Reform are getting a shitload of voters

[HeBeaverandSheBeaver]

I have not voted
Reform and live in a safe tory seat But I voted
Lib dem tactical vote

I said ages Ago on here the reform would do really well and was shouted down.

Same as brexit, no one will admit voting for reform but
They still do it in droves it seems.

I'm Willing to bet they
Might win an election in four years at this rate!!

Scary
Times

Actually, yes Europe is on our foot step, in fact we are part of Europe. It is a priority partner for the EU. Do you even have the slightest clue about the politics around this situation and the threat Russia poses to the West? You do have a basic grasp of geography don’t you? I don’t think anyone is arguing against immigration where there is a need for it. But if you’re happy stereotyping immigrants that’s up to you.

Im guessing by your lack of education in simple matters and Mantra repeating you voted Labour/Green/pseudo Lib Dem’s.

Get a grip😂 nothing racist about it! It’s about time we put our own people first and stop everyone coming here and sponging everything. These other countries wouldn’t do the same for us!

Birmingham and solihull at least

Those 4 million Reform votes prevented any chance of the Tories getting back in - who probably would have done a lot more about immigration than Labour. Farage is like a mosquito that makes the two main parties do all kinds of crazy chaotic dancing they don’t want to be doing in the first place, with the result that, yes, he’s “having an influence”, but the influence is just chaos. Which is actually what I’m sure he enjoys. I can’t imagine he’d enjoy actually governing at all and having to be responsible for every facet of the country, as opposed to just stopping a bunch of poor people on boats.

It's not as concerning as you'd think. It's just largely Tory voters who always had anti-immigration views and took the Conservative party lurching to the right. Even that wasn't enough so the Conservatives may move further to the centre which would be a good thing. Those people who voted Reform will never change their views, so it's better for them to find their natural home rather than make the mainstream parties more extremist.

Thank you @Pelham678 that makes sense.

In four or five years time when labour don’t deliver (and they have no hope of delivering because there’s no money and immense amounts of debt) Reform will make exactly the same inroads into their vote like they did at the last election due to opposition to Brexit.

So do people who just dismiss reform as racist also think they know better than the BAME voters who voted Reform and the BAME candidates who stood for Reform?

Isn't that a bit racist to say you know a black person's inner motivations better than they do?

My Reform candidate was the only black person out of 6 standing. He got 6k votes. If you add his votes plus the Tories together, then that would have been a clear win over the Lib Dems (who actually won). This is in the South, so not just a northern problem.

I do know quite a few immigrants who voted Reform too. They're obviously not anti-immigration, they're against illegal and unplanned immigration which probably affects them far more than it affects the middle class white lefties weaponising the term 'racist'.

A lot of people are hugely invested in shutting down reasonable discourse about immigration with cries of racist, and some of that is against BAME people so it's actually a racist position.

From the stats

Tory / Brexit / Reform share:
45% has fallen to 38%

Lab / LD / Grn / SNP share:
53% has increased slightly to 55%

Reform also has an interesting problem in the shape of a Nigel Farage because it is him I think who is incredibly divisive. Do you keep him because he can talk the talk and a certain amount of voters vote simply for him. Or do you accept that to many he is the reason no matter what you do they will never vote for reform.

and where on the right do you sit how far to the right do you go because the conservatives and labour have both become far more central so there is an opening in the right that could be acceptable to many more voters

and how many reform voters were simply a protest against the Conservatives

Legal immigrants aren't sponging, they make a vast contribution to our economy. Indeed, you only have to make a visit to a large NHS hospital to realise how very dependent we are on immigration to keep our infrastructure going.

One or our proudest British traditions is our welcome of refugees, and in many respects it's the fact that we have a population with such a diverse ancestry which makes the country what it is. It's incredibly unpatriotic to want to stop that.

i don’t know why you’re telling me your academic background, since I didn’t mention it, and don’t care. Nor do I think it’s at all relevant to how you vote, or how anyone else votes.

But I do care that people double down on voting for a party that has recently had to expel three candidates for openly racist and bigoted comments, and from which two candidates have resigned themselves because they are concerned about the racism washing around the party. Then there is the very clear and historic racism from the man himself running it.

Immigrants who've come here legally and are trying to get their family members in through a legal route are often quite frustrated by the failure to address illegal immigration too. Why some people can't get their brains around this concept is a mystery.

It's generally quite frustrating if you've had to do something legally and jump through lots of hoops and incur huge costs and then see other people achieving the same thing illegally. I was an immigrant to another country for a while, I did it legally whilst lots did it illegally and I can speak to that being a frustrating experience.

Immigrants aren't some massive homogeneous mass.

Asylum seekers are not coming here illegally.

I think if you were voting against the torys staying in, you would vote Labour not Reform.

Ha ha, You've sort of cheered me up in a random way.

I'm an educated genius.
This sad little country could suddenly find accomodation, transport passes, college places, school places and so on for white Ukrainians but is happy to see brown people shoved into the sea to die.

I am absolutely not talking about my Italian neighbour as an example of multi- cultralism he has an anti- intergration stance himself.

I was speaking about my Educational and professional experience and that of my children. My secondary school was absolutely not a middle class enclave. Plenty of single parent families, huge number of children of 1st generation immigrants. I refute this is a exclusively middle class standpoint. It might be a metropolitan, urban perspective but it is not middle class.

Yawn. The SNP are not bigots.

You are right obviously.

Possibly the Tories might move in that direction, and offer a solid small c conservative approach that addresses that gap. On a worldwide basis, if you look at people who are writing and thinking in a careful way about those issues, they are coming from a more small c perspective.

Frankly I think Labour is a lost cause. Those hoping this will cause them to reflect are going to be disappointed, look at the thread. They would rather burn down the whole country and have a government like the ones we re seeing have success in Europe than take the disenfranchised working classes seriously.

@Whoooois can we stop the poor folks born here sponging 1st please. Those risking their lives on boats to get here are in a much worse position yet in our area they are the ones filling the caring jobs etc.

This is hitting the nail on the head. But it isn't due to immigration.

@Devonbabs said Its this lack of understanding and sacrificing common sense at the altar of pseudo liberalism which shows exactly why Reform are popular in standing up to this nonsense
Yep just this.
Schools are being changed by outside pressures. Girls coerced to wear hijab and give up music and choir. This happened to the Micheala School.
Many will not listen to Farage, but you should take note of Katherine Babalsingh.

I realise this is a highly emotive topic with a lot of nuance. We live in a stable democracy thankfully. So can discuss our feelings freely.
I work in secondary education in a very multicultural area , I would like to reassure everyone, a bit frivolously, we barely manage to comply with department of education actual directives and GCSE board rules, we do not bow to pressure from any religious sect or cultural group.
We accidently forgot about Ramadan altogether recently despite having Muslim staff members on our senior team. Not that we do anything to acknowledge it but it meant we had too much food at lunchtime. Much recrimination about the waste ensued.
We do try to boost our GCSE results by entering children for any languages they have learnt at home, Italian and Turkish and Arabic for example. We don't teach them but we aren't above claiming credit for their passes.
Like I said nuance exists.

I agree. I'm very concerned that 4 independents have ousted Labour in muslim constituencys on a Gaza ticket. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of the Middle East conflict, I absolutely don't agree with religion based politics and believe it's a dangerous place for the UK to go.

@BloodyHellKenAgain I agree. I'm very concerned that 4 independents have ousted Labour in muslim constituencys on a Gaza ticket. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of the Middle East conflict, I absolutely don't agree with religion based politics and believe it's a dangerous place for the UK to go.
But will losing those seats help the main Parties to listen?
Don't hold your breath!

.