People seem to be in denial that Farage would win or do very well. I remember the pre-Trump and pre-Boris years, where people actively laughed at the prospect of either of them getting top jobs. And said something along the lines of that's never gonna happen!
All you need to do is spout a little populist rhetoric and become a darling of the press.
We used to have a decent opposition in this country where at least, we would hear things like: 'this is not working', followed by 'we could do this to fix it'. Shout the first and in a drunken stupor we'll all nod our heads in agreement and bang our glasses on the table.
Farage has the media on side, and he's very good at playing the socials. When vox-popping youth, many seem to be buying into Reform, partly because it's the protest vote. And because they believe everything they read on TikTok etc. I remember hearing something very similar during Brexit, lads chanting for Brexit in the street like some football hooligans.
Reform had no real manifesto in the past, but at least now you can read some of their guff on their website, and they have almost made it look passable in principle. With excerpts about how they would support the NHS even.
Reform would just lead to a Trumpism, more deregulation ala Liz Truss, fracking, the selling off of the NHS, and probably a collapse/sell off of the welfare state.
Quite why anyone would buy anything Farage says after he screwed the country with Brexit is beyond me. He's just a conman. Has had two foreign girlfriends. Got an EU passport (the day after Brexit). And he'll still likely get his £70,000 a year EU pension on top of his EU severance payout of £150,000. And now his yearly MP salary, where he's doing nothing for Clacton. He's a self-serving con-man plain and simple. And then there's the other goons in Reform who are a bunch of lunatics, totally unfit to govern. Just listen to them speak.
But as the UK bought Johnson, I've no doubt the amnesia will kick in, and they will self sabotage again. I could quite imagine a Reform win. The Tory voters have nowhere to go at the moment.
Rather than an election, I wouldn't mind seeing a referendum for electoral reform, that will at least give Reform a fairer share of power, however much I detest them. I loathe Starmer's Labour but as a voter have nowhere else to go under the current system, I'm not prepared to toss Reform my vote as a protest to get a bunch of pound shop Mousilinis that further trash the country. The last 15 years have been bad enough.