Council Elections

[OneTealShaker]

The first declared seats going to Reform.

Reform +2
Labour -1

Buckle up people.

Your post. Again, scroll back and read what was being responded to. Labour are failing over many things.

@MabelRoyds no, I’m saying there are a lot of disaffected voters out there trying to shake things up. They feel ignored and disrespected.

I am saying that Reform are pulling the wool over the eyes of their supporters by not being clear about a lot of their intentions. It’s disingenuous behaviour “Vote for us we’ll sort out immigration but don’t read the small print on what our real intentions are”.

That's true for me as well.😃
Not because I support ReformUK, I am a member of the Conservative Party but it is a good first step in showing the Left ie. Lab+LidDems that things must change. We must stop the population increasing. We cannot cope. Land being lost for houses is extreme now, stopping immigration is our only chance to keep the countryside.

Labour have cut immigration.

However, I was pointing out that ‘stop the boats’ (illegal immigration) is a fallacy in addressing immigration as it is not the major source of high numbers of people coming to the UK from abroad.

Data shows this.

As the poster is concerned that although Labour have reduced the number of immigrants in hotels they have not declared the number moved to barracks.

I was pointing out that the number living in barracks is irrelevant in the scale of things given that this number is a tiny proportion of an already tiny proportion of immigrants.

They don't. It's infuriating because SO much valuable has been wasted with this shit (10 years now since the Brexit vote) that could have been used to try to actually engage with the public being lost & make a real effort to understand , make concrete improvements on the ground (and I don't just mean to do with immigration), rebuild trust, improve people's lives & try to pull especially working class voters back from Reform. Which the fingerpointing, sneering "you're all thick and evil" approach has singularly failed to do for all that time and has pushed more voters TO Reform instead, because all it demonstrates to those voters is that they are 100% correct about what the so-called "left" (in truth, mostly very middle class metropolitan establishment) think of the UK working classes or care about what actually goes on in their lives or around them. Slow hand clap.

Yes, Reform are of course fomenting all those divisions for their own ends.Personally, I despise them, think they will do very little for their working class voters in reality, voters who I don't think their leaders care about in reality either. But nor have they created those divisions and gripes out of nothing. Instead, it seems to me, they keep being handed them on a plate by arrogant people who appear to have very little ability to self reflect but assume they are being very intelligent and just have to keep trying to impose unpopular ideas and policies on the public until the public submits. As they should be able to see by now, and to have seen by Trump's second victory in the US, this strategy really is not working. A new tack is required. Calling people stupid and evil really isn't going to change minds or magically make people want to vote for you.

Who will have me believe what??

I’ve got eyes and ears and I can see and hear exactly what has happened to this country due to mass uncontrolled immigration be it illegal, legal, student visas etc

People are well and truly sick to the back teeth of it! And that is putting it mildly 🙄

Yeah how is Brexit going for us?

And it’s clear a fair amount of voters think Labour are failing on it and other issues given the swings.

Promising to do stuff and including it as an achievement (see pp) when most can see through it is part of the problem for them.

Theres a lot wrong with this country including an hugely idiotic energy policy- which impacts upon literally everything including manufacturing, food, transport, the fact the country was shut down for 2 years for covid, mass immigration, closing of industries, a burgeoning welfare bill, lack of investment … but all people talk about is bloody Brexit as if eveything else is all rosy. The countries problems go a lot further than that. It’s been going on for years. People are bloody sick of it.

Ah. You missed my point entirely and you think Refirm voters have overlooked things that you see.

Do you really believe that student visa allows partner, children and parents to arrive too?

I don't think parents have ever been allowed and govt stopped allowing partners and dependent children for undergrads in 2024.

I think migration is a very important issue. It should be discussed. But on the basis of facts not assumptions.

How many student visas were there in 2025?
How many student dependents were there?
How much was the visa and NHS surcharge income from this group?
How much did they pay in fees to Universities?
What proportion of students leave at the end of their studies? How many "disappear" and stay illegally?
How much did they add to local economies while living here?
What would happen to Higher Eduction finance without then?
What level of care did they use from the NHS?
Was there any gain to the UK in hosting and influencing students from overseas in terms of reputation and "soft power"?
What was the breakdown of courses they studied? (Does it matter if University gets a profit from overseas students paying high fees if they subsidise UK students' courses that may be deemed not second rate?)

I'm sure there are loads more questions, the answers to which I also don't have. But I'm inclined to think that the issue isnt as obviously terrible as you seem to suggest.

To be fair to the various governments over the last ten years, that time has been spent firefighting major issues created by a pandemic, the effects of Brexit, the threat of a war on the European continent and an unhinged US administration.

I find this.... rich?
The same tories who didn't plan, created a housing shortage, didn't invest properly in the NHS and schools while allowing record numbers of immigrants in under their watch? Processing asylum seekers pretty much ground to a halt under the tories too, didn't it?

Lol. Gaslighting at it's finest.

No, the average voter hears the sound bite ‘stop the boats’ and believes this is the issue.

Data shows it isn’t.
Clearly those who believe it is are not basing this on fact. If they researched the data for themselves they would know.

The number living in barracks is not irrelevant if you live near a barracks. I.e. Crowborough!

What Brexit benefits are you most enjoying?

Which Reform polcies do you think will translate best into the running of local govenment?

You may be sick to the back teeth of immigration but the fact remains that it's not as simple as pulling up the drawbridge and chucking 'them' all out. All that will do is wreak more and more havoc on everyone. You personally would benefit much more from a prosperous country. None of what Reform are planning points to an increase in prosperity for ordinary people. I want more growth and more business opportunities. I also want a decent pool of people to recruit from. Wrecking higher education whilst simultaneously preventing new arrivals will not help.

I don't think people care about most MP's names. Our system doesn't encourage it. So I still back my original theory.

It clearly is to voters and that’s who decides. Even Labour tried to sell in smash the gangs at the last GE.

Labour spend money on unnecessary things. That is why they went bankrupt along with not paying women equally to men over many years they were in power and losing the discrimination case and being ordered to pay the women back by a judge.

Apart from the fact that those schemes are in fact very expensive to implement in any significant way - and that they're a legal nightmare- that's only 5% of annual arrivals. That leaves 95%.
An issue that represents a total of 5% of all immigration to the UK is mobilising close to 100% of the attention. That's populism in a nutshell.

The huge amount of money saved from deporting illegal immigrants and blocking benefits from people without settled stated will go some way to funding tax cuts.

What "data" shows that 40,000 people that we know nothing about (largely men) arriving unsanctioned by boat is not an "issue"?

Yes in 2023 they might have been 40,000 out of nearly 1 million immigrants (with another 60,000 claiming asylum that had arrived by other routes) but they are the most "unknown". We know nothing about their criminal histories/ cannot tell if they are who they say they are. We know most of them come from cultures very alien to British culture particularly in their treatment of women.

All of this with bells on!!

Net zero is madness we should be drilling our own North sea oil! It’s a no brainer but loony tunes Millipede won’t hear of it.
Energy affects every single thing ….and we are paying through the nose and some !

The welfare bill is out of control that needs slashing. People are working and slogging their guts not seeing any reward when benefits are so high.

This nails it. My DH was saying exactly this earlier, and that the Reform councillors don't actually have a manifesto to work from. It's all a load of talk.