If you voted Reform, I would love to know why?

[AplineDaisies]

I am not here to judge so would just like to hear from Reform voters for their reasoning.

Reform didn’t decide that (to restructure), it’s being enforced by central government. All councils will be going through Local Government Reorganisation (if they’re not already organised that way), which means we will all have unitary authorities rather than district/ boroughs and county councils. Some are just on a faster timeline than others.

The current councils then put forward proposals for how it could work (how many unitaries there should be, the boundaries etc) which central government considers. But the decision for reorganisation has come from central government following their White Paper in December 2024.

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/local-government-unitarisation

After reading this thread, I am sure the Reform voters will all be suitably shamed by the intellectual superiority of the centre left.

And you wonder why we voted Green- why do you categorise other British people by their ethnicity?
As if Reform can talk about flags when all year they have been abusing the Union Jack by using it to tell immigrants and second and third generation Brits to fuck off.

These issues are not within Local Government control

Because I’m thick as mince and I saw a post on Facebook that said if I vote Green in my local area I can look forward to my daughter encountering men dressed as women in public toilets using heroin. My daughter would then be assaulted by this man dressed as a woman but because the Greens would also abolish prisons there’d be nowhere to put him so he’d get off Scott free.

I didn’t obviously but this is horrific reality of the propaganda that Reform are peddling and people are believing.

screen shot of this pending approval

I think there is frustration among people who would never vote Reform as well as confusion. It is easy enough to 'listen' to the concerns of others. For everyone living in the UK, the general issues are known. Many are a result of the last Tory Gov's austerity policies.

The others are global issues that someone in charge has to deal with and no person or party has a magic wand. The Gov also has to deal with people like Trump affecting the economy as well issues like the climate crisis - which will affect immigration further - the UK's reliance on energy and food supplies from elsewhere. Of course, many of those are made harder by Brexit, so even more difficult to sort out.

The answers to these issues will not be found by voting for Reform. They have none of your best interests at heart. I think often the frustration comes from understanding what Reform want to do and being worried that other people hate their country that much. It seems more anti-Reform people read the Reform manifesto than the people voting for them. The Reform voters don't seem to know as much about Farage's history, funding and all round hatred for UK citizens as those not voting for them.

It is also frustrating that the UK moan so much about all these things without realising how bad the rest of the world is and how they should be protecting what they have - including a tolerant and welcoming disposition - rather than wanting to tear down the very structures that are holding up what good things the UK has left.

There is so many positive things that can be done (and are being done! But, good things don't seem to be popular in the press!). Voting in a divisive party that doesn't care for the common people is not going to improve your lives at all.

Canada funds from general taxation like the UK. For a vey short period it trialled co pay but quickly realised the administrative burden of running that system cost more than money recouped.

If not tax payer funded, then how do you change that and retain free at the point of need? And if we change from a publicly funded model based on taxation to insurance, it will follow the US model, not a European one. Families pay a minimum of $20,000 pa for insurance, which doesn’t cover everything.

Here’s a reminder of how private American firms are currently paying their GPs in the UK…

The BMA says that GPs considering employment by private providers not using the salaried contract should be aware of the following risks:

• A decrease in entitlement of annual leave from six weeks to the statutory minimum of four weeks
• Disputes over pro rata entitlement to bank holidays for part time salaried employees
• Demise of protected time for continuing professional development
• Loss of current terms for maternity leave, and a resulting return to statutory maternity pay or maternity allowance
• Loss of current terms for sick leave, and the resulting return to statutory sick pay
• Increased work hours
• Possible loss of any financial support given for professional fees.
• Doctors who leave the NHS to work for a private provider should be aware that they will lose the benefits of the NHS pension scheme.

What do you think happens when a service provider becomes privately owned and has to start paying substantial dividends to owners, huge CEO salaries and managerial bonuses? Those costs are paid by service users ie patients. All of us.

It’s really not difficult to understand. Look at how well privatisation worked for water provision in this country fgs.

Let’s not forget many of this week’s elections would not have even gone ahead if it wasn’t for Reform challenging Labour’s original plan to postpone them again for a second year.

Great, so what's your solution?

The Government should have kept the Rwanda scheme. It was an effective deterrent.

But that doesn’t mean they will definitely fail at making my council better, same as any party, we are giving them the chance to improve things.

I will probably vote reform next. Yes I am 60, but I have under and post graduate degrees. I been to over 75 countries, including working in the ME for 20 years.
The problem for is me, is that Labour/ Conservatives have screwed the country up and can't be trusted. They are two sides of the same coin. They both failed to grow the economy, so relied on immigration to grow GDP.
Immigration isn't bad and the UK problems is not the immigrants fault. But since 1994 (Blair era) -2025 the UK population has grown from 58 to 69 million almost 20%. By context Germany's in the same period has grown from 81 to 84 million (about 3%).
In some vain attempt to keep the population explosion under the radar, successive government's have NOT built the infrastructure to match the population. So IMHO people when they complain about immigration, they are partly complaining about lack of - good schools, access to GP's, timely NHS appointments etc ect.

On the other hand there has definitely been a woke driven distortion because of Immigration. Anyone talking about the, potential harm of radical islam, the culture of rape gangs, the decline of national culture, a two tier justice, getto'ization of certain cities, etc, etc is instantly called a racist. My view currently is that all except essential immigration should be stopped until we have housing/ GP's/schools numbers, up to some agreed level. (Possibly pre 1994 levels).

Therefore as a middle of the road person (broadly socialist) where do I vote? The Lib Dems, Greens, Labour are too woke. They want social welfare bills we can't afford. Plus I can't vote for a party that doesn't know what a woman is.

Exactly. And agreed - responses on this thread demonstrate it perfectly. Labour especially, have done a grand job in this regard.

This is all rubbish. The Tories didn't have austerity they tried to cut public spending after the banking crisis, sometimes in the wrong places but ended up with massive public spending, alot more than the Blair govt which is why we are now nearly 3 trillion in debt (and nothing to do with "billionaires" not paying their way. The massive quantative easing they engaged in caused alot more damage. And the fact that you think you know alo to more about the Reform plans (probably all with a negative spin) is a product of where you get your info -probably the BBC/Guardian - am I right?

Given the downward spiral was in large part caused by Brexit and reform is the party of brexit. Cost of living is increasing the additional red tape on imports could be said to be factor.

Immigration is a factor but we import far fewer than countries in mainland Europe and when we were in Europe we could send immigrants back across the channel under the Dublin treaty (We never did of course).

Given that in the last twenty years the proportion of national wealth has increasingly gone to the wealthy away from the poor and middle classes and reform is largely financially supported by billionaires, then we know who reform will be looking after.

You do know that these were local elections, and that means that they can't actually do anything about the 'problems' you've listed above????

Local Elections are about potholes, waste collections, streetlights, elderly care......

Im sure all these lovely new Reform MP's can't wait to get to work!

Interesting. I’m 5 years behind you and, barring work history, could have written this word for word. I consider myself socialist and think liberals are to blame for a lot of where we’ve ended up.

only thing I would say is that official population figures are out by a significant amount. The supermarkets and water companies have long disputed them based on consumption. I think we’re unofficially pushing 80 million, in a far smaller country than Germany.

This is the quality of councillor Reform have given us
Reform councillor David Barker beat girlfriend and abused child

And this is why we cant have a reasonable discussion on this site about politics. The people who just throw insults around, who make accusations of racism, stupidity etc. They are part of the reason we have Reform.

For the record, I am one of the politically homeless and struggle to vote in national elections. I voted conservative in the locals because i know the candidate and what they personally stand for.

I live in Wakefield, now a Reform council and close to Barnsley. I was genuinely shocked at the results because as the saying here goes, you can pin a red rosette on a donkey and the locals would vote them in because you just vote Labour.

Wakefield council in particular regularly ignore what people want and do what they think people should want. There have been some very dubious devisions made which on the surface look like cronyism. People have had enough of politicians telling them they are wrong to have concerns, implying they are idiots and of politicians forgetting they are there to represent the people who elected them not for their own agenda.

I think we are in for an interesting few years politically and i hope we can get to a point where we can have an actual conversation instead of this rediculous situation we have found ourselves in.

We are a much smaller country than France, Germany, Spain etc. If we didn’t have the channel and you could get here by land, no doubt UK would have more migrants than Germany and France.

But what are the specific policies which appeal?
Apart from immigrants of course.
Yes, more people voted for Reform than any other party, but they won 30% of the seats available. This means 70% of people voted for parties/ candidates who are not Reform.

hair I didn't want to out myself, but I used to work in the water industry and the figures you quoted are spot on.

You may know more, who ARE university educated. Not that being university educated is a cast-iron guarantee of being some kind of intellectual elite - certainly not these days.

They are just less likely to admit it because of the absolute pounding they’ll receive (as demonstrated on this thread).

Yes those two posters mocking someone who replied look worse than someone answering the question.

What a sneering and nasty post.

The poster probably spoke their post aloud and enabled dictation rather than writing it. Judging by their username are may up in the middle of the night due to caring responsibilities and didn’t have time to edit it down.

You could argue every one is stupid for who they vote for. Greens are batshit, Labour and Tory voters vote for the same thing and then are shocked when nothing changes. Not much intelligence there either.