... to think that Nigel Farage will be our next PM?

[ohime]

Or, more accurately: AIBU to be afraid that truly nasty piece of work Nigel Farage who has, by all accounts, always been utterly useless at (or at least completely uninterested in) the actual business end of governing will be our next PM because everyone is so fed up with all the other parties being, variously or all at once, so corrupt, incompetent and useless that we've collectively abandoned all hope? I will never vote for Farage, who is a horrible man, or any of his party which keeps having to fire people for being just a teensy bit too overtly racist - but it seems from the polls that for many people the choice against the status quo outweighs what we may be choosing. (For an example, I can't believe that Farage's stated position that DOGE in the US didn't go far enough with its swinging cuts to the social safety net would be popular with UK voters who recently elected a government on the basis that it would reverse years of Tory austerity... not that that's worked out so well...)

Read her posts. She used the tired and ignorant "shut down" = "racist" "bigot" . I wouldn't presume that was a very "intelligent" debate strategy. But it tends to come (in her words) from the "more educated/intelligent"

@Namitynamenamethe last couple of lines really aren’t the case. Peak asylum was 2002 whilst in the EU at 100k grants. We didn’t have a mass return programme. A few hundred a year only. That’s minimal against the grant rate.

Listening to Labour MP spin out the same lines inherited, broken, broadest shoulders on SEN reform, I have no idea how that is thought to be ‘intelligent’.

The last standard line is clearly incorrect anyway they’ve gone for welfare and pensioners and now dc.

The return of Sure Start isn't going after children.... neither have they gone for pensioners, unless a household income of 70k is considered "going after..."

UK now the no1 destination for foreign investment....

Amazing how the country was "apparently" booming under the Tories, yet suffered their biggest GE defeat ever.... just 120 MPs and struggling in 3rd place in the 'polls.

Truth is the last 14 years has wrecked the UK.

Referring to most of the Reform voters not being educated…

The problem with educated people is that they sometimes don’t have any common sense and it’s definitely common sense that’s needed now to help get this country back on its feet and functioning as it should be functioning!

Hear hear !

Ok. So if NF is the saviour and his one big idea was brexit. Please tell me how Brexit has changed peoples life for the positive?1

Thanks.

Yes the Dublin agreement by itself was failing. That's why...
2003: Treaty of Le Touquet. Reciprocal border controls of French and UK officials in each other’s countries brought in. Effectively moves the UK border to France.
As you yourself said the peak was 2002 (the year before this agreement). Migration then, as you said, went down from that peak. After 2020 (when this agreement and the Dublin agreement ceased to be) the numbers of migrants shot up. From the low 100s crossing by boat in 2019 to the 10s of 1000s annually after 2020.
Coincidence?

And the main point of the return programme was deterrence. People knew if they were caught at the border they could be handed back. You could argue that it's impossible to know how effective deterrence is, but surely seeing what happened after that deterrence was removed is a small clue? Besides another poster praised Switzerland for having a much better policy on immigration - when actually they just have the same agreement we used to have.

Even Chris Philp accepts that Brexit has made returns to EU far harder, he even made a speech about it.

Yet some deny this, who to believe former HO minister? or...

Can you explain your thoughts process about how becoming highly educated means you are less likely to have common sense, or that not being very well educated means you are likely to have more common sense?

Do you not feel that racists and bigots are over represented amongst reform supporters as a group, in comparison with the UK as a whole?

You've forgotten... We have had enough of experts.....

Judging by the support for Reform, this sentiment is widespread.

Common sense? whose common sense? yours or someone who is mentally very ill.....

@CleverButScatty
how much time have you got? 🤣🤣🤣

It also means if he gets in or even if Reform gets more of a foothold there is 0 incentive to improve anything - in terms of migration, regional inequality etc. Because the worst those things get the more political support he gets -even when there is clear evidence his own policies (Brexit) were responsible for those things getting worse. Whereas other politicians are punished electorally if their policies cause their voters issues. So it's actually in his interests to make things worse for his supporters.

@Namitynamenamecan you say how many were returned and entered under the agreement?

For example it was 2017 under the Dublin regulation: - 314 migrants were transferred out of the UK - 461 migrants were transferred to the UK The year before the numbers were 362 and 558

Do you have much higher figures for any year?

Also can you say why EU countries such as Germany and any that are have the same issues with migration don’t use the agreement to deal with that?

I've got all day. Hit us hard.

Common sense = a hodge-podge of accumulated advice, experiences, aphorisms, norms, received wisdom, inherited beliefs, and introspection that is neither coherent nor even internally self-consistent.

Meanwhile, back to Farage. Here he is on women in the army -

"maybe it's because I've got so many women pregnant over the years that I have a different view. I find it very difficult to think that we could stand up and run over the top together, into the machine guns or whatever."

Farage on hunting.

"I don't think fox hunting is cruel."

Yes the numbers returned were less than the numbers accepted in exchange. But the argument in favour is the numbers deterred from crossing was much higher. It was about deterrence. Also the return numbers don't include those stopped at the French border under the 2003 agreement - effectively we policed it like it was pur own land but weren't required to "keep" or formally exchange the people detected there. They were stopped. In terms of the "deterrent".effect of the returns policy I can see that it was politically hard to justify because pre Brexit it was hypothetical versus a real number of people accepted. However, since then the increase sort of suggests it was actually working. 461 is less than 30,000.

You yourself acknowledged that numbers went down in 2003- do you not think that was something to do with the agreement signed then?

Farage on marriage equality.

“I didn’t support it. I thought it was wrong to introduce it "

@Namitynamenameto add on your timing question. Lorries as method declined after deaths in back, public outcry and new rules.

Like any profitable business it takes time to set up a new system. Now with awareness, marketing and demand traffickers earn billions from a new set up. It wasn’t overnight obviously as it would take time to build.

Let's home it take Farage as many attempts to be PM as it took him to be an MP.