Why do people like reform?

[TheGoogleMum]

I haven't been keeping very up to date with politics. I usually vote Labour. I don't really understand the popularity of reform, could anyone explain it to me?
As far as I'm aware Farage doesn't actually do anything when he wins a seat somewhere so I'm not convinced they'll actually do anything? Is it just a protest vote that's gone a bit far?

Have Reform said how they’ll stop “illegal immigrants”? I mean, the vast majority of immigrants are students and workers, so I guess they’re talking about the small minority who come on small boats.

Conservatives tried and Labour are trying - but it’s clearly not as easy as just “detaining and deporting” migrants because of laws and human rights/asylum protections, as Trump is finding out (and we don’t have a politically appointed judiciary). I’m curious as to what Reform voters who are anti-immigrant think is going to happen.

So globalisation (as opposed to nationalism) is great news for those consumers in work that can afford to buy much cheaper products imported from China as well as companies like Amazon that sell it. However it's not great for workers in UK manufacturing that then lose their jobs.

Immigration is great for Governments able to staff the healthcare sector at lower costs or businesses able to staff low skilled jobs at a lower cost. However it's not great for the country as a whole when the existing infrastructure (healthcare, roads, water, education etc) starts to creek at the seams from a higher population.

Since 2000 the UK population has risen from 59 million to 69 million an increase of 10 million or the equivalent of a new London, the majority of which is due to legal migration.

@CortadoPlease

"Have Reform said how they’ll stop “illegal immigrants”?"

Of course not, by definition it's nearly impossible to stop illegal migration because it's illegal.

The only solution is to deter, detect and deport. For deter reduce the attractiveness of the UK as a destination for migrants- for example national ID. For detect for example find out where the smuggling gangs are getting their boats from and generally make it more difficult for the smuggling gangs. For deport it means actually deporting illegal migrants rather than stretching out the lengthy appeals process etc etc.

Yep, you can't just show yourself as woefully incompetent, duplicitous, devious, dishinest, hypocritical and unwilling to keep to your core pre-election promises and instead do a 180 on them - and then urge people to trust you to keep on doing the same, because they would be disastrous!

Just because (imho) Reform are not THE drastic solution that many are believing they are, that doesn't mean that we don't need A drastic solution.

Reform's appeal is that they are promising to:

• abolish inheritance tax (obviously including farmers)
• kick out all illegal immigrants
• cut VAT on private schools
• No tax on anyone earning up to £20k
• abandon the current green initiative

How they will achieve this without significantly reducing the quality of services in hospitals or schools is unclear.

My worry personally would be, if you are being encouraged to demonise people who are here illegally, it's surely just a short step to encouraging hatred towards anyone with non-white skin, even if they are second, third or fourth generation. It's an ideology that breeds racism and division.

What should that look like, in your view?

Yes, this. People always use the local council elections to vent their frustrations at the government.

To be fair, if the councils gladly get elected on the back of being allied to a big (sometimes!) popular party, they can hardly complain when people still associate them with that party and then punish them when the big fish under the banner of that same party are appalling.

They’ll do these things by making the NHS an insurance based business, mirroring that of the USA.

They will also cut other public services to the bone and / or privatise them wherever possible e.g. private security firms instead of a National Police Force that is accountable to the people.

If people are so short sighted as to vote Reform at the next GE they can expect to be paying thousands of £s for private health care, which has so many exclusions that it’s virtually worthless. Think USA where people are bankrupted by a serious illness.

Of course, Reform will spin it differently… but people need to think very carefully about the bigger picture when they put their cross in a box.

The promise of low tax/high spend would get battered from the press it if came from any other party. Somehow Reform escape much scrutiny on the details of their policies, in part I guess because they simply refuse to engage.

And people are living more and more in their own echo chambers; with "news" tailored to them. (Probably whatever your view is to be fair).

Politics is more polemical than ever. And so you're likely to get more extreme views.

Most people don't follow politics very much and just take in the odd sound bite, whatever fits with their perception.

People who voted for Brexit and so on won't admit to making a mistake (again this can fit with most views)

People are still pissed off/affected by the 2008 crash and that others were unaffected who may have been instrumental in it occurring.

Reform is "famous" currently and it's pretty much all about Nigel Farage. Similar to Trump popularity. See above my point about people not following politics much generally.

These are just off the top of my head.

This is a good article from Marina Hyde. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/02/nigel-farage-reform-win-labour-local-elections

My ex in-laws are big Reform supporters. Despite having retired at 58 to their enormous house that is worth £1m despite them buying it for £30,000, they think that the country has gone to the dogs and that life is rubbish. I just think they’re bored, but not bored enough to research the plausibility of Reform’s policy contradictions, its pro-Russia/pro-Trump foreign policy or the disastrous Brexit that its leader championed.

How long should people have to wait, ( smash the gangs ) pot holes not fixed, immigration both legal and illegal still to high and not being addressed, over 8 million a day being spent on it, while money being taken away from oap’s and disabled, NHS dentists and Doctors impossible to find or make am appointment, the justice system and police have lost public trust,

Because they are promising something different. Folk seem to view it as fairer policies. Labour have been hopeless so far.

One word - Immigration, sadly

Reform have taken the valid concerns of some of the more disadvantaged in our society and played on all of their fears. Immigrants are an easy target when you are for example a white working class, fairly uneducated male who has been told they are pretty worthless. They have taken extremely complex issues and turned them into popularist sound bites. Fact checking has gone out of the window.

Labour havn't helped themselves with policies such as the winter fuel allowance. I thin what they have also failed to realise is that a LOT of working class British people don't want socialism, they want capitalism, they aspire to the likes of Andrew Tate because he brings hope that they can have all these things.

In the area where I live (which is looking ike a Reform landslide) education has been poor over many, many years. People don;t have critical thinking skills and social media has reduced everything to unverifiable soundbites.

I'm very sad about it all. A lot of the people I love and who I know to be good people have fallen for this rhetoric.

What @Screamingabdabz said.

But there’s no point asking in mumsnet - because the party line on here is that voters for Reform must be evil racist shits who should STFU.

If you want to know why we vote for them - look at their Contract. Really look, rather than listening to the screaming horde. Then really think about whether, maybe, just maybe, they could be onto something.

I can't see me voting for them personally. I do actually think the boats are a problem (but not legal immigration), but i don't see how they can actually stop the boats. If it was that simple it would have been done already. Once people have arrived where do you deport them? They don't always reveal where they are from so not as simple as back to where they came from! France won't let us send them back.

Maybe I'm never going to understand it as I was a remainer.

I actually think people should give Labour more of a chance as the tories got over a decade of mucking up the country, it's not going to be fixed very quickly!

Or look at the News & Politics thread on Gransnet … plenty of support for Reform there🙈

Nearly every person I've spoken to who voted Labour ( and most have voted Labour all their life) say they wish they had never voted Labour this time.
Most from mining villages where Labour has always been in power..
They belive Stammer has lied and taken them for fools.( Which is has) . They weren't happy with Conservatives.. but mainly a lot of that was during Covid and the Conservatives never got a chance to show what they could do.. so people are thinking " let's give Reform a go" surely they can't do any worse?
Personally I'd still like the Conservatives back in.. But I'd never vote labour.

I’ve read the contract, which is largely the same as their election manifesto. As I said earlier, I can entirely see why the headline messages appeal to a lot of people. I worry that people don’t read what sits beneath them, which is a lot of quite authoritarian activity, and much of it is unfunded, which raises serious questions about how any of it might be supported. But yes, I get why it appeals to people. Populism always does.

Mumsnet isn’t a safe space to discuss why people vote for Reform. Who wants to be hunted down here, attacked, insulted and belittled? Voting for reform is not just about immigration.

It’s voting for reform, for change. I think it’s unfair to say no one on this site hears or gets that. I think it’s a shame to talk about safe spaces as that just drives us further into echo chambers. And it’s no bad thing to have to argue our standpoints or disagree. The lack of critical challenge on any side is a bad thing. Reform is a critical challenge to established parties and they should be answering back too.

Reform are representative of the move towards de-globalisation and self- preservation which is happening in the west. Baring in mind that the biggest winners in globalisation have been smaller/ poorer countries. Now people who are struggling in their own day to day lives want to do something different, look inward and not outward, focus on British people.

I find it interesting that the left are so pro global trade and globalisation and also climate change, because arguably a new model of doing business, reshoring etc would be better from a climate perspective. But I’ve not seen anyone talk about that link.

I think you'll find there are a fair few people who voted Labour for the exact same reasons and are now scratching their heads and wondering how they got so royally screwed over by the people they thought were on their side.