Reform as a protest vote

[twirlischocolate]

I hear and read of people who would normally vote for one of the main parties but are now thinking of voting reform.

I am in my fifties and I remember being spat at, called a paki just walking down the street and told to fuck off for no other reason than I don’t have white skin. Told by teachers to stop telling tales if I was hit/punched by kids while they were screaming National Front in my face.

After the referendum I heard stories of people being shouted at in the street “we voted leave so leave” The people being shouted at were all brown. I was in the queue at the post office when an old lady in front of me said to the Indian lady who worked there - as we voted leave you’ll be leaving now won’t you?

The people who spat at me in the seventies would now be voting reform.

You may be saying - Farage offers a different way. To me Farage emboldens these people - evidenced by his refusal to disown or deselect various reform candidates recently.

Some people would say that it’s a protest vote and they’ll never get in - but every single protest vote makes him think that people agree with him and makes him louder.

And as to the man himself - he shares platforms with the AFD and says that real live human beings should be left to drown in the channel. Is this who we want anywhere near power?

A few years ago he was so broke he was doing “up the RA” videos for 80 odd quid and suddenly he has a Coutts account. Where has this money come from?

I know none of this matters to those who are absolute reform voters but hopefully it will make those who are protest voters think again.

I know you may ask “but what’s the alternative for the politically homeless?” Maybe an Independent- I don’t know but I really don’t think reform is.

When people say the country's overcrowded I always think they must never travel by train.

Or understand that only about 5% of our country's land mass has buildings on it.

Surrey's one of the more crowded counties because of its proximity to London and on hearing that Frimley Park Hospital in Michael Gove's old constituency of Surrey Heath needs to be replaced because the Tories have been ignoring it's crumbling RAAC since 2012 I wondered where on Earth they would put a new hospital.

But they found a site quite quickly. Not five miles away. And Labour will build it.

Well Reform Ltd aren't exactly going after the classy vote are they?

Their job is spread division and weaken our country.

More fool anyone who helps them.

@twirlischocolate I am really sorry about your experiences re race. I don't live in the UK anymore and I can relate slightly as we are the "forrins" where we are, but I haven't experienced anything like what you have experienced. We moved awhile ago, before Brexit and I am behind about all this. When I see Farage speak I hear things about the Ukraine war and about how the UK is controlled by monied groups and that anyone who speaks out against government policy will be de-banked if that is the right word, ie that is what happened to him. Could you or anyone else link the racist or inhumane things said by him, eg let people drown in the channel? Also, which of his candidates are the ones who you wanted to see removed, ie are presumably linked to far right? And any articles about now banking with Coutts etc?

Immigration itself is a good and positive thing (obviously I would say that), but at the moment the very serious problems for the UK are to do with out of control trafficking and criminal activities and increasing numbers of armed criminals entering the UK etc. Also, to my mind the Rwandan solution indicates attitudes every bit as bad as far right solutions. But as I say, I might be missing things because I am not there anymore.

Can you link this - the bit about Farage supporting the views of Andrew Tate? Thank you

I have seen him say in interviews that he was de-banked, or whatever the term is. His accounts were closed without notice, which he said was to do with his political beliefs, I think (I might be wrong as I was only half listening at the time).

Eh? Trains are usually very crowded!

Here you go. It was no surprise to anyone though.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-andrew-tate-general-election-reform-b2566506.html

But the view out of the train window generally is not @EvangelistaSister

The division also has a lot to do with Russia and possibly China, using Social Media to create more division and instability.

We HAVE to go and research stuff ourselves - go to the manifestos, actually listen to the candidates and most importantly FACT CHECK anything that seems too good to be true or is creating strong emotional reactions. Now more than ever in my life time, we need a steady hand at the helm.

thank you

I find anything racist and any support of andrew tate sickening, but it isn't true that there is nothing in the manifesto - I have just looked at a comparison.

It seems to me that Reform are pandering to the people who want a charismatic leader, without Farage they are nothing, not a single other candidate is brought forward to do a TV interview or talk show. Without NF they are nothing.

Look at the world's recent history of charismatic leaders, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Johnson, Trump, rarely are they leading towards anything good. And rarely is there any substance behind them as individuals, they talk a good talk, but they are capable of harnessing people to do awful things from their rhetoric. Get rid of the leader and their "parties" crumble.

I'll leave it there.

If people want a protest vote or feel politically homeless I really wish they'd vote Lib Dems

Purely so that when Labour win the Lib dems coming second and being the official opposition whilst the tories sit in the back benches would be the biggest political upset that could happen

Reform is a racist vote, not a protest vote. Anyone who tries to say otherwise is delusional.

My husband's just chatted to a reasonably young bloke with a toddler. 36 maybe.

He says he's voted Tory all his life.

"Even Theresa May"

He voted for Brexit and Boris Johnson.

Thought Liz Truss would be good.

Thought "Rishi" would be good.

But everything's shit.

Especially the last couple of years.

So to fix it he's going to vote for Nigel Farage and his renamed Brexit Party

"He didn't seem thick" says OH. "But in what world is that going to improve ANYTHING?!"

It looks to me like a response to the failure of the past 30/40 years of neoliberalism; the orthodoxy that has underpinned the national and global regulatory frameworks that have so spectacularly failed to prevent the economic mayhem the West has suffered, the complete car crash of economic, social, and political life, the accumulation of wealth by the richest 1%. Even our social fracturing into identity groups can be laid at its door.

Who gets the blame for this? Not the liberalisation & deregulation of the banks or the marketisation of healthcare, education & housing etc. Not even the blatant assault on public services, the welfare state and worker's rights by governments.

Nope. It's a familiar pattern of blaming immigrants, single mothers, welfare claimants, striking workers etc.

We've seen the response in the US with Trump, here with Farage, and across Europe with people turning to populist politicians and their rightwing parties.

I don't think it matters if people vote for Reform now because after 4/5 years of a Labour government following, that same neoliberal orthodoxy, they'll certainly vote for them or a Conservative party built in their image.

Who gets the blame for this? Not the liberalisation & deregulation of the banks or the marketisation of healthcare, education & housing etc. Not even the blatant assault on public services, the welfare state and worker's rights by governments.

If you watch the clips available of the debate between Farage and Clegg in 2014 (I watched last night) you will see that Farage has quite a lot to say about the accountability of the EU governments. He slated the fact that the EU was turning into a war machine. Given what has happened since, you could debate whether the billions being churned into increasing military capability caused what has happened recently, or whether it should be seen as proof it was necessary. Farage - and to be fair many others - argue the former. Farage has also commented on the dereg of banks, I haven't yet found clips about his commentary on marketisation of public services and individual's rights. His manifesto does indicate policy in relation to all areas, not just immigration. Problem is, a lot of headline grabbers quote tiny fragments, not the comments in context - I can see that this is probably on purpose, but given the support for him now I think that it is necessary to now be more responsible and more detailed in relation to reporting on his policies, not just quote attention grabbing outrageous comments. It was the total lack of credible and detailed info that led to the Brexit referendum outcome.

In relation to immigration, if you watch Farage vs Eddie Izzard debate from around the time of the referendum, Farage's comments on immigration do come across as facile and crass, though he was saying at that point that he did not favour zero immigration, instead he favoured a points system similar to that of Oz, he wanted to open the UK to the possibility of immigration from around the world rather than being tied to forced immigration from EU countries. But notwithstanding this, the comments about "what the people want" I do think were irresponsible and crass and though I don't think the comments were racist in themselves (or not the ones I heard) they seem to have encouraged racism. Izzard was great, and funny, I thought - he pointed out Farage's own immigrant heritage and pointed out the many positives of immigration, with humour. Neither mentioned the real vices associated with immigration being trafficking and influx of criminals by-passing official channels and the extraordinary incompetence in relation to the official channels and the bonkers claims that lawyers are encouraging illegal immigration - basically the issues are very complex and not a simplistic "it is racist/inhumane" vs "it isn't racist.inhumane". How do we talk about the appalling control held by trafficking and the influx of armed criminals without it being anti-immigration?

One of the volunteers for UKIP said appalling things about Sunak and made disgusting ractist slurs recently and Farage sacked the volunteer and gave an interview saying he did not agree at all with the racist comments, and apologised. I might be wrong to raise this, there might be examples I have missed and if anyone can point me to actual whole interviews rather than quotes taken out of context, then that would be welcome.

I feel quite sorry for the leading parties. I am not sure they have much choice in what they are doing, the impact of war spending will now impact on what we can do at home. I am not promoting that anyone votes in any particular way. But I think more awareness of and debate about background drivers would be helpful, rather than the simplistic comments here.

Maybe everyone should demand parliamentary reform to ensure more responsible leadership - however that could be achieved - and refuse to validate the shitshow of an election.

I was just making a general
point about needing to do due diligence and not rely on SM as we need to make sure we make properly informed decisions and not get drawn into divisive single issues as we are in a very precarious position and Russian bots are all over SM trying to stir up division and destabilise us.

It’s just such a shame people see Farage as the answer when the only thing he cares about is himself.