Mumsnetters voting Reform

[Illjustplayostrich]

Mumsnet mothers have always leaned Labour. Now Reform is ahead

https://www.thetimes.com/article/dbd39087-465c-4587-9eaa-292606ffb775?shareToken=a99daa444e8bc0f9444cca2bf01f3851

I'm slightly startled by this. I'm a centrist, slightly more right leaning perhaps but frankly I'm open to any government who will get a firm grip on the public finances and go about growing the economy in a sustainable way. My impression of this site is that it's definitely more left leaning and and Reform enthusiasts tend to get shouted down. Personally, I think we should be talking about them a lot more as it's highly likely they will form part of the next government.

My impression is that they are promising the earth but don't have people with the necessary skill set to make that happen. I really worry that they will get voted in and find out that they can't fix all the problems within 18 months, leading to yet more disillusionment amongst voters.

We're certainly in a very bad place. What will decide the GE are a few things.
How motivated the Reform base is
Ditto the Omnicause Polanski base.
How big turnout is, even in the US there's a huge section who don't vote (disenfranchised poor blacks AND whites)
Whether older Tory voters again stay home, or en masse go back to Mummy (Badenoch) try a new Sugar Daddy (Farage).
How motivated right voters are to keeping the left out (will Reform-ers vote Tory if needed)
How motivated left voters are to keeping Farage out (will Polanskiites consider Labour if need be, or even vote Tory to spike Reform?)
And a big one to factor in, how does Trump Musk Vance factor in, how does Farage negotiate his bromance with The Donald if UK voters get repelled en masse by events in the US. Greenland. Ukraine?
Any number of possible outcomes on 2029,even money on each of them.
None of them will suit your window cleaner friend.

Sorry, money didn't stop the police and authorities taking action against 10 times caught with a knife Axel Rudabukana. The system did.

Yes thankyou. I just got Lee when I was drinking my coffee. But now I can lose it from my brain again thankyou.

I agree they should have dealt with the knife issues sooner. If by "hard" you meant cracking down on repeated knife crime them I agree. But its not just the law around arresting minors/young people for repeated violence. It's also that the funding needs to be there to put those laws into practice. I don't think his father would have been granted asylum today as the laws changed so much since then (both by Labour and the Tories). It's not fair to blame him for not changing the current law in response to the law having been different (and perhaps wrong) 2 decades ago. Particularly when the crime was committed by the son not the father.

Absolutely agree with you. It's very welcome.
I myself am politically homeless.
But the thread is about all the longtime Mumsnetters who have swung from the left and intend voting for Reform.
So it's good to hear from them all and to hear why.

The police are (part of) the system. The system is massively under resourced and possibly some of the resources aren't resourcing right. Its not likely to be fear of being called racist as much as having to much to handle and to little resources and crimes committed by children being easy to sort into the "domestic" category and pass on to other (also under resourced services like CAHMS or social services) than deal with the massive headache and paper work those sort of cases entail. And CAHMs and social services are also under resourced so they push the problem along too. It's absolutely about money in part.

Less money for inpatient mental health facilities or mental health care = more mentally unwell people left to their own resources. Less money for prisons = more criminals not prosecuted or locked up.

Yes, but all the shit about Rudabukana "slipping" thru Prevent because he had no "consistent" terrorist/extremist MO.
He was pretty bloody consistent, ten times caught with a knife, the eleventh time he finally made "good" on a life leading to this nihilistic event.
My point is not that I expect the state to automatically protect every citizen, I'm just expecting something other than no protection.
Of course we can extrapolate this to the woman begging the police to arrest her DV husband, as she's ignored multiple times.
And on it goes.
What genuinely angers me and I'm sure millions more is that Starmer addresses this as all good technocrats do, with a tweak in the law and social conditioning.
Banning pointy knives, Adolescence 24/7 in schools.
As politics changes into something beyond pure left right class interests, and more into cultural tribal tropes, there are only two winners, the populists in society
In this group I put Farage and Polanski, but also Corbyn, Sultana, Muslim Independents.
I genuinely see the future as Reform w Tory reverse takeover versus Polanski outsize influence on the left, Farage rise also fuelled by Muslim Independents sectarian populism.
Escalates as Vance takes the Trump project up a level after 2028.
Post liberalism is officially here.

Prevent was set up to deal with extremism/terrorism though. He slipped through because although he was violent he wasn't expressing extremist/terrorist views to justify the violence. E.g. he was waving knives around but he wasn't saying that all infidels should die or Bin Laden was right
Maybe we need to expand what prevent is for(I would support, for example, expanding the definition of extremist views to include mysogyny/violent intentions towards women or girls since that sort of radicalisation is a problem). Or we could have another service specifically to catch young people who are escalating in violent behaviour/showing dangerous signs but aren't promoting terrorist ideology. But the thing about him slipping through the net because he didnt fall within Prevents remit isn't shit, it's literally what happened. He turned out to have a lot of very dodgy literature (including the anarchist cookbook and I think the Al Quaida training manual) but he wasnt going around talking about anarchism or Islam. He was being violent.

Thinking about it, the other services should probably be the police and the mental health services.

‘Starmer’s pig-headed refusal to make the country work’ was responsible for the riots in Southport, even though he’d only been in government a few short weeks? Your point makes no sense at all.

Yep it’s been a pretty good thread for a range of views.

He doubled down on the far right message, the first thing that came out of his mouth.

He’s struggled with this, either using far right / racist as an attack or Mahmood to try and get people to switch.

By his own far right definition, his "Island of strangers" speech made his a bigot.
Just despise the man.

Firstly, that’s two separate points, which you’re now conflating.

Secondly, Starmer condemned of the ‘far-right thuggery’ of those violently rioting and it was not the first thing that came out of his mouth - who does it serve to keep peddling this? How would you describe vandalising mosques and threatening to burn down hotels which house asylum seekers?

He’s messed up there, the only comfort is going by focus groups and polling you’re far from alone on that.

You have blamed the left over several posts.
Yes under Labour, he was given asylum, under the Cons his son was let off for carrying a knife.
Under the Cons (Badenoch in Govt at the time) that Egyptian guy given citizenship no less.
Being burgled repeatedly and nothing gets down, is an age old problem, remember Tony Martin?
You wont get 3pts for 22 in 20 zone, you wouldn't even get a ticket, Police forces operate under the 10% plus 2mph, to allow for speedo inaccuracies but even then, its likely to be a Speed Awareness course.

I lived in Sweden, men and women share the same loo's, same saunas, all naked too... i survived!
The danger to women comes from dickhead entitled heterosexual men.

Starmer is saying he'll put asylum seekers in CH properties, why? because a previous Govt housed them all in Hotels and now pretends they didn't!

Where would you put 150k people who have crossed the channel? the crazy thing is, it was Farage that helped this influx, even Chris Philp says Brexit and loss of Dublin stopped returns, pretty obvious really.

Reform is now packed full of ex Con's, so the argument "Both parties have failed, so lets go for something fresh" is a false one.

I'm not sure there's anything like the appetite for abortion reform that there is in the US, we just don't have god in our politics in the same way. I think most people feel that it's a settled issue. I personally feel very uncomfortable about Tonia Antoniazzi's amendment going through and was very glad that Stella Creasey's totally mad proposal sank. I think the case of the woman who aborted her 34 week baby over lockdown showed that people's views are generally settled on the law having the right balance.

Assisted dying however-not a chance of that going through under Reform if it falls this time. I'd be much more worried about them coming for maternity employment rights in the name of making business efficient.

Oh, I'm an equal opportunities whinger, my contempt for the Tories won't abate for a long time.
The speed limit comment was just an aside, yes I know it's a speed awareness course.
My point is a bigger one, that Rudabukana gets nary a slapped wrist waving a knife ten times in public, an OAP gets a £100 speed awareness course for going just over 20mph.
You were fine in mixed spaces, that's very nice for you, but women want the choice to have their own spaces, and not be labelled as bigoted for that request.
Reform voters are the type that wouldn't have given asylum to Rudabukana father, which would have meant no son to go on the rampage here, or certainly dealt with this maniac's warning signs way earlier.
150k waiting for their fate tbd, you know Reform's policy here, but yes, the Tories come out of this terribly.
You see, I can spend a whole message not criticising the left, lol.

If someone got into power who was opposed to abortion they could reduce access to it. For example, make the requirements for getting permission for an abortion more onerous or reduce the number of doctors /health centres allowed to recommend or provide abortions. Or push back on the rules on what qualifies as a legitimate reading for an abortion. There has already been an increase in the rate of women being investigated for illegal abortions though. Those women aren't even necessarily women who had abortions. There have been women suffering miscarriages who have then been investigated in recent years. This never used to happen, and it's actually an awful thing to go through on top of losing a pregnancy. But you can create an environment where that's looked into more which itself generates increased public consciousness "the police investigated over 100 possible cases of illegal late term abortions in 2029. We need to do something" etc

I'm not as blase as you. I think it's a settled issue for most people but it's definitely a worthwhile fight for some on the right. And that's growing because increasingly they are getting their cues from American politics/there's a lot of crossover. I know people who are "prolife" and would be happy to see abortion banned so it's not an unheard of position in the UK now. I can respect their viewpoints but I wouldn't want them to get what they wanted. It's another "thing" Reform can offer to another group. You promise to cut benefits to people who are upset about benefit scroungers. You promise to cut immigration to the person on benefits worried about immigration. You promise to "look at" abortion to the pro life Christian who organised church collections for refugees. There's more value (at least for the populist right) in catering to niche concerns than there was.

I agree with you and I really hope that it stays that way.

I’m just alarmed by Danny Kruger who has been linked with the Christian right and James Orr who is advising them is hard-line anti-abortion. Farage has also met with ADF the christian Christian legal group who helped overturn Roe vs Wade in the US. JD Vance has spoken out about the abortions in the UK (misrepresenting the safe zones near clinics), so there’s some serious backing too, and Orr is also close to Vance just complete the circle.

https://abortionrights.org.uk/press-release-nigel-farage-appoints-hard-line-anti-abortion-senior-adviser-abortion-rights-condemns-move/

https://abortionrights.org.uk/🚨-farages-pro-family-pitch-is-a-real-and-present-threat/

What are the various limits for abortions in comparable countries, in Europe, Canada, Australia etc?
Why was opposition to decriminalization of abortion to term framed in such polarized language?
Are women here as one with Stella Creasy in this?
If the term limits are fewer weeks in most other Western countries, surely Farage will feel he has a reasonable opportunity to talk about this?

Comparable countries? all a lot lower than the UK

12 to 14 weeks in Italy, Spain, Germany and France, some have mandatory counselling too.

The Netherlands is probably most similar to the UK, in that’s it’s not so obsessive about religion. Same time limit.

I can’t imagine women here are ‘at one’ on most things.

And if Nigel Farage is looking to bring UK laws more inline with those of other European countries, the irony level would be off-the-scale.

Lol! absolutely!

But of course Farage concerned about abortion limits is more to do with his right wing views and nothing to do with womens rights.