To think Reform aren’t going to win the bloody election

[Edenspirits73]

All I have seen all over social media is that Reform are going to win the election 🤪🙄 (probably Russian BOTS just like BREXIT)

The poll I have attached below is from Opinium who got the 2019 general election result almost exactly right with their polling methods and is one of the more recent polls. The research methods they use hold up better to scrutiny! Ipsos Mori were also pretty spot on so these are the polls I tend to pay more attention to.

Aibu to think that we aren’t in for a Brexit style shock are we?

I live in hope that the U.K. really isn’t full of reform voting racists 🤞🏻🙈

I thought you were talking about Reform, not Farage. People refer to Farage as using dog whistle politics because he's not talking directly about what he means about issues such as immigration.

In 2013, he claimed that Muslims were coming over here to take over. He's also called Islam the fifth column.

In 2014, he said that he agreed with the basic principle of Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech. He asked Powell to support UKIP but he turned him down.

Also in 2014, he said on LBC that he felt uncomfortable hearing other languages on London transport.

When LBC radio presenter James O’Brien asked why he objected to Romanian migrants but not Germans — like his Hamburg-born wife Kirsten — Farage retorted: "You know the difference."

He's also said that he wouldn't want to live next door to a Romanian family.

Having said that, he left UKIP when they took on Tommy Robinson and he said they were becoming too extreme.

Well, the thread is a bit unreasonable, not because Farage has any chance of winning but because you must get really weird news feeds! I haven’t read anywhere ever that reform might win.

What is a more real possibility is that the Tories get truly annihilated (70 seats or less) and only the right wing rump is left in parliament. Then the Tories and Reform could merge under Farage to form a harder right but more serious opposition, with the threat of them winning the next election.

Not to mention this (now ex) candidate who supported the BNP: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/16/reform-uk-candidate-resigns-over-previous-comments-backing-bnp

As well as all these 'charming' characters described by The Times: https://archive.is/lTfN4

And I do feel sorry for the people of Bournemouth West - I would be mightily miffed if I thought that people felt that this was what would appeal to me... the first Reform candidate was deselected because of his social media posts - and then the replacement was even worse: https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/24405618.reform-candidate-claimed-jews-blame-muslim-immigration/

I don't think that every single Reform voter is racist, no... but an awful lot of racists seem to feel very at home within that party...

Thanks for the link. It will be very interesting to see if she is kicked out. She should be.
Reform will never win an election. But the more people brand reform voters as all racist or dullards, their popularity will increase.

I’ve just been on Twitter and Farage has tweeted the arrival of his first grandchild. There are thousands of replies and just scrolling through the first handful I found ‘keep England for the English’. He certainly offers something that attracts the racists to him.

That's ironic. Isn't his partner French?

Current partner is French. Second wife is German. First one was Irish. So all his children have European passports and maintain access to all the opportunities that offers.

Of course. He’s a total grifter. Vacuous populist in the image of Trump with the views of Mosely. National front in suits.

Can’t believe people are falling for his fascist shite again either - wants to abolish the equality act.

And he had the audacity to be in France on the anniversary of D Day while saying he wants to take us out of the ECHR - literally created by Churchill after WW2 to stop fascist cunts like Farage.

Farage and his fellow far righters spend a lot of time telling us that the ECHR gives rapists too many rights etc (while demonstrating very little interest in the rights of women and girls of course) to obscure the fact that most of what it does is protect our human rights in every area of life. Sure, that leads to times when we have to acknowledge that people who seem like shits have those rights too, but it’s a small price to pay for the wider protection it offers. And scrapping it allows the sort of people Farage wants it charge to do more or less what they want.

I voted YABU because I haven’t heard this anywhere and anyone with even a basic level of intelligence would understand it’s never going to happen, therefore YABU to start a pointless frothing thread.

On another note, I was going to vote labour but the attitude of many labour supporters lately crying racist at anyone that doesn’t agree with everything they say is terrifying and making me very very nervous of what could happen if we had a massive labour majority, so much so that despite disliking them and not wanting them in power, I’ll now be voting conservative, I wonder how many others feel the same?

As it goes, I am voting green.

And in terms of it being a ‘frothing’ thread, isn’t Mumsnet about discussion? It’s not different to to half the threads that pop up on here. We should be talking about Farage - his views are unacceptable in many ways and he’s not a decent person interested in public service. He’s just a grifter out for himself.

Well yes but then why not start a thread something like AIBU to disagree with Nigel Farage’s views instead of some made up nonsense? People will still agree with you.

How will you feel if the Conservatives successfully scare so many people with this line that they manage to get back into power?

It's impossible for them to win but I'm yet to see in their manifesto all the racist policies. As someone of ethic minority heritage, I find it embarrassing and insulting the word is so easily thrown around.

Well because I did actually want to talk anout this topic. It’s all over social media as I said!

BOTS out in force trying their luck with a similar strategy that influenced Brexit.

That they’ll win?

Where are you seeing it? I’m not seeing that all over social media

Abolishing the Equality act would set this country back a century.

All the protections against racism, sexism, homophobia, disability equality, maternity rights. All of it - gone.

Genuinely don’t understand how anyone could look at that and not think it was wildly problematic.

I think it’s extremely unlikely but I’d prefer a small conservative majority to a huge labour one. To be clear my preference is a small labour majority.

Yes, on Twitter, in massive numbers.

It's not blatant, no. In 2015 Farage said he wanted to get rid off anti discrimination laws in the workplace. He said that while concern over preventing racial discrimination in employment "would probably have been valid" 40 years ago, it is not today.

Reform's manifesto wants to take us out of the ECHR, the ECHR and get rid off the Equality Act and other anti discrimination laws.

Yes and I think people don’t understand what it means. I don’t think people know that the Equality act protects us against SO many things.

All this ‘foreign court’ nonsense about the ECHR - literally created post WW2 by Churchill - it’s terrifying the propaganda that has been spouted about it.

But maybe people like getting sacked for being pregnant?

Or want to lose their job if they have a health condition?

Or fancy getting sacked because they reach 50 and their employer decides they are too old.

Yea, fuck the Equality act eh 🤷🏻‍♀️

Reform contract. I don’t see how it’s racist. It wants to help British people.
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/253/attachments/original/1718625371/Reform_UK_Our_Contract_with_You.pdf?1718625371

Yea nothing remotely racist about this 🤦‍♀️

And jam packed full of dog whistle lies too

To me, their manifesto is less about the racism and more about the crushing of rights, and the desire to yank us socially back to the 1940s. The racism is an underlying theme of much of what is said out loud about immigration, and seen in the comments from their supporters, but less so in what the leadership say because they are careful about that. Farage weakened the processes for kicking people out for racism but won’t admit that of course.

Looking at their policies I can quite understand how appealing they must seem to plenty of people. Some of them sound like that famous ‘common sense’. But at heart they are in the interests of rich people getting richer, trampling on the environment, removing protections for many of the people in society, cutting services in swathes, and of course ‘Reclaiming Britain’. They are handing out money to all the people they deem deserving but it is not affordable, not even marginally, and they are breaking laws left, right and centre.

I recently read something that really chimed with me, which is that you never hear Farage talk with compassion or kindness. Never with understanding about how easy it is to end up the wrong sort of people in his world. It’s all about everyone’s right to do exactly what they want, so long as they want to do the right sort of thing and are the right sort of person. Heaven help you if you’re not, and many of us aren’t.