The Reform party is pretty new. Do you think that before it existed, those racist and xenophobic people didn't exist in number in the UK? Do you think they've been rattling around for the last fifty years voting for no-one? Or do you think at some point they might have supported one or other of the mainstream parties? It's pretty naive to assume there are no racists in any other parties but Reform.
It's just that a certain section of the media goes to enormous lengths to discredit Reform (and the Tories) by doing everything it can to find, encourage and then record the worst behaviour from the worst pondlife among their supporters or their candidates and use that as evidence for the whole party being rotten and borderline fascist. It was the same with Brexit. A cynical, concerted policy of filtering out the voices of anyone articulate, intelligent, measured and moderate, to give the impression that they literally didn't exist, in favour of putting the knuckle draggers and the thickos front and centre every single time.
The simple fact is that Reform doesn't even meet the criteria to be considered a 'far right' party, let alone as a Fascist one. Compare them to the past history of the National Rally in France, for example and there is no comparison. Yet millions of disillusioned French people will be voting for the NR today, not because they are all racists, but because they are ordinary working people who for one reason or another feel let down by Macron, the metropolitan elite and the EU. This parliamentary election is France's Brexit moment. Leaving the EU for us was hard enough. It's much harder to do when you are in the Euro, so this is the French people sending a message that while they may not be leaving any time soon, they won't continue to kowtow to the EU's every demand either.
It's funny because when the Brexit debate was going on, all the Remainers were saying 'look we know it's not always perfect but we can't change it if we aren't in it. We should stay in and campaign to change things from inside.' (like no-one had already thought of trying that, and banged their head against the wall, so given up. )
Now, I notice that people are saying of Marine Le Pen 'Watch her, she's dangerous. She's dropped Frexit from her manifesto but she's still massively EU-sceptic and she'll just try to destroy it from the inside.'
So if people are aggrieved and feel ill-served by aspects of EU membership, what exactly is an acceptable way to challenge it? Clearly, if you are asking the evangelical disciples of Brussels, there isn't one.
So will the racist thugs in France be voting for the NR? Of course they will. But they won't be the only people voting for them. Not by a very long shot. This is the direct consequence of arrogant people at the top consistently and repeatedly not listening to the valid concerns of the 'little people' they lord it over. It's potentially dangerous and worrying for France of course, but it's too late to hand wring over that now. The peasants are revolting and the French elite can't say they weren't warned. Same in Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe.
So back to Reform, look, people who are racist are going to vote for someone, so it stands to reason that they will vote for the party which promises to be most hardline on immigration, because racists don't tend to like immigration. But frankly, lots of people are uncomfortable with the unprecedented levels of immigration in recent years (and its very obvious consequences) including plenty of people who are of immigrant heritage themselves. To be concerned about immigration (both legal and illegal) is not racist in and of itself.
One of the biggest reasons to vote for Reform in my opinion is that they seem to genuinely understand and acknowledge the truth of exactly what's required to sort out the NHS and to retain our doctors and nurses. No-one else seems to have a clue.