Reform UK neck and neck with Labour?

[NeatDog]

Absolutely shocked to read that in a poll Reform UK are neck and neck with Labour...

About 25% polling share for Reform and Labour.

I thought Blair was the worst PM ever, but Starmer seems to be giving him a run for his money.

However, as Farage's aim is to move the NHS to a "French-style insurance-based health model" perhaps the additional funds required will not be an issue.

The Reform manifesto says that immigrants working in healthcare is fine, so they acknowledge that the NHS would collapse without immigrants.

I'm a bit surprised at people being so keen to move to an insurance model of healthcare when that man in the US murdered a healthcare insurance CEO in cold blood and he is being lionised as a hero because the insurance never pays out. That surely gives pause for thought?

The difference is that you can't really tell what the outcome will be after 5 months. The Tories were completely inert for at least 10 of their 14 years because of their obsession with Brexit, and their own internal squabbles. They deserved a hammering, and if Reform are neck and neck in the polls, they have basically capitulated. I'll wait and see on Starmer. The Left of his party and those on the Left are also desperate for him to fail. On both sides, the alternatives are not going to be good. Either Reform doing the bidding of Musk and Trump or whoever the Hard Left within Labour manage to drag up to replace Starmer ( possibly readmitted Corbyn) The Tories are in no position to take over. Badenoch is ineffectual. Jenrick is also a waste of space. After him, who is there?

Then why do so many of these asylum seekers conveniently ‘lose’ any docs confirming where they’re from? Even refuse to confirm it? Why so many are men, alone. Have they left their wives, their children, in these war torn countries to die? You’re very naïve if you think all these single men come here to escape war and oppression.

If they bring JC back then it is also a Reform triumph for the next elections.

I know you’re buried in media full of angry anti-immigration and I’m sure that echo-chamber extends to your real life, but immigration and immigrants aren’t to blame for everything. Deporting people will not fix the NHS. It’s insane that I have to say that. When Reform fans say people are running scared of Reform, it’s not in the way you think: we’re scared that incompetent cretins with no real policies, or graft, or understanding of politics outside of writing tweets on immigration, have been voted as MPs. This week in parliament they were shambolic and a disgrace - people are equal parts laughing at them and horrified.

If you ever watch PMQs or consume media that isn’t designed to whip you up into hate, then you’ll see that there is a lot of debate about immigration. For example, Alastair Campbell was on BBC Question Time debating this with Farage last month - pointing out that Brexit has really changed our immigration system, maybe give it a watch.

I agree with this. They are also people who have paid a huge amount of money to people traffickers. They aren't all the poor and dispossessed. Afghan men for example, are claiming asylum, but their wives, mothers, sisters and daughters are not allowed to leave the house or speak in public. Why are they just running away from this and leaving them to rot? They will never be able to follow them afterwards. We should be taking from refugee camps (women and children first). The UK is a haven for criminal and black market activity. They know it. That's why they come.

Disability benefits, and in fact all out of work benefits, need a huge overhaul. Businesses are being ruined by the current ‘sick note’ culture. There are many who are disabled that should absolutely get all the help needed. But equally there are so many claiming out there for frivolous stuff, anxiety being one of them, that it is becoming a big problem. There are people out there with very disabling MH issues, but this current trend of people claiming for anxiety are minimising those who are genuine.

No doubt they are terrified of being sent back so try to make it as hard as possible for the home office to identify where they are from. But yes, men flee war and oppression as well. Many of them are young so they won’t have wives and children.

Some of that is true - especially the Tories’ deserved hammering. They needed to be out of office to refresh and clean out the muck if they possibly can.

But I can’t see any reason to believe that Starmer is any less ineffectual than Badenoch. Or that we’ve any reason to believe that the next four-and-a-half years will be any better under Labour than the last six months. That was their honeymoon period, supposedly.

If the minister for combatting financial corruption has to resign for alleged dodgy dealings, as seems entirely possible, Labour will really be in deep and enduring shit reputationally.

No-one is ‘blaming’ the immigrants. The facts simply put are that our infrastructure is nowhere close to being able to cope at the moment with supporting immigration. The NHS cannot cope, is on its knees. On waiting lists for years, GP surgeries serving far too many people, so that even a simple phone call for an appointment can mean hanging on the phone for hours. High housing shortages - not enough homes to house people already living here - waiting lists of 5 years and more. We need to ‘pause’ immigration whilst these issues are sorted. Doesn’t take a genius to work that out.

But why are they ‘terrified’? If they have proof that they are fleeing a war torn country, the UK will definitely not be returning them to that country. And they might not always have wives and children, but they will have family - parents and siblings.

There are many reasons, fleeing war and oppression is just one. Many of them are gay, and just want to live their lives without fear of imprisonment or death. Others are religious apostates, many Christian looking for sanctuary in a country with freedom of religion. Some are even political pariahs, opposing tyrannical regimes and being marked for sanction by the state. As you can imagine, nobody in these scenarios wants to be sent back to their country of origin.

I agree.

Would you be happy to pay 20-30% of your medical costs? You can purchase insurance policies that cover the co-pay for around £850 per year per person (£more as you get older of course). There's also a small fee per GP visit (around £20) and for things like visiting A&E.

It's not a perfect system. 12.7% of French citizens have unmet health needs due to financial constraints, but neither is our system perfect.

Health spending per person is pretty low until mid 40s before really skyrocketing from late 60s. Most refugees and immigrants are of working age so whilst excluding them would bring some cost savings, sadly it will not make much of a dent on the overall cost of running the NHS. 45.6% of their total NHS spend is on salaries so, unfortunately, keeping salaries low with cheap migrant labour is a better strategy if you're looking to save money - if not a particularly moral one!

I do think we'll end up moving to a French system. I'm just really surprised how happy Reform voters are to suck up the extra £850/person/year for insurance. I can just imagine the outcry if one of the main parties suggested this!

I see you’re having your usual difficulty with facts. There are jobs the indigenous population won’t do. There were farmers in Lincolnshire whose crops rotted in the fields last year because the foreign workers who used to harvest them returned home after Brexit and they couldn’t replace their labour.

Irish people weren’t “brought over”, they were starved out of Ireland by English and Scottish landowners when the potato crop failed. There was a British campaign in the West Indies to encourage migration to fill the UK’s employment needs post war. And the NHS had a policy of recruiting Filipino nurses, there are still 40,000 nursing vacancies and the whole service would collapse without migrant workers.

The UK birth rate is falling. I really don’t know where people think the workforce and taxpayers of the future are going to come from when the population isn’t replacing itself.

Absolutely this.
I watched a programme which followed “asylum seekers”- many from Afghanistan and from African countries-
They said they lose documents- and when they landed in Europe the men were talking about the”lightly dressed” women and girls.

They had never seen uncovered women out in public.

Also some on that boat you'd absolutely not want in any country- Thugs with knives.

It was an interesting documentary.

We need a far stricter immigration system.

Other parts of Europe are also turning against the mass immigration of aggressive sexually harassing young males.

Unfortunately, this what parties do, criticise each others policies, then do similar.

When/if Labour do reduce the benefits bill, the Tories will be screaming blue murder & the Mail headline highlighting a single mum with 4 kids begging after her benefits withdrawn "Is this what our Great Country has become?"

See also how the WFA policy has been portrayed by the RW media.

I don't want £700 per month going to a young man i know who just sits in his room.... he should be out working, earning money and enjoying his life but so long as he has his rent paid, his wifi and PC, plus £100 per week, why should he work?

On Labour, i don't agree at all with some stuff they done or in particular not done BUT to say after 6 months that they are as bad as the lot they replaced is very partisan and no better than those you seek to criticise.... the Tories were given 14 years....

Labour have inherited a basket case of a UK.... everything is either on its knees or no longer even functions.

Rachel Reeves is going to cut disability benefits apparently according to several new sources today, in an effort to cut spending

You’re virtually a Tory! At least in some respects.

I don’t claim not to have political preferences and I don’t claim to be supernaturally unbiased. But I do try to be as fair as I can be and to criticise shit politics and shit government even if it’s my preferred party.

I see very, very little of that from the left. I think - apparently you excluded - that the self-righteousness of the left has blinded it to uncomfortable truths about its own double-standards, flaws and contemptible conduct.

I'm happy to move to a competent health care model that doesn't nearly kill the people in it.
Unfortunately care is too patchy, poor communication, lots of time wasting and yes in my family and acquaintecepeoks people injected with the wrong medications, the wrong drugs given or left alone in labour etc.

Is this the new tactic? I’ve been accused of being virtually a Tory this morning too. It’s very interesting. First accuse anyone left of you of blindly defending their party no matter what and then when they’re clearly not doing that accuse them of being a closet Tory. Make it make sense.

Which is why they should be honest. Surely they realise that any of the reasons you've described gives them a better opportunity of their applications being accepted, than refusing to speak or disclose why they're seeking asylum?

Absolutely disgraceful how the NHS is currently run. I've enrolled in private health care, something I never considered a decade ago, but now due to incidences I've seen with relatives, I would no longer trust the NHS. It's broken, and the resolution isn't throwing more money at it, but overhauling the way its managed.

Labour are certainly adding to that basket 🤣 the very first thing they do is rob the elderly of winter fuel!
I agree with that policy I know some extremely wealthy pensioners who should never have got it.
But BUT, why oh why make the threshold so incredibly low??

Why??

They have thrown money at some sectors like school teachers pay but abandoned other underfunded education sectors.
They have ring fenced how many billions for Ed milliband? Billions and yet everything else is just going to crap and now they are taking from the disabled people.

Why do you suppose people operate ‘tactics’? Maybe they just say what they think.

Along with bot accusations it looks like Labour supporters fall into a belief of shadowy conspiracy when people criticise their party.

Maybe Rachel Reeves turning her focus to disability will have the desired effect then, and people will have no choice but to take jobs where companies are having difficulties filling. More people need to get back in the workplace. We cant use an excuse for accepting immigrants is due to people here refusing to work.