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.

It's offensive to anyone who isn't an idiot and is also an immigrant. Yes, it is. Because you're basically making Reform's point for them. If you really do believe it's incredibly easy for someone "who isn't good at language, and no country would actually want" to move to another country, then you really should be voting Reform.

100%. They’re a limited company run by privileged private school boys.

I’m shocked people don’t appear to read the proposed policy solutions politicians put forward - or not. Reform’s so-called policies look like they’ve been developed on the back of a fag packet. Don’t believe the marketing and advertising (aka political rhetoric), people! Examine the ingredients of the product on offer.

There's plenty of well put arguments against reform on this thread maybe it's you that doesn't want to engage in any debate and just throw out old soundbites

@inadequatepillow , my word the naked disdain that you voice for the ‘common man’ is quite breathtaking. Do you realise how arrogant and supercilious you sound?

Yet immigration just goes up and up and up no matter what. People just get ignored.

Exactly this. I don’t believe for a minute that voting for Reform will improve things, but I can see why people might choose to do it.

I despise Reform candidates and the voters they attract and do not agree with their politics but like most right wing parties they have tapped into the disgruntled section of the electorate who feel the mainstream parties don’t represent their views. Immigration is the easy target to blame and no doubt the already stretched local services which are chronically underfunded and the NHS waitlists support this. Ironically though Brexit is the reason for many of the NHS woes when we made it clear that trained medics from other European countries weren’t welcome here.

I don’t believe the answer to our troubles though is less immigration but rather higher taxes. Reform are not peddling this narrative so if they ever do get their hands on power it will be interesting to see how they navigate this.

Reform are now the protest vote for those who feel the main parties are doing nothing for them. In some ways they are not wrong as none of today’s politicians have a solution to our problems. Goodness knows what economists are advising them. They all seem incompetent.

It is not about feeling superior or calling people names. I am personally past that stage.
If people want to vote for Reform and have Farage as a prime minister then so be it. We are heading towards another Brexit- like disaster( but this time, I fear this country will really never recover).

The things being promised will simply not be delivered( ex: the immigration numbers going up after Brexit was delivered and so forth).

If "winning", disrupting the status quo takes priority over basic common sense then so be it.

What's hard to understand is that, on the surface, "We want to vote for the party who will actually DO and STAND FOR something, not be mealy-mouthed and change their minds all the time like the main two" seems perfectly reasonable - but then why vote for them when what they will do, and stand for, is demonstrably WORSE? "I don't like how the NHS is run so let's trash it" ???? A protest vote doesn't really cut it as an idea anymore - we saw how that ended up turning out for the USA, not to mention Brexit. "Anything has to be better than this" is really not worth the gamble.

Got a point though haven’t they ??!!

I understand the point that you're making, and I agree with it to some extent. But a lot of the people saying that they would emigrate may well be the highly skilled people that would find it easier to move.

I haven't actually said on here that we'd emigrate if Reform was elected, but we would seriously think about it. And we would certainly have options... there are 3 other countries where we would automatically have the right to live without even having to bother about visas etc, so it would certainly be feasible for us if that was the route that we chose. I don't really want to right now because I'm a carer for my elderly dad, but if that were to change, then all bets are off. Especially as my dd would be much less inclined to stay and work as a doctor in the UK if Reform started dismantling the NHS.

It’s a bit like ‘do not go gentle into that good night’. I always thought it should be ‘gently’ but apparently not . . .

To the Scottish who says it wouldn't happen there. You still have secretarism.

They've turned one of the safest Labour seats over to Reform in the by-election, hardly right leaning in that area would you say? 😁

Having to explain to someone that Don ald Trump wasn't on The Apprentice. Billionaire Donald Trump created The Apprentice
Irrelevant but Donald Trump did not create the Apprentice. He presented it. He's never ' created' anything in his life, apart from ' creating' his entirely false image. He took his father's money and mostly pissed it up the wall, yet is still a billionaire. He would have been richer if he'd done nothing.

I think the voting Green proved a point at Runcorn - they have now ended up with a Reform MP - total opposite of their policies. Maybe this will be a lesson for Greens in the future that you have to stick with the Devil you know…

My daughter actually said she would vote Green next time and despises Reform. Hope this will show her what can happen.

"Circa 70% of those who turned out to vote"

Nearer 60% really (61.28%), but I take your point.

"That is not democratic."

Surely getting the most votes in an election is the very essence of democratic?

I live in an area where the last mayoral election was held under a supplementary system where voters got two votes.

The Conservative candidate got the most votes but not 50%. So the second votes of those who had voted for the LibDems etc were then added in as well and the Labour candidate ended up getting 51% of the votes.

However, subsequent to that, the Elections Act 2022 came into force.

This was the Act that made photo ID compulsory.

Another thing the Act did was to do away with the supplementary vote and so all mayoral elections since 2022 have to be first past the post

And that's exactly why Reform are winning. The Left won't get their arses out of the echo chamber. (Is that literate enough for you?)

Also The Greens, who are just as terrible on the other side.

I can't imagine why anyone would vote for a convicted criminal and womaniser, I really do struggle to understand the mentality. I do think people on the whole are selfish though, easily swayed by the media and social media propaganda and desperate for a scapegoat.

The American media is also terrible and the education system in the US is pretty bad so I also think it's harder for people to be properly informed.

Good. I hope they win the general election next. It’s time we had a different government in, no more of this labour Tory nonsense. I agree with 90% of their policies. I’m just disappointed they didn’t get in last time.

Tories done nothing.
Labour doubt nothing.
Let's see what reform can do. Bring on a GE

It is in no way "the party of the people, working people..."

The real issue is that people are being hoodwinked into believing it is.

The whole premise of Reform is 'the grift', aiming for the betterment of its owners and shareholders.

Don't forget where UKIP/Brexit/Reform came from - the founders'/owners' desire to prevent the EU from taxing their 'hidden' wealth and assets and, as a sideshow, to make money from allowing malign, foreign influence to get a foothold in the UK.

I really don't care for Labour and hate the Tories since Boris/Truss et al, but forget any notion of Reform being in any way "for the people".

Exactly.

If people who were comfortably off prior to the CoL crisis are now struggling how do they think the people who were already barely making end meet are managing? Their lives are harder, the rise in NI is affecting employment and yet they see millions of pounds made available to people who enter the country illegally. When resources are in very short supply it's hardly surprising people will question allocation and if they feel that allocation increases hardship for them they will object.

It's not rocket science and yet posters on here would rather those people shut up so that they can have the floor to argue about the injustice of their child not getting a job after completing medical school or VAT on private education with absolutely zero awareness that lots of people are too worried about where their next meal is coming from to have the luxury of such concerns.

I don't believe Reform is the answer either and I wonder what comes next if they are elected and fail.

The problem is that reactionary parties don’t tend to put things back on track. You’ll get the same old same old with a new crop of self interested politicians, as per that novel Animal Farm. We can see this happening in the US - they honestly don’t care about ordinary people.

Interestingly, here in Australia, we seem to have had a different reaction to Trumpism. We look like probably following the same trajectory as Canada in the general election tomorrow. The conservative equivalent was in the lead for quite a while before Trump started with the tariff drama and then in just a couple of months that seems to have all changed. They are expecting the incumbent centre Left Labor party to win now.