Is Reform done for?

[anotherside]

The last several recent national polls indicate that the election of Burnham as leader has seen Labour retake the lead and would probably form a minority government (or better) if an election was held tomorrow. Reform meanwhile is in the low 20s, while they’re were averaging low 30s just six months ago. Do you think it’s game over for Reform in terms of the next election? Is Burnham enough to secure the next election for Labour? Or could Reform claw it back still?

I don’t particularly care for Reform because they’ve made it very clear they think anyone who works in the public sector are lazy and don’t know the meaning of hard work. So they won’t be getting my vote, and I don’t care if they’re losing votes.

Equally I’m not happy with Labour at all because they’ve gone back on so many promises, and don’t even get me started on the Greens. So I will be voting for Kemi to
be the next PM.

It’s likely that Reform’s support has peaked, for two man reasons :

1, Sleaze. They are up to their necks in serious allegations of dodgy financial donations from very dodgy people. Voters don’t like blatantly corrupt politicians.

2, Restore. Rupert Lowe has become a serious problem for Farage. Restore got 9% of the vote in the Manchester mayoral election & 7% in Makerfield, comfortably beating the Tories & Lib Dems in both. Those are significant numbers of real votes in real elections. Votes cast by people whose support Reform needs in order to win a general election.

Therefore Farage has big problems. He has to try to find a way of neutralising the sleaze allegations, which won’t be easy. Then, he has to try to do do some sort of deal with Lowe without being forced to adopt radical policies (eg forceD mass deportations of people who came to this country legally) which will alienate the moderate centre-right conservative voters he needs in order to win.

It doesn't mean that though. Your only realistic chance of getting rid of Labour is the total eradication of Reform (or the Tories) so the right is united under one party in the proper two horse race of old. Reform inching ahead while still neck and neck with Labour, and the Tories still taking a sizable vote chunk is no use to you at all. The three party race is only of benefit to us lefties at the moment I'm afraid.

Agree with this . Restore is far too right for most normal righties . Besides a Reform / Restore join up would result in nothing but internal fights . The best thing for righties is if the Tories become stronger and on the right I only see Kemi as a strong enough leader .

Kemi herself sees this. Hence her not joining in with the baying for a GE right now.
The Restore pact proposal is interesting as Farage has tried very hard to present as 'mainstream right' and hasn't done that well enough to convince enough thinking moderate right wing voters.
He will alienate them further with an alliance with a lunatic who wants to bring in the death penalty (but only for British Citizens, criminals from abroad escaping justice via deportation, make that make sense!) and fire arms (Dunblane was only 'a' murder, after all).
I also think that the thinking righties have as much of a problem with Reform as the lefties. Just because the moderate right and left disagree on economic issues and some social policy, doesn't mean the moderate right would accept a corrupt and incompetent Reform government.

Spot on. With the Joshua Bonehill-Paine debacle which Badenoch has doubled down on, my bloke’s last remaining strand of allegiance to the Tory party is under severe strain. I imagine he’ll continue to vote for them because even I have to admit our local MP is excellent but the party overall is making him tear his hair out. He finds Reform as appalling as I do.

What was she thinking with JBP? I mean, I'm always quite close to the front of those willing to accept people can be rehabilitated, though more sceptical when that appears to involve a reversal of values rather than regret for an action or mistake; but the optics here are appalling and Reform will have a field day.

And do you genuinely think that a Reform government would do better and be less corrupt than the “shit show” of a Labour government?

Can but hope! They'd be an absolute disaster.

I detest Farage and everything he stands for but hope he wins Clacton so that the investigation into his finances and failures to declare can be properly investigated. For people on the left Clacton is a bit of a win win. If he loses to Binface it will be hilarious and if he wins then the investigation can resume. And since he stood down his own account of when he decided to ‘re-enter’ politics has shifted considerably.

That's an interesting comment. I was reading an article the other day (I can't remember where) about why so many people in the USA were still backing Trump. It said that many of them know that he's a corrupt, lying, incompetent, rude, ignorant and all-round thoroughly unpleasant man, but that they'll still vote for him rather than a Democrat, as they see them as the spawn of Satan.

There seem to be growing parallels between what has happened in the USA and what is happening here (a lot of which I believe is being manipulated by foreign factors posting fake news on social media) and it scares me.....

@5128gap

They basically have one offer, stop the boats. If people see the current government addressing immigration, then what have they got to attract voters?

I agree. They're a one trick pony, and have flourished because neither Tories nor Starmer properly understood the strength of feeling re uncontrolled immigration of undesirables. IF, and it's a very big IF, Burnham can deal with the boats and other unnecessary immigration, AND the existing asylum seekers are dealt with properly, deport or integrate properly, not just move them around to bases quadrupling local village populations!), and introduce stronger laws to deport serious immigrant criminals, then Farage has nothing else to offer.

All the parties will have a field day with it. I can’t imagine how Lucinda Berger feels about it. Every single party leader will condemn Badenoch for this and rightly so. It’s a massive error of judgement.

Unfortunately Burnham doesn't have magic powers and there is no way he's going to be able to achieve all that. Just as the Tories couldn't, and no more than Farage could.
Its a complex piece of work, that Farage has framed as achievable if the will was there, rather than the reality.
My realistic hope is that Burnham is able to improve lives so that people feel less shortchanged and therefore less likely to obsess over immigration as the reason for their problems. And alongside that, steadily bring in workable measures to reduce numbers, keeping the public informed of progress made.
Starmer started with this, but wasn't good on communication to explain why it takes time and what progress had been made. The communication vacuum was then filled by Reform.

There was very little “strength of feeling” about immigration before Farage started stirring the pot. I strongly suspect that if he piped down for a bit it would weaken considerably.

People in their own echo chambers may have thought that. People living in areas like Bradford that have been virtually taken over, have been "worried" about uncontrolled immigration for decades!

People were worried about uncontrolled immigration from Eastern Europe under Blair - long before Farage jumped on the bandwagon.

The only people who were concerned about immigration from eastern Europe were those who saw those people working hard for lower pay and resented the competition. Polish builders were highly sought after because they were notoriously hard working, honest and competent.

Agree, hence we saw the rise of the BNP. There were race riots in Oldham in 2001.

Nothing to do with people having concerns and everything to do with far right fascists shit stirring and paving the way for Farage and his ilk.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/15/race-riots-far-right-britain-stereotypes-nationalist-politics

I don't need The Guardian to tell me why it happened, I grew up there.

Bloody hope so.

I think its obvious how, why and when it happens.
Working class people in deprived neighbourhoods with too few resources to go around see themselves in competition for what little they have with new communities. And rather than look at the real reasons they are poor and who is really being enriched at their expense, they are encouraged to see only their immediate competitors as the problem.
The fact that the working classes were poor and exploited when Britain was a white homogenous society, and were far worse off, seems to pass them by.
As does the fact that any additional rights and protections they do have, state support for low incomes, employment and housing protections are the work of the left. And that those they look to to save them from immigrants would remove these in a heartbeat.

Exactly that.

The FPTP system makes opinion poll percentages worthless. Look at the results of the 2024 general election.

Labour votes 33.7% seats 63.2 %
Cons votes 23.7% seats 18.6%
Reform votes 14.3% seats 0.76%
LibDems votes 12.2% seats 11%

Reform unlikely to win the next general election, but possible to be part of a coalition.

With who? As we stand now no other party will touch them with a barge poll except Restore, and combined that wouldn't be enough for a majority. A hung parliament would see a progressive coalition.