shocked my best friend voted Reform

[clearmoon]

Long standing close friend came round for dinner and we were nattering away, and she just mentioned off hand in the conversation that she had voted Reform. i am really shocked. We don't discuss politics much. But I would have guessed lib dems or labour. I love her dearly. But I do wonder if I should think about her differently now, or just carry on as before

YANBU - She is not such a good person as I thought all these years
YABU-its all fine

My friend and I are on completely different ends of the scale when it comes to politics. It doesn't stop us being friends. We don't really discuss it, but when we do were always respectful.

But how you feel is how you feel. It's completely your choice.

But @clearmoon if you have the morals you espouse, tell her you are disgusted with her and find her views abhorrent, that in your opinion she is a thick, ignorant racist, and you don't want to have her in your life. I mean, you're not going to be two faced and come on here and whip up a furore and have her called all these named and still be friends to her face? That's not a good example of the wonderful left is it?

This

The example I gave was friend who was a Trumpster and a Brexiter, despite doing no damage as she’s American and couldn’t vote. I just grabbed at a revolting extreme

Listen to yourself though. Holding yourself up as the moral compass.

Trump didn’t do too badly as a president. He’s odious, but no more than Biden, for whom YouTube had to be cleared of the thousands of videos of him sniffing children’s hair and getting handsy with them in plain sight.
As for Brexit - that was the same situation as this latest election. The silent majority were told over and over again that they were racist idiots - did they learn from that? Clearly not.

@MouseBoat who are the silent majority you refer to?

I am a left wing liberal. I could not be friends with someone who votes for Reform.

This is not a contradiction. I believe that people have the right to an opinion and I know that will not always be the same as mine. But being liberal does not mean that it I think it's ok to support a party that has openly racist policies.

Being liberal does not mean any or all behaviour or views are ok. I cannot 'tolerate' the behaviour of thugs of the last few days who have been rioting and looting using terrible tragedy to justify their behavior. I cannot 'tolerate' the things that Trump does and says.

Your friend can vote for who she wants - it's a democracy and that is her choice. It would be my choice to step back from this friendship.

I’m not a UK national and I can understand why people might have decided to vote reform, so I think it’s stupid to dismiss someone immediately. The worst thing we can do is to alienate people because they have different opinions and fears. This is the very thing that breeds division and extremism.

My oldest friends watch GB news and think it's impartial.

I am finding this with my dad. He honestly doesn’t see how it is warping his version of reality. He thinks the BBC is “woke” and lying to us.

@calimali you said: "But being liberal does not mean that it I think it's ok to support a party that has openly racist policies."

Which of Reform's policies are openly racist?

Why not. People should have the courage of their convictions or at least their beliefs.

If people are ashamed of what they believe, then on some level they know it's not right.

This is an excellent post. And should be copied and pasted into all threads going forwards.

@MouseBoat i said it’s revolting to me. Knock yourself out and vote for who you want. My friend lives in the UK as an American immigrant and is married with another immigrant. She’s also homophobic and anti-abortion and not anti-gun. She ticks quite a few boxes. We’re still friends but avoid many topics. I do spend less time with her. She didn’t even watch the Napoleon film because of the gayness. Or maybe about Alexander the Great. If you can’t even talk films the friendship is quickly running its course.

36% of respondent to the poll voted its not unreasonable to your question of whether you should think of her differently and if she is no longer a good person.

So 36% of people are basically intolerant of political views which don't align with their own?

That's the type of attitude of people that think their view is superior to others and that other peoples views are morally inferior.

I hope these intolerant and prejudiced 36% learn to be more open minded about people with different views to them.

Not again, why can't we have a respectful discussion about why people voted the way they did. We need to step out of our frame of reference and listen to others who have different worldviews to try and understand why they voted the way they did. Insulting people shuts down discussion and is getting us nowhere; its just fuelling resentment and anger and ultimately division.

The ones who voted brexit (and reform).

I am a Labour voter, which she will know as I has a labour poster in my window. Other friends that I know about voted Labour, Libdem ( lots of lib dem friends, actually) Green, workers party, and Tory

Did you ask her why? Sometimes people do dumb things for good reasons. Maybe there's a local issue that the Reform candidate promised to deal with and the others didn't.

Oh the virtue.
Have you got your halo on straight?

There was no acceptable choice in my constituency this past election - and I don't mean that all the choices were equally objectively bad, but that they were each in their own way unacceptable and damaging, based on either the individual or the party platform or both. It was a tough decision. So I don't know that I'd end a long and treasured friendship because my friend made a different "least bad" tactical choice than I did, especially if they're in another constituency where I probably don't know all the factors involved.

Since she brought it up, why not ask her why she chose that candidate to vote for? Maybe it was some kind of misguided protest vote, because she thought Reform couldn't win - or maybe she thought it was the best way to "keep out" another worse candidate based on polling predictions? If it does turn out you have a fundamentally incompatible political view versus your old friend, why not talk it through? If you're so upset about Reform that you'd dump someone you love dearly, then it might be useful to understand what about them appeals to people like your friend so you can more effectively combat their rise/promote your own political position. You might even persuade her toward your views.

Just agree to disagree. One of my mates is left wing and if you disagree with her, she thinks you are far right. In my mind, she is so far left that it affects her judgement, but I let her get on with it.

Did you disclose your political persuasion to your best friend? Wonder if she's shocked by your politics, but tolerating you.

Lots of us learn to tolerate. It's what makes us Brits fair minded.

Would you even ask her why she voted Reform before abandoning her? What if she simply agreed that we should switch to a French style health system? Or believes in low government interference in business and low tax? Is that grounds to disown her as a friend?

Always interesting to see the discrepancy between the poll and the comments in these type of threads

And yet another example of why many people don't bother to engage. But ok, here goes. Please tell me why it is the only "socially acceptable" choice?

Is the answer perhaps that you fear being ostracised or punished by your friends if you dare to say anything that doesn't strictly align with their group mandated thoughts?

There are very many moral and socially upstanding people in every party (there are even a few in the Greens despite what their leadership are like).

Why is that you believe that people not on the left do not have morals?

I'm not talking here about a few bad examples (eg a number of ex Conservative ministers) but are you really saying that everybody that voted Conservative lacks morals?

I have few people I would class as friends but the ones I do have are diverse and from all sorts of backgrounds.

I can only imagine how boring it would be if we all thought the same and voted for the same party.
I have no idea how some of them voted and quite frankly, I don't care. I love them for who they are and what they mean to me, not which box they put a cross in on a piece of paper.

???
She's just giving an example of how you can be friends with someone who has different opinions.