Reform are getting a shitload of voters

Your teens did not read the Reform manifesto if they voted for them. Other than removing interest on tuition fees, there was nothing at all in there for young people. Absolutely nothing.

They got in in predominantly white, ultra deprived areas with lots of social problems and issues

yes it's amazing how turkeys vote for Christmas. Poor people in non-affluent areas voting for people who'll put them down even more. Lets not forget that it's all there in plain sight - Reform's manifesto makes crystal clear that they will remove employment rights.

The groundswell of support for Reform is certainly worrying.

In my constituency (large, mainly rural and one of the safest Tory seats in the country) the two major parties took the majority vote share as expected but Reform pulled twice as many votes as the Lib Dems.

That's very disappointing, but one great advantage of a first-past-the-post system is that fringe parties like this are mostly prevented from ever gaining a foothold.

He is the Bookies favourite to take over from Starmer . Currently 7/1.

I reckon votes of no confidence will start around March/April next year and we will have a new PM next summer - Starmer got fewer votes than Corbyn I understand.

Labour won by default, Starmer was a Trojan horse.

This country is fucked

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2024/jul/04/uk-general-election-results-2024-live-in-full

Interactive map of results ! Now I know where to avoid 😬 thankfully my area isn’t one of them.

Not to forget the insane inflation in that period. The recent col crisis pales into insignificance in comparison.
Old Enough to Remember.

The Tory’s are not racist. Have you not noticed that the prime minister and several of his cabinet members are not white?

They got more votes than the Lib Dems too.

What? Where are they going? You can’t get into America, or Europe. The commonwealth countries have pretty strict immigration policies, and who wants to live in SE Asia? Maybe a fraction of people will somehow move away, far far less than the people caught up in it.
Anyway, I’m talking about unearned wealth of inheritance and house prices.
Those people aren’t going anywhere.

A CGT on house sales would also be a good idea, and scrap stamp duty.

I was very scared for reform in my home town (I no longer live there). My home town after 14 years of neglect elected a labour MP, reform split the Tory vote. I am for the first time in so many years proud of Yorkshire, not submitting to racism and xenophobia as the first line and I’m sure tactical voting to get rid of the tories. Yorkshire is as it should be, once again, a red wall.

I remain scared of the potential reform has, but for all their wealth and all their bigotry they’ve only got 4 seats. Let it not fester to more than this. They got in in predominantly white, ultra deprived areas with lots of social problems and issues. Let those four experience being constituency MPs and actual accountability by nature of being MP.

My seat went from the SNP to Labour. It has been so refreshing knowing the result would be SNP or Labour. Not Tory and not reform.

I do not love keir starmer, I am a Jeremy Corbyn era Labour member (since left), but I hope for a kinder country for the working classes and this is a massive relief

But what happens if those people who have the wealth leave and take their companies with them

I'm really worried about this. Reform plus Tory is a bit chunk of the vote. People who are right leaning have felt let down by the supposed centre right party and lurched further right. The conservatives have some big choices about how to regain those Reform votes. Will they lurch further right too. Will they go for more moderate policies and chase lib dem votes even though they are quite different philosophy.

Labour has only 5 years to prove to voters they are better. They have a mess of a country to sort, very little ability to change tax. If people don't feel change has happened that next election could go further right than we have had before.

I voted to leave the EU because it was turning into a United States of Europe, and the UK has traditionally opposed that. Also because the EU bureaucracy leeches sovereignty from the participating nations and when those nations object crushes them.
I would not vote Reform (right wingers) because the reason I am a Brexiteer is that I am a 'clause 4' Bennite socialist; that is I support the views of the late Tony Benn, who opposed the EU for exactly the same reasons that I do - that it is a capitalist cartel bent on removing most agency from ordinary people in favour of big business.

So who pays “Tax” as opposed to personal tax

Or are you dealing with amounts and trying to compare 1954 to 2024 and being surprised the amount is higher

Absolutely right. Labour sold much of our gold reserve at very low prices. There just isn’t the money that was available for Blair’s government. Money alone (even if we’d got any) won’t solve the NHS crisis. And anyone who says immigration numbers is not an issue must live in a bubble. It’s not about race, it’s about infrastructure, integration (some cultures have mediaeval views about women) and the speed of change in many (mainly poorer) neighbourhoods.

One could argue that problem was created by the Blair / Brown government though. The benefits systems drive to more and more in-work benefits is effectively the state subsiding big business. So, rather than pay people a fair wage/salary, that govenment encouaged minimum wage jobs, topped up by benefits, to bolster its core vote. Then they swamped the market with graduates, far beyond the number of graduate jobs, depressing graduate salaries for generations as well. If that govenment had invested in business / industry at the same time, instead of lumbering the NHS and schools with debt, perhaps they would also have created a demand for all the graduates, increasing wages and salaries for all by creating scarcity of staff at the bottom. Their legacy is still a hollowing out of career progession for the lowest paid by imposing a 'grafuate celing' on theor aspirations. Then of course if any future government tries to change the benefits system there is uproar...

OneForTheToad · Today 07:37
The massive inequality now is people who paid £40k for a 3 bed semi vs. people now paying £300k for the same

I paid around that for a house but I was on £2500 per year

I now work a minimum wage job and am now on 10 times that amount and yet the £40k house is now only £300k
By your assumptions it should be easier to buy a house now

Don’t forget there was no minimum wage at the time houses were £40k. It was a case of how desperate you needed the money and how low you could sell yourself for

Fullfact

It's a charity that fact checks claims made by politicians, public institutions and journalists, as well as viral content online.

It says
"It’s true that in 2022/23 the tax burden was at the highest level in over 70 years. It’s since fallen slightly, but is forecast to increase over each of the next five years to a near-record level."

https://fullfact.org/economy/70-year-high-tax-burden/

Watch Reform. Its not good calling their voters thick, racist etc. They might not stand for what you want but their votes are equally as important. Imagine what would have happened if Tories had done a deal with Reform and stood together...

Have you missed the SNP in power for over a decade?

I said Tax not personal tax.

Yes. They have to go after wealth.
But also introduce regional income taxes like in Switzerland. That way we’d get more companies and people working in the regions rather than everything happening in the South East.
But I digress from ‘Reform bad’.

It’s probably the lowest tax for 70 years

What are you talking about

Are you forgetting the shit show of Harold Wilson’s Labour Government upping the tax to 83% for the highest earners
Then there was the 70s when the basic rate of income tax was 35%
(I did pay that in my first job)

The massive inequality now is people who paid £40k for a 3 bed semi vs. people now paying £300k for the same.

Labour need to tap into all that unearned wealth sat in housing. Hitting pensions (which is earned wealth) will cause resentment. Though Gorden Brown did it previously.
Another thing is pensioners not being required to pay NI. They should be paying at least some % or monetary figure for healthcare. At what point can you stop paying insurance and benefit from cover for free for another 20 or 30 years?