This post nails it about left wing voters on Mumsnet over the last two days

[ProudAmberTurtle]

It's by an ex-academic on X, about posts on Reddit over the last 48 hours but is equally applicable to Mumsnet, where I can seeing posts stating things like:

"How stupid are Reform voters? Don't they realise they'll get fewer benefits?!"

The irony is of course that it's those posters who need to be educated, not the working class voters they mock because they think they're thick.

Here you go:

Reading through Reddit threads in which leftists/progressives express their bewilderment/confusion/fury at working class English voters for casting their lot in with Reform, one of the things I'm starting to understand is this:

They simply do not understand how a government could help working-class people in any other way besides giving them benefits, handouts, and other free things.

Their entire mental architecture is premised upon the premises that

1. Working class people are poor
2. The only way for them to not be poor is for the state to give them free stuff
3. So left-wing parties need to promise them lots of free stuff

Then, when these working-class voters instead vote for right-of-centre parties who instead promise an economy in which they can build a career, start their own business, make a financial success of themselves and start a family, they're confused.

Because, again, in their mental architecture, what the working class are supposed to want is free benefits from the state.

But what they actually want is a fair shake at making their own way in the world, making money, getting on in life.

And the left simply doesn't understand that what these voters want from the state is an economy in which they can actually do this.

x.com/i/status/2053073719086469193

They simply do not understand how a government could help working-class people in any other way besides giving them benefits, handouts, and other free things

This is where this completely falls down.

Reform are no such thing.

And left-wing people despise the white working class. Actually they also despise any poc who has made a success of things. The just love a victim with their hand out.

Well Reform don’t seem to have any plan to grow the economy, much of the benefits structure was in place when the Tories were in power, they didn’t grow the economy either, nor did they make any meaningful changes to the welfare state. So right of centre aren’t doing much other than fostering divide.

Er no. What many of us realise is that Reform and their ilk have no interest in creating a society where the working class can prosper. They're a party that represent the interests of the wealthy elite and are scapegoating immigrants to divert attention from the real reasons why the working class are struggling. The insatiable greed of the wealthy elite who pay poverty wages, buy up property and resources etc. They see the working classes as nothing more than proles to be used to further enable them to meet their own ends. If they actually cared about the working classes why would they say that the minimum wage is too high, despise unions, and want to end protections for worker's rights? They will create a society where work and wages are even more precarious for the working classes making them even more desperate.

The interests of businessmen like Tice, Banks, Harborne and the other wealthy business people propping the party up do not align with the interests of the working classes. This is what we on the left understand and working classes on the right do not. Why have the wealthy elite in this country shifted their support from the Tories to Reform? Because they are the extreme wing of the Tory Party who they know will enable them to become even richer.

And if it was actually about immigration - why the fuck are two of the culprits of the immigration disaster of the last decade, Jenrick and Braverman, on the front benches of Reform? They're responsible for this mess, and sit there saying we're the ones to fix it.

I agree with you. It was summed up to me by some posh twat at Glastonbury the day after the brexit vote quoted in the press as saying “the chavs have won mate.”

The privileged dont get it. They don’t have to live and work with the impact of unfettered mass immigration policy, declining public services, and working long hours in mind numbing low paid jobs to see their feckless neighbour or recently arrived people being given everything.

It’s ironic that they are called the thick chavs or gammons when the leftist middle classes continually hand wring over the rise of Reform and yet the answers are obvious - build the economy, promote British industry, make work pay and be seen to have sensible, controlled immigration.

That is absolute nonsense.

The post is about online 'progressives' not understanding working class people, and thinking they're all stupid, want free things from the state or both.

The 'progressives' of Mumsnet in response: Urgh. Working class people are so thick!

And what policies other than making those mind numbing low paid jobs even more precarious do Reform have to alleviate those concerns? All they're suggesting they'll do is lower the minimum wage and scrap worker's protections and rights. They'll still have the same shitty mind numbing job, but with even fewer rights and be at the mercy of their employers. Woohoo what a win!!!

Thank you for putting it better than I could’ve!

@Firetreev has it right. 👏

I think the Tories were okay with mass immigration because it helped undermine the working classes and made for cheap labour.

That's all very well, but it meant competition for housing among one end of society, resentment that could be fostered - but if you want to go back to how it was before, it's tricky because the current economy is based around all that now, not to mention the gig economy where someone can get to work cheap and off the books.

It's like the Right (inc to some extent Blair's New Labour) created this situation, and now the Extreme Right seek to benefit. I'm not sure the actual Left would have allowed this at all, but then a) They've been sidelined for decades and b) Ugh - socialism!

You’ve proved my point about middle class mentality and thinking. You work 40+ hours doing something mindless and soul crushing and then see if you give a shit about the minutiae of wage policy. You already live a shit life, you’ve got nothing to lose.

I must admit, I don't come across working class people in my daily life all that much so I can't pretend to know how they feel on anything really. But what I will say is, time and time again I found myself incredibly disappointed with the results of elections/referendum when I find out the reason things have gone the way they have is because of some working class non issue that has whipped them all up into a frenzy.

It happened with Brexit and it's happening again. I try not to feel this way but it really does make me incredibly resentful I have to say.

Working class doesn’t mean thick or on benefits and Labour was meant to be the party of the working classes. It isn’t the working class’s fault that Labour abandoned them. The Tories aren’t there for them either. So who should the working class vote for? No one is representing them, how is that their fault? Could a working class person even get a sniff of political power by actually representing working class people and issues these days anyway? I don’t think reform or the Green Party or the ridiculous party the people who live where I do have voted into the local council will do a good job of representing the working class either but again, what do people want working class people to do? Not vote at all?

I’m a middle class, educated, success story from a very working class family. I would say the key thing Reform tapped into, for both the working classes AND the upper middles, was the idea of having pride in this country. My WC family feel pride in being British and my mum was as potty about the Royal family as my upper MC MIL.

The self flagellation that Labour now professes, the idea of reparations for things done hundreds of years ago, men in women’s spaces and sport - all of these things cause my family to do a big eye roll. They love the flags along the road leading into town, they want to reclaim that pride and Reform seem to be the only party offering that to them.

Your thread title doesn't reflect that.

How do you know that online 'progressives' are not working class?
At the last election about a third of all classes of the population voted Labour.

Those online/MN progressives are as likely to be a gardener as they are a lecturer.

I voted Labour. I'm a manual worker, comprehensive educated, dad a motor mechanic (votes Tory), mum a cleaner (votes Labour) , husband a decorator (Labour), brother on benefits (Reform). Am I one of your 'progressives' or am I one of your 'working class'?

Also 'working class people are so thick' isn't the same as

"their entire mental architecture is premised upon the premises that

1. Working class people are poor
2. The only way for them to not be poor is for the state to give them free stuff
3. So left-wing parties need to promise them lots of free stuff"

Can you give us an example of the latter that you have seen on MN?

I don’t despise working class people or think they’re thick. But the irony is that Nigel Farage does.

I take exception with this being levelled at the 'left wing'. In my experience, much of the working class is actually left wing, certainly up north in the old industrial heartlands where the votes for Labour could be weighed not that long ago. They're voting Reform because they are desperate for change. If Blair's Labour hadn't let them down so immensely, we wouldn't be where we are now.

It's my experience as a long time, exasperated Guardian reader that the people being referred to are actually liberals. These people despise the working class with a passion. They are the people who champion EDI, but what that looks like to them is giving a black kid from a top public school a leg up rather than a white working class kid with aptitude from a sink school who is excelling against the odds.

I loathe them with every fibre of my being.

You make so many assumptions. I have worked mindless, soul crushing jobs for minimum wage in the past. It made me more engaged and supportive of worker's rights and how I could better my circumstances, it didn't encourage me to vote against my own interests. The country is in a mess off the back of fourteen years of Tory rule, and so many people seem to think the way to fix that mess is to vote for the same shysters because they've pinned on a rosette which is a lighter shade of blue led by the man who is responsible for the biggest fuck up of all, Brexit!

That's revolting, truly revolting. As a society we should be past jingoism and nationalism. People from all over the world make this tiny island their home and those flags do not represent the place that it is today. I hope Labour stand their ground and don't give in to the patriotism epidemic that seems to be sweeping it's way through the northern working class.

Love the double think here. Right wingers/Reform voters get really upset when they are even mildly challenged on here, calling it bullying, or a pile on or the childish epithet de jour. But left wingers are fair game!

I don't like Reform myself but I agree with your basic hypothesis. The Left, to which I once belonged, has become obsessed with identitarianism and a narcissistic belief that they are morally superior. It's really disappointing.

The snobbery towards the working class never went away, it just changed clothes. The Left is now populated by the wealthy and privileged who, in a different era, would just be bog standard Tories. I saw this change happening in the 90s. At first I thought it was great to see so many privileged people developing a social conscience - but that wasn't it at all, it was about being seen to care, which is not the same thing at all.

Rob Henderson is very interesting on development. He's the man who coined the term Luxury Beliefs, which is worth reading up on - and is certainly the basis of many of the unworkable/unfair policies being generated from the Left.

The Green Party being the most extreme. They actually scare me.

The privileged dont get it. They don’t have to live and work with the impact of unfettered mass immigration policy, declining public services, and working long hours in mind numbing low paid jobs to see their feckless neighbour or recently arrived people being given everything.

That argument might work if we had an unfettered mass immigration policy, but obviously we don't. The right to immigration is strictly controlled, in indeed the vast majority of immigrants come here to work and contribute to our economy. This government has significantly speeded up the processing of asylum claims with the result that, whereas in 2023 (Tory government with Braverman and Jenrick responsible for immigration) the backlog of claims awaiting a decision was 138K, in 2025 (after 18 months of Labour government) it fell to 48K.

Being dependent on benefits is not "being given everything"; on the contrary, asylum seekers, who are the main targets of Reform voters' anger, get the princely sum of £49.18 per week.

Reform make themselves out to be deeply patriotic, but the reality is that they are the reverse. We have a centuries-old tradition in Britain of helping refugees which Reform wants to junk. I really hate to think what would have happened had they been in power in the 1930s - I suspect we really would have a Nazi government now.

It really is quite astonishing.

"working class people just want a leg-up, not a hand-out!"

Well yes, hence the bafflement at working-class people voting for right-wing parties whose entire ideology is based on low wage capitalism, race to the bottom, stripping of rights, and exploiting the workforce in order to fatten the back balances of the already wealthy.

Presumably we're supposed to still buy into the total nonsense that "trickle down economy" is actually a thing.

The country is not just in a mess because of 14 years of tory rule. We've had Tory rule since 1979, Blair changed nothing. He saw it as his job to build on the policies of Thatcherism, rather than reverse them. Labour were supposed to the party that championed the working class but they've been infiltrated by liberals who like the right wing policies and hand out freebies at the lower end to even things up. What people want is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome which is an insidious ideology.