Why on earth are Farage and Reform so popular ?

[Nonamenoblame]

Their ideology is essentially heated up Thatcherism, more deregulation (if that’s possible) and laissez faire light touch for businesses, more cuts to public services because they love an even smaller state, cuts to benefits apart from those for pensioners, no real solution to the immigration issue apart from sinking the small boats.
So why isn’t Farage being challenged ? Everywhere you read that Farage is the next PM in waiting but his policies are a rerun of the last 14 years but worse, they haven’t worked so far, why would they work with a Reform government ? What’s an even worse thought is a Tory/Reform coalition, are we as country daft enough to fall for it ?
And how long would we give a Reform government to turn things around ? 6 months, a year ?

Anyone who thinks Starmer was in the wrong about that flat is seriously being played.

Quite.

Going back to the topic of the thread. Farage was an MEP who rarely attended meetings, received a substantial wage and was investigated for not declaring hefty amounts of cash from Arron Banks and for misappropriation of EU funds.

He had 35k docked because of misspent money. He was investigated by the electoral commission for 200k of undeclared donations

UKIP MPs were found to have the worst attendance in the EU parliament. He hasn't done any surgeries for his constituency since his election, he's been busy brown nosing Trump.

You actually want this spiv to lead the country. It's a fucking joke.

You actually want this spiv to lead the country. It's a fucking joke

Do you have me mixed up with another poster?

That was the Tories. Not this government. Jesus 🙄🙈

Stealer
Because some people are thick racist arseholes.

Ah...here we go!!!

🤷🏻‍♀️ you did ask....

But you know, the turkeys will just crack on and vote for xmas... 

I'm directing my post to you because you're talking about Starmer's 'freebies' on a thread about why people want to vote for Reform. Farage is adept at claiming freebies and claiming a wage for doing nothing.

So you just decided to make stuff up about me because I was talking to another poster about something that wasn't about Reform? How ...typical.

@SunshinePleaseReturn

"MikeRafone
Also, many people actually want small state/government and lower taxes. Why do people find they so hard to fathom.

because if you cut taxes, it means public services are cut - which adversely hits the working class harder. As they don’t have the money to pay for those services privately

But you know, the turkeys will just crack on and vote for xmas... "

Because if you raise taxes it means economic growth is cut which hits Government revenue meaning that borrowing goes up which means less money for public services as well as slowing the economy further through higher interest rates.

But you know voters like the idea of debunked Keynesian economics with more Government spending so long as they don't have to pay for it and so we continue the slow managed economic decline of the last 50 years.

The most sustained period of economic growth happened when Keynsianism was in. It was never debunked.

The Labour Party moved away from policies meant to support working class people and reflect their views, instead preferring to reflect middle class professional types.

The Conservative Party moved away from conservatism.

Both have embraced a combination of liberalism, globalism, progressivism, and individualism.

And the Greens and Lib Dems have been the same but more crazy in the way small parties sometimes are.

Reform has picked up voters among both traditional conservatives and the traditional left.

It's quite similar to what's going on in the US and in Europe.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/24/britain-net-zero-economy-booming-cbi-green-sector-jobs-energy-security

One in the eye for the Reform dinosaurs: even the CBI disagrees with them.

Poster has form for that type of thing!

@TomPinch

UK industrial electricity prices at 25.85p/kWh are the highest of the 28 countries covered by the IEA report. UK prices are some four times those in the US, 2.6 times those of Korea and 46% higher than the IEA median. Given that UK gas prices are below the IEA median and those of France and Germany it cannot be gas prices that are driving UK electricity prices so much higher than elsewhere. Canada, Norway, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand and Portugal all have industrial electricity prices less than 10p/kWh.

The UK cannot hope to compete in traditional energy intensive industries or industries of the future like making batteries or AI with such high electricity prices.

iea.org.uk/were-number-one-in-unaffordable-electricity/

I have never been in any political party before I am accused of being a shill -but if anyone is following the situation in Germany - this poster is suggesting why the AfD came second in yesterdays elections (but the CDU refuses to make a coalition with them /which will only show the continuing disregard by the comfortable classes of what people are actually experiencing and probably why people in the UK also want an alternative to the legacy parties.

^^
They’ve had enough of the ridiculous net zero policies which have crippled Germany’s industries the working classes once relied on for the good jobs that used to define the German economy.
Of politicians who prioritise climate change over their lives, planning to ban all gas and oil boilers, forcing the people to replace them with expensive heat pumps that only the rich, electric-car driving Green voters can afford.
They’ve had enough of a welfare system where almost half of all welfare recipients don’t even have a German passport
They’ve had enough of leaders who blubberwhen they’re rightly told off by Americans for strangling free speech and failing to uphold the values of Western civilisation.
They’ve had enough of politicians who change the law so they can sue ordinary people who dare to say rude things about them online, with one minister suing 800 people for up to 3,000 Euros for the crime of daring to call him stupid online.
They’ve had enough of woke laws, which let men with penises demand the right to join a gym class for women with only one changing room and one shower, on the strength of nothing more than a single form at the local civil registry to ‘prove’ they are really a woman now.
Of far-left extremists who beat people up for being right-wing and then declare they are women, with the media falling over themselves to respect their pronouns.
And they’ve had enough of an elite minority imposing their extreme agenda on the forgotten majority, destroying the country the people used to love and call home.
This is why they are now voting for the Alternative for Germany in record numbers —because the liberal establishment has simply left them with no choice to the dreary status-quo, to all the carnage and chaos they see around them today
And now they face one final betrayal. Even though the right-wing CDU and AfD got nearly half the vote and over half the seats in Parliament, the CDU will now refuse to go into coalition with the AfD.

@TomPinch

"The most sustained period of economic growth happened when Keynsianism was in. It was never debunked."

Oh dear - despite the 2008 Financial Crisis, Liz Truss budget and Rachel Reeves budgets there is still those that believe borrowing more money to grow the economy is a good idea.

Of course borrowing money will create short term economic, in the same way as borrowing money on your credit card will make you richer in the short term.

And whilst Keynesian economics might have worked when Government debt was very low and private business and banks were simply not investing at all, this is not the case now.

In addition:
Additional Government spending simply crowds out private sector investment.
Governments spend more less efficiently and less productively than the private sector
The multiplier effect of Keynes becomes progressively weaker as more investment is made. For example the return on the first airport a country makes is way higher than its 32nd airport.
The concept of Keynes is that the Government borrows money to grow the economy so that the next Government can then pay back this debt. Except that every Government and every voter likes the spending money part but no one likes the paying off debt part.

Lastly with debt to GDP at 95%, the cost of simply paying the interest on this debt at £111 billion which is about the same as the education budget at £116 billion.

In the long run borrowing money to grow the economy means debt goes up which means interest rates go up, the economy and the Government has less money to spend on other services and the economy slows. So let's borrow some more money to grow in the short term and so on.

And all we have to look forward to is the slow managed economic decline of Western economies.

Yeah Keynesian economics is great????

What a load of rubbish

None of this disproves what I've stated. The most sustained period of economic growth was the 50s through to the 70s, when Keynsianism was in. Incidentally, UK government debt was very high at the start of that period, on account of war debts and the cost of maintaining much bigger armed forces than now.

Not random borrowing but sensible investment: really nothing to do with Lettuce Liz's piece of illiteracy at all.

I'm not sure how this contradicts the article I linked to. Could you explain?

@ImAChangeling

"What a load of rubbish"

Thank you for your detailed and critical macro economic counter argument which provided an in depth intellectual case for Keynesian economics.

Do you vote?

@TomPinch are you arguing for higher borrowing than we have now?

But reform is just Thatcherism taken to the extreme. Why would ‘traditional one nation’ tories want that ? Selling off of public utilities ? The trains, water companies etc to foreign institutions. Surely that’s far far from traditional Conservatism ?
And you could say that the middle class labour supporters are just wc folk done good, gone to uni, educated. They want to see the same for others. No probs with that tbh.

But reform is just Thatcherism taken to the extreme.

Is it bogroll.

Mrs Thatcher would never in a million years have defended a Russian aggressor who invaded a sovereign European country. Unlike the vile apologists in Reform.

They are Russian shills being forced to reveal their allegiances. Vote Reform. Get Putin.

@TomPinch

"I'm not sure how this contradicts the article I linked to. Could you explain?"

Because Government subsidies to renewable energy is paid for by levies on the industrial electricity price. As well as creating higher grid charges.

So whilst this does indeed create economic growth and jobs in the renewable sector and also in the grid sector, this comes at the cost of higher electricity prices which in turn puts the energy intensive industries (like manufacturing or steel) out of business in the UK and reduces the growth of new energy intensive industries like data centres or battery manufacturing.