If you support Farage, would you be able to explain why please.

[lightseeker]

I know there have probably been other threads asking this, but really .... why?

Why would you say he is a "man of the people?"'(Public school educated stockbroker / multi millionaire)

Genuinely, what appeals about him?

If you voted Brexit, have you forgotten that he resigned from public office that day after his Leave campaign won?

It's an anonymous forum, so please be honest.

@LiuBei I've never known such house building , flats/houses huge estates are going up all over our green spaces. Id hate to see what actual house building looks like.

@Qb2654 I’m politically homeless too but that doesn’t make me vote for the far left or Reform to shake things up a bit! It’s madness but that’s what people are going to do. We deserve better political parties that are able to have non political policies.

Oh bore off. And FWIW I will be voting Conservative. What is it with the left though and not accepting that other people are entitled to vote for parties that aren’t left wing? So over invested 🙄

I thought lefties were supposed to be tolerant?

Infact all these anti Farage posts are getting so annoying that I might just vote for him next time.

@5128gap but this problem has been going on for years and before massive boats it was lorries wasn't it. .
So why Havant these laws been tackled and changed ?

It's like the evil rapist from Pakistan ,people are saying to the authorities you've had 14 years to sort out how you will deport him why wait now when he's actually loose and his victims are reliving trauma ?

Anyway I find the reocuring theme of "stupid /I'll educated " and so on very distubring. It almost sounds like some people want to deprive people of the vote ??

@ResprayingmyaferrarisIt’s shameful that voters cannot understand how the economy works yet get to vote on who will be running it. I’d quite like a basic test in order to vote. Because the low level of understanding is very worrying and that goes for the left too.

Well didnr starmer say he would stop the boats? and what has he done?
Fuck all

Why is it, that when you ask what people like about Farage, you are automatically branded 'the left.'

I'm not 'the left.' I didn't vote Labour. I'm politically homeless and not enthused by any of them.

But it's so obvious Farage is running scared at the moment over this investigation into the £5m 'gift'. And he's using his 'people' in Clacton to distract attention from himself. No Farage - it's not about them. They already voted once - remember? This investigation is about YOU. And no amount of smoke and mirrors will deflect from that.

How can 'the people decide' when the investigation into his corruption hasn't even happened? What are they supposed to do without a verdict - have a guess?

If he had nothing to hide, he'd be speeding the investigation up by any means possible. Not stalling with this cynical tactic of using the poor sods in his constituency. Is there no low this man won't stop to?

Maybe people in Clacton just vote for him because they don't know the names of any of the others, but they know his face? Or because he's more famous, as a pp said?

I hope there is a viral campaign and people vote Binface. Why not? #binhimoff

But I find it perversely fascinating that people who have most to lose from
a Reform govt are the ones to support Farage. I was hoping someone might be able to explain his appeal - beyond "stop the boats" (which he can't do anyway). I think one person has been honest enough to say she votes for Reform due to reduced taxation for business and high earners and lowering of benefits.

It's not just Farage. They voted for Carswell(UKIP) too. Now what could it be about the people of Clacton that they voted for both Farage and Carswell?

I'm still a Conservative party member but would be tempted to vote Reform tactically in my area at a general election.

OP points out in the opening post that he isn't really any different from the rest of the political class so you could say why not vote for him?

Reform feels like it could offer right wing conservatism and is not comparable to the likes of BNP/EDL.

I also want maximum distance from the far left who I consider the most disgraceful political leaning.

Can you explain what this means?

"people who have most to lose from
a Reform govt are the ones to support Farage"

He's a man of the people. Will nip the immigration problems in the bud.

Lots of typically daft MN comments on this thread.

1. OP, it doesn't matter that Farage is a stockbroker etc. What a ridiculously blinkered view. He can still care about ordinary people, regardless of his background. Churchill had an aristocratic background but oversaw welfare state measures that benefited people beyond his class. Castro came from a privileged background but fought for communism in Cuba etc etc.
2. Farage resigned after Brexit because he likely believed, like many who voted for Johnson, that the latter believed in Brexit and would take advantage of the many opportunities it offered. Farage had spent decades campaigning for Brexit and thought his job was done.
3. Farage is not just about immigration. In the 2024 election debates he was the only politician honest enough to say that we spend so much on the NHS and yet, compared to other countries, we have worse outcomes relative to the money spent and that the model needs reform.
4. UK businesses have crippling energy costs due to net zero zealotry. Labour want us to be highminded, poor and cold. Farage doesn't want that and nor do many of the electorate.
5. Brexit was about democracy and sovereignty. Those things may not mean much to the majority of MN. More fool them. Farage is a conviction politician, who campaigned for decades to get a referendum and won.
6. Finally, as an ex-teacher, who knows how much the "qualifications" MNetters love to use as evidence of their "intelligence"....these qualifications have been so dumbed down, particularly since Blair, and so many degrees are not worth the paper they are written on. There was a woman droning on in a previous post about how her gardener is a Reform voter and a bit thick. She is thick. There is a peculiar way of being thick characteristic of the left-wing middle class. You cannot have uncontrolled immigration and a welfare state. You cannot import thousands of men from misogynistic cultures and keep women and girls safe. People will vote for Farage because he, and they, are not insane enough to engage in the doublethink required to believe that diversity is a strength. "Diversity is a problem to be solved, not an advantage to be sought." ( Thomas Sewell)
7. Finally, Farage and many of the Reform MPs are businessmen and know about creating wealth, unlike many of the Uniparty politicians, who only know how to reward the public sector and kill the private sector that pays for it.

It's odd that the left talk so much about fascism when far left ideology has killed so many more people.

Exactly. When I was a teacher, every student knew about Hitler. None of them, hardly, had heard of Stalin or Mao. Terrifying.

His is exactly what’s happening in Australia at present. A party no one in their right mind would have ever voted for historically (obviously, a very small minority did) have now surged ahead of the 2 major parties in the polls, which is causing them to amend their proposed policies. People have had enough and are now taking drastic action such as this.

Indeed.

The Nazis killed 11-20m from memory. What was Mao? 80m?

I have relatives in their late 60s/70s who I reckon vote/would vote reform (not 100% sure there was a R-UK candidate in their constituency). They're financially comfortable, are second gen immigrants themselves have mixed heritage grandkids and grand nieces/nephews who they adore. But they HATE Islam with a vengeance and genuinely think London is being 'taken over' by Muslims. It's wild to be around. Their kids (my age) don't understand where they've developed those views. I don't think this attitude should be underestimated in the reform vote ie it's not as simple as racist - Islamophibia is a bigger factor I reckon, including these viral ideas/tropes of young militarised single men from countries with different values etc etc.

Islamophibia? Is that when they start swimming across the channel? 🤣

(sorry)

To be serious though, the Muslim population has expanded by something like 44% in the last decade. In some London boroughs it's now around 40% of residents. So you can see how people might think this.

And Mohammed has been the most popular boys name in the UK for years, although admittedly it's down to the fact it has a number of different spellings and is hugely over represented as a choice.

There was an article I read last year about why Americans continued to support Trump in spite of his repellent personality, and one of the points it made was that some of his supporters don’t actually like him much, or they are very aware of his shortcomings. But they are so consumed with single issues, like immigration, that they are willing to overlook and defend those shortcomings. That made so much sense to me because I couldn’t fathom how someone like Trump who is not a great speaker, with long winded and confusing speeches, has developed such a cult.

I feel like that’s what’s happening here too, to some extent, it’s all about “stopping the boats” to the extent that supporters are willing to look past and defend anything dodgy about Farage. As well as a number of people who find him “refreshing” and probably don’t look too deeply beyond his soundbites.

It's not all about stopping the boats. Please see my previous post. And if you think you're one of the people who sees "deeply" into things, please answer my points!

I’ve tried to say in my post, probably a bit clumsily, that for some people it’s all about the boats (they say as much in interviews!). I’m sure other supporters have other reasons.

I have a friend who I love dearly and she is intelligent and deeply thinking and she voted for Brexit because of a single case that turned her against the human rights act. She had teenage children and didn’t prioritise how Brexit would affect them. My FIL voted for Brexit to protect British farmers (he didn’t explain the reasoning). He is the loveliest most forward thinking guy wrt family but he didn’t consider or care how Brexit would impact his son or his grandchildren. The only point I’m making is that single issues don’t necessarily blind people to the shortcomings of politicians or other issues, but they might have such strength of feeling that they are willing to overlook them. We all do it to some extent.

The establishment used to be defined by class & wealth. Today, it’s defined by attitudes & institutions. That’s why Trump & Farage are anti-establishment, while lower-paid BBC journalists & academics are part of the establishment. The left wilfully misunderstand this.

Could you search for a graph of housebuilding over time? You will find this is absolutely not an era of high housebuilding.

Furthermore if you dislike this level of housebuilding I think you're obliged to be radically anti immigration, as this level of housebuilding is far below the population growth rate that our current immigration system causes.