The Masochism of Voting Reform

[BreezyMoose]

Reform voters are now the largest mass political movement in the UK. While their leaders are bereft of both principles and plans, dismissing all Reform voters as idiots and racists is a lazy cop out that serves nobody.

Voting Labour is an act of crass immorality and stupidity, voting Tory suggests a drag anchor of stasis and apathy, voting Lib Dem smacks of a lack of passion and imagination, but voting Reform is an act of unmitigated masochism and self harm - but it is important we understand why people do it.

On one level its the logical fallacy outlined in Yes Prime Minister, my dog has four legs and my cat has four legs - therefore my dog is a cat. I want reform and here is a new party called Reform so i’ll vote for that. Dominic Cummings used the word Brexit to work the same scam, Morgan McSweeney deployed the word ‘change’ and the Democrats tried the word ‘joy’. It didn’t work for the Democrats because not enough people in the states wanted ‘joy’ - they wanted revenge, which brings us to the masochism of voting for Reform.

Imagine a child wants an ice cream, their parents say no and the child is left angry about not getting what they want and their lack of agency - perhaps in a hot moment they might even start hating their parents. After a while the parents see how upset their child is and offer an ice cream, but the child screams ‘neaaww!!’ and knocks the ice cream out of their parent’s hand and on to the floor. That’s masochism, any parent will recognise it, the child is too into hating their parent in the moment to take the thing they really want, such moments need careful handling.

Many (most?) people in the UK don’t get much careful handling, they are consistently told in both word and deed that their happiness is irrelevant, perhaps this is a hangover of empire, but more saliently it is why the UK consistently ranks as one of the most unhappy nations in Europe. A shocking but normalised backdrop of familial, educational and neoliberal socioeconomic squashes, dehumanises many Britons, seeing them as little more than throwaway units of consumption and production.

One can see from this standpoint, why many focus on the (wilfully over-hyped and politically weaponised) topic of economic migration that is portrayed as further diluting an already anaemic sense of belonging and adding to a sense that to a certain establishment, working class Britons are as disposable as a used vape. Reform voters may be muddled about the motives of Farage, but they ain’t wrong about that last bit.

The throwaway working classes of Britain, face accusatory pressure from people (usually in comfortable positions in the media, government / politics) that they must remain vigilant about (and indeed accept responsibility for) the hurt feelings of a wide range of people in OTHER groups.

It’s easy to see how exhausted white, heterosexual males scratching an increasingly precarious living in a nation that has never cared about their feelings, might resent the quivering sensitivity demanded of them for gay rights, trans rights, people on the ‘spectrum’, ethnic / religious minorities and all the rest. They might just think that being in the majority ethnic group in the UK is actually a curse rather than a benefit, after all there are no government grants for organisations combating discrimination against the white-van-man, no benefits for people in work who lie awake at night worrying about having to put their car repairs and urgent dental work on their credit card - quite the reverse, these are the people that late stage capitalism loves to exploit to the max.

Now Reform are not any kind of an answer for the precariat (they’ll make it worse), but it is nigh on impossible to explain this to Reform voters and here is why:
Reform voters (and many voters for all the other parties) are often not making an evidenced based judgement but an emotional one, they quite understandably HATE the establishment that dehumanises and discards them and more than anything they want to STICK IT to that establishment, they don’t WANT to check the credentials and plans of their chosen champions and the more that smug liberals tell them they should, the less inclined they feel to do it.

This is the masochism, what matters is not healing or hope, but the hatred (carefully cultivated for decades by the billionaire owned media) for what they see as a shadowy triumvirate of invaders - immigrants, the woke and the loony left.

The British political / media class has nobody but itself to blame for the looming triumph of the Farage / Trump playbook. For decades voters have been promised change and got nothing but more of the same and worse. The lived reality of the political clock in the UK stopped under Thatcher and has not changed since. Those parties like Labour and the Lib-Dems who delivered more status-quo neoliberalism are particularly to blame.

Reform voters will soon have the rare pleasure of sticking a plastic straw up the noses of at least some of the establishment, it doesn't matter to them who benefits or even what happens next as long as Starmer, the immigrants and the woke get shafted by it.

This mostly blind back-lash that Farage is surfing has been long in the making and I doubt much can be done to mitigate it now, but for those minded to try...

...start by trying to understand the emotional landscape of Reform voters first, hear and acknowledge their pain, respect their concerns and fears, listen to their frustration and frayed sense of betrayal and try to offer more hope than a one shot stab at revenge. This job has been made very difficult by identity politics and decades of betrayal from faux left wing hustlers like Blair, Brown and now Starmer but there is little to be lost from the effort and perhaps everything to gain.

Sometimes political change is more about a heartfelt commitment to listening and healing than it is about winning the argument. The Greens, now the champions of the left-liberal progressives, would be especially well served by remembering this.

Sorry, please tell me exactly why my daughter should have penises in her changing room and toilet?

I’ll wait.

Oh I missed which user you @ed in your reply. I would say their position on that issue is entirely sensible, and I won't vote for any party stubbornly clinging on to the laughable ideas of gender ideology.

Tl;dr. You start with so many outlandish premises that I can't be bothered to read the rest. You should start by establishing your premises then I might be willing to read on. And as pp said, it's obvious that this is going to be a superior, condescending post. If you want to understand reform voters you should perhaps speak with them? And try to listen?

It’s the Lib Dems here. The other day they put a letter through my letterbox which made zero references to what they have done or will do if elected. It was a whole page of “vote for us so we can beat Reform”

"To be fair though, most people who vote Reform are idiots"

Responders obediently lining up to prove the point.

Yet nothing on the immoral, corrupt, often illegal behaviour of members of their beloved Reform party, or on some of their destructive policies that are designed to enrich themselves and their mates and actively hurt the very imbeciles who vote for them.

You couldn't make it up... 🙄

"You start with so many outlandish premises that I can't be bothered to read the rest"

Typical Reform thinking. Facts don't stop being facts just because you don't like the facts.

Did you miss this "fact" from the OP's 1st paragraph? You can't both be right.

"Dismissing all Reform voters as idiots and racists is a lazy cop out that serves nobody."

It's simple. I disagree with the OP on the mental capabilities and political ideology of Reform voters.

That you can be ignorant of the facts about the party and want to vote for them is understandable; you don't know any better.

But to have the facts laid out, to be shown how utterly corrupt and self-serving Reform are, and then still want to vote for them either makes you as morally bankrupt as them or a fucking imbecile.

ha ha. So wrong on every count. First off, I am not a reform voter. Second off, the opening statements are not facts they are characterisations of different types of voters. If you think those are facts and also think you can know what way I vote from a couple of sentences on an internet forum then I can't believe you are calling me stupid. Do you even know what a premise is?

Oh I do agree with you about The Green party being, basically, the Worst Thing Ever.

I've done some digging into their leader and am alarmed at what I've read. Here is a summary...

(Disclaimer: Reform voters. This summary is long and contains lots of them words and stuff, so you may want to stop reading now so you has enuf head power for putting a little X in a little box later)

Millions of impressionable voters will soon be heading to the polls, dreaming of saving the planet, hugging trees, and finally getting proportional representation. Their inspiration is the charismatic supervillain who currently goes by the name of Zack Polanski. Who knows what he will be called tomorrow?
Younger generations have clearly been hypnotised by the Green Party’s new leader, but do they really know the man behind the pocket watch? This stunning investigation from Normal Island News reveals the hideous truth. A truth so grim that Britain’s newspapers have borrowed from antisemitic cartoons from the 1930s to depict Polanski’s true face.

As Antisemitism Tsar John Mann explained on three separate podcasts: “It’s the Green Party’s fault that everyone is being antisemitic towards Zack.” Presumably, it’s also his family’s fault for anglicising their surname decades ago… to avoid antisemitism.

Antisemitism against Jews who disagree with the Israeli government is the only acceptable form left so naturally, we’re making the most of it. We were waiting for an excuse to attack Polanski for being gay, but it turns out he’s vegan and his boyfriend is a criminal who was arrested at an Extinction Rebellion protest. That’s the type of scumbag we’re dealing with here, someone who wants to save the world…

This nightmare began on 2 November 1982 when a baby called David Paulden emerged in the godforsaken lands of Salford, screaming “Globalise the intifada!” Disgracefully, he was not born wearing a grey suit. Even worse, to this day he does not speak like a robotic accountant who enjoys beige.

Real politicians are wheeled into cupboards at night so their batteries can recharge, but this guy has repeatedly failed to explain how his batteries are charged — I bet he is not using wind or solar. Fucking hypocrite.
As a child, David attended the elitist Stockport Grammar School, proving that he didn’t believe in equality even then. Upon leaving school, he arrogantly decided he was too good for a proper job, instead wasting his life in the gig economy doing youth work, mental health counselling, and hospitality.

At the age of 18, David Paulden changed his name to Zack Polanski to avoid a £3.50 library fine, a fee that he still hasn’t paid to this day. Thanks to interest, late fees, and inflation, that £3.50 has risen to £1,768,089, an amount that Polanski is clearly keeping for himself. The man is hoarding wealth that belongs to Stockport Library Services. Who is the one-percenter now?

Polanski’s ego was so inflated, he tried his hand at acting and appeared in several low budget abominations, such as The Art of Suicide, Seven Crosses, and The Gallon Challenge, none of which matched the quality of cinematic masterpieces such as The Iron Lady, or even Melania.

Polanski might no longer be appearing in movies, but he is still acting: his latest role being someone who cares about the environment, international law, and the struggles of ordinary people. No credible politician would stoop so low.

Alarmingly, Polanski invented the climate crisis in the 2000s when the world was still reeling from the Millennium Bug. He kept this lie going for over two decades to distract from the fact that he increased the size of a woman’s boobs through hypnotherapy. When news crossed the Atlantic, he was briefly hired by Kristi Noem’s husband, proving he will do anything for money, unlike the politicians who take donations from the Israeli lobby.

Polanski is such a fraud that he once claimed to be a spokesperson for the British Red Cross, but he actually just organised events for them and spoke on stage at their fundraisers. Fucking scumbag. Who raises funds for the Red Cross? As Netanyahu keeps telling us, it is basically a front for Hamas, meaning Polanski has undeniable ties to terrorism.

Polanski once said something nice about Greta Thunberg and even praised notorious terror leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn. Previously, he was a good boy who amplified the line that Corbyn was a threat to Britain’s Jews, but then he was radicalised by the truth. At that point, Polanski became a threat to Britain’s Jews, even though he is one of Britain’s Jews. I still don’t understand why this smear isn’t landing.

Eleven years ago came the most shameful episode of Polanski’s career when he officially stood for nothing. Well, he stood for the Liberal Democrats, but that’s more or less the same thing. Polanski might have switched allegiances to the Greens, but he is still a moral vacuum, unlike the politicians who drone “Israel has the right to defend itself” in unison.

While he lectures us on our carbon footprint, it turns out Polanski can’t even do his recycling properly. Being a serious journalist, I rummaged through his blue bin and planted… I mean found non-recyclables such as crisp packets. I also found an unwashed tin of beans and an egg carton that wasn’t free range.

Clearly, Polanski is worse than the companies poisoning our water supplies with data centres that do AI porn and mass surveillance.

Despite his shady past, Polanski stood as Green leader in 2025 and won a totally believable 85% of the vote, making him the UK’s Kim Jong Un. Just know that if he becomes prime minister, it will be because he rigged that vote too.
There is no way the public would knowingly vote for someone who is not an establishment puppet…

While uniparty politicians tell the truth about everything, Polanski is always inventing ridiculous conspiracy theories. For example, he claimed the media had erased the Muslim victim of the Golders Green stabbings from headlines. This might be factually correct, but Polanski also claimed that Keir Starmer sent weapons to Israel while it was committing genocide. This might also be factually correct, but he also claimed that the Metropolitan Police have replaced London’s pigeons with feathered surveillance drones. This might also be correct, but are you not tired of his conspiracy theories?

Polanski poses such a national security threat that the prime minister sensibly mimics Farage and attacks the only political leader on the left. The fact all party leaders agree Polanski is the real problem proves that 47 years of Thatcherism are his fault. Why did Zack cause the housing crisis? What was he thinking?
Britain deserves better than a man who believes workers deserve a living wage, breathable air is a good idea, and genocide is wrong. We deserve better than a gay, vegan, name-changing Jew who wants to lead us into a bright green future.

We say: ENOUGH! We demand Polanski’s immediate resignation. We demand he finally pays that library fine. And most of all, we demand that someone wheels him into a cupboard at night like a normal politician. The people deserve nothing less.

Indeed. Which in the UK excludes Labour, Lib Dem’s and Greens as well as the SNP and Plaid

I didn’t leave the left. The left left me.

I think you've done enough to prove you know how to use AI to write your posts for you now.

🤣

To be fair I looked at the length of it and couldn’t be bothered. Why not post a condensed version?

This is the tragedy of Labour.

How did it get so taken over by relative wealthy idealogues that it forgot who it was supposed to be representing?

When the Boris Red Wall vote showed them clearly that this had happened why did they do nothing to put it right?

Who did they leave for the working class to vote for but Reform, and now the Greens?

Now they've swung back to policies that attract those votes but they done such a hash of a job of managing the country so far that it's not working.

It's going to be a Labour bloodbath today.

And just how stupid does Starmer think his back benches are, threatening them with a General Election if they depose him? There is no reason whatsoever why, with their majority, that would happen.

We didn't have more covid deaths than any other EU country. We're about mid table - around the same death rate as Italy, Belgium and Poland
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/?srsltid=AfmBOopmD5oQQ0h9BsjeXdVKQSBTsZIP3uX0A0vgxslQrvSXTUblKvAy

I heard he leaves the top off the toothpaste.

Jesus. Are there no depths to which this monster won't stoop!?

And puts the end of the loo roll against the wall before leaving the toilet seat up? 🤣😂🤣

😀

Worse still, I heard Zack puts the loo-roll on backwards, so the end hangs straight down at the back instead of over the roll and at the front which is the way a Patriotic British loo-roll should be.

He also eats scones with the jam on before the cream. The man has No Shame

Kamala targeted the wealthy Manhattan voters, because that's what mattered to her. She didn't care about Birmingham Alabama, and all the rest of the "hillbilly" towns.
How did that go for her?

Rather more importantly, how's that going for Birmingham Alabama?

I think we are looking at labour losing maybe 2000 seats I think it’s going to be worse than the predictions

Again, specifically you tell me why my 14 year-old daughter should have penises in her changing room and toilets. be exact.

just because you think women are second class citizens doesn’t mean I do