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 ?

That’s quite possibly the most unintentionally funny comment I’ve read.

Do you know how loathed he was by Tory party members? Or that his economic policies were continued by New Labour? So him saying Reeves is doing okay is pretty much QED.

That shows how much you know. Ministers in cabinet have all manner of legal powers to make directions: they just aren't called executive orders. They are called statutory instruments, regulations etc.

In addition, as Government in the UK by definition controls a majority in the House of Commons, they can in theory have any Acts of Parliament changed, though there is a process. Furthermore, the UK Supreme Court has no power to rule any law unconstitutional.

Prime Ministers in Britain have way more power domestically than US presidents do. I suggest that the current UK PM is a just a bit wiser than the current US president and his lunatic BFF.

Reform and other populist parties offer simple solutions to complex problems. Some people like that. Others are aware it's just not that easy or the problem would have already been fixed.
They maintain that they just saying what 'everyone' thinking.
They will cut taxes and public services which were already cut to the bone by austerity and who will suffer the most.......the elderly and the poorest.
Persuading people to vote against their own interests.
Just like the MAGA's will find out IN the USA.

@ramowwo I believe in a public healthcare system for everyone but the current one needs completely re hauling....it's only got worse over the last 20 years. I couldnt get my children into the local 'good' school that's not even a mile away so they had to travel more than four miles to the next good school. My father in law who is 65 can't find an NHS dentist. I waited 10 months for a referral. These are people's lived experiences under the previous two governments. Public services as a whole need overhauling.Just because Farage has shared values with Trump doesnt mean he will privatise the NHS. There's a lot of money that could be saved under Farage that could be spent overhauling public services. There's no doubt in my mind that current systems under the Labour government waste money.

Yes, it’s probably why I like him against the rest of the modern morally debunked types in there

There are literally no other choices unless we vote for the pirate party that's why they are popular

Anyone that thinks Public Services in this Country are bloated is delusional!

Most Govt departments over the past 14 years have been cut to the bone!

Pay freezes, recruitment freezes degradation of terms & conditions!

Why would the majority of the country be kicking themselves? That wouldn’t make sense.

Your belief must be 'they can't do that badly, so let's give them a go'.

But actually yes, they could do really badly. I never had much love for the EU, but I can't think of anything that Farage promised that has eventuated for the UK through Brexit. I'm in a Commonwealth country and the UK just looks even further from its days of glory than ever: it's poorer and diplomatically way weaker.

I don't think Reform politicians have any idea how to govern a country. Never mind their policies: as individuals they aren't up to it.

Do I also need to tell you why? Because their worldview, values, lifestyle and treatment of women are incompatible with our modern Western life.

and reform has a view of employment law that will affect woman more adversely than men, same with human rights. Thus the party particularly appealingly to 18-24 year old males

pompey38

if reform got in and took apart the nhs allowing for insurance based healthcare (which Farige has said he would want ) then you couldn’t get insurance - what then?

I'm not in the UK any longer but occasionally have to deal with UK bureaucracy and it's utterly painful. Nothing happens fast. A mixture of chaos, obtuseness and pedantry. Every sign of a demoralised staff being worked to the bone and our of their depth. Worryingly, the private sector has the same characteristics.

because the majority of the people that vote for them dont research the politics, and base it on soundbites for choosing them, if more people studied the politicians like people study football, or study reality tv shows, then we would have better leaders and political parties

It's NOT immigration that's the problem. It's underfunding of EVERYTHING. This underfunding will be 100 times worse under reform. Sure we might have less immigration but we'll also have less NHS, education, workers protections, green investment. Honestly Farage isn't one of "us". He does not care about ordinary people. He is only out for himself and his super rich mates. He's laughing at you and all the others falling for his fake persona right now.

The NHS under a Reform government.

(A Reform supporter also features)

Why the constant rhetoric about rich vs poor? The main difference between most rich people and most poor people these days is work. Which everyone is entitled to do. Inherited wealth is pretty much all dried up now.
if you want to get some more money, stop asking rich people to give some via taxes and get a job or start a business. God knows the country needs people to get off their arses!

I agree, but we (collectively) need to address why that is the case.

Because time and time and time again throughout history people need to focus the ills of their life somewhere. They often don’t know where until a right wing person tells them and it all makes sense. It’s normalising the needle move to the right much like it is to boil a frog.

Its the ‘I’m one of you’ charismatic highly articulate person that seems to go against the established political system that seems to be speaking ‘the truth’ and relating to them the way normal politicians can’t/wont.

After a continued difficult 15 years of global economic recession, Brexit, Covid, Ukraine War etc people want things to get better and the status quo doesn’t work anymore so they want a change.

Just to be clear. I don’t support Reform or Farage but understand why people do (without agreeing with it).

"Inherited wealth is pretty much all dried up now."

Completely untrue. London School of Economics:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/to-tackle-wealth-inequality-reform-inheritance-tax/#:~:text=The%20share%20of%20inherited%20wealth,cent%20of%20total%20private%20wealth.

The value of wealth relative to the UK’s national income has indeed steeply increased in recent years, going from 350 per cent in 1980 to more than 600 per cent today. The share of inherited wealth relative to total private wealth is also particularly high in the UK (close to 60 per cent), and larger than in most Western economies, such as France or Germany.

While wealth, and in particular inherited wealth, has gained importance relative to income, it is also becoming more concentrated among the richest. Parental wealth per heir did not evolve much across generations for the bottom of the wealth distribution, but it has doubled for the top 10 per cent between the generation born in the 1960s and the generation born in the 1980s. As a result, the top 10 per cent of the UK population currently own around 43 per cent of total private wealth.

In the coming decades, inheritance is expected to gain even more importance, with a forecasted increase of 70 per cent relative to GDP by 2032.

Taken together, these factors pose a serious threat on social mobility, with the very real risk of seeing most of the wealth being acquired through intergenerational transmissions, rather than through one’s own lifetime work.

from talking with some friends they find politics boring and would rather watch reality tv, or get drunk, party, or even working.

so basically they dont want to put the effort in so basically lazy and they are smart people,

I think the UK is in a 1970s situation all over again. Then, it was the most industrialised country in the world, but its businesses were failing. Thatcher was brutal but at least the 1980s Conservative government managed to put the UK on a different and very successful economic footing based on exporting financial services.

But the GFC weakened that, and the UK has been limping along ever since. Where's the strategy? Populists like Farage don't have any idea and attempts to have a serious discussion just get drowned out by loudmouths.

Face it: Europe and the UK are being left in the dust, technologically, by the US and China, and this is why things are getting worse, ie, economic stagnation, lower tax base. I don't see any solutions coming from the populists.

Funnily enough I live in a ‘northern shithole’ and yes I’m concerned about immigration. But I’m also concerned that the town centre resembles something out of soviet Russia in the 70s. It’s an absolute disgrace mainly because successive right wing governments in Westminster have ignored us. I don’t necessarily blame immigration for this though but it hasn’t helped and the fact that no one wants to live here has attracted many poor unskilled migrants who can’t afford anywhere else.
What is perplexing is the phrase being repeated ‘reform offers something new’. I mean they don’t. Their policies are what we’ve had for the last 14 years, which blatantly haven’t worked. Why do people keep saying this ?

Successful for the city and the south east is what you mean.

@TomPinch The US isn't doing so great either. Entire cities derelict over there.

We're a bit more fucked than we were in the 70s. In the 70s living standards were broadly still on the rise.

A lot of it is just demographics.

The average age of a European is over 40. There's a significant amount that are over 65. We can't compete in terms of manpower with countries where the average citizen is 25 years old - young, fit, strong, easily trained and with the majority of their working life ahead of them.

In the UK in particular we can't compete now we seem to have suddenly realised that taking care of our elderly population is really expensive and whoops we haven't made any provision for that at the same time as realising that as one of the first nations to industrialise our infrastructure is now woefully in need of repair and/or replacement.

@Nonamenoblame It's just as well we do have the city as it goes - we'd barely have an economy at all without it.