What will life be like under Reform?

[Easipeelerie]

I have accepted the likelihood of the next government being Reform. I don’t think the government after that will necessarily be Reform. But in the 4 Reform years, what do people think life will be like for the different groups in our country? Will we see very immediate changes?

If you can't see Nige's involvement in getting us here I suggest you see what was predicted for UK economy prior to the Brexit vote and what it is now.

Why do you think that bankers who thrive on an unstable market are "smart" by the way and would be a good person to lead the country?

No goverment will be 'right' on every single thing. That's impossible.
What we need to do is figure out which one will get the country back to financial viability.

I have no idea if paracetamol is now considered unsafe. However I am open to the idea that lots of things that used to be deemed safe and good for us have transpired to be anything but.

Asylum seekers get accommodation waiting for asylum. That is either granted or they are sent back.
This process takes way too long, no doubt about that, and if there was places that people could claim asylum before landing in the UK, that would be even better. Then, anyone who turned up on a boat would be illegal. If a government worked on that it would solve some problems.

People here illegally don't get benefits.

Isn’t this rather the point? A new political party have garnered support on a single issue policy. They have no proper manifesto which explains how they will make things better for the average Josephine.

They won 14% of the votes cast in 2024. If their rise in support continues (and there is no reason to think it won’t) they could feasibly gain enough votes in the next election to prevent a majority party. This would put them in coalition, probably with the tories. Given the whole reason we are in the economic mess we are right now is because parties in power have been pandering to Reform voters, afraid of losing political standing, the power reform would have in a coalition can’t be understated. It doesn’t take much in today’s climate for a government to collapse and Farage is politically skilled enough to cause maximum carnage in that situation.

I can’t say what would happen. That depends on how far right Farage is willing to go, and how our checks and balances could stop him. I can’t say say with some certainty what won’t happen. The economy won’t improve because of them. Doctor appointment and school places won’t magically appear. Education won’t improve, schools wont become better for any child and will become worse for children with SEN. That will mean we have more people reliant on disability benefits, or will end up in severe poverty because those benefits will disappear. Our workforce will be decimated as immigration falls off a cliff. Farage will be no more able to “stop the boats”and will start going after people who are here legally in order to “fix” the immigration problem. Families will be torn apart. I suspect he will also go after his political opponents and we’ll see how much they really believe in “free speech”

We can see what the potential is by looking at other democracies who have a similar further right government who love leaders like Putin. The US and Hungary would be the best examples.

Yes , distance lends perspective they say.

Oh would some Power the giftie gie us
Tae see oursells as others see us

Everyone can see he is Trump lite. We know Trump is funding him.
Let the next couple of years show this up more. He's desperate for an early GE because he can't hold the reigns for that long without cracks showing and he knows it.

Well said
I am sick of seeing all this misinformation posted continuously

Some of these things will happen, some won't. Or some may happen slower than people think/fear.

But the key thing we can be certain of is that inequality will increase, with a small number getting richer while most of us get poorer. You don't need to understand all the details to see that that will be the outcome of a right wing program that is specifically designed around that intention.

Surely decisions should be made best on what is best for the country as a whole not based on one person posting on mumsnet.

If reform do get in - some will benefit, some will not. Will the country be better run overall. Will our debt reduce. Will we build growth. Will we invest in things. This is what a goverment should be worrying about not some sad sob story of one individual.

I mean there are going to be lots of sad sob stories aren't there. People who get their benefits cut for one.

However the reason we are in the position is because the people who are working and paying taxes to fund the country are not having their 'sob stories' listened to.

Oh and I have never voted reform before, never been on a march, never flown a flag, never voiced any racist views. I have voted Tory all my life and yet here I am having to think which goverment is best going forward.

As soon as you say Nazi I glaze over and you've lost me.

Unfortunately those at a distance do not generally have a vote in our elections

It isn’t considered unsafe. Not by every metric which governs the safety of medication. A drug that was first administered to patients a century and a half ago, and is the most commonly used pain reliever across the world with trillions of doses taken per year with very few proven issues has zero chance of being problematic.

The problem with a government decreeing something to its people with absolutely no proof whatsoever goes way beyond one single drug. It shows they are willing to lie to the people they are supposed to serve and protect. Paracetamol might be today’s lie but what about the next one, and the next? Are you willing to take the chance that it won’t be something that is important to your life? These lies are easily disproven to anyone who wants to check. But instead, they are happy to take the word of politicians, usually because that politician has a single policy that doesn’t actually affect them but fits with their world view. Politicians who are putting other policies in place which actively harm them. You are comfortable with our nation’s future being put in the hands of people like that?

This is such an interesting thread if not quite scary to think about.

However the state of our country at the moment is scary so there is no getting away from that.

Labour got in easily last year and so many of us who voted for them thought that they were the right choice. Now many of us are saying 'Oh well, we got that wrong didn't we'

People are without a doubt scared of change and that is being reflected here. I think all we need to decide is - which party is best for the overall country.

We need to ignore the individual plights of all and set policies which return us to financial viability and start digging us out of the huge debt hole.

This is going to involve hard decisions and a goverment who can make them and stand by them. Lots of people saying Nigel will get rid of the NHS - well the NHS is falling apart and is costing us more than we have. So is he wrong to get rid of it and move to a different system? Maybe, maybe not.

It's going to be an 'interesting' time for sure. Much like the last year under labour has been.

And you’re proud of that?

After world war 2 we all said “never again”. How do we ensure that, if we are prevented from pointing out the times where history is repeating itself? Even if we are wrong, wouldn’t you want to at least take a look and consider whether we are at risk of ending up in world war 3, with millions of people targeted for their religion and sent to the gas chamber? You think in 1930s Germany people wouldn’t have said “aww don’t be stupid, the German people would never be ok with 6 million Jews being sent to their death, that would never happen?”

I will 100% concede that there is no world where we could end up there, if you can show me a nation in the world where a leader has behaved in the same way as Trump (or Farage in his bid to become leader) has behaved, and it hasn’t ended up badly for the people in their country. Just one, that’s all I ask.

It'll take more than a year for Labour (any government in fact) to pull us out of the sinkhole that the Tories dragged Britain into.

If you were expecting 14 years of crap to be reversed in just one year you'd need a magic wand, a couple of genies in bottles, a fleet of flying carpets and half a dozen wishes upon a star.

Well, the same people behind Brexit are behind reform, and that turned out to be a sham. Immigration from third world countries has spared, meanwhile Europeans have headed home. That said, Trump has somehow managed to secure the borders in the US and I am not certain how many deportations have taken place, but there have been some. Perhaps if the same powers are applied here it might be possible to stop the boats, but it seems so many European laws prevent it.
As regards other policies, years ago I asked ukip about its environmental policy - it had none! So expect the environment to worsen, from it's already pretty dire state. But sadly the idea that electric cars and solar panels will stop biodiversity loss, is nuts. So the left are also dangerous when it comes to this. Joe Biden funnelled lots of mining permits in areas of wilderness in the US, for the so called green agenda. All the tortoises and Bob cats that died didn't quite see how it was "green" (see desert apocalypse on YouTube).

The problem remains that mismanagement over decades has gutted our manufacturing capacity, and now labour is shutting down north sea oil - and buying instead from Russia!? Crazy. None of the current lot get it.

"Do I think there will be an element of telling people to buck the fuck up and get back to work or starve? Yes I do..."

So some people will starve.Are you good with that? It's how things used to be,after all.
I have an autistic relative with significant anxiety and dyslexia who cannot find a full time job. They have always worked part time, have also volunteered, studied to improve their skills.They apply for jobs, and do get interviewed but not employed.They are not picky, but realistically there are some jobs they would not be able to do.
They are desperate to work full time and be independent but it ain't happening,and they are also now in the not enough experience/ can't get experience without a job bind.
Currently they are not on benefits as they are supported by their family and so have some savings, but the minute family are no longer there then what?
What form do you think bucking the fuck up and getting back to work should take for them?

When you say you got that wrong, who do you think you should have voted for that would have been better than who we have? Who do you think would have returned us back to where we were pre covid by now?

Do you think it’s possible this government is “doing badly” (and I’d like to see the metrics for that) because everything they do is being talked up as being disastrous?

I didn’t vote for Labour. That’s a wasted vote in my constituency. I probably would have if that were not the case. There was no real alternative who had any kind of plan to get us back on our feet. Pulling us out of the utter mess we are in was never going to happen immediately. I can see what a Labour are trying to do and given the right circumstances I believe it can work. But when they are too focussed on small boats and being hammered for any attempt to balance the books, whilst refusing to go after the inequity that is happening in our country, they will likely not succeed and we are sleepwalking into another right wing government who have no plan on how to make things better for us.

I think the countries that used to be the best places in the world are now not anymore. Erosion of our manufacturing base, a bloated welfare state costing us all in inflation + mass immigration has spoiled it. If Russia wasn't aligning tanks I would say go to Eastern Europe.

So you didn't properly comment on it, just called it a sob story

Similar to what is happening to the US....basically a shit show.

The deportations that have taken place are not of the terrible bad people he promised they would be. Trump has not “secured the border”. His figures are cherry picked, don’t compare apples with apples, and reflected on a 7 day period. Immigration has always fluctuated so those number mean nothing. It is also the case that under Biden, border crossings dropped by nearly 2/3, so it is likely any drop in immigration is due at least in part to the policies he put in place.

But, even if (and it’s a big if) he managed to fully secure the border and deported everyone living illegally in the US. Can you point to any other metric where the US is doing better now than it was before?

Yep, he’s so hardworking Nigel Farage - 748th out of 751 for lowest attendance when he was an MEP and only managed to make the effort for 37% of votes; he’s still going to take his EU pension though when he turns 63, despite making a career out of criticising the EU and influencing the financial disaster that is Brexit. His record as an MP is much the same - low attendance, little casework, etc. and yet he’s still the highest earning MP from his ‘anywhere but Clacton’ tour. I wonder how much he was paid each of the 17 times he appeared on Russian state TV?

@BoredZelda absolutely - people are like sheep - if someone tells you ‘he’s a disaster’ enough people hang on it - I absolutely fail to see what the issue is - the Tory’s knew this chickens coming home to roost was coming , people were busy saying they wanted the gvt to get tough on this that and the other, the minute they do it’s like ‘oh not on that- I benefit from that’ - problem for Labour isn’t so much the ‘I blame it all on foreigners crowd’ - it’s the fact that within their party they have a bunch of very naive people who think you can just make everything ok by hammering down on anyone doing ‘a bit better’ and the world is full of nice people who would stop doing nasty things if we just ask them to stop and let’s focus on LGBT and oppressed country’s - whereas a large percentage just want basic stuff functioning

if people can’t see that the media is part of the issue by constantly bigging up Farage with very little actual deep assessment because it’s good for figures , clicks, money making then there really is no hope here.

The Tory government have been failing people since 2010 - way before the little boats began arriving. People seem to have forgotten the explosion in the appearance of foodbanks in 2011-12 just after the Tories got back into power.
Reform are lying that this country is struggling due to illegal immigration.

How we treat the working classes and the poorest and most vulnerable in our country is a measure of our success. This is what labour are contending with. What are Reform planning to do to help these people?

Food parcels distributed by Trussell Trust food banks:
2008-09 - 10 thousand (this figure was pretty stable from 2005-2010)
2011-13 - 0.2 Million
2014-15 - 1.2 Million
2017-18 - 1.4 Million
2020-21 - 2.6 Million
2023-24 - 3.2 Million
Source: Trussell Trust. Note: The trust says the rise in distributions is driven by increasing demand