Media request: has your political allegiance shifted to Reform?

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

Hi there,

We've received the following media request.

Thanks,
MNHQ

I'd like to speak to women from Mumsnet whose political allegiances have changed to Reform in recent times. Ideally they would be willing to be named and pictured (in a piece for the Telegraph). Please contact [email protected] if you are interested.

The comments here that instinctively default to insults demonstrate what is wrong with politics and reasoning at this moment in time. It is the same with the gender debate - no nuance, zero critical thinking and rampant insults and tribalism. Political party choice has always been about balancing the pros and cons of a party, and many people choose based on general messaging, general direction of travel rather than specifics. Have I ever judged Labour by their most useless and clueless politicians, or by the fact I support social safety nets for unfortunate times? The latter. The Reform/Advance UK/Rupert Lowe side of politics represents reasonable directions of travel that many would like to see - but nobody in the classic parties is willing to tackle (looking at reality and actually trying to deal with it). I was against Brexit, do not like Nigel Farage’s approach to policy and Reform leadership, and recognise that Reform has very little experience of day to day national and council level politics. They also seem to attract a lot of COVID and vaccine sceptics for some reason, which turns me off. Some of the rhetoric about social groups also veers on the uninformed and distasteful at times from lower down representatives. However if Advance UK/Rupert Lowe cannot gather enough support to form a realistic bloc then I may well be drawn to vote Reform. I am a lifelong Green, then Labour then LibDem voter, well educated, multilingual global citizen with a mixed race/nationality family. I am not who the above thread comments believe is a Reform supporter, but I believe there are increasing numbers out there like me who would never raise their voice and face in a national newspaper knowing that their career and social relationships would take a beating due to the instinctive knee jerk reactions of the loudest voices and simplistic narratives that make traction in the public sphere. The LibDems and Greens refuse to back women and sex reality, and Labour as an entity has proved itself spineless on this issue. If someone could come up with a party that defended sex reality, promoted a proper tax relief and maternity support system for working families with children, put dramatic restrictions on illegal and legal migration and the resources made available to non-nationals (as do other countries I have lived in), and placed the rights and identity of longstanding British citizens above other global and sectarian issues - while maintaining the the NHS principle and ethos of a social safety net for those most in need, and an intelligent approach to climate, vaccines and freedom of speech etc then I think you would have a winning formula. Until then, no political party party choice is going to be a comfortable fit.

Do you think there is any prospect of Reform or any of its spin-offs offering the kind of thing you are looking for, @path123 ? What does 'not making resources available to non-nationals' look like to you? As an EU immigrant with settled status who has been here for almost 29 years I am truly interested in your perspective on this. I'd also be interested in what you think an intelligent approach to environmental issues and vaccines looks like in your opinion.

No no no

I dont know whether the magical combination could ever come together. The problem seems to me that even if you got a dream team together, political parties succeed or fail based on how much infrastructure they have around them, and legacy voters who don’t follow twists and turns. If eg Badenoch, Lowe, Laila Cunningham, Ben Habib and some of the veteran sensible Labour politicians somehow came together in a room, would they ever manage to rally the necessary PR and other resources? Could they break through tribalism and simplistic headlines? Sadly unlikely. On non-national resources, other countries don’t give access to certain services eg some health services, legal aid, housing, translation, unemployment benefits if you don’t directly pay taxes for a certain period, or if you are not on a certain class of work visa etc, or flat out if you are not a citizen. if you lose your job you have to leave. Your children don’t get rights even if born there. If you want citizenship after a certain period (where offered) you have to take very hard language and culture tests. I have seen many examples in the UK at probably the other end of the financial spectrum than you are at, which are just out and out abuse of lax visa and government support systems. People around the world know our loopholes exist, and understandably utilise them. Do I blame them? Not really, I myself move when I see opportunity elsewhere. But that’s why we need better policies. Failure to recognise this essential part of human nature is a policy own goal. I’ve been an immigrant in a number of countries and know that the UK can be much tighter for its own self preservation, without being unduly mean. I don’t really mind that I have fewer privileges in other countries, thst my visas can be revoked, that I stick out in certain settings, and that my cultural and language needs may not be catered for. I am not sure why this is controversial in only the UK.

I think the UK situation is as it is because of the nature of its systems though. Access to healthcare is universal, and the healthcare levy has always struck me as mean spirited. How can it be morally acceptable to make someone pay twice, based purely on nationality? In terms of benefits, I think moving to a contribution based system would help everyone, including British people.

I don't think British people have the right to say anything at all about language and culture though. I doubt Rupert Lowe is bothering to learn Arabic.

Your list of people you consider sensible concerns me.

For those asking about the poll, we had 1,011 respondents. We generally use a baseline of around 1,000, which is fairly standard for this kind of opinion polling. It isn’t weighted, so it’s not intended to be a representative sample of the UK population, but it gives a useful snapshot of what Mumsnet users are thinking and allows us to compare with previous, similar polls, which is what made this one more interesting. The responses are filtered to UK users only and wasn't promoted outside Mumsnet. We've seen nothing to suggest it’s been influenced by non-Mumsnet users.

Thanks as ever for your interest - we're always happy to answer questions about how we go about these things.

It isn’t weighted, so it’s not intended to be a representative sample of the UK

Then this makes it a very, very dubious source of information @BeckyAMumsnet

And it’s all very well saying it represents Mumsnet users - but does it? Does your sample at least reflect the demographic make-up of Mumsnet?

Having a sample size of 1000+ is good from the point of view of statistical significance, but it is not the be all and end all. As any market researcher or statistician will tell you.

It worries me greatly that MN is using such data to create such stories.

Agree this is not a scientifically rigorous sample.

From the article in the Times, on one of the other threads here, I saw this:

MumsGPT, Mumsnet’s artificial intelligence software, analysed 1,322 conversations about politics among users over the past 12 months.

But that’s very different from conducting a poll, asking specific questions about voting intentions.

@BeckyAMumsnet can you clarify this, please? Did you actually conduct a research survey, or was it just AI scraping?

We did both - poll first which the Sunday Times found interesting and asked us to do some further conversational analysis using our proprietary ai tool - MumGPT

No…I’m not racist and my IQ is higher than my shoe size.

Why is it being spun as 'shifting to Reform' and not 'shifting away from all the main parties'?

I have no idea why my previous post was deleted so I will say again and again. No not ever would I vote for Reform. NO.

I just woke up in the night because the news is stressing me out so much: invasion of Venezuela, ICE shooting an unarmed civilian mother for no apparent reason then independent investigation being blocked , Trump’s hopes to invade or take in whatever way suits him Greenland, nobody in UK politics talking about the many urgent security reasons there wold be to rejoin the EU. which seems intitely negligent. The workd in 2016 was a different place. I don’t care about the advisory referendum back then. We need to rejoin the EU. Our biggest trading partner. Financially and for security reasons.

I’m gutted that we have a PM who’s a human rights lawyer and even he is too afraid of America’s power to condemn the human rights violations and breaking of international law that America is doing.

Meanwhile in the UK the country being encouraged to distract itself by looking the other way at the ‘other’ and while. The population is subdued by life becining so unaffordable and we race to the bottom on public services. Meanwhile those in power just suck up to the three global superpowers. In that sense we have a choice but that can’t last forever and we always have to pick one.

We are living through a general falling apart of the democratic world order, rule the of international law and the international consensus on things like human rights since the second world war that US, China and Russia are setting fire to all that basically in their own interests .

Venezuela as a colonised serf state to America just feels like the future for a lot of countries once these string men become so strong we can’t stop them any more. It’s so frightening. we spend column inches (rightly) worrying about AI but in fact the too strong to control people are the three very human global superpowers because they don’t respect democracy or the law.

Anyway then I read there is a ‘MumGPT’ being used to scrape our stuff w e have written and sell it on to actual newspapers as misplaced political surveying along with online surveys. I avoid those ragebaitey paid ad- questionnaires on MN deliberately and have never engaged with one. They popped up at eight away Labour came in saying ‘hiw unhappy are you with the new government?’ or whatever. These kinds of leading questions aren’t how you ask about political intentions like future voting plans. And it’s not a weighted representative survey if it’s a self selecting online poll that anyone can join.

I guess I feel like if that’s happening and being taken as political opinion by serious newspapers for a few quid in to Mumsnet then we’re truly fucked as ordinary voters because there are bots and shills all over this site. It was common knowledge that was happening over Brexit, they were stirring up pro Brexit aggression on here, but they’rediefinely still around. And loads of men and kids come here just to stir up crap.

Would rather ‘MumGPT’ was used to identify trolls and fake posters by their posting patterns. Anyway I will. try to go back to sleep now.

but to re answer the question, personally Id rather have peri menopausal anxiety and insomnia left untreated by an overstretched GP that I can’t get an appt with for weeks…. forever… than vote Reform or Tory because they are awful. Boris sacked all the serious and decent Tories ten years ago and I say that as a lifelong Labour voter. That was the end of a decent opposition and that is badly needed because there is scarce real talent or big brains in this Labour Party either.

The Tories and reform party both want to dismantle the human rights act which gives us normal people key protections and freedoms (like ironically freedom on beliefs and the GC things posters have been talking about, praising the Tories for). I massively distrust any party who wants to remove that from the population. It’s totally undemocratic. So I will happily force my labour vote and become a tactical voter for anyone who might keep Reform and the Tories out. Sorry not sorry Labour. Your very un- Labour lack of a vision for education, spiteful treatment of kids with SEND and disabled people on PIP, aggression to pensioners on WFA, lack of interest in pubs, the Uk high street, your failures to tax properly the huge companies, the spiteful and arbitrary new tax on education, most of all the lack of affordable housing, childcare, transport, fuel and food in the country for loads of people. It’s just a tragically unfocused opportunity to try to improve things for ordinary people. I can only assume energy is being wasted fighting like cats in a sack behind the scenes because progress (like on health and the NHS, good) feels piecemeal compared to in other areas and that often means a party is very disunited and individuals are fighting their own turf inside the cabinet.

@beigeybeige

Anyway then I read there is a ‘MumGPT’ being used to scrape our stuff w e have written and sell it on to actual newspapers as misplaced political surveying along with online surveys. I avoid those ragebaitey paid ad- questionnaires on MN deliberately and have never engaged with one. They popped up at eight away Labour came in saying ‘hiw unhappy are you with the new government?’ or whatever. These kinds of leading questions aren’t how you ask about political intentions like future voting plans. And it’s not a weighted representative survey if it’s a self selecting online poll that anyone can join.

I guess I feel like if that’s happening and being taken as political opinion by serious newspapers for a few quid in to Mumsnet then we’re truly fucked as ordinary voters because there are bots and shills all over this site. It was common knowledge that was happening over Brexit, they were stirring up pro Brexit aggression on here, but they’rediefinely still around. And loads of men and kids come here just to stir up crap.
Would rather ‘MumGPT’ was used to identify trolls and fake posters by their posting patterns. Anyway I will. try to go back to sleep now.

I quite agree.

Thanks for your reply @JustineMumsnet I’d still like to know more about how the poll was conducted. Specifically how the sample was contacted/constructed.

Me too.

They can report our posts - I think mine went for swearing!! Bless - but they can’t dictate how we eventually vote, thank goodness.

I’d consider voting tactically to keep Reform at bay, although all the other parties stink on children’s safeguarding and women’s rights.

It’s the political homelessness of women that’s the story here, as posters keep pointing out. SIGH.

Me three.

I would my fanny.

Me four.

It's blatantly obvious that there are trolls and politically motivated bad actors posting here - both at election time (when it is rife) and on political threads generally. If we can identify that, why can't MumsnetHQ?

Christ, you could practically set your watch by a Tory-written thread around 5am every day before the last election.

Hi Biwi
The sample is self selecting - we advertise on site and via the Voices panel and close when or soon after we hit the 1000 replies mark. As said it's meant to give a snapshot or our users views rather than being Nat Rep.
And incidentally there's no financial transaction involved with the papers/ media - we don't receive any payment for surveys or conversational analysis. Thanks

Me five.

Eta: the thread on the murder of Renee Good is an excellent example of what pps are talking about.

Would rather ‘MumGPT’ was used to identify trolls and fake posters by their posting patterns.

Me too.

@JustineMumsnet The sample is self selecting - we advertise on site and via the Voices panel and close when or soon after we hit the 1000 replies mark. As said it's meant to give a snapshot or our users views rather than being Nat Rep.

But this means it’s only a snapshot of some users’ views. You have to ask who would have signed up and what their agenda was. And also why other MNetters didn’t sign up.

This, plus the fact that my first post on this thread, which was expressing my feelings about Reform very clearly, has been deleted, makes me wonder what on earth MN is about these days. Are you suddenly endorsing Farage and his lot?

Oh, and:

And incidentally there's no financial transaction involved with the papers/ media - we don't receive any payment for surveys or conversational analysis.

I would not expect there to have been any. That’s the least of my concerns!