To think the main Mumsnet demographic are out of touch politically

[Veiledveritas]

Reform.are smashing the polls yet any Reform voter is despised and ridiculed on here.

with vast swathes of the population being incapable of basic critical thinking, unable to sort fact from fiction, unable to make informed decisions etc.

I'm 68. In my lifetime this has always been the situation.

What has changed from where I sit is those people's willingness/apathy to sit and be done to.

The authority of the church and the reinforcement of a social contract that came with that has ended.

Social media has enabled the fracturing of interests down into political sub groups, where anyone with however warped ideas can find a like minded group of people to share and promote their ideas with.

We used to have 2 party politics which kept largely to a middle line by Labour and the Conservatives putting right in their turn the worse excesses of the other.

That's now gone out of the window, politics has fractured, all trust in both "authority" and political parties to do the right thing has been broken, and we are left with what is looking horribly like nothing to replace it.

I have voted all my life. My parents generation died so that I could. This time round I do not see any party which I can vote for.

The critical thinking stuff below applies to Labour too. People listened to Labour at the last GE, soundbites were enough then. But it doesn’t add up and people go elsewhere.

I don't understand why you have quoted my post. My post does not refer to any one politics party, it is entirely politically neutral.

I'm a Tory voter and I avoid particularly political discussions because I don't need to have an argument with a stranger.

OK, thank you for agreeing with me one the importance of teaching people to evaluate information more effectively.

As for your question, I would need to know exactly what you mean by "overpopulated" before I could agree or disagree, as it's quite a nuanced issue. Are you talking about the whole of the UK or just some parts?

I certainly agree that our economy is far too centralised in London and the South East, and that this creates overcrowding in some areas. It would be great to see a government with a strategy to rebalance our economy to encourage people to spread out into areas which are much less densely populated.

I also agree that our public services are woefully underfunded, and that this can create perceptions of overcrowding which could just as well be regarded as underfunding. I used to live in a country with a significantly higher population density than the UK, but there was strong investment in infrastructure and public services etc so the quality of life was excellent.

We have also built too few houses over the decades, and the wrong kind of houses, often in the wrong places. There are so many unoccupied brownfield sites in our cities which could be redeveloped into affordable housing provision if only there was the will to do so.

There are so many factors which feed into this debate, as it isn't just about raw numbers of people - it's about what types of people, how old they are, whether they can work, what skills they have, what gaps we have in the labour market, how people are distributed across the country, how public services are funded and delivered, what housing policies are in place, what environmental policies are in place, what specific strategies we have in place to manage food security etc.

It is such a complex and multifaceted question that a simple yes/no answer isn't really of any value.

ETA apologies, this was in response to @Walkyrie , I forgot to quote.

Nigel Farage is obviously a great politician and has run a successful targeted campaign including on social media. He has deliberately targeted more deprived areas and parts of the country where higher education participation is lower. Not going to uni does not make people thick at all. It means many simply had less educational opportunities. Nigel Farage is also successful with pensioners and the elderly and the Leave brigade.
Green is the young student party and I guess aiming for the 5 million Muslim vote too. Although again probably as an antithesis to Reform. Some of the Green policies are contradictory to what a lot of conservative Muslims believe in.

Then we have an identity crisis within Labour and Torie of the more moderate in those parties and where to turn and the Lib Dem’s will be picking up some of the disillusioned voters there.
It seems to me that the two party system hasn’t really worked for a long time now as there was too much infighting in both camps. So time for electoral reform and for more people to have themselves represented in Parliament. It’s happening anyway but in a way that is causing anger and frustration. Labour need to be brave now and announce reforms. That is what we need at this point.

I just saw the bold part really and commented on the ‘critical thinking’ stuff.

Ik it was from another post but didn’t read that one.

Of course, it applies to everyone. However id say Labour made very cautious non-sound bite policy promises in their manifesto, and part of their problem now is they don’t have loads of quick showy stuff to deliver on.

But she thinks she is so superior when in actual fact she comes across as an ill mannered bigot.

A 1950s white utopia that never existed.
Keep hearing British values what are British values and did they ever exist?

Reform voters may regret their decision once they come into power in their constituency. Nottinghamshires Reform Council spent £77k on Union Jack flags despite requiring £44 million in budget cuts over a 3yr period
I wouldn’t trust them with my grandchildrens piggybanks

Honestly, I don't think they will connect the poor decisions being made in their local communities with the decisions that they made in the ballot box.

Our Reform council has been shambolic but it doesn't seem to have dampened anyone's enthusiasm for them, because they just blame everything on Westminster regardless.

What policies from reform do you think will be sorting the country out?

I think Reform supporters will be happy if immigrants are treated badly, regardless of whether their own circumstances improve or not.

Sadly, I think you're probably right.

I just don't understand how there have been so few comments actually saying what it is about reforms policies that have made them go out and vote for them. I could understand that people want to vote with parties that they think will benefit them and align with their values, like if they genuinely think privatisation of the nhs would be a good thing because of XYZ or whatever. I don't agree with any of their values and haven't heard any policies that I would be wanting to support but I don't hear much about what the people voting for them think they're voting for

I did and I know many people who have done too

Public services are not good.

pretty much everyone can agree on that.

it’s hard to get in to see a GP, NHS referrals for hospital stuff are hard to get and waiting lists are very high so many people waiting for eg cataract operations or hip replacements etc are going private.

potholes are a big issue.

the trains are bad. My mum recently started doing her family visits by train because she can’t drive long distances any more and every single journey she’s got her money back (but she’d rather have had a running train).

everyone can see that public services are not good and so they would like to vote for people to fix it.

a substantial number of people think that the Conservatives austerity is a big reason why public services are so bad and so they aren’t going to vote for them to fix it.

Labour did well and got it but now many people can see that while things aren’t getting massively worse they aren’t really getting better either.

so a lot of people are now looking around for new places to vote.

the Lib Dems are benefitting from this, but so are the greens and reform.

Perhaps they left the thread after being called thick racists who revel in the misery of non white people for the umpteenth time.

Nearly everyone I work with stated they would vote Reform. So there are many who will say so. Must be where you live that you don’t hear it.

We are building far too many houses now. He have had a falling birthrate for years we shouldn’t need this many houses. All round us they’re tearing up the countryside to build more and more houses, there is a massive influx of people fleeing certain areas to live in this area ( I know, I was one of them) as certain cities are becoming impossible to live in if you’re not part of the 1st/2nd/3rd generation immigrant communities.

Immigration is probably the biggest threat facing this country since 1945, on an economic, societal and cultural level. It needs massively reigning back and our own culture and societal norms, values and traditions to be the default for everyone who chooses to live here.

My household voted Reform despite not believing they are far right enough. We are hoping Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain is ready for the General Election. Multiculturalism has brought nothing but violence and corruption. Time to get things under control and Restore Britain to what it once was and could be again.

But your values and my values clearly don't align, so whose values get to be the default and how is that going to be decided?

Which cities in particular?

I think it’s more that it’s a party that has addressed the concerns of the country, rather than just pretend everything will magically get better if we just keep on as we are.
I didn’t vote Reform but Kemi was one of the few in power that could tell you what a woman was.
Not everything that’s uncomfortable is wrong.