If you were 'politically homeless' have you now found a home?

[kinkytoes]

I saw an interesting thread on Twitter that said Reform UK is now providing an option for those who previously felt they had nowhere to go.

Does this apply to you? Or have you decided to just 'hold your nose' and vote for someone you'd really rather not (best of a bad bunch)?

Ok but Australia had someone where to tow them.

The French wont agree to taking them back, so what then?

This is how wars start, one side thinking they can do whatever they like....

I have been reading about politics from WW2 onto present day. I am so disappointed at the quality in all current parties. I shall make a protest vote.
Cannot vote Green after reports of Antisemitic ranting from Candidate in Bristol.
Six members of the Party now suspended for similar.
So it will be Reform for us. They have no chance of winning anything. So it is safe to do so.
Did you see that Rosie Duffield is using Suffragette colours in her campaign leaflet?

I am politically homeless still because I'm a Lefty but do not want to support Starmer nor do I like Labour's attitude to women's rights.

The French make migrants stay in terrible camps (not hotels like us) don't give them benefits and funnel them towards the UK. They also only accept 25% asylum applications versus our 70%. To me that sounds very much like doing what you like. Migrants go into France in the first place because of schengen which will probably be abrogated from one Le Pen or someone similar gets in.

So when Nigel farage said we couldn't control our immigration within the EU he was lying?

They process migrants according to need, why are we accepting asylum claims from people which countries such as Norway reject? or the 100s of Albanian claims we also accepted, when these were clearly economic ones?

The UK also uses camps & a boat and not nice ones either, we do not give benefits, its a very small allowance, similar to what France gives migrants.

I don't know if France funnels migrants towards the UK, you'd have to provide evidence of that?

Schengen doesn't make people travel to France, they can stay in Greece, Spain, Italy, go to Germany etc etc.

Le Pen isn't going to re instate France's pre EU border controls, economic suicide & wouldn't stop people by passing them if they wanted too.

I’m looking at our independent candidates atm.

I just found the SDP website. I thought they had folded.
The biggest surprise was that they have candidates for most constituencies.
They will get fewer than 'Screaming Lord Buckethead' but it is a choice!

I've settled on our local independent candidate. I obviously can't vote conservative but disagree with too many policies of the other parties (and don't trust Kier Starmer) so independent it is

Yes agree with this. People who vote for reform are not necessarily racist but they are mugs.

@lovelysunshine22 So does being concerned about the huge amounts of immigration and the social changes that come with it make people racist idiots?

Yes, because immigration is not the cause of the problems you're being told it's the cause of.

I would say it's attitudes like yours that push people towards voting for reform because you push them towards people who will listen to their concerns without shutting the conversation down by screaming racism!

Cry me a river. We had a whole Brexit campaign and referendum during which the racist idiots got to complain ad nauseaum about how the Big Bad Progressives were being mean to them, and really should just "listen to their concerns".

Their side won, and in doing so fucked the country and my children's future. I'm done with tip toeing around idiots' feelings so they can carry on destroying us.

@kinkytoes I agree to a certain extent with @lovelysunshine22 in that for example in last night's debate, nobody addressed the immigration concern with any seriousness with the exception of Reform. Maybe I see it too simplistically but for me it's not a race issue, but a numbers one. Too many of anything can be a problem and it certainly seems that overpopulation is causing problems for everyone living here. You can't expel those already living here so surely the only solution is to limit extra coming in. I hope that doesn't make me a racist? People are people in my book, but they all use resources and resources are finite.

No. You may not be a racist but you're categorically wrong here.

Resources are not finite. They expand and contract with economic activity. Immigration benefits the economy because it increases the number of working age people paying taxes, as a proportion of the population. It increase the ratio of government revenues to expenditures. The whole nonsense story that Farage et al. put about is based on ignoring one side of that balance sheet, and pretending that expenditures exist in a world of their own funded by a fixed, "finite" sum of resources.

Tony Blair knew this. David Cameron knew it too. Keir Starmer either knows it, or will find it out soon enough. That's why noone does anything to reduce immigration: because they know it's one of the few bullwarks against our rapidly aging and unproductive economy, and reducing it would make funding our already crippled public services even harder.

Yes @Defenestre the feeling is mutual, I feel like idiots like you have ruined the country for my children (and if you voted for Blair, then you ruined the Middle East). I expect you thought endless lockdowns were a great idea. I have argued with enough people like you in the past to know that it is pointless trying to have an intelligent debate as you will resort to insults as don't have any logical arguments.

@Defenestre you seem to be assuming there is an increase in revenue but not costs of each person added to the country. Most third world migrants are a net cost as on minimum wage jobs which we could be getting the 5m on out of work benefits to do in many cases who are also a net cost. That is before adding to shortages of housing etc. One of the main reasons our economy is unproductive since mass immigration began is because politicians have lazily added to the population at yhe behest of business rather than encouraging them to invest in technology. I don't have the faith in Cameron et al that you do in afraid.

Thing is many people are not saying uncontrolled immigration is causing our infrastructure to collapse. But what we are saying is that it has collapsed, and as a result we should not be accepting other people into the country until it’s stabilised. It’s madness. Akin to the lifeboats on the titanic. The more people pushed into them caused them to sink and everyone drowns. We need to pause immigration for however many years it takes to repair the damage. Huge investment needed to build more houses. The NHS to be sorted out, and made fit for purpose. Too many people using it - people living longer, and influx of people into the UK adding to the problems. I just don’t get why people think it’s a good idea to bring more people into our country when we are massively struggling to accommodate the needs of the people already here.

No, I make no such assumption. Yes of course if there's more people in the country there will be more claims on housing benefit, the NHS etc. This is taken for granted - everyone knows it and it's the focus of the whole debate. BUT if there are more people in the country there is also more economic activity and more tax revenues. The question is then: which outweighs the other?

I don't know about "most third world immigration" but it is true that there are certain specific demographics of immigration that cost more than they provide. However when it comes to immigration from EU countries - the kind that Brexit was designed to restrict - the opposite is most certainly true.

It's not a question of my opinion or anyone's anecdotal comments about particular individuals etc. People who know much more about the subject than I do have studied the numbers and repeatedly come to the conclusion the immigration, as a whole, is a net contributor to the economy. The reasons aren't difficult to work out.

Thing is many people are not saying uncontrolled immigration is causing our infrastructure to collapse. But what we are saying is that it has collapsed, and as a result we should not be accepting other people into the country until it’s stabilised. It’s madness. Akin to the lifeboats on the titanic. The more people pushed into them caused them to sink and everyone drowns. We need to pause immigration for however many years it takes to repair the damage. Huge investment needed to build more houses. The NHS to be sorted out, and made fit for purpose. Too many people using it - people living longer, and influx of people into the UK adding to the problems. I just don’t get why people think it’s a good idea to bring more people into our country when we are massively struggling to accommodate the needs of the people already here.

Because those people work and pay taxes, without - given that most of them come as young adults rather than children - first spending 18 years of their life as a massive net cost to the state.

Your Titanic analogy doesn't work because it's based on the idea of a lifeboat that remains the same size and strength regardless of how many people are pushed onto it. So one side of the equation is remaining constant while the other is increasing. Immigration isn't like that because at the same time as increasing demand, it also increases supply. It's like every time someone jumps on the lifeboat, they also cause the lifeboat to expand in size.

Your analogy is exactly what people like Farage would have you believe, but it simply isn't true. Funding public services depends on two things: the amount of claims upon them AND the amount of money available to put into them. Increasing immigration doesn't just increase the amount of claims, it also increases the amount of money available. It increases both sides of the balance sheet, and evidence suggests that it increases the funding by more than it increases the cost.

Report

I wasn’t going to vote initially but I’ll be voting Reform now on Election Day.

Yes are correct on failing to invest in technology but that may well lead to a loss of jobs, many of which will be skilled, jobs the unemployed cannot do.
Manual and Care work jobs are not quite so easy to automate.

You say there are 5m on out of work benefits? so people who are sick, chosen not to work, unemployable, older people etc and you think they will be able to become bricklayers, slaughter men, various trades people and are suitable to care for our parents?

Brexit meant that we lost access to, generally speaking, well educated people from (close by) culturally similar countries, with equivalent skills and good English for ones that are not well trained and bring in large numbers of dependents.
Its also meant that we've many more people here who otherwise would have gone to the EU either to work or retire.

Walk around my local Hospital in Plymouth and there are very high numbers of migrants working there, from Dr's to porters and everything in between, how would you replace them?

Its empty words to just say "halt migration until we fix our economy/nhs etc..."

Farage has no more idea on how to limit/stop migration than my cat does, he is selling cow pats dressed up as choc cake.

Voting SDP or Reform is the only option for someone with conservative values. I think by 2029 there will actually be an Islamic party to threaten Labour so that will be the chance for a conservative party (not the Conservatives who are similar to Labour) to gain traction.

I've been politically homeless for years and have held my nose every time I've voted. Usually wrt erosion of women's rights.

I've voted Labour, Liberal Democrat, more recently Green and even Conservative once, but Reform would be a step too far.

For life-long Tories who are embarrassed by the current fiasco then Reform will probably be their protest vote. And there are a lot of them out there.

But the two are totally the opposite. The Greens are deeply socialist, support mass immigration, have no interest in sex based rights and are further left than any other party. Reform are on the right and defend sex based rights and want to limit immigration. It's like saying the Tories aren't standing so I'll vote for the Socialist Workers instead!

Immigration is not a key voting issue for me. I'm not even considering reform.

But stating that being concerned about high immigration means you are racist is probably about the most ill advised political argument I can imagine. It's both logically flawed and needlessly alienating.

Those who are saying they'll vote Reform because of immigration - and saying our public services can't cope with more migrants etc - and that Reform is the party which recognises their concerns - have you paused to consider that it is Reform who have created this scapegoat?

The reason why public services are in such a mess is because of 14 years of austerity and Tory underfunding. The Tories have deliberately crushed public services. And then parties like Reform (helped by the right-wing press, especially the Mail), have manufactured the idea that migrants are to blame. Don't fall for their lies!