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

If we were to increase capped schemes we would still have to process asylum with people arriving by irregular means

Can you think of how many in capped schemes would stop the requirement outside them?

On average we do 60k capped per year, we could triple that and still see trafficking networks use irregular methods for profit

Schemes will not end those gangs and profit so if you do want to stop it you’ll need another way

Generally white working class men feel threatened, yes, and losing what they expected to always have ie privilege. So a lot of them vote Reform, yes.

Generally white working class men feel threatened, yes, and losing what they expected to always have ie privilege

They sure don’t look privileged to me. They’ve always been a underclass in the UK, no?

White working class men only have privilege in the upside down. It's insane to say they're privileged. Think of the miners and countless other examples of working class men who've been harmed by their jobs because they didn't have any other choice (though it's not confined by skin colour - it's all working class men).

Working class men also got screwed during covid - often having to go out to work whilst those who claim they're privileged stayed at home. Many of them died as a result.

Problem is that people throw the racist label around so much, that now it just loses its impact.

This. It's in fact 'racist' you could say to imply all Reform voters are 'racist' when some of them are BAME, and some candidates too. My only black candidate was from Reform.

It doesn't help BAME people to smear a huge chunk of the electorate as racist. In fact, I would say, the opposite because people see it for the idiocy it is and then stop listening when there are real issues of racism.

Privilege in this context doesn't equate with economic privilege. The men you refer to were disadvantaged on the basis of their class. They didn't have to deal with further disadvantage on the basis of their skin colour. And, being members of the physically stronger, more dominant sex class means they weren't disadvantaged on the basis of their sex, either.

This is what it boils down to: the specific layers of systemic discrimination which work against people on various bases. 'Privilege' was probably a misleading word to describe these situations because it's inevitable this would end up confused with economic privilege.

It isn't directly related to econonics. But it certainly can end up resulting in poverty through no fault of a person's own but having everything to do with their race, class, sex, mental health, neurotypicality or able-bodied status. People who have privilege don't necessarily see that privilege. It's only truly visible when you don't.

God!
Just visited relatives all voted Reform. Had to listen to how asylum seekers get £38 per day and British people get nothing.

Because I spent some time in the ME I can honestly say the way women were treated is shocking. Of course the men think it’s fine and the women agree (!!). They walk around covered completely often in black in the heat to stop people like my husband ogling them.

A friend of mine was working for a Middle Eastern airline. She obviously wasn’t always at base but she was only able to stick it out 18 months. Women have no real voice. They are controlled by their male family members. They often have big families to keep the women suppressed and at home.

There are of course other parts of the world that are equally shocking with their treatment of their girls and women, controlling their movements in their teens etc. In Turkey regardless of your will as a women a certain % MUST go to male children even though they might be step children and you would prefer to choose yourself who you leave your money to!

And this attitude is not tempered by immigrants from these areas living in the UK.. it also seems to get worse in 2nd/3rd generations.

We need to tackle this, without being called racist letting it go unchecked is a danger to women.

Reform won seats in Clacton (Essex), Boston/Skegness (Lincolnshire), Great Yarmouth (Norfolk), Ashfield (Nottinghamshire) and South Basildon (Essex).

The only way Reform seats were won in the 'impoverished' north is if you turn a map of the UK upside down.

@DodoTired Ironically, there is a level of privilege that allows one to happily ignore concerns around increased immigration because they don’t affect you. See also the privilege it requires to ignore the importance of issues such as single-sex spaces.

The number of votes doesn't always mean anything. It's the concentration of them that wins the seat.

Labour got less overall votes this time than Corbyn in both the 2017 and 2019 elections.

Reform got 4 million votes and 4 seats, while the LibDems got 3.4 million votes and have 71 seats.

They didn't have to deal with further disadvantage on the basis of their skin colour

You were like, a 98% white country in those days. Hardly relevant.

People who have privilege don't necessarily see that privilege. It's only truly visible when you don't

Tbh it seems like you see privilege where there is none

£38 per day? That's weirdly specific. Have they got hold of some factoid and misunderstood?

People from ethnic backgrounds have to put up no end of shit from the prebirth to the grave. We don't care or need the approval of people like you. You are a huge part of the problem. As you well know BAME is completely unacceptable. BTW If you want to see idiocy, look in the mirror.

Racists have always been focused on immigration. Reform voters complain 'You cant talk about immigration without being accused of being a racist', but the fact is you can't talk to a racist without immigration coming up.

I have a very racist family Uncle, he believes in white replacement, conspiracy theories but above all he believes white people are superior to non-white people. Farage said himself he smashed the BNP by providing a home for white people who weren't racist, but felt some of the BNP policies were spot on, putting British people first. The trouble is, Reform is a home for many who liked many other aspects of the BNP that Reform don't talk about it.

The only way to reduce immigration REALLY reduce it, is accepting we can't have huge growth with an ageing population and low native birth rate, we will have to accept to be a poorer nation and have a reduced economy , even then, we'll still need some migrants, but we can't bloody well have both, a big economy and low migration, unless we all start having 3 or 4 kids again. And this is the puzzle that all of western Europe and the US is facing.

But no politician will tell you the truth about immigration...including Farage, Trump or Le Pen.

Sadly racists have not had the memo. It will be interesting to see their reaction when the wheels fall of the of the cart!

China and Japan do very well with worse demographics and no immigration. So no, it doesn’t have to be that way at all.

@paperrocksiscissors

"The only way to reduce immigration REALLY reduce it, is accepting we can't have huge growth with an ageing population and low native birth rate, we will have to accept to be a poorer nation and have a reduced economy , even then, we'll still need some migrants, but we can't bloody well have both, a big economy and low migration, unless we all start having 3 or 4 kids again. And this is the puzzle that all of western Europe and the US is facing."

To take an alternative approach a large number of the legal migrants are working in the agricultural, care and health sector. Jobs that the native population is not willing to do at the salaries on offer.

Now you could in theory resolve this by increasing salaries in those sectors - to take an extreme example if you paid fruit pickers £50k a year then you would have no problem recruiting native workers, however your punnet of strawberries would now cost £25 and no one would buy them! An alternative approach would be to reduce social welfare so that native workers have a choice between say picking fruit or serving to death, although I think such a policy might be a tad Victorian and somewhat unpopular with the electorate!

The ageing population explanation whilst true only offers a part explanation, for example Japan has a much quicker ageing population and is handling it without immigration albeit through two decades of lost growth but they are now coming out the other side of it.

So to my mind there are choices to be made.
Yes the UK could strictly control immigration just like Japan does but this would come at a cost to the economy.
Or UK could continue to import cheap foreign labour to grow our economy and keep inflation low. But by continually seeking to increase the population in some kind of Ponzi scheme you are placing stress on housing, healthcare, education, social cohesion
Or you face massive unpopularity by forcing the native population to do the jobs that they are currently unwilling to do.

But what we cannot do is to dodge the question entirely and accuse anyone asking it of racism, fascism, nationalism etc etc.

No, I meant to say there are large Muslim communities in those constituencies and I still think the 4 (muslim) independents who ousted Labour over Gaza are strongly influenced by their religion and so does the BBC:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3g37mk7vxlo

IMO religion has no place in UK politics.

Neither Japan nor China is without problems. Both need immigration as does this country. Both do have problems with racism.

We need immigration, 1 in 1 out is not going to cut it. We need to to focus on:
How we get the right newcomers for the right roles. We don't just need Drs.
We need to define what good integration looks like and put in an infrastructure that ensures it happens.
We definitely need to stop the boats and other foms of illegal immigration. Unfortunately only taking a firm line on this is going to reduce this.

Changes are going to need to happen on both sides.

The average racist is not thinking that deeply about this. Their behaviour towards ethnic minorities is not driven by this. There is a reason so many people found a home in Reform and it isn't intelligence.

We need to train/educated our own workforce rather than poaching the workforces of nations which are less well off than us. We also could encourage slightly larger families by extending benefits to all families, not just those with both parents (or sole parent) working, so that childcare can be the choice of the family, whether it is parent staying at home, grandparent care, childminder, friendly arrangement or a nursery.

I voted Lib Dem, because I want to rejoin the EU.

However I understand why people voted Reform. I think parties like that hold a kind of nostalgia, back to the ‘good times’ of the 60s-90s when housing was cheap, the economy was on the up bar one or two blips, population much smaller and the ‘more old fashioned way of life’ was gentler and more enjoyable - globalisation is seen as the opposite of that, it signifies a fast moving word of tech and immigration.

I don’t think all Reform voters are racists, I think a lot of them are simply weary of modernity and the sad places it’s taken us to and want to revert to happier times.

I think you have a better understanding than many here. I guess we are at a cross roads. Rather like the Industrial Revolution. Rather like the Reformation.

I think we have become used to “any change is good” existence must keep getting better. But that’s one of the biggest lies we tell ourselves.

History is littered with empires of similar mindsets, with people who were just as intelligent, with advanced technology. Who thought they were unbeatable, most of the time the they have been the architects of their own destruction.

This is where we are now in the developed world. We tinker round the edges of a broken system whether that be globalisation or institutions like the NHS.

In reality no political party will solve this. I feel like Reform were the closest to identifying many of the issues. They are right, having some electric cars isn’t going to stop global warming. What we need to do is address the impact of countries like China. What we need yo fo is stop the rampant consumption and yes that links back to how people lived decades ago.

We need humanity esp in the West to change its mindset about the future of mankind.