... 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...)

Farage could most definitely be the next PM. Look at Trump.

Of course they do, because they're all run by people with lots of money who will pay a lot less tax under Reform.

Farage is good at stirring and talking things down, but when he's asked for a solution he runs away. Also - Brexit wasn't mismanaged; it was just that when May, Johnson etc realised what Brexit actually meant to firms and the economy they tried to minimise the damage and avoid a hard Brexit. Turns out you can't eat or pay the bills with sovereignty.

I work in a now Reform council and they have no idea what they are doing. We have a committee process that they seem to think is a joke, don't want us working on anything to do with climate change or people's basic rights and try and constantly overturn decisions without any legal basis. It's causing us additional work to spell out the basics to them. I don't think they will get in as they will make a mess of their current power and people will move on.

Well, he didn't leave politics did he? he stayed drawing a 100k per year from his hated EU, whilst getting done for fiddling EU expenses.

He is a snake, lied and said "I bought a house in Clacton...." No, his partner did, avoiding 2nd home SLDT but of course lives there.

Lied saying he'll stop ALL boats inside 2weeks, now its 2 weeks after legislation passed..... so years then....

Will return women back to Afghanistan, send money to the Taliban, who killed 457 British soldiers...

He is a grade A xxxx

I agree with this. We watched his conference speech yesterday and my DH said that he is not only saying what people want to hear, but that what people are saying in the street. People have legitimate concerns about the way this country is being run and he is definitely tapping into that.

Farage knows that you can galvanise a disaffected public by giving them a common enemy to get exercised about. It's a blatantly cynical tactic. It's exactly how Hitler rose to power.

Totally agree with the pp who says that the media rarely challenge him because, like Trump, he is continual clickbait. Farage is extremely media-savvy, but behind the clickbait statements, there is nothing. Well nothing more than small-mindedness, malice, greed and entitlement.

Beth Rigby did today, he collapsed like a pack of cards, quite funny.

I suspected that was the case. It’s useful to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

Populist parties have an agenda to not only destroy the EU but actually Europe itself. It's not just Reform. It's all of its European avatars who are bankrolled by Russia. The RN in France got into hot water because Russian banks bailed them out some years ago. Brexit was welcomed by the Kremlin ffs. They cracked open the bubbly when it happened. And twice when Trump won. Doesn't that tell voters something?

That's great to hear but it should be relentless. Everyday. From every journalist with a conscience.

Brexit absolutely wasn't mismanaged. It just so happens that you can't polish a turd. The most honest thing Johnson ever said as PM was 'Fuck business', because indeed, Brexit was a giant 'fuck you' to British businesses.

Well tell that to the poster I was replying to who was complaining that he quit politics straight after the Brexit vote.

Farage is all we've got at the moment because he hasn't yet succeeded or failed. Labour and the Conservatives have both failed. And that's the essential and desperate problem we all face. Because of their incompetence, cowardice, ideological madness (Ed Milliband I'm looking as you), venal and dishonest behaviour and greed. On both sides. We have low grade politicians who give into temptation to benefit themselves like Angela Raynar who has thrown away the chance to be PM for the deposit on flat. And we sit there slagging them all off in accordance with our own prejudices in our own little echo chambers so no one normal would ever want to put themselves on the line as a politician because its not worth the abuse.

No idea what the solution is though.

Farage really isn't all we've got because he can't be an option any more than collective suicide is an option.

If he does a quarter of what he has said he would in terms of economic policy, the bond markets would have hysterics and the country would either go bankrupt or he'd be replaced within days. It would be exactly like Truss on steroids.

It is on Sky News this evening that Farage has confirmed he would deport female asylum seekers to Afghanistan.

On children beung deported to Afghanistan he said he'd "have to think about that."

The man is utterly reprehensible.

This would be in contravention of international law. You can't deport people to a country if it means certain death. Deporting Afghan women back to the Taliban means certain death. The man is a psychopath and so is anyone who hears this and continues to support him.

How many women and children will be getting in with Labour’s pause and new system?

Are you worried about that?

Do you mean that refugees on the small boats are mostly men and do I worry about that? That's beside the point here. Farage wasn't talking about them, he was making a statement about Afghan women and sending back to a horrible fate. How do you ever justify that? If the 'argument' in favour of Reform is getting 'foreign rapists' out of the country, how do you justify sending a group of women fleeing those very men back into their hands?? How can you call yourself a feminist and stand by such cruelty? Or do only white women matter?

...and when I say those very men i specifically mean the Taliban.

No I’m talking about Labour pausing the ability for family to apply for asylum. And possibly restricting it after that. That impacts women and children most as they usually join later.

Does this policy change concern you?

I’m beginning to think that people are happy with them being Kremlin stooges as long as they “kick out the foreigners”.

That some people would actually prefer to be allied to or even controlled by russia because they think they’ll make the UK white “again” (which it hasn’t been in any of their lifetimes anyway!)

In related matters, there’s an interesting article in the Economist called ‘Is the decline of reading making politics dumber’.

I really don’t know what those in charge thought would happen when they impoverished the working classes with buy to let and ripped up the whole idea of working for a living and meritocracy with a whole succession of both extreme left and extreme right policies, for decades. Not to mention ‘there is no such thing as society’ swiftly followed by globalism for the super rich. Destroying the economy - with computers too - never ends well.

Now we start to pay for that. And women always always pay for men and their stupidity and violence.

That some people would actually prefer to be allied to or even controlled by russia because they think they’ll make the UK white “again” (which it hasn’t been in any of their lifetimes anyway

This kind of attitude is what I call extreme left and you are wrong.

I am 50 ish. In my lifetime the population of the UK has increased by half, most of that in England and most of it by immigration. The proportion of non-native (I’m not dragging skin colour into this, not all immigrants have the same skin colour and i despise the way all the nations of earth are all lumped in together) has increased, and gangs have increased. Sharia law is used, formally and acceptably, in parts of the country now which would have been unthinkable in the post-war consensus. Leicester is now known as Little India for gods sake and English Midlands, the heartlands of the country which actually affect the long term future of the nation, have gangs running riot. My grandmother lived in Birmingham, it’s now unrecognisable. These are the facts, denied by so many for so long. The demographic change forced - forced, in a “democracy” - is real.

It was the financiers and globalists at the top (that I call extreme right) that allied with Russia and turned the country into a money laundering centre, not the traditional working classes who’ve now almost vanished, and not the poorest underclasses either. They have little political agency now.

‘It was the financiers and globalists at the top (that I call extreme right) that allied with Russia and turned the country into a money laundering centre,’
… and who have given the Russians political power by destroying traditional media and undermining, perhaps through sheer ignorance and unmitigated stupidity as much as greed, all of the principles of free flow of information and informed consent that go with democracy, social cohesion and meritocracies.