the wannabe reform mps have to agree with him, there is no one in reform to hold him to account. He is absolutely a dictator in his own organisation and if, god forbid, he gained any sort of power that is the direction he’d follow. I have seen no evidence that he supports democracy, other than as means to getting power for himself.

He is a very dangerous man and I too find the parallel with the rise of the Nazis chilling. No country is ‘settled’ or ‘finished’ and democracy is never secure. Look what happened to Iran.

But it’s not “fuck you” when it’s yourself that you’re fucking, it’s “fuck me”. You might think you’re socking it to the man, when you’re punching yourself in the face, just like Brexit.

@Validus Excellent post. The ability to see and understand nuance appears to be a lost skill.

This may well turn out to be a 'fuck you' election; the same as the Brexit vote.

@ValidusThe sheer arrogance shown on most threads by left wing voters is astounding. As is the description of policies that are merely right of (true) centre as ‘extreme far right’. They are not. Most police's and positions that the modern left objects to have in fact been proposed in the past by politicians on ‘the left’.

We aren’t saying that we fear them because their all their policies are far right. It isn’t just about their current policies, but who they are as people and what they have the potential to become. Their candidates openly admire fascists and some have been involved with far right groups like the BNP and NF. That is terrifying. These people are far right, even if their manifesto tries to portray them as ordinary moderate people.

Farage is planning on scrapping women’s rights, and protections for gay people, disabled people and ethnic minorities. That is FAR right and actually is in the manifesto. It is not moderate, centre-right politics, its subjugation of protected groups. People fought for decades for these protections. But when we’re chained to the kitchen sink again, “We didn’t know that this is what they’d do” won’t cut it again. They’re telling us, we should listen.

He admires Trump, Putin and Andrew Tate. That should tell us exactly who he is.

There are so many parallels with the rise of the Third Reich, and that is why we fear them turning us into a dictatorship (which Farage has said he admires Putin doing the same in Russia), not because we think that everyone who votes for them is far right. Because we have strong views about Farage does not mean we’re “attacking” every potential Reform voter.

He has also studied and learnt from the people he admires - trump and putin. Not my idea of role models!!

@Meadowtrees absolutely. The man is a conman and a liar. He knows how to appeal to the people who engaged with his Brexit lies last time though. He's a smooth operator and some people are evidently prepared to overlook his total lack of principles or morals.

Validus - do you really think it is just left wing people that oppose Farage?

I’m a centrist, small c conservative and I utterly disagree with his ill-thought out spouting. I loathe his vaguely concealed racism and misogyny. He’d wreck the economy and he is only interested in making things better for people like him.

that and the fact that he’s pulling off a huge grift in presenting reform as a political party when in fact it’s a business that he owns the majority of shares in! It blows my mind that he isn’t being challenged on this.

What he is is a very persuasive and charismatic speaker and sadly many people can’t see beyond that.

He’s already done huge damage with brexit and people are happy to fall for his lies again. It’s quite hard not to feel frustrated by it!

I would recommend that the citizens of mumsnet stop ‘othering’ and monstering Reform and its voters. And start encouraging the other parties to actually talk about issues like security, defence and immigration and its effects. Otherwise the exact same thing will happen as with Brexit - those who aren’t listened to by the main parties will simply vote for the ones that bother to engage with them.

The reduction of international relationships and all disputes to ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ with nary a though is also unhelpful. Reality has nuance. It is also perfectly possible to recognise that evil people can be strategically brilliant or good orators without condoning what they chose to do with that skill. Pretending they were dumb as a box of rocks is stupid and reflects more on the commentator making such a suggestion. But hey, we live in a Hollywoodised era where apparently people are incapable of logic or reasoned discussion.

The sheer arrogance shown on most threads by left wing voters is astounding. As is the description of policies that are merely right of (true) centre as ‘extreme far right’. They are not. Most police's and positions that the modern left objects to have in fact been proposed in the past by politicians on ‘the left’.

This election is going the same way as Brexit - and the ‘left’s’ Refusal to engage like grown ups with issues that do actually concern a large part of the population is going to have the same effect now as it did then. It was 17.4m “fuck offs” back then. That’s a wide pool for any party to drawn from.

Watched a report yesterday on the computer systems that China had hacked. Government, NHS, etc and the vast amount of data they had harvested.

Apparently they could shut down many systems now. All without firing a bullet. So China concerns me.

This is what Reform are about (quite about Putin)

"I said I disliked him as a person, but admired him as a political operator because he's managed to take control of running Russia," Mr Farage said.

From West provoked Ukraine war, Nigel Farage says www.bbc.com/news/articles/cldd44zv3kpo

Imagine him ever "taking control". It would be disastrous and it has a sinister ring about it, given what we know for certain about Putin.

Reform will get a handful of seats if they are lucky. FPTP is not on their side.

@Gabbsters has it spot on. Reform will probably take a bigger overall vote share than the Lib Dems. But the latter will win likely 30 or more seats, as compared to the maybe 2 or 3, that Reform might get. And just as likely they'll get none. Personally I'd prefer the zero option.

The Lib Dems have some seriously concentrated support in specific parts of the country, with upwards of 40% or more support in those constituencies.

Why is 40% important? Because in only around 20 seats in the last General Election in 2019 did a candidate securing less than 40% of the vote secure victory. And with just one exception (32% in a NI constituency) these victories still needed to be in the 35% to 39% range.

Reform may well pick up a few dozen second places. But in FPTP there are no prizes for second place.

Our local reform candidate makes a big point about controlling the borders and people moving here from other countries but also mentions how he's lived in Denmark and Sweden. What a tit. Alright for him to do it but not for other people. To my dismay our neighbours have got his sign up in their window so must be voting for him. I think reform are picking up the disgruntled Tories.