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.

Starmer still seen as preferable to Farage, thats quite telling, Badenoch a long way behind, she really is holding back the Cons.

I've just shown this to my wife who hates party politics with an absolute vengeance, telling her this is the drinking game fun for all the family and friends at Xmas, but she tells me I have some way to go to convince her this won't kill the party mood stone dead.

Anyone who is thinking of voting Reform needs to reflect on:

• the damage that Brexit has done to our economy
• what is happening in Reform controlled council: I live in Kent and they are breaking their promise to not increase council tax
• their lack of engagement in Parliament
• what is happening in the USA because of Trump. Women's rights for instance are under threat not to.mention democracy and the rule of law. Farage has similar views

-.the concerns about Reform politicians being too close to foreign powers rather that having the UK's best interest.

This is not a party that I can trust...

What women's rights are under threat? Re abortion, I'm sure I read that Biden could have done way more to protect access to abortion at federal level, but chose not to. Just like Obama who could have done more for African Americans, but chose to prioritise trans rights, so did Biden.
Harris warned of a roll back on trans, women's, gay rights, if Trump elected, no evidence of that yet.
Brexit costly? Sure, can be argued.
I'd argue that Milliband's folly on pushing Net Zero hard is more damaging, our industrial electricity prices multiples pricier than our competitors, and we need abundant cheap electricity for the AI revolution coming.
Reform not visible in Parliament? I guess they'd argue their presence with just a handful of MPs achieves nothing, their priority is to work to get a Reform majority to then enact real change.
Yes, the party should never have said "vote for us, we'll freeze your council tax"
Just like it's a mistake for Farage to confidently predict he'll sort the small boats issue.
Then again, I'm not a narcissistic and ego driven, would be a terrible leader let alone ambitious politician

Anyone who is thinking of voting Reform needs to reflect on:

• the damage that Brexit has done to our economy

Ursula von der Leyen is the President of the European Commission which makes decisions for the whole of the EU . She is German and when in Germany had the post of Minister of Defence which she messed up and was forced to resign because of failings amongst other things. She is totally unelected by the people's of Europe but makes life changing decisions that affect us all. she and her team are responsible for the decision to practically allow porous borders into Europe and force all members to take their quota of immigrants or pay millions of Euros in fines if they don't. This and other issues that are decided by this small group of unelected people is massively undemocratic but is largely ignored by the msm. This is far more important than the economic issue .

I'm afraid Remainers really don't get this. The drive to leave the EU may have been most visible re immigration, but at heart it was about accountability and democracy.
I voted Remain (just!) in 2016, but would vote Stay Out in a flash if there was another referendum.

So easy to have the opinion of what is ‘more important than the economic issue‘ when you’re glossing over the billions Brexit it cost us, and the impact it’s had on our economy and GDP.

Also, on the theme of unelected leaders, why is it that Farage is the only party leader who wasn’t democratically elected by his party’s membership in a traditional leadership contest? Seems a bit off.

My guess is supporters of Net Zero also don't want to discuss the economic hit we've taken as a country.
Industrial electricity prices are the most expensive in the developed world, 4x what the likes of America pays.
If you want to make things easier on the economy by rejoining the EU, you also going to pivot away from Net Zero?

This isn’t the part where you claim that there’s no climate change, global warming, etc., is it?

No, this is the part where you agree that our industrial energy prices are way higher than our competitors, and that's crippling our economy, just at the point we need cheap energy and tons of it to be anywhere at the races re AI.
But like all the Brexiters you claim are wearing blinkers, you're similarly afflicted on this.

I don’t think it’s a matter of agreeing or disagreeing: isn’t it just facts that our industrial energy prices are higher? We’re not in Trump’s post-truth dystopia just yet.

Also, thanks for the analysis of my personal afflictions - it always means so much when it comes from a stranger on the internet.

Our industrial energy prices are high and making it difficult to manufacture anything profitably in the UK but worse to my mind is the payments being made to wind generating companies to turn the turbines off because the National Grid's interconnection infrastructure can't cope with the load. The capacity upgrades that were known to be essential back in 2007 didn't get the investment needed as the vast increase in wind power came on stream. So they are white elephants. The blame has to be shared between the major parties, NIMBYs and the civil service. Another catastrophic failure that costs us all.

Let's start with Ed Davey, a man who's failed upwards all his life, his major contribution to our current plight being when as Energy Sec in the coalition govt, he was instrumental on the policy to wind down natural gas reserves on the imbecilic march to Net Zero.
We are absolutely cursed by the biggest idiots in our political class.
But hey, a photo opportunity with him prancing as a pretend show jumper, and all is good on the centre left.

I wouldn't get rid of net zero. I would seriously look at how its being implemented. There have been a lot of questionable decisions made (resistance to nuclear power) but also quite a lot of progress. While we have North Sea Oil we have less natural gas and oil reserves than America and many other countries. So energy prices are always going to be very vulnerable to global fluctuations as long as we need gas and oil.
The "we need cheap industrial electricity for AI" is a bit of a double edged sword. America has gone all in on AI data centres. What that means in reality is higher electricity prices for users in the states those data centres are. Effectively individuals are subsidising the data centres. Also, there are issues with those data centres being very ugly, incredibly noisy and taking a lot of water. In some cases also polluting to the local area. Locals near those data centres really aren't happy but you have to remember America is a much bigger country so the proportion of people affected is less than it would be here. Also, they don't tend to create jobs in the way traditional polluting industries do so it's lose lose for locals.
We probably do need to build data centres. But cutting back on all regulation to get ahead of the competition the way America has would hurt UK residents. And it's looking like a lot of the hype around AI is a bubble.
There will be genuine advantages from AI. But advanced predictive text machines like Chat GPT and Grok are not going to be it. A really big game changer would be quantum computing.

We need the potential and capacity. If we're going to get to 5% GDP defence spending for real (unlike Starmer's creative accounting methods), we'll need cheap energy. If we're ever going to unleash industrial investment and housebuilding, ditto.
I know one thing, another Labour term with Milliband's policies at energy, and our options shrink to zero.
My bigger point is that the left are just as ideological and blinkered as they claim the right are eg on the likes of Brexit.
Net Zero, open borders...lose-lose for the UK.
And watching how much pressure VdL and the EU Commission out on Belgium to agree to the spending of sequestered Russian billions to re-arm Ukraine, Belgium bravely holding out to scupper this insane idea, it's yet another reason to treat the EU as an organisation further and further from the UKs best interests.

I don't understand quantum computing and would be grateful for a Dummies' Guide.... @persephonia ? What does it bring closer? Why and how might it improve our lives?

Great info, if unbelievably depressing.

Where is the cheap energy going to come from? Do we subsidise energy producers more than we are now? Or directly subsidise energy at the consumer end? Fossil fuel produced energy also costs money. Even if we go full steam ahead on opening up new North Sea Oil fields we will still be vulnerable to market fluctuations (unless we nationilise those industries and regulate exports) because oil companies will sell their oil at the highest price and that will always be set by global events. We are taking oil from the North Sea right now by the way. Its just that we aren't exploring for new wells. Energy prices following things like the Ukraine invasion would have gone up either way.

If you wanted cheap energy in the future there is an argument that the best thing to do today is invest in non fossil fuels (solar, winds) etc because once the initial infrastructure costs are paid of it's effectively free. Of course, in reality it's never that simple. The biggest block is energy storage and being able to move capacity around. An optimist might hope for massive improvements in battery technology that will render these problems moot. A pessimist might suggest nuclear as a way to cover periods when renewables are unproductive.

One of the things making electricity so expensive in the UK is the format the government sets for calculating prices. It made sense at the time but it's very illogical now. But the worst thing from an energy security or future energy prices perspective is going all in on oil and gas.

If you want to talk about coal I do think closing the last mine was a mistake. Not really for energy but for our steel industry. There are some industries worth keeping going even if it costs subsidies etc.

You only need to read the history of the Greens in Germany to see what a cultish, anti-human, pure dystopian group they were. And since the 80s, have successfully killed German industrial capacity.
That we allowed their poison to control our future via the Milliband millinerian strain in the Labour Party one for the history books.
We need 5% GDP on defence, likely more, to counter Putin (now that Trump is disengaging from European sphere), we need God knows how much for AI, we need steel to rebuild our infrastructure, we need nuclear power now.
And we're gonna do all that with Milliband? Please!

Trump is taking a hard line on immigration and imposing mass deportations which I approve of. However he is going about it for the wrong reasons. There is no social security in the USA so immigrants (both legal and illegal) go there to work, not to doss on benefits. Trump is deporting people who simply appear a certain way. They have tatoos so they must be gang members. They are Hispanics so they must be illegal, Etc. We need to take a much harder line in this country. If we denied illegals support, or access to medical services and social housing they would have no where to live. So this country would begin to appear a lot less attractive.

Reading two stories today.
Councils requesting that local elections in May are cancelled.
Some of these councils requesting funding to build council housing for illegals.
And leftists wonder why Reform is channeling the escalating frustration, leading to anger, of voters.
I can only think that left (and tbh, many liberal Conservatives) simply despise their people. That they think they know better than them. That the people will accept whatever fate politicians oblige them to.

The biggest block is energy storage and being able to move capacity around. An optimist might hope for massive improvements in battery technology that will render these problems moot. A pessimist might suggest nuclear as a way to cover periods when renewables are unproductive.

And the pragmatist would build out the interconnectors to move the power where it's consumed. Scotland's windfarms, on and offshore, generate far more electricity than Scotland needs. Nuclear is back-up, and we need to keep some gas-fired generation that can come on stream quickly when the wind doesn't blow. There were a surprising number of still days last year.

Dunkelflaute to you!

Germany had issues but during and after the 1980s it's industrial and manufacturing capacity grew. It's the giant of manufacturing in Europe. I doubt that had anything to do with the German Greens (odd though they might be) but more because they chose not to switch to the Thatcher/Reagan era shift towards the service industry the way America and the UK did. That's partly why they were so hard hit by the Ukraine war. Their heavy industry relies on fossil fuels so sanctioning Russian oil caused a big dillema. In not sure thats an argument for increasing our dependance on fossil fuels but either way it's nothing to do with the German Greens and their creepy past policies. And I am not sure what it has to do with Ed Miliband or UK net zero. The German Greens past tolerance of nonces was evil, but for different reasons. I don't see the connection to German manufacturing or UK net zero policies.

Actually what did hurt German manufacturing jobs in East Germany was the shift from a communist system of heavy state subsidies to a capitalist system with less subsidies etc. But not much to do with green policies.