Labour voters….

Durham result tells you the opposite. Reform are moving in on traditional Labour voters. Labour supporters are pretty now concentrated in metropolitan elites who can afford to bear the brunt of their policies.
Look at Welsh polling at moment + where Reform won in council elections

There's the irony. I can't recall if it was further up this thread, or a different one where I made a comment on a radio programme where the sentiment was that immigration could reduce to zero, and the Farages of the world would still be banging on about small boats and gaining supporters.

Also, Reform are surely capturing disenfranchised Conservative voters more than disenfranchised Labour voters? The council elections are usually a protest vote, so not necessarily indicative of a GE result, so maybe there are more than one might initially think.

Traditional Labour voters, i.e. the working class, have already abandoned the party in their droves because they were abandoned to chase after the vote of middle class liberals, calculating that the working class had nowhere else to go.

Now the working class are going to Reform Labour are merely making a half arsed plea over immigration.

More migrants have been processed and returned back to where? What are the current figures?

On the basis the majority of people trying it on with the small.boats won't be classed as asylum seekers (as they are economic migrants) they probably won't be successfully claiming asylum in an off shore processing centre . Where will this processing centre be?

If you mean your Labour isn’t working one I’ve never posted on it. It would be very rude.

Thanks you saved me bothering to say the same.

You are quite happy to wade in on threads not aimed at you so stop policing what other people do

In case you hadn’t noticed, this thread is addressed to Labour voters. And obviously processing claims faster is the key because the impact of arrivals would be much reduced if they’re processed and leave quickly. Nobody with any common sense can argue with that.

If you’re a Labour voter maybe but it won’t convince everyone hence Reform support growing since the GE.

I agree. I could have understood it if he had said there was a need to be careful with immigration for the time being to preserve social cohesion while people were doing it tough but blaming immigrants for the UK becoming an “island of strangers” was a different kind of language.

People no longer talking to each other, mixing and knowing each others’ names is something that happens among UK born people too. People today no longer mix as much in general because of the impact of the internet, Netflix etc. In person, old style activities such as clubs, sport participation, volunteering, churches etc have all seen declines in membership. This is not good for mental health and has a far greater impact on people becoming relative strangers.

Starmer has to move further to the right to catch the disenfranchised Conservative voters, without pissing off the usual Labour voters.

I think that about sums it up. Starmer is between a rock and hard place.

Voters like me would like to see him being more radical - public investment in services being top of the list. But he cannot go overboard on this without inviting accusations of financial irresponsibility.

What I do know is that any politician we vote in will not do everything we want - that is a fact of life - and I would rather have Starmer's decency at the helm than the nonsense we endured for 14 years from the other lot.

I think he is doing well on the world stage and showing statesman-like behaviour, something that has been in short supply from British politicians in recent years.

I am hoping that once Labour is bedded in they will start to tackle the things for which we voted them in: NHS, care reform etc.

I do not necessarily disagree with what they have done so far but feel these issues should have come further down the line after they had established their public service credentials - they have got the optics wrong I feel.

Net though, more migrants have been procesed and returned. The important measure is not how many arrive, it is how quickly they are dealt with.

The obvious solution to preventing arrivals in small boats would be to enable the ability to apply for asylum before reaching UK soil.

What have Labour done? Apart from the last week when KS is all of a sudden “on it’” the subject of immigration has hardly been touched on and numbers have risen in the last year

The state needs to do much less, much better. Concentrate on what we need rather than spending vast sums setting up useless quangos so the government looks like its doing something. Far too many unprodutive managers. Bonfire of the quangos etc.

Then we should be allowed to keep more of our own money. It won't happen though. Because we are run by politicians.

Raising the tax allowance to £20,000 would cost 50 billions, I wonder how that would be funded. Liz Truss had a budget of £45 billion of tax cuts and we all know the result of that.
It’s like dangling a carrot for a donkey at the edge of a cliff.

The crossings have risen significantly since the election. So yes Labour have certainly done more about immigration.

I agree with this. If former traditional Labour voters switched to Conservatives then it's not a big stretch for those types of voters to switch to Reform. I would assume most of those types of Labour voters would be OK with that switch as Reform appear from the polls and local elections to appeal to them.

The types of Labour voters that probably won't change are the Guardian type metropolitan voters, most Muslim voters, the voters who are invested in the DEI system and trans etc (which old Labour voters will not be) and those that the unions support like doctors, train drivers, state workers etc. I'd assume they wouldn't want to vote against their own interests so will stick with Labour. Those are specific groups of people with specific interests. I don't think the rest of the country will go for Keir so it will be a numbers game. He's lost pensioners, farmers, anyone interested in preserving our countryside, wealthy people(and their taxes), private school parents, people hoping to pass anything on to their children, the private sector, business owners, kids hoping for a part time job etc.

As to alternatives to Labour and Conservatives, the Conservatives only have Reform whereas Labour voters have a few left/of centre parties to chose from eg Lib Dems, Greens, SNP etc.

I didn't say it would catch them, just that it is his intention. Tony Blair did the same thing in the 90s. They all do it to a greater or lesser degree, other than possibly Corbyn, who, much as he was unelectable for many other reasons, at least hoisted his flag and stuck to it.

Ultimately, there are so many broken things at the moment, no party will be able to fix them all, certainly not in a single term.

Edited to add - if immigration is your thing, Labour have done more about it in the last 9 months than the Conservative party did in the last 5 years. Whether you think what they've done is right or not is a different conversation, but more returns is inarguable.

Isn’t Reform polling well in Wales, they will more likely be switching from Labour. I’m not sure they’re immune. Plus it’s the ‘red wall’ all three parties have tried to get or will try to at next GE.

But a lot of Tory voters were previously Labour voters who have now moved to Reform instead. Labour did nothing to get them back over the past decade or two.

Reform do not represent Labour votors especially as they are mostly former conservative Party members

It was always very clear Labour were going to be a shambles of a Government. I and many others warned about the dangers of electing them, but all we got back was “I’m fed up of the Tories”. There is no purpose to Labour any more. Reform reflect the views of the traditional Labour voter far better with the Lib Dem’s catching their middle class, be kind contingent.

The world has changed - Labour are irrelevant and probably so irrelevant they’re not really fit to be the opposition party let alone in government, they don’t know what they stand for anymore. The Lib Dem’s would be even worse.

The best bet is for the Tories to keep centre but have a workable plan to combat immigration issues and tackle the integration issue of people, including 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants who are already here.

I think it will end up being Lib Dem vs reform. Labour have upset a lot of their electorate and that won’t be forgotten about.

I always vote Conservative and quite like Kemi but she seems really unpopular and unless they have a change of leader and/ regain in popularity again then I will be voting Lib Dem. Reform are way too far to the right for me and there is no way I would ever vote for Labour.