Reform winning big

[Keirawr]

Reform had a good night, winning county councils, probably will win a mayoral seat and won the parliamentary by election also.

You don’t have to be a Reform voter to acknowledge that they are taking votes off Labour. Or that they are being electorally effective.

No doubt the ‘basket of deplorables’ crowd will be along in a min with their usual quips calling reform voters names, having learned absolutely 0 from Brexit. Insult the voters at your peril.

These same people also totally miss the point that winning is winning. Feeling all moral and superior about ‘oh well, what will they actually do’ changes nothing.

Perhaps those who label everyone that wants immigration limiting as ‘racist’ Will think again. But likely not.

They’ve got to stop answering every question with ‘inherited’ for a start.

Plenty of people are feeling the negative impact of Labour.

I am not a Reform voter so am only surmising here.
I think many Reform voters are voting for them as a protest against the current system, where we essentially have a Uniparty (Labour/Tories) persisting with the same destructive politics that has failed over several decades. Reform has proposed making changes and that is what many people want to see.

I guess it depends on your definition of “fix” - Farage will ensure the NHS runs very well for those who can afford to pay for it 🤷‍♀️

And so could the Lib Dems and Greens.

Birmingham and I work with asylum seeking children

Tory supporters, assuming they aren't switching to Reform, should be very worried about Reform, constantly slagging off Labour, wont win them support.

Reform are always going to take more votes from them than Labour, 2000 odd people voted tory last night in Runcorn.. thats abysmal.

Ler them show themselves up for what and who they are

❤️ 💙 💜

He was hardly Ronald Reagan.

Course it does, more people needing homes and more rubbish about affordable homes that don’t seem to be going to people who actually live here or may have actually contributed.

Also the constant building over countryside and at the same time the environment argument

Well when you're running a council that has to serve the needs of 300,000 odd people or more while keeping an extremely precarious ship on the straight and narrow-yes, experience does matter. There are going to be council leaders making hugely consequential decisions who have never even been in the public sector before.

How can it modify its policies any further and still call itself the Labour party? It's already lost its way so far as to be indistinguishable from the Tory party. If it becomes Reform just to win votes, what is the point? I won't just be happy Labour are in power regardless of their policies.

I have zero doubt that this country will put Reform or whatever the xenophobic party of the day is calling itself at the time, in charge. But becoming the xenophobic/anti poor party of the day won't help anyone. Those of you looking smugly at Reform's wins would be better looking at Trump because that's what we'll have. It's a shit show there and it won't be better here. The difference is that the average person in this country has expectation of entitlement that the average American doesn't have. So it's going to hurt so much more. And you'll have no one but yourselves to blame.

I think as well, round here there is a fair amount of anger at Labour policies, and we are only just over the Mersey from Southport.
Lets not forget our former MP only got a few days jail time for a violent attack on a constituent, while Lucy Connolly is still in prison for a tweet.

Good. This country is sinking.

Yes I understand that but surely you have to know what the promised changes will be before voting for them.

This

i told my dad that if reform got in (in a GE) i would emigrate…..i don’t want to emigrate, i don’t think anywhere else would want me and i am bad at languages 😩

Thats not true. Those that live in diverse areas tend to not vote for such parties. What happens is that places like big cities, London, Manchester etc, people are more left wing and engage with diversity.

Places that have a few pockets of incomers, of any sort whether that be from London or Romania, tend to be down an out in any case, long term neglect by local services and national government, the locals then rather than look inward at why they let the place be such a shit hole, blame the incomers.

Well, they had better be careful what they wish for. Things could get a whole lot worse.

There are plenty of uncomfortable truths - but I bet many people who voted for Reform don't know that Reform want to charge people to use the NHS.

Does Reform have a view on paying for social care?
Will people who have assets have to fund their social care ?

The problem is that there is no genuinely left-wing parties anymore. All are simply arch-capitalists preserving the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of the working class and the poor and most vulnerable in society. Reform are even worse for this than Labour/Tories, but your average working class person is rightly angry and fed up at what has been happening: the problem is they are falling for the red herring of why these problems are happening in the first place, i.e. the failings of capitalism as a system, not because of the scapegoat of immigration, benefit claimants, etc. The left needs to actually start acting or fascism is a real possibility.

True. If the main parties listened and the tried to sort those problems.

No, they aren’t- they are being lied to, yet again. Be careful what you wish for.

OP, you are right. It’s easy to feel morally superior, whilst ignoring the fact that people are actually pissed off with the status quo- it’s what happened in the US.

Please tell what we learned from brexit apart from people were lied to, to get the votes and that’s it’s been a shit show??

Of course, in an ideal world, everyone would read each party manifesto and understand it. I think we both know that this is not what happens though!
A lot of people vote because they like the look of a particular politician or because of one remark that a politician made. I agree that it is illogical but it is also the reality.

What does listening to people's concerns about immigration even mean? It just feels like a threat - "Enact anti-immigration policies or we'll vote for something that will tank the country." There doesn't seem to be much interest in a conversation about how it's not immigrants causing the financial problems of this country.