Reform UK rising in popularity with young men

[ILoveCustardTartsFromTescoBakery]

It's just being spoken about by Ben Kentish on LBC

Just about how Reform UK have a large following of 18-35 year old men. Specially men, not women.

Why is this? What's driving them?

The fact that some many young men voted for very far right leaders elsewhere in the western world is also being spoken about

So far, the opinion seems to be that it's because Reform UK are very active on TikTok/Instagram seems unlikely but I don't have a better idea

I personally know a few young men who are 'all for' Nigel Fanny but I don't understand the appeal, although I also noticed it's always men that seem to support him the most

For context, I'm 27. Married. Own husband seems to say 'well I don't hate him, no'. Argh.

Agree!!!

But I also think part of the issue is the best role models aren't the ones marketing themselves as "role models". Especially for men/boys - the healthiest role models are just the ones getting on with their hobbies, their lives, their jobs and maybe talking passionately about those on TV/social media.

Too many assumptions here about what Nigel has said. The fiction is getting as bad as the accusations against JKRowling.
Just when did me speak up about ideals of masculinity, just tell me the Tate supporting quote. Others who claim to support him might have but I don't think NFdid.
Kemi Badenoch quoted a paper about how the western democracies are being overwhelmed be bureaucracy, our world is being de-risked. 20mph speed limits, the council that insisted on volunteers having training to water hanging baskets. So many regulations about animals, anglers not allowed to hold fish in a keep net in case they get upset.
Speed limits mean it is no fun riding a motor-cycle any more. Enforcing 60mph on open empty roads across moorland is not about safety it is about catching people out. The left wing people who run councils love that.
These and more are being interpreted as the 'feminisation' of the world.

They are being presented with easy, glib solutions to difficult and intransigent societal issues by far right populist parties and some politicians in that category are superficially charismatic and seem to have all the answers and the ordinary working persons best interests at heart. They most definitely do not have anyone's best interests at heart other than their own.

None of the issues they concern themselves, particularly immigration, or illegal immigration, with are easy or cheap to deal with.

It happened before. Let us not forget the Daily Mail's support for the Nazis in the 1930s. And the largely right wing media plus divisive characters on social media fanning the flames of hatred and division more recently.

Yes, but you can flip that round. If you reduce health and safety/regulations then the main "losers" in that are men who have the most workplace accidents etc and most likely to be working in jobs (building industry etc) that have the potential to be dangerous if not properly regulated. You have a situation where women complaining about e.g. sexual violence have it pointed out (correctly) that men do the most dangerous jobs and are most at risk of violence. Men are indeed justified in feeling hard done by if no-one shows an interest in those issues. But if people DO try to fix those issues (better safety measures, anti-street violence initiatives then that is spun as feminising society and making life harder for men.
So either way you have a strong argument for men to feel discontented. Maybe there is no perfect world and we all (men and women) are built to be slightly unhappy. But that isn't women's fault and can't be fixed by voting for reform.

Indeed. They are turkeys voting for Christmas.

“If you reduce health and safety/regulations then the main "losers" in that are men who have the most workplace accidents etc and most likely to be working in jobs (building industry etc) that have the potential to be dangerous if not properly regulated”

Men don’t mind that though (within reason). They value other considerations more besides safety – being in a position where they have to look out for themselves is an important thing for male self-worth. There’s a reason why motorcycle speed limits often comes up in discussions like this. It might seem like a no-brainer to enforce safety but there’s actually something much more fundamental going on there.

But, men DO mind it apparently, because every time women's issues are discussed then someone will bring up "men have the most dangerous jobs", Its tempting to ignore those as attempts to derail the conversation (definitely a good idea on online discussions) but if policy makers risk looking like they think they can ignore half the populations needs.
Its not just work place safety. Men's mental health is a serious issue - but do you tackle that with more therapy/encouraging men to be open about their feelings or is that something men will resent.
Young black men were the most likely to be stopped and searched by the Met police but when they stopped doing that and knife crime went up, young black men were disproportionately victims.

Also I am not sure it is really fair to say "men don't mind about that". They would mind if they lost an arm! And I am sure, contrary to what the tory hardcore might say lots of men don't want the opportunity to work unnecessarily risky jobs for the thrill of it (even if this does save their employers money).

The thing is, if young men in your society are ‘losers’ what future do you have?

TBH inequality will happen and it’s not worrisome if it opens up job opportunities. That’s my overall point.

Yes, but your two points sort of contradict each other nd you don't even seem to realise it.
Unless "inequality" means a difference between people having a nice life, and people having a fantastic life. But thats not what is being discussed.

Because when you say ‘inequality’, what do you mean? I take it to mean that outcomes are to be collapsed: someone making too much (by your definition) should be taxed and those funds given to unnamed others (after, of course, funding bureaucrats to make those decisions on unnamed others). But how is that going to run a proper economy?

You don’t need to think about equality at all, you just need to provide opportunities for working people (plenty of those, you are importing immigrants to do it) and pay them enough to make it worth their while. Might need to tighten benefits to make that happen idk

I don’t know, it’s the progressives (well educated, often middle class) who were falling over themselves to enforce things like transwomen are literally women. This is clearly ridiculous, yet apparently these are our educated classes. I don’t think we’ve taught critical thinking for a while and I was at uni over 20 years ago.

I think it’s cultural capital warfare

I don't think you should "take money from those earning too much and give it to those who are earning less". I do think there should be progressive taxation so that those who can afford it are taxed in order that important public services that benefit everyone are maintained. I also think that there should be a living wage and that industries that are harmful to society should either be regulated or incentivized to ameliorate those risks. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax I am not going to type out all my beliefs, I agree that you will never have a perfectly equal society. But wage inequality is growing.

However, if "You don’t need to think about equality at all, you just need to provide opportunities for working people" is the case then it is inevitable that some of those "given the opportunity" will win and some will lose. Saying it doesn't matter but simultaneously this is a very good reason for men to be disatisfied is either contradictory OR deeply cynical. (Cynical because you could argue that dissatisfaction in men left behind is OK because it can be redirected towards other groups so the people "winning" don't need to deal with it).

People aren't talking about privilege in the sense of money and jobs though!
They're obviously not privileged in that sense in your example, which is a concern too, but that's not what people are talking about here.
Some people just don't seem to want to understand that sometimes just being white is a privilege in itself, in that I can just go out my front door and walk down the street without fear of being physically or verbally attacked/abused for it.

Speak for yourself can tell you've never lived in an area where white people are the minority, try going out for a walk past six pm in an area with majority Pakistani Muslims as a young white girl. Seriously never heard of grooming gangs? Not to mention my cousin who went to school in a majority black part of London and got beat up almost every day.

All this talk about "privilege" from someone who's privileged to never have experienced things like that 🙄

God forbid the younger generation don't want to become a minority in their own country let's go blame ticktock for that.

Yes but this post isn't about that. It's about young men being radicalised by the far right, and the primary driver for this is hatred of women and immigrants.

Stuff like trans women are women, stances on immigration etc, are used by the media as sources of blame and to create division by people who want to rile folks up to promote their right wing agenda.

Can’t you see though that the way someone means a word isn’t important - it’s the way it is interpreted by the listeners that counts. And unemployed poor men being told they are privileged is immensely enraging. Even if that is not the sense the speaker meant. The privilege discourse was a catastrophic mistake in comms by the left imo

Yes, I agree with all of this.

I feel that the loss of stable, unionised manufacturing jobs has for years meant that there was a squeeze on job opportunities, felt acutely by white working class men. It was largely that demographic voting for Farage when service jobs were being filled by Eastern European workers. Working class women are affected too but as you say, they aren’t causing problems.

Who exactly is being physically and verbally abused in the UK? Maybe you could have an argument for Jewish people … but this is complete nonsense and you should be called out for it.

Yeah I can’t take shit like this seriously and we should stop letting people slip fake crap like this into the discourse. Call it out 👏

But how we interpret a word is partly set by the sources we get it from? If I am getting my information from Elon Musk on Twitter I might understand that word differently to if I get it from the Guardian. Sometimes the left are at fault, but there has definitely been a huge attempt to push certain agendas online. I don't think completely absolving myself, as the listener, of all responsibility to understand what the person using the word meant is helpful. Its ironically a very post-modern approach from people who largely describe themselves as anti post-modern.

Quoted to say what I mean is the idea that "the way someone means a word isn’t important" is a crazy thing to just casually drop in. It might not be the only important thing. But to say it isn't important at all is an incredibly offhand way to subvert millennia's worth of evolution/progress through reason and communication

Ahhhh the old "men feel left behind" shite.

Women have been oppressed and downtrodden and left behind for eons. You don't see us starting summer riots and getting behind idiots like NF because it's crap being a woman.

I think the young men have been sold a more traditional order of the past - “the golden age” as Trump called it.

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Quite. And if you've watched Handmaids Tale and the backstory to Gilead being formed it's horribly familiar

But surely some over unionised industries led to their own decline. Scargill refused to negotiate the problems of some pits. Coal from Yorkshire was much more expensive than that imported.
Red Robbo was a factor in the demise of British Leyland.
These are examples also of the incompetence of Managers. Who would take the job on if you were faced with Robinson?

So Reform is popular with young men. But will they actually turn out and vote?