This post nails it about left wing voters on Mumsnet over the last two days

We hear from Tice this morning that they are enormously grateful to a billionaire who paid £5 million to Farage “for his security “. Apart from the fact its taken him a good few days to come up with that as a reason for the undeclared millions, I’m a bit surprised that he thinks people are grateful to him 😂

I can understand why people are disappointed in both the Tories and the Labour Party right now. But they are going to be far more disappointed by Farage and his ilk, that’s for sure.

I’ve certainly seen far more posts (on MN and elsewhere) from people stating that other people think Reform voters are thick than posts actually saying anything of the sort.

I’ve seen more general “how could you vote for such awful policies” but then that comes from every side, and is pointed at every other party. “How could you support useless Starmer” “How could you think Badenoch is competent” “Can’t you see that Polanski is dreadful” etc. An awful lot of people think that anyone who votes for another party must be stupid.

If someone can sneer that every progressive left person is stupidly out of touch then it’s a bit rich to have a strop if some of them are also sneery.

Sorted 🤪why has nobody else thought of this?

I think assuming all left wing voters are the same is as stupid as assuming all reform voters are.

They used the same “us common people against the evil elites” campaign during Brexit. Remember when being worried about the economic hit was portrayed as being too posh to not want to “make do and mend?” Now here we are after that, the pandemic, and now two wars with a cost of living crisis, and no-one seems to be enjoying “making do and mending” - but if you mention it you get called an elitist snob who looks down on the people who talked up being happy to be poor in the first place.

Meanwhile Farage is taking £5 million “gifts” from crypto billionaires but that’s not elitist at all, nope!

Couldn't agree more. I can't believe what I'm reading on this thread. The self loathing is incoherent and tragic. We have a national culture too, several in fact. That are also worthy of being celebrated and acknowledged. We're not a transient rock for all comers.

Absolute nonsense, made by someone who clearly has little understanding of poverty.

Labour made a clear pledge to make Britain fairer, to end the attack on those on welfare. Austerity has permanently damaged the UK..... irreversible damage and this was acknowledged by Boris Johnson.

The problem for Britain is our economy is flat lining and has been for 25 years. We also have social problems that are not quickly solved. 83 billion pounds worth of debt held by water companies, aging population and a pension shortfall, a million homeless, poverty increasing, aging infrastructure.

You can't blame those not in work for this mess, this mess has been in the making since Thatcher. It's called decline and it's being made worse by greed

Farage wants to cut red tape, slash benefits, privatise the NHS and bring in insurance and cut spending.

This will bring in considerable suffering and likely cause lasting harm with no sure way to reverse it. Funding healthcare through insurance hasn't resolved the dental crisis as millions with private dental care are finding. There's always a shortfall and premiums to negate this are always very expensive.

If you want to understand our problems then I urge you to approach this from a global perspective. Look to Asia and Africa and accept that we are in a period of change. We have no right to success on a global stage and our past may be catching up with us. Leaving Europe has left us vulnerable and dealing with mounting red tape, and remember it was Farage who took you there. Are you any more free, I would argue that you are now trapped unable to leave an island in decline. Will a Reform government be able to aggressively force it's place in this new world.....I doubt that very much considering the size of the global economy.

I'm afraid it's not Labour who are to blame but more it's voters for repeating the mistakes since Brexit and refusing to accept that change is coming whether you are on board or not. Britain is not in a place anymore to reshape the global trade network.....and thanks to Brexit we don't even have a voice.

If Farage thinks that bullying will get himself something globally then he's in trouble. If he thinks getting into bed with Israel and the yanks will achieve power then again he might find himself outcasted more by Europe.

Your problem is that you assume change = better. This is nothing to do with class, it's a failure of imagination. Reform voters really don't seem to grasp how much WORSE everything can get. Firetreev is right. 'Your life is a bit shit, is it? Tell you what, why don't I go ahead and tell you some fairy tales about how that brown bloke over there is getting on a boat back to where he came from? And while you're clapping I'll dismantle your worker protections and take another 10% of your wage to give to the 0.5%. Those yachts won't buy themselves!'

And by the way, the Greens are the other face of the same coin. Just replace brown bloke with rich twat. And they'll give the 10%of your wage to a weed smoking guy in a frock writing angry tweets about how vulnerable and marginalised he is.

I think this works as an explanation of why working class voters voted for Thatcher in the 80s. Struggling to see how it works for Reform, who don’t appear to have any policies that would grow the economy.

@RedTagAlan Yesterday I saw a post where the pro Reform poster admitted to using a spelling mistake to be pulled up on.

This is interesting in itself. Why are they doing that? That hasn't come out of a vacuum, has it? It's because the self proclaimed intellectually superior posters who look down on reform voters use spelling mistakes in their own posts when referring to them. For example, 'forrin' is now used so much instead of 'foreign' in the guardian by the commentariat, I'm surprised the G don't adopt it as one of their official style forms.

What I see on MN is that more often than not it is the Reform voters who instigate the "thick insult" usually.

Because it seems to be their election strategy. And it is a proven strategy when used when used by authoritarians seeking to create a cult of personality. Especially when there is no firm political ideology or manifesto, but there is a person seeking power at any cost.

Yesterday I saw a post where the pro Reform poster admitted to using a spelling mistake to be pulled up on. In another the poster used a daft idea of push bike power station, that the poster later admitted was nonsense. Two different threads had the near same gish gallop solid wall of false claims, no punctuation and no structure.

It is designed to get a reaction. And when someone reacts, the thread instantly switches to " you calling them thick or wot, typical anti reform elite".

It's the same method of creating division as Mao used in his cultural revolution pre internet, and as Trump uses post internet. " I am one of you, see how the elite talk down to us".

This thread is just another example of that strategy in action.

Yes, but what was it George Orwell said? That 'England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.'

What came first? I would argue that it was this attitude from the intelligentsia that people finally pushed back on. Had the university educated middle class not had this attitude, patriotism could have been wrestled back from the NF in the 1970s instead of allowing them to own it.

I think unfortunately it has also been used by people who want to slag off anything that Britain is or does or has done. There is a real talking down of the UK by the left, and I am a left voter, its damaging. Its like a person having poor self esteem, self fullfilling prophecy about how awful they are, they cant do anything, they carry guilt which is a wasted emotion about something they did or didnt do years ago. They dont see that they should be aspirational or ambitious and look down on others that are

Thats been the UKs message to itself for years within the left. It has then allowed a vacuum where 'patriotism' is viewed as little Britain whereas it should be aspirational, celebratory, proud and ambitious.

The trouble in this country is that patriotism has been tinged with something else by people in 'fit in or fuck off' T shirts drinking all day lager under a St George's Flag, by Tommy Robinson and his 888 bus and a general philistinism at the things we can genuinely be patriotic about.

Also the 'patriots' are often the ones calling this Broken Britain.

Totally agree. Farage has taken people in with his ‘man of the people’ act. He is nothing of the sort.

He is millionaire who went to Dulwich College, which is one of the most prestigious and expensive independent schools in the world. A couple of years ago he got a £5million gift - according to him, a personal gift- in cryptocurrency.

You should add lacking any self awareness.

I wonder how other countries who were also colonialists in the past manage. I dont see any shame in hanging out flags in Spain or Portugual, they're celebrating their past and embracing their future, just like the UK should do.

Patriotism is what you make of it. You show by your post you dont even understand what it means.

Someone who tries very hard to make a better world for everybody with real active policies, not parochial fringe issues that have been manipulated by bad faith actors.

Brexit-type policies don’t grow the economy. I’m depressed that we’re watching America eat itself alive and we think ‘great, let’s try a bit of that’.

Dont Reform voters tend to come from what would be termed as the underclasses?

The Working classes who could benefit from a government who wants the economy to grow and support people in that (which Reform dont seem to be able to deliver but lets pretend that they can) are already on that pathway, they're plumbers, small businesses, working in care or equivalent types of job

The working classes who wont benefit from that are those who are on zero hour contracts, part time working with huge benefit top ups due to the cost of housing etc, those with disabilities who cant work full time or are carers for elderly or children. Minimum wage, insecure employment, unable to upskill due to lack of ability or capacity.

The underclasses who cant or dont work, wont benefit either.

I'm not working class but I think it's a shame that the media has skewed things so much that some working class voters think that Reform want to help them.

Couple of them on here, completely missed your point.