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.

Reform to the UK are the equivalent of Trump to America in my opinion.

I think your post is deliberately goady (reference to Brexit).

Trump is stopping immigration.
Could there be a link?????

Do people not think we just have far,far,far too many people through immigration we could lose a million and things would improve. It’s not pleasant living in an overcrowded island. I miss the easier traffic, more green spaces and just less people.

the interesting thing will be to see how they perform
As with all political parties, they'll deliver for their donors and the electorate will be shafted.

I am not sure that Thatcher was all for society pulling together and supporting one another either lol, she decimated whole communities and those communities are still struggling today and maybe that is where the rot set in and has developed from.
The labour govt of 1998 onwards did an awful lot of good to right some of the wrongs by improving health, education etc, and now we have had 14 years of the tories creating the same mess all over again.
I am not surprised people are disillusioned and frankly these are dangerous times. This leaves people open to finding somebody to blame for their ills and even if they are constantly reminded that the sound bites are wrong, they won't listen. Every single topic nowadays is polarised with one side refusing to listen to the other.
I am reading here the so what Reform have no policy of for example social care for the elderly, because you have to pay for it if you have assets. So that means it is ok not to consider social care in your manifesto because people are paying for it anyway? Of course that's nonsense and we can see that because people just paying for it anyway is not making the situation better at all. The sector is failing because private companies are paying minimum wage for profit and charging more to private residents than they charge council funded residents. So yes this needs an overhaul, do we think Farage and his ilk have any clue how to do that?

@Alexandra2001 Whilst thats true, we also failed to get the homeless into permanent accommodation long before we housed migrants.
So migrants aren't the issue, we are.
The Labour Government is the issue because it keeps prioritising the immigrants over local people.
They get free Dentists, privately contracted by the Govt. They did on the Bibby in Weymouth.

Or look at the mess Starmer is making...

The most interesting point is that a tory reform agreement / elevtion pact would have beaten labour everywhere

Yeah... it's a bit like 'I have a leak in my kitchen and no plumber has fixed it yet... I know: let me burn down my entire house!'

I have no time for the tory party but this would have been the end of them for sure.

Oh no! Not people from the EU! How terrible 🙄

We have already had a Tory/Farage collaboration. It was called Brexit.

These tend to be also well off people who stand to get even richer. Reform isn’t going to help the common people, they are backed by well educated, wealthy sorts who stand to make a fortune gobbling up the NHS and making profits on an already ill and ageing workforce.

And do we think free dentistry made up for the conditions on the Bobby Stockholm?
You can't make this stuff up!

I agree that Runcorn town centre is rundown,But the constituency is not just Runcorn. It encompasses Frodsham which is affluent and lots of rural villages such as Helsby, Dunham on the Hill and Kingsley which are also affluent.

Some farmers appeared to have voted Reform too, maybe instead of the conservatives?

I think the reasons are complex. I have also thought about moving a couple of miles across the border to another constituency. It’s so depressing.

In a few days time we will “celebrate “ VE day

lest we forget

But we have forgotten - we have forgotten what made it so easy tor hitler to take control , for people to turn on their neighbours, for Germany to go to war

and it’s the same today - people who feel desperate and ignored will fall for the myth that it’s”their” fault - the immigrants, the politicians , the super rich - anyone but ourselves.

The situation isn’t as bad as prewar Germany - people voting reform often have food, more money but they also have much higher expectations driven by social media

I’ve always been a Reform voter (late twenties).

Before anyone calls me a fascist or uneducated, my ds is mixed race and I have lived in many countries, including Islamic ones. I have many friends who are immigrants and paid for my XH spouse visa. What I do have a problem with is the ones who are coming over illegally and unvetted. The last time I checked, Albania wasn’t a country of danger.

Many people I know of my age support them and admit they used to hide the fact they did incase they were branded a racist.

In my area (NE), there wasn’t any local elections. If there had been, I suspect Reform would have done very well.

I would like to see low-skilled immigration reduced. I am not voting for a load of reactionary nutjobs with no policy on anything beyond "keep out foreigns!", and I am certainly not stupid enough to vote for them in local elections where their power to do anything to do with immigration is close to zero.

Reform-led councils aren't actually going to do any good for local transport or housing are they? I.e. the things they're actually there for. Let's make our local areas worse places to live in just to stick it to the immigrants, that makes perfect sense.

@Catsandcheese And do we think free dentistry made up for the conditions on the Bobby Stockholm?

The general accommodation was better than many of our own people have.

You do realise the migrant issue has been on going under the Tories?

But Labour are in now, so what should they do? leave the migrants to roam the streets? guarded tent camps? Are you willing to have one in your community? or towed back out into international waters and left there?

I don't know what standard of dental care they get... if its full treatment, rather than emergency filling/extraction, thats clearly very wrong.

What they mean is that the people voting for Reform haven’t learnt anything from Brexit.

The current issues in the UK have nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with years of underfunding, lack of investment and zero long term planning.

The NHS is already struggling with the massive exodus of staff from EU countries. Who do they think will staff the wards or run their care homes when even more migrant workers leave? 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Keirawr ‘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.’

I would say it’s the opposite way round. It’s a shame the Reform voters didn’t learn anything from the economic quagmire Brexit has dumped us in. Social pariahs in Europe, harder & more expensive to travel. Nightmare for sending things to & from Europe. Just where are the benefits?! Oh & don’t get me started on the lies painted on the bus about the money that magically would go into the NHS once we left the EU! All lies championed by Farage.

I agree though that the traditional parties need to learn to speak in a language that disenfranchised voters will listen to as Labour & the Tories seem to have lost the ability to engage with them.

It’s not that everyone that voted reform is a racist (obviously). However, you know that every racist person voted reform.

When I say racist I don’t mean people who have a genuine concern about the rate and regulation of immigration, I mean people that just “don’t like those foreigners”.

People aren't enjoying the labour government who seem to hate everyone (pensioners, private schools, the disabled, employers, farmers etc etc). Voting for Reform is as per Brexit - a protest against a government they don't identify with.