Reform party seems to be ahead in my area.

[Moier]

Any of you voting Reform?
My area was always labour..( I've never voted labour).. but according to what I'm reading.. it's surprisingly gone the other way.
Will have to wait and see.
Did him being in I'm a Celebrity make him more popular..or is the extreme right the way to go?

A tactical one, in many constituencies, even more so.

Yes, I will be voting Reform. Politically, I'd describe myself as a moderate conservative, or even a left-leaning Tory, but I am very worried about immigration. The conservatives have utterly failed to deal with the issue, and pretty much ignored voter's concerns. They deserve to be punished. In 2022, 750,000 extra people settled in this country (when you add in illegal immigrants, it may well have been a million). It's just insane, and it can't go on. To house that many people we'll need to build three new Manchesters. WHERE? Obviously, on what is left of the British countryside. But I don't want more houses and cars. I want more trees and fields and silence. In the last ten years, my local woods have been hacked down to make way for two big new estates, including blocks of flats. And at the other end of the village another giant estate is under construction. We've also just heard that 800 new homes are going to be built on the long road that connects our village to the town. That road is clogged with traffic now, so what the hell is it going to be like when we add an extra thousand cars?!

No matter how many of these ghastly rabbit huts they jam on top of one another we always need more, more, more. Obviously Labour won't do anything about it. On the contrary, they'll be much worse. And make no mistake, this problem isn't going away. In spite of concerns about falling birth rates, the world's population is still growing. In 1960 there were three billion humans. Today there are eight billion and we're heading for ten. It looks like the world's population will peak in the 2050s, just as climate change begins to bite. Right now there are awful heatwaves in southern Europe and central America. In fact, Mexico just broke its record heat. Pretty soon people are going to start moving en mass. Either we face up to this or we'll be overwhelmed. I'm all for helping people, don't get me wrong. The rich countries have a moral duty to help the poor. But allowing millions of people onto this small, crowded little island isn't the answer.

What is your solution to the immigration numbers?

How do you think Reform will deal with it?
Do you think they need to form a government to do so, or will they be able to make a difference with a few MPs?
Farage has talked about sending people back to France, how do you think he will do that?

I'd be gutted if my area voted for such an awful crew as Reform. They're just dreadful and I wouldn't want to live alongside people who can't see through the obvious liar that is Nigel Farage.

And what impression are you sending by voting reform?

I’d rather spoil my vote than vote for them

Farage says a lot of things. France won't take them back.

Ben Habib, Reform's deputy leader said that asylum seekers should 'suffer the consequences of their actions ' and drown.

I am interested in someone who is voting for Reform answering this.

I am not sure what the actual plan is. Even if it is leaving them to drown, that will require a workforce committed to that, as there are many who would instinctively want to save people from that.

If it's send them back, who will do that? Will Farage be on the beaches turning boats around?

We can't turn boats around, it's against international law. The only way to tackle it, in my opinion, is investment and international cooperation.

Are you voting for Reform?
Or is this what you think they will do?

I'd like to really clear how people who are voting Reform because of immigration think that they will be solving it.

I'm not voting for Reform. I'm just answering the question.

I'd also love to hear what Reform voters think is the solution.

Habib sounds like a good old fashioned Anglo-Saxon name...

I believe he's British Pakistani.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crggy73m2ero

Ben Habib's dad is Pakistani and his mum is white British.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Habib

He was born in Pakistan.

Please don't make stuff up

• at no point did Farage say that he admired Putin.

The actual quote was

“I said I disliked him as a person, but I admired him as a political operator because he’s managed to take control of running Russia.”

Now I would disagree with the use of wording "admired him as a political operator" and would be better phrased as "an effective political operator" just as one could say that Hitler was an effective public speaker but it doesn't equate to supporting Hitler.

how do people know?
just a poll presumably?

Admiring the way Putin operates doesn't bode well.

Based on actual policies selected blind to the party they originate from these are the preferences (according to 45000 votes from across the UK).

It’s like the 2016 EU referendum as others have said - certain voters feel ignored, Farage gives the impression he’s listening to them.

I think that we’ll get a Lab majority gov with the Conservatives in opposition but I wouldn’t be surprised if Conservatives and Reform were on the same percentage of votes, about 18% each.

I’ll be voting Labour as I always have done, but I understand the appeal of Reform although I’m unattracted to them myself.

I refuse to dismiss all Reform voters as racist bigots or to sneer at them. Because…well, back to what happened in 2016.

Reform's proposals are economically illiterate. They are fantasists or liars or most likely both. Their proposals are Truss on steroids. Seems like a great idea... what could go wrong?

Their social views are unpleasant from my perspective (to put it politely) but their economic proposals mean that anybody voting for them is swimming at the shallow end of the gene pool in terms of brain capacity.

I think Brexit is a fantastic example of what happens when governments fail to carry the people with them. When they ignore and belittle valid concerns. Eventually they’ll get a bloody nose.

That's a large part of why the Conservative party is now dying. They were warned that their approach to this would mean total wipeout in the long run, but persisted anyway to pursue their extremist version of Brexit and make us all significantly poorer, against the will of the majority. Then compounded this with economic mismanagement and disgraceful behaviour in public office.

I'm not convinced Labour are much more honest though, sadly. They haven't levelled with the public. They won't address the Brexit issue and essentially are predicating their own manifesto and their promises on being able to magic up significant economic growth within a very short time period. I hope they'll be successful in doing so, but it is unlikely, especially given their weak proposals regarding how they will achieve this. Therefore they will have to activate plan B but have promised no more austerity and no tax rises on anybody who works.

I would love to know what their plan B is within these constraints because reducing tax relief on pension savings/ savings more would be a manifesto promise break because this is a rise in income tax.

They will likely raise capital gains tax and inheritance tax (presumably with exemptions for working people... otherwise also a breach of their promises!). And claim they'll raise money from reducing tax evasion (as every Government/ wannabe Government does). But that an non-doms and VAT on private education are small beans compared to what is required. So if this growth doesn't materialise fast enough, what will they do?

I really wish we had a competent media whp actually asked such questions and pressed for them to be answered. If that had happened during the Brexit fiasco then we wouldn't be where we are. Such a shame that a large proportion of the country seem averse to factual discussions and are only interested in emotive nonsense so politicians play to that and infantilise us all.

their economic proposals mean that anybody voting for them is swimming at the shallow end of the gene pool in terms of brain capacity

And again with the insults. It’s this kind of discourse that needs to stop. It’s - completely unnecessary attack on others and does nothing to move a debate on. What it does is get everyone’s backs up and causes entrenchment. Please stop.

All parties claim they have fully costed plans, and it always turns out to be fantasy. I would expect that Reform voters don’t care about that because they don’t expect Reform to be the governing party. However, what Reform offers is, in the long term, very attractive to many people. they’d quite like someone in opposition (or at least in Parliament) to be raising these things and making the governing party address them rather than sweeping them under the carpet.

I really wish we had a competent media whp actually asked such questions and pressed for them to be answered. If that had happened during the Brexit fiasco then we wouldn't be where we are. Such a shame that a large proportion of the country seem averse to factual discussions and are only interested in emotive nonsense so politicians play to that and infantilise us all.

I would add to that, that the media needs to tell their interviewers to shut up and allow long form answers. Then think about the answer and ask proper follow up, open questions (rather than the antagonist, ‘gotcha’ statements they are now prone to). Most interviews these days seem to just be the interviewer interrupting and then pushing their own views.