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.

I did. Where do you think I got mine from? The fact that you’re so coy about posting a link speaks volumes.

I've watched that video and it says nothing about what Reform intends to do. If they want to remove a tiny part of the Equality Act, then they can amend the Act. There is absolutely no need to repeal it, which is what they've stated they will do. Why would you repeal (= remove) an extremely long and complex piece of legislation covering many different types of discrimination just because you don't want a couple of government internship schemes to be restricted to certain disadvantaged groups of young people? And why would the person who we are told will be Equalities Minister in a Reform Government boast about repealing the Equality Act (with no mention that this will somehow be restricted to civil service internship schemes)? And at the same time boast that on day 1 as Equalities Minister she will abolish the post of Equalities Minister?

Does reform want to abolish the equality act 2010

It's obviously not only about civil service internships: that was an example

Presumably they've found sufficient instances where the intent of the Equality Act has been subverted - and decided that the weakness in the legislation is sufficiently structural - that they've decided that repealing and replacing it is the best action. It's hardly unprecedented: the Equality Act itself replacesd many other pieces of equality legislation.

I very much want to keep legal protections so that people are genuinely treated equally - I think everyone does.

I also want to roll back recent over-reach, where those protections are perverted to treat people un-equally. There are lots of situations like that internship program, which exclude whole groups of people, which I see as discriminatory.. I was outraged at the attempt to have different sentencing based on ethnicity, cultural background and religion, thankfully blocked by Mahmood
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0m9n4m7w3jo

Our society has changed substantially since 2010. It's become much more fragmented and partisan, with interest 'blocks' who work against other parts of society. Re-working the Equality Act to make sure that it genuinely provides equality for individuals seems reasonable.

I was initially worried, but I'm holding judgement until Reform give more detail on their proposal

Well, thats a bit of leap even for you, please point me to the sentence where i said immigrants don't need to learn English??

Perhaps those on the 'right who let in around 4m people over the last few years, should have specified a high standard of English as pre requisite?

You ve zero idea if Ukrainians or anyone else has a good grasp of English, some of the Ukrainians who have lived in our area didn't speak English to a decent level and some of my neighbours carers, lovely as they are, have to bring someone one with them as their English skills are v poor.

Another example would be the situation highlighted in a current AIBU thread where Leeds Mind - a charity, but largely NHS funded - is apparently restricting child mental health support to "culturally diverse communities".

I don't have full information on it - but posters who thought it was reasonable didn't seem to be denying it was happening: they just thought it was acceptable to prioritise children of non-white ethnicities over white children for NHS funding. I don't.

The rise of Trans rights such that women no longer have a 'women's only' pool at Hampstead Ponds (making it an experience which some women will self-exclude from) - despite there already being a separate 'mixed' pond - and even having no right to single-sex changing spaces at work (as we've seen in recent court cases) are other examples.

The legislation was written to protect individuals from being discriminated against based on prejudice. It is open for exploitation in our current society where powerful interest groups deliberately prioritise the interests of one segment of society over another, either for their own gain or out of ideology and agenda.

I’m starting to wonder if I’m speaking double Dutch with the levels of misreading my posts.

You said: So Govt invites people into the UK on student and work visa's, HK'ers and Ukrainians too, with little to no requirement to speak English.

This is on a thread about immigrants, the reasonable inference would be that you thoughts that as some visas are issued with no English requirement, then nobody should be required to speak English.

But I don’t know why you are now claiming that I said that you said that immigrants don’t need to learn English? I didn’t accuse you of tgat. I was just reiterating the point that could be best that they do.

You ve zero idea if Ukrainians or anyone else has a good grasp of English, some of the Ukrainians who have lived in our area didn't speak English to a decent level

Well that’s clearly not true because we had quite a large group of Ukrainians come to our area, and their English was very good. I spoke to a number of them and my children spent time with them in school. So for you to rather abruptly claim I have ‘zero idea’ just because the Ukrainians you met didn’t is not correct.

And really, that has no relevance to the point I was making - you brought up Ukrainians and I’m still no clearer what point you were trying to make.

Well said. I’m finding the often eye watering levels of dishonesty from the anti Reform people quite hard work and they make me more inclined to distrust what they are saying and listen properly to Reform.

I’m not saying I agree with everything they say, in some cases I just don’t know enough to form an opinion but as I said earlier, we have been voting for the same parties that make the same mistakes for years.

Revisiting laws that have contributed to, among other things, removing female only spaces from society would seem sensible.

Something needs to change and I can’t see how the mainstream parties have the capacity for a sufficient level of change. We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. We HAVE to do something different. Otherwise the shit show in which we find ourselves will just get worse.

I sometimes wonder if this is the spiral of decline for our civilisation and we’ll end up like the Incas.

The 4m migrants the Tories let in, are in the main, SE Asians, Africans, HK'ers Ukrainians.

For 2 of those groups, there is no requirement to speak English at all and i don't believe there is for Students either.
Just because you met migrants who speak good English, doesn't make my exp "not true" thats ridiculous and false.

Some migrants speak good English, some don't, my point is the English requirement either is weak or doesn't exist.
The English tests for Nurses was lowered by the Tories... some higher level work visa's have been tightened recently by Labour.

For carers, the standard has been poor for many years.

For dependants, the Tories set no standards at all.

Yet you blamed those on the left.

Ash Sarkar is a bloody journalist (not even a good one) she isn't even an MP, thats like me saying Tommy Robinson represents the 'right!

I can only talk about one nurse, who looked after DH in an acute cardiac care unit over Christmas last year. She had been in the UK about eight weeks, recruited directly by the NHS from Islamabad, with her mother's blessing as long as she was studying for her masters in nursing. She told us that had her father still been alive, she would never have been allowed to do other than marry, but her mother was fervently in favour of women's education. Her English was competent then but I am sure it is much better now, and regardless of whether she stays post qualification or returns to Pakistan, the world has a much better trained, qualified and experienced nurse. Surely a good outcome?

Wouldn't it be better if she worked in Pakistan, serving her own country, which has desperate poverty & health outcomes, showing men and women that females can be educated without the world falling in?

I'm all for the UK helping to train such people but we should not be recruiting from developing countries because we cannot be bothered to train our own staff & when we do get them to become HCP's we screw them with v high fee's and scam levels of interest.

It does sometimes feel that we're declining - but actually it's just that the rest of the world is catching up. The danger is that we must recognise that we need to do the right things to re-earn our country's income every single year anew: it doesn't come automatically. Borrowing to fund a national lifestyle we feel entitled to - but haven't earned - impoverishes us and our children.

The UK still has enormous strengths in established infrastructure (technical and economic as well as physical), stable institutions and cultures to encourage investment and risk-taking, high levels of technical expertise and established businesses. We have absolutely everything we need to work with! But we do all have to work hard and smartly: to turn that potential into real productive output every single year, and to maintain and enhance it as technology advances, so that our children will also have equivalent incredible national assets to make use of in their turn.

I'm not convinced about Reform either. But likewise, I find the scaremongering over them annoying. I don't think they're any different from other political parties, and we should look at their policies and judge their actions just like any other.

I find them a bit one-dimensional, and get the impression they haven't worked out the rest of their policies and views - let alone communicated them to voters. Being in government is hard, and you really need to have figured things out before you get in - as Labour have found out! The recent Conservative defections should help Refirm with that. We should all hope so, because if they do get in we will all depend on them governing successfully.

That 'need for change' you describe is certainly what's lifted Reform so dramatically. But I'm not sure. Each new administration is a change, despite being the same political party. This Labour government is fundamentally different in values and approach than the Blair/Brown government. Likewise, David Cameron's One Nation Conservativism was quite different to Thatcherism, and I think Kemi Badenoch is forging a new path again.

I do think that the flaws in some of the assumptions and direction we've had since the post-war years are becoming more apparent, and we're coming to a break from those. The world has changed, and our position in it: we must adjust in order to thrive again.

But it's not just political parties: any change will have to reach deeply into our institutions including judiciary and education, our laws and practice. We need deep change, but without breaking those institutions or allowing the change to be co-opted by interest groups. I think that requires huge political skill as well as resolve. I'm not convinced that Reform has it.

I see Thatcher as the last prime minister to have successfully brought about that kind of deep political change. Before that, Clement Attlee.

It doesn't come often!

I don’t think the rest of the world is catching up. I think they’re ahead.

China has bullet trains everywhere. They have robot as waiters. We can’t even build a decent train system. Public transport is cheap and efficient in Europe and the Far East. The U.K. is way behind.

What positive political change did MT bring about? she certainly changed our industrial, services sectors & industrial relations.

What would help the UK is electoral reform & no one is seriously suggesting that sort of political change.

As @ArseInTheCoOpWindow has said, the UK is lagging in most modern measures, its also a very expensive place to live in, with hi taxes and v poor services.

The UK was a disaster in the 70s: the 'lost decade' of economic growth, decline of our uncompetitive nationalised industries, overly powerful unions driving inflation which peaked at 27% and holding the country to ransom with harmful industrial action, and widespread dependency on a bloated state,.

Most of the prosperity the UK has enjoyed in the last 45 years is thanks to Thatcher's policies.

If you genuinely didn't know that (rather than just making a political point that you hate her. Yes, we know.) then you should read up a bit more about that era.

People seem to have forgotten, and seem keen to repeat the same mistakes.

Electoral reform is pissing in the wind. Yet more political infighting will do nothing for the UK's economic prospects.

Possibly, but in Pakistan she would not be seeing the high level sophisticated medicine that we have reached. She will work here for a few years, learn a lot and return to Pakistan ready for a very senior post with a masters degree. And our local hospital will have benefited from her work during the training.

I agree Alexandra2001 that we should not be stealing health professionals, but if we keep them for a few years and they return home upskilled, is that not a benefit for both countries?

While the Pakistani nurse was wonderful, the same could not be said for the Nigerian doctor on the same ward, who had come for surgical training. Ham-fisted is polite.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

The nurse was lovely, clever and kind, and her English improved every day. And as English is likely to be her professional tongue for life, even in Pakistan, because everyone speaks a bit, two or three years in Devon is unlikely to damage her prospects.

I would agree, but because we have spent too much on welfare rather than infrastructure investment. It's not a popular opinion.

Well, thats one way of looking at it and no need to be quite so sarky is there?

One can easily make the point that she squandered NS oil, sold off public services, BT/GPO aside, a disaster... Buy to Let - destroyed social housing, moved from manufacturing to services - very mixed results.

You asked me to read up on that era, it may surprise you to know, that despite the IMF loan, unemployment was 5.5% in 1978 (not massaged figures as we now, with sickness and HE) Inflation at 8% (similar to USA) & GDP growth of 4.2%.......unheard in the last 25 years.

We had at least 2 recessions under MT in the 80s, in the 90s we had an ERM crisis with interest rates hitting 15% Yes, you read that right - 15%! a collapsing currency and a humiliating climb down, oh and a recession.

On Unions, she destroyed them, one reason our productivity is so poor, the power balance went to the employer, unions may have been too powerful in the 70s, so yes, they did need some restriction but not what she did.

& i don't hate her, if i came from a mining family i might though, her saving grace for me, is she was a staunch European, one reason i have voted Tory in the 80s and 90s.
Its a pity the Tory party has moved to the right as much as it has done in recent years, i mean they might all say they worship MT but they also got rid of her former ministers, as too left/woke.

Everything Alexandra2001 reminds us of is true. I was there, living through it. And yes, it was shit. And so will be the next three to five years. No soft soaping from me. the next five years are going to be absolutely horrendous. Your money won't go as far, your bills will increase; your employer will want the same hours for less money. You will have to say no to your kids. And in the end, it will probably work out okay.