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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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6
24kPalamino · 15/03/2026 22:00

Suedoh · 15/03/2026 21:57

@everyone
How can we persuade folk to not vote Reform?? Whar are the arguments??

I guess someone would have to convince me that the government taking all my money to redistribute was a good thing…and if I really didn’t like it, I could in the future get high on crack legally to drown all my sorrows.

Eskarina1 · 15/03/2026 22:00

Screamingabdabz · 15/03/2026 01:00

Yeah we get it…. Reform and brexit voters are thick as pig shit and should be rounded up, which is just plain old fashioned snobbery disguised as political commentary.

Funny how the left never offers a satisfactory alternative for the disadvantaged and disenfranchised.

Just more of the same economically disastrous woke idealism, bankrupt the country to pander to people who contribute nothing (at all ends of the spectrum). The low and middle income workers keeping the wheels on, breaking their backs and paying tax for every grabby opportunist, sex offending billionaires and feckless dope smoking dossers.

If the left really cared about people voting for these extreme parties they’d read the room - they’d prioritise society for people who work hard, abide by the law and do right by their kids.

I don't think the current labour party are remotely left wing or woke, but I definitely don't think the Conservatives - and particularly the brand of Conservative that kicked out centrists like Rory Stewart and promoted Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman meet that dedefinition. And thats the party that have been in charge for the majority of the last 15 years.

Also Reform are funded by billionaires. Stopping billionaires from taking without contribution is a laudable aim, but it's not one Reform shares

24kPalamino · 15/03/2026 22:03

Eskarina1 · 15/03/2026 22:00

I don't think the current labour party are remotely left wing or woke, but I definitely don't think the Conservatives - and particularly the brand of Conservative that kicked out centrists like Rory Stewart and promoted Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman meet that dedefinition. And thats the party that have been in charge for the majority of the last 15 years.

Also Reform are funded by billionaires. Stopping billionaires from taking without contribution is a laudable aim, but it's not one Reform shares

They are billionaires because they know business. They aren’t career politicians who haven’t moved away from their sixth form debating days. Having a party who actually have worked in the UK and created wealth, might just be a positive thing!

Blueharmonica · 15/03/2026 22:15

24kPalamino · 15/03/2026 21:54

True! It isn’t a manifesto yet is it! They just have a list of policies at the moment op. But you’re welcome to take a look and confirm that there is nothing remotely like 1933 Germany.

It’s quite hard to compare a manifesto that doesn’t exist, but Hitlers main policies in 1933 were around state control of the economy, suppression of dissent and the elimination of political opposition. None of these have been touted as policies by Reform, in fact they have been pretty vocal on criticising Labour for increasing state control of the economy and suppressing dissent.

My genuine advice would be do some reading from sources where it’s not sensationalised and you will realise there is nothing to worry about let alone have to leave the country. You may even find you like some of Reforms ideas.

24kPalamino · 15/03/2026 22:18

Blueharmonica · 15/03/2026 22:15

It’s quite hard to compare a manifesto that doesn’t exist, but Hitlers main policies in 1933 were around state control of the economy, suppression of dissent and the elimination of political opposition. None of these have been touted as policies by Reform, in fact they have been pretty vocal on criticising Labour for increasing state control of the economy and suppressing dissent.

My genuine advice would be do some reading from sources where it’s not sensationalised and you will realise there is nothing to worry about let alone have to leave the country. You may even find you like some of Reforms ideas.

Edited

I definitely agree with you.

Lifeandlovesofashedevil · 15/03/2026 22:21

Gosh I may just vote Reform!

Thechaseison71 · 15/03/2026 22:26

catinateacup · 14/03/2026 23:58

Daft as a brush

Freedom of movement didn't mean you could just get a job in another EU Country.

That’s exactly what it meant 🤦‍♀️

Edited

A job yes. Not necessarily one in OP s profession

catinateacup · 15/03/2026 22:30

Nosea · 15/03/2026 17:56

How are you going to live there and deal with society without knowing the language?

What makes you think I (or anyone else) wouldn’t know the language? I speak French, Spanish and some Italian. It doesn’t matter whether you speak the language or not, anyway - plenty of English expats don’t! - it’s the principle of freedom of movement.

Britain actually benefitted massively from EU freedom of movement, which filled high-skill labour deficits across our economy for more than a decade — we effectively siphoned off a huge amount of EU talent, from the NHS to universities to finance. Now those people have gone home, we’ve lost the benefit to our economy of excellent Polish plumbers and accountants, Romanian construction workers, Spanish nurses, German scientists and French engineers, etc. etc.

Who have we got instead? Lots of unskilled workers from elsewhere in the world with less good qualifications, many of whom are not remotely as good contributors to our economy as all the EU workers were. And we’ve still got lots of illegal migrants as well. So that was a massive fucking own goal by all the people who didn’t like immigration and were thick enough to think that Brexit would make immigrants go away. (Oh, and no, we don’t train those high skill people ourselves, because as a culture we don’t actually like investing in our own kids or funding education and training. We prefer to load all our young people up with massive debts, ration their access to higher education, and import all our doctors, nurses and lecturers from other counties where they take education more seriously. So those jobs are not suddenly going to British people instead. They’ve just disappeared for the most part.)

We’ve also lost: massive grant incomes for European science projects; the ERASMUS scheme which allowed our students to study in the EU and EU students to come here; we’ve lost all sorts of opportunities for travel and reciprocal exchange amongst cultures, including our own population actually leaving a few more languages and skills from elsewhere in Europe.

catinateacup · 15/03/2026 22:33

Thechaseison71 · 15/03/2026 22:26

A job yes. Not necessarily one in OP s profession

Missing the entire point 🤷‍♀️

Nosea · 15/03/2026 22:34

Reform want to deport illegal immigrants and reduce legal migration. They do not and will not exterminate and kill a whole group of people.

Thechaseison71 · 15/03/2026 22:36

catinateacup · 15/03/2026 22:33

Missing the entire point 🤷‍♀️

No it was about the OP saying she couldn't do her job in Ireland without Irish experience.

Blueharmonica · 15/03/2026 22:36

Suedoh · 15/03/2026 21:57

@everyone
How can we persuade folk to not vote Reform?? Whar are the arguments??

The best way would be to do some research on what their policies are going to be and then debate the pros and cons. Their tax policies and focus on families and economic growth are really appealing, particularly for working families and those on low wages.

By the way the Reform definition of working families means families that work, not the Labour definition that counter intuitively means those not working and on benefits. Labour calls working families ‘those with broad shoulders’.

NotAnotherScarf · 15/03/2026 22:40

Oh here's the weekly middle class I was better off in the EU thread...you might have been with your middle class privileges...your over 3 months every six months holidays, walking into high paid jobs in France.

Well the rest of us were paying to move the parliament from Brussels to Strasbourg every six months, paying farmers not to farm so food prices remained high, so that unelected officials could come up with ideas like the oh so successful EES system for non EU nationals which is an abject failure.

The rest of us had wages suppressed for 20 years because there was a completely elastic supply of labour. Paid for countries to be admitted to the union purely to keep them out of the sphere of Russian influence: Romania and Bulgaria for example which were second world countries at best... leading directly to the Ukrainian War.

And let's not forget that the UK paid to develop a COVID vaccine, paid for a factory in Europe and the EU who sat on their arse wanted to stop those vaccines coming to the UK...and when they got their own vaccines, the richer states got them first.

likelysuspect · 15/03/2026 22:43

TooBigForMyBoots · 14/03/2026 21:21

If Reform win the next election the UK is over. But don't worry about everyone, Farage's children have dual nationality. As do Boris Johnson's. David Cameron's family have enough money that it doesn't matter.🤷‍♀️

As much as I resent Cameron for holding the referendum, he wasnt a leaver, he was a remainer

likelysuspect · 15/03/2026 22:43

NotAnotherScarf · 15/03/2026 22:40

Oh here's the weekly middle class I was better off in the EU thread...you might have been with your middle class privileges...your over 3 months every six months holidays, walking into high paid jobs in France.

Well the rest of us were paying to move the parliament from Brussels to Strasbourg every six months, paying farmers not to farm so food prices remained high, so that unelected officials could come up with ideas like the oh so successful EES system for non EU nationals which is an abject failure.

The rest of us had wages suppressed for 20 years because there was a completely elastic supply of labour. Paid for countries to be admitted to the union purely to keep them out of the sphere of Russian influence: Romania and Bulgaria for example which were second world countries at best... leading directly to the Ukrainian War.

And let's not forget that the UK paid to develop a COVID vaccine, paid for a factory in Europe and the EU who sat on their arse wanted to stop those vaccines coming to the UK...and when they got their own vaccines, the richer states got them first.

Edited

The poor in this country and deprived areas got huge financial and social support via the EU.

catinateacup · 15/03/2026 22:54

BlueEyedBogWitch · 15/03/2026 21:22

God, this thread. Some of the stories. I mean, people really are thick, aren’t they? It’s mind-blowing.

One of my neighbours who voted for Brexit said to me that the reason she’d voted for it was because “now Ireland will have to bring back the pound instead of the Euro”.

I mean — where do you even start? She had completely no idea that Ireland is even a separate country, never mind that it’s still part of the EU and had absolutely nothing to do with Brexit.

Like the MAGAs voting Trump in not once but twice, Brexiteers who think Reform is going to solve the very problems Brexit created are simply idiots on main. It’s a scary time — because all those people are not going to be sorting out all this mess in a few years’ time.

Warmlight1 · 15/03/2026 22:56

Viviennemary · 14/03/2026 23:52

I think Nigel Farage enjoys life far too much to want to be PM. Much more fun just sitting back telling everyone how you'd do it much better. I think he'd emigrate if he was elected

I agree . I can't see him wanting it. Neither him nor Tice. There's no evidence whatsoever that they'd cope with the responsibility. They are loaded and don't need the money and are both bothered by responsibility. You'd never have privacy ever again. I just don't see a PM there.

catinateacup · 15/03/2026 22:56

NotAnotherScarf · 15/03/2026 22:40

Oh here's the weekly middle class I was better off in the EU thread...you might have been with your middle class privileges...your over 3 months every six months holidays, walking into high paid jobs in France.

Well the rest of us were paying to move the parliament from Brussels to Strasbourg every six months, paying farmers not to farm so food prices remained high, so that unelected officials could come up with ideas like the oh so successful EES system for non EU nationals which is an abject failure.

The rest of us had wages suppressed for 20 years because there was a completely elastic supply of labour. Paid for countries to be admitted to the union purely to keep them out of the sphere of Russian influence: Romania and Bulgaria for example which were second world countries at best... leading directly to the Ukrainian War.

And let's not forget that the UK paid to develop a COVID vaccine, paid for a factory in Europe and the EU who sat on their arse wanted to stop those vaccines coming to the UK...and when they got their own vaccines, the richer states got them first.

Edited

Are you an idiot? This is all straight-up misinformation straight from the pages of the Daily Express. It’s simply garbage made up by malevolent journalists. Why not add in the bendy banana rubbish as well? That was literally invented by Johnson!

Marmalademorning · 15/03/2026 22:59

TooBigForMyBoots · 14/03/2026 21:21

If Reform win the next election the UK is over. But don't worry about everyone, Farage's children have dual nationality. As do Boris Johnson's. David Cameron's family have enough money that it doesn't matter.🤷‍♀️

And it won’t be over if the Greens win? Have you actually read their policies? They are so much worse than Reform.

abracadabra1980 · 15/03/2026 23:02

Screamingabdabz · 15/03/2026 01:00

Yeah we get it…. Reform and brexit voters are thick as pig shit and should be rounded up, which is just plain old fashioned snobbery disguised as political commentary.

Funny how the left never offers a satisfactory alternative for the disadvantaged and disenfranchised.

Just more of the same economically disastrous woke idealism, bankrupt the country to pander to people who contribute nothing (at all ends of the spectrum). The low and middle income workers keeping the wheels on, breaking their backs and paying tax for every grabby opportunist, sex offending billionaires and feckless dope smoking dossers.

If the left really cared about people voting for these extreme parties they’d read the room - they’d prioritise society for people who work hard, abide by the law and do right by their kids.

100% agree with this. I live in an ABC1 demographic area, and I can tell you that the majority of folk here are seething with open borders and the economy squeezing the middle to high income earners. They are going to Reform because they have a desperate need for change and the two main parties are full of liars. Over and over again people are fed up with being told one thing, then they do another. Personally I'm politically homeless and listen to all opinions from Jeremy Corbyn to Rupert Lowe. With the state of the world in the middle east, I'd feel safer in Rupert Lowe's hands right now, than anyone else's.

Blueharmonica · 15/03/2026 23:02

catinateacup · 15/03/2026 22:56

Are you an idiot? This is all straight-up misinformation straight from the pages of the Daily Express. It’s simply garbage made up by malevolent journalists. Why not add in the bendy banana rubbish as well? That was literally invented by Johnson!

I was very anti Brexit and believe it has made the UK poorer, but there is absolutely nothing incorrect in what the pp posted. I think just calling people idiots without any sort of argument makes you look ignorant and irrational.

catinateacup · 15/03/2026 23:10

Blueharmonica · 15/03/2026 23:02

I was very anti Brexit and believe it has made the UK poorer, but there is absolutely nothing incorrect in what the pp posted. I think just calling people idiots without any sort of argument makes you look ignorant and irrational.

Literally none of that is the case, from the “walking into jobs in France” to the “completely elastic supply of labour” or the Russian influence stuff or the stuff about vaccines. They’re manufactured and highly tendentious right wing talking points put about by the right-wing press, lots of them in the Murdoch tabloids and the GB News mediasphere. If you believe all that shit you have to have very little knowledge either about the EU or about economics or international politics — they are all manipulated “stories” that were drip-fed by the press and rightwing media, every last one of them. The stuff about “moving the parliament” and the vaccines is an absolute tell. If you believe any of it you’re an easy mark for this stuff.

SevenYellowHammers · 15/03/2026 23:13

CoolFineDoneWicked · 14/03/2026 23:23

This was the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/pt/podcast/the-news-agents/id1640878689?l=en-GB&i=1000711170191

The report from the Reform club starts at 18 minutes in.

Transcript of the relevant section:

“I'm all for people coming to this country legally. Get a visa. If I want to go to Spain, which I will be doing because that's where I want to retire to, I've got to get a visa. I've got to have 28,000 euros in the bank for myself.

Pre Brexit, you would have just been able to move there.

Well, yeah. And believe it or not, they didn't tell the truth about that. If they explained everything about Brexit, like, oh, you won't be able to travel as many times as you want to Spain, freedom of movement, I would have probably voted not to leave it.

You would?

Yeah.

Well, that was Farage's big idea.

Well, everyone changes their mind.

But you're the owner of Britain's first Reform club. And you actually say, as a result, if you'd known now what you'd known about Brexit, you'd have voted remain?

I probably would have done, yeah. Well, I didn't know. It's too late now, isn't it?”

To be fair to him, although I don’t know why I want to be fair to him, nobody seriously thought the referendum would go the way it did and there was no plan. This is evidenced by the way NI and Gibraltar hadn’t been considered at all. Cameron put the referendum on to shut the Euro skeptics up and stop the debate . The forecasts for what might happen were foggy either way. I nearly voted leave based on the leftxit argument that an almighty recession was heading the EUs way and we needed to distance ourselves. In the end, I couldn’t bear to align with Farage et al and voted remain.

Nosea · 15/03/2026 23:18

catinateacup · 15/03/2026 22:30

What makes you think I (or anyone else) wouldn’t know the language? I speak French, Spanish and some Italian. It doesn’t matter whether you speak the language or not, anyway - plenty of English expats don’t! - it’s the principle of freedom of movement.

Britain actually benefitted massively from EU freedom of movement, which filled high-skill labour deficits across our economy for more than a decade — we effectively siphoned off a huge amount of EU talent, from the NHS to universities to finance. Now those people have gone home, we’ve lost the benefit to our economy of excellent Polish plumbers and accountants, Romanian construction workers, Spanish nurses, German scientists and French engineers, etc. etc.

Who have we got instead? Lots of unskilled workers from elsewhere in the world with less good qualifications, many of whom are not remotely as good contributors to our economy as all the EU workers were. And we’ve still got lots of illegal migrants as well. So that was a massive fucking own goal by all the people who didn’t like immigration and were thick enough to think that Brexit would make immigrants go away. (Oh, and no, we don’t train those high skill people ourselves, because as a culture we don’t actually like investing in our own kids or funding education and training. We prefer to load all our young people up with massive debts, ration their access to higher education, and import all our doctors, nurses and lecturers from other counties where they take education more seriously. So those jobs are not suddenly going to British people instead. They’ve just disappeared for the most part.)

We’ve also lost: massive grant incomes for European science projects; the ERASMUS scheme which allowed our students to study in the EU and EU students to come here; we’ve lost all sorts of opportunities for travel and reciprocal exchange amongst cultures, including our own population actually leaving a few more languages and skills from elsewhere in Europe.

Edited

I mean most surveys say 75-80% of Brits can't speak a second language.

Why were workers from the EU more special than workers from America, Australia, India or Nigeria? Brexit made everyone else equal if they wanted to work here. I have a Chinese friend who said he got his job in the UK thanks to Brexit and to being on an equal footing to Europeans in the job application process. High-skill, high-pay service sectors continued to draw non-EU skilled labour after Brexit. The Boriswave was a political choice he made anyway to depress wages. We can train our own people, what more do you want? We have school, apprenticeships, degree apprenticeships and an increasing number of people in higher education. We don't need to import medical staff to fill vacancies where we can have our own medical graduates do it. We should never have to rely on immigration forever and we should change things here if they aren't working.

You can collaborate on science funding without being in the EU. We had the Turing scheme instead.. My child's uni still had exchanges to the EU. But also has exchanges to the USA and China. Even Canada, Singapore and Japan.

Blueharmonica · 15/03/2026 23:20

catinateacup · 15/03/2026 23:10

Literally none of that is the case, from the “walking into jobs in France” to the “completely elastic supply of labour” or the Russian influence stuff or the stuff about vaccines. They’re manufactured and highly tendentious right wing talking points put about by the right-wing press, lots of them in the Murdoch tabloids and the GB News mediasphere. If you believe all that shit you have to have very little knowledge either about the EU or about economics or international politics — they are all manipulated “stories” that were drip-fed by the press and rightwing media, every last one of them. The stuff about “moving the parliament” and the vaccines is an absolute tell. If you believe any of it you’re an easy mark for this stuff.

Edited

Oh dear, this is going to be a bit of shock for you;
The parliament moves once a month: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/3/why-does-parliament-move-between-brussels-and-strasbourg

They stopped vaccines several times, conducted raids and threatened to close the Irish border ;https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/17/eu-threatens-to-halt-covid-vaccine-exports-to-uk-unless-it-gets-fair-share

https://www.euronews.com/2021/03/21/covid-19-vaccines-uk-says-world-is-watching-eu-over-threat-to-ban-exports

Silly and ignorant posts are why we lost the Brexit debate.

Why does Parliament move between Brussels and Strasbourg? | News | European Parliament

Check the facts on the European Parliament

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/faq/3/why-does-parliament-move-between-brussels-and-strasbourg