To be starting to worry that Reform will win next GE?

[TortoiseMantle]

The polls have shown a consistent lead. Is there any realistic chance of Reform actually winning the next election?

I vote Labour, but it’s hard to see how they’ve managed to throw away such a lead in just a year, and it’s hard to see how their polling improves. The Tories maybe have more opportunity for improving, but we’re going to see a Reform government, aren’t we? Nigel Farage is going to be our next PM.

Trying to smear Farage is pointless. Unless he does something truly beyond the pale, the people voting for him couldn’t care less. They already know what he is and are voting for him anyway. Even if he did go, the dissatisfaction that meant those people were voting for him in the first place won’t just disappear.

Even if he does do something beyond the pale (which to most rational people, he arguably already has) they still won’t care. At the moment Reform are using softened language to justify their positions as a form of psychological conditioning to get people to accept and justify cruelty.

It will then be ramped up and people will do anything to try and justify it, no matter what he does. Just look at the USA right now. It is exactly the same as what happened with MAGA.

People have made Farage and reform part of their identity and will use identity protective biases in order to justify him no matter what, out of fear and a desperation to believe they aren’t complicit and their idol isn’t THAT bad, they haven’t been conned. It’s how fascism proliferates. Stupid human ego and pride.

Badenoch had a point when she commented that she was glad Jenrick was now Farage's problem. There's an obvious inherent danger in having a party full of people who have a track history of betraying their colleagues.

Respectfully, it's exactly this kind of rhetoric that has galvanised support for Reform.
If Nigel Farage does end up in No.10, you can give yourself a pat on the back.

I genuinely think many see Farage as, not the best, but the least worst option...

.

People sleepwalked into giving Boris a majority, I can’t see them doing the same self harm with Farage

The trouble with every man made disaster is they are always entirely predictable, it's just that people think it's not going to happen because they can't imagine the awfulness of it happening.

It's a weird state of being where people are too hopeful and optimistic and don't want to imagine things going wrong.

So they sleep walking into it.

It's the mountain disaster that starts off because someone got up late. Then they realise they haven't quite got the right equipment but think 'oh well we don't really need it that much'. Then the weather turns unexpectedly. Then someone falls. And before you know it your got a right mess on your hands. But at 7am everything seemed really nice and was well planned. Until it wasn't.

Respectfully, anybody who votes for reform should take accountability for their own decisions. Nobody forces anybody to vote any way. You can’t blame someone else for the fact people chose to vote for a party of their own free will.

I’m sick to death of the suggestion that people vote reform because other people call them stupid. It’s a juvenile way to think and act, it’s like, ‘’Mummy, that meany lady called me Stew-pid!. I’ll show her!’’ The emotional regulation skills of a five year old. Which I suppose goes with the territory since every reform voter I’ve ever met meets that criteria.

If anyone votes reform on the basis that someone called them stupid, then I’m afraid they prove their point, they are fucking stupid.

Somebody’s actions are nobody’s responsibility but their own.

They'll see it that they've 'taken responsibility' by voting. They won't have a problem with their vote... but you will. And you will need to take responsibility for that.

I don’t take responsibility for what someone else chooses to do. Your attitude is the exact same attitude that abusers have, ‘’you made me do it!’ No one makes anybody do anything.

All it shows is that the person who impulsively acts because of what someone else does/ says needs some kind of therapy because they are not emotionally healthy. It’s their problem if they’re so thin skinned that they choose to vote for a party purely on the basis of being called stupid 🤣

They should stop pretending they weren’t going to vote for them anyway, and are simply saying it’s other people’s fault so they can justify it further.

Not every reform voter will be happy with their vote. I’d be willing to bet that a sizable chunk will have a problem with it in the end. Not everyone will admit it though. People don’t tend to admit they’ve been conned very readily, it makes them feel uncomfortable.

Besides which, ‘if your argument is ‘they won’t have a problem with their vote’ that means they wanted to vote for them anyway, so how is that someone else’s fault? 🤣🤣

If you’re being called stupid for voting for reform, then obviously you must have said you supported them in the first place, or people wouldn’t have the opportunity to call you stupid for supporting reform, would they? So your whole point about it being other people’s fault that people vote for reform is backward.

THEY decide to put a cross in the box, if it goes wrong that is on THEM. Full stop.

Japan actually. Or Oz. I think they’re as down on nasty Dubai as I am.
I hope they don’t. But wouldn’t blame them if they did. and they won’t be the only ones. Britain will suffer a brain drain at the same time as closing the doors to talent from abroad.

Im hoping the tories claw it back in the next 3 years 😍

He won't.

I wish I could be as sanguine @Slightyamusedandsilly .

Brexit is a failure.

Brexit was achieved through lies.

Reform is full of Brexiteers.

If Reform become the next UK government, the Brexit mess will deepen not least because Reform will pivot the UK away from the EU to Trump's America.

UK national schisms WILL deepen esp. in NI & Scotland: pro-EU countries.

Brexit is indeed a failure. But l don’t understand this;

The majority of the U.K. want to rejoin Europe. But Reform are in the lead. Which one is right?

Most of the UK can't read, present company excepted, so probably remain blissfully unaware that the big beast economies of the EU (Germany and France) are struggling massively. I wouldn't join the EU on the basis of their national balance sheets right now.

Reform is not in the lead in either NI or Scotland. Brexit all over again.

Immigration is the biggest driving issue of course. But you need a tad more political nous than just yelling Deport! Deport! Deport!

To be fair, Lord Offord (new Scottish Reform leader) seems a good sort though he is very "Tory Banker" pedigree. I like his regional devolution ideas BUT I do not trust that he will successfully get any tread with Westminster Reform.

One Size Fits All does not work anymore for the UK. Drastic constitutional reform is needed - as Offord himself says ( though not via Scottish independence/Irish Unification). Both of which I now support courtesy Blair's Wars; Brexit; Tory Austerity; Johnson; Truss & the rise of Reform.

The EU is hardly a triumph @celticnations . The mid 1980s joiner nations like Spain are doing well, along with Poland, thanks to the investment they received when they joined. The original founder nations are all suffering similar problems to the UK. It's more about ageing populations, IMO.

Regardless, leaving it has shaved 8% off the UK economy.

https://universityobserver.ie/what-would-a-reform-uk-government-mean-for-ireland/

Penultimate paragraph is chilling.

12 500 Loyalist paramilitaries.

"Some level of IRA exists".(Denied by Sinn Fein).

Reform UK is dangerous because they are divisive. Tice wants to renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement. Ben Habib wants to remove devolution. These are dangerous stances.

@Papyrophile Brexit has severely damaged the entire UK in numerous areas - trade, science, casual manual labour markets, political influence.

Agree re demographics.

I agree, largely. Reform are a catastrophe. I cannot tell you how much I hate them. The words don't exist.

There is serous damage done, but over-management is IMO likely to be worse that a bit of letting people roll and get on with life. Most people will make sensible choices for themselves, and most of those ultimately turn out to have been the right choices for society.

I can only say this because over my 70 years, I have watched a lot of political car crashes. It's not anything I would recommend experiencing.