**Alternate Sources**
Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story:
* [Nigel Farage's return boosts UK's right wing Reform UK party, poll shows](https://reuters.com/world/uk/nigel-farages-return-boosts-uks-right-wing-reform-uk-party-poll-shows-2024-06-05/), suggested by Madisupercool - reuters.com
I like how that dude has done his performative 'I'll vote Reform, come at me bruh' routine but simply asking 'Why?' is the thing that gets downvoted lol.
I've listened to our local Reform reps - they're fucking morons, quite obvious they're wayward Tories who've just come out of decades long careers of being a 'I have no policy ideas'-backbencher and just see Reform as a means to try to cling onto what's left of their career. Frankly if you give a shit about voting for a party with cohesion/a vision for the future, then they're not worth the time - they have no vision, and I pity anyone who buys their blatant bullshit for even a moment.
I don’t need to buy their full range of ideas - I mainly care about immigration and that’s the main issue they want to solve - once that’s done I can then vote for a party to fix everything else
> and that’s the main issue they want to solve
No far right party has ever delivered this for any country over multiple terms. Capitalism will never allow it. For example, Austria had one of the first significant far right anti immigration parties in the latter half of the 20th century. Yet go check their immigration rates by year and see if that made a difference.
Hell, America has been moaning about immigrants for the past 200 years. Still immigration always ticks upwards. Because the Treasury demands several hundred thousand immigrants every quarterly, because it knows that capitalism is a debt ponzi which requires a constant influx of immigrants to expand its consumer/producer base and so avoid collapse.
And note that far right parties like Reform tend to be militantly capitalist. So they hate the symptoms of the religion they love, and are ideologically opposed to the few economic policies which would make their anti immigration stance marginally workable.
Outright lie, multiple countries and multiple parties have done this, I am not sure why your lying.
Japan, Singapore, Australia, South Korea, Poland and so on so fourth.
They still have net immigration though, and they're currently facing a population crisis as their population ages but young people aren't having *nearly* enough babies to achieve even replacement levels (1.3 kids rather than 2.1).
Japan is *famously* facing a demographic crisis, as (like many developed nations) its native population fertility has dropped below replacement rate but it's also culturally opposed to bolstering its population with large-scale immigration.
If they don't change something soon their population is actually going to start shrinking, and the effects on a capitalist society of population *reduction* from generation to generation are economically disastrous, as there simply aren't enough productive young workers to offset the economically unproductive old people.
**Edit:** Holy shit, it's [already happening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Population_Projection) - Japan's population peaked around 2010 and has already started declining. Unless something changes quickly their economy is *toast* in the next few decades.
Yeah, Reform aren't fixing immigration. Not in their interests to do so. They wouldn't have anything to run on next time, would they?
They're just lining their pockets, don't fall for it.
They won’t fix it because they won’t get elected. But if they do well enough then it might make the main two parties think about actually addressing the issue instead of ignoring it.
They won't fix it because they don't want to.
I'm sorry, they just don't. They know that *you* want it fixed, so they'll say whatever they need to say to get your vote. That's what the people in Reform have done for their careers before, and they'll continue to do it now.
They're noise makers. Populists. They're not credible politicians with any ability or will to execute on what they're selling you.
They won’t fix anything though… they are a party chock full of grifters. If they actually do anything about immigration, their grift would be over. They’ll do absolutely naff all, pin any blame on someone else, and try to keep their scam going.
With regards literally anything else about the country, and their policies, the terms piss up, and brewery, come to mind.
Plus people voted for Brexit which is fairly reform like lol and legal immigration figures shot up. Visas were the price of poorly negotiated trade deals the tories desperately needed to sign for some good news. The bad news is thpse deals were crap for many and some feel sold out. The dingys? I maintain they never wanted them stopped. They dominate headlines that might otherwise go on an NHS strike, state of social care, state of the roads, lack of 40 hospitals, party gate etc. Useful are dinghys.
Just like Brexit; the people who lent their vote to the tories got what they wanted and now they've moved on. It didn't do anyone any *good* but hey, what's another single issue among friends?
My point is; you should be voting based on a whole range of concerns not just one thing, because everything is connected and if a gov decides the only way it can cling on is by 'doing the one thing' like it was with Brexit, then everything else is on the chopping block, including a lot of things we need!
And you would say the same to anyone who votes for the SNP or Greens? They are largely single issue parties - like reform they have other policies but they largely are unachievalbe or make no sense.
Many many people are single issue voters and it’s fine - neither 100% of Tory or labours policies make complete sense and not all of them will be achieved anyway (typically only a few things will be achieved)
I very much would say the same to SNP and Green voters, yes! I'll grant that the SNP seemed to buck the trend for awhile but they're set to lose like, 60%+ of their MPs for a reason. And the less said about the Green's various failings the better, for brevity's sake.
>I mainly care about immigration
Why? You don't like the fact that our entire healthcare system is kept alive by the working multi-generational immigrant population in the UK?
This is commonly quoted. Immigrations only overcontribute 0.2% to the NHS. Our white population is 74.5% whilst 74.3% of NHS workers are white British.
Why wouldn’t it?
Housing - we would need 600k houses to maintain our currently level of housing standard. Labour plans to build 300k houses per year. Reducing immigration would mean this 300k results in a surplus
NHS and school usage - immigrants typically have more children. Less immigrants (especially unskilled ) results in less pressure for both
Honestly, it’s refreshing to see you admitting this *and* (except that one guy who was the classic redditor with a superiority complex) people generally giving you a fair listen.
Personally, I’m a bit sceptical about Reform’s ability to actually *do* anything about immigration. And I absolutely think something does need to be done about it.
So I’m one of those undecided voters at the moment.
Oh I have little faith in politicians enacting what’s promised in their manifestos.
But Ive gotta put that cross somewhere. I do feel Reform see this as more a priority issue than the other parties.
I gave a reason in response to someone else. Seems they just asked to create an argument though.
But briefly, we need to build 530,000 new homes each year just to stay still with current migration levels. That’s according to the FT.
What kind of future is that for school leavers, knowing there’s a good chance they’ll never be able to afford a home? A lifetime of renting with nothing to show for it? I don’t trust the Tories on this issue given that they tripled net migration. And Labour can’t commit to saying roughly how much they’d like to reduce it by.
Migration added 1% to our population last year. GDP grew at around 0.2%. We all got slightly poorer. I think it’s the longest recession in terms of GDP per capita that we’ve had in a long while.
Folk should be able to look forward to owning a home for their families after working hard.
I actually saw that as I scrolled on after commenting. But i appreciate the response, I'm not looking to give you a lecture.
Il be honest with you. I watched the press conference of farages the other day, just to see what he was saying. I ended up watching the whole thing, even the press questions after. I thought at the time that what he was saying, especially at the start is going to resonate with alot of people. I even felt a bit stirred myself. I'm really interested to see how it all plays out. I think if they manage to snatch some traditional labour red wall votes they could do rather well, votes wise. I wouldn't vote for reform myself. But I can really see a fair amount of people doing it.
Thanks again for the answer. It's nice to sometimes come here and ask questions and get information on how others are feeling and thinking.
No problem. I’m not voting for them because I think they will win the election or anything. But I feel every vote they pick up will add to the pressure to reduce net migration. It disgusts me that folk will have to spend a lifetime renting and we’re just making the situation ever worse with each year that passes.
Who’s gonna want to start a family when they’re living in a HMO house share?
That's exactly what farage said himself. He's aiming to use it as a pressure group in the same way ukip was. Any seats or mps are a bonus. I'm surprised they havent got Lee Anderson out yet as he's a very effective communicator to a certain part of the electorate aswell.
Let me see...
Highest tax burden in 70 years
Massive state interference
Increasing corporation tax by 30%
Record immigration
Soaring benefits bill
Lack of punishment for criminals
Net Zero
All of those for a start.
I had someone t'other day accused me of supporting Farage because I was explaining that no matter what they *thought* that the milkshake incident met the *legal* requirements of assault.
You're technically correct, and I think throwing the milkshake was pretty childish, but the people yesterday banging on about it being 'A Violent Assault' as if someone had actually kicked the shit out of him were making a McDonalds value meal out of it.
Most were worried that it might set a precedent that you can just attack politicians you don’t like if you see them. The milkshakes of today can be the acid of tomorrow
Sadly, it does.
What a truly poor indictment of our society.... throwing a cold drink at a bloke is at worst comical. It's literally been the clichéd response to things for decades, and at blokes who are far less disruptive and damaging than Farage.
Yet today, we recognise that as assault upon a person, whilst letting those who are killing us in the tens of thousands every year through air pollution, amongst others, be protected from any shame...
What a truly mad world.
Got perma banned from ukpolitics for making a joke about it... ... ... perhaps social media's approach to requires a second look.
I’ve heard this version as “I love pancakes” - “So you hate waffles?” by someone describing typical Twitter discourse.
I’ve found it’s easier to immediately dismiss anyone who starts their sentence with “so you…”.
I’ve been accused of all sorts of nonsense for fact checking fake news. I don’t support the tories, I do support the truth. I don’t think we need lies when they have so catastrophically fucked up for real.
Could be some time-
[https://www.economist.com/interactive/uk-general-election/polls](https://www.economist.com/interactive/uk-general-election/polls)
[https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/](https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/)
[https://www.ft.com/content/c7b4fa91-3601-4b82-b766-319af3c261a5](https://www.ft.com/content/c7b4fa91-3601-4b82-b766-319af3c261a5)
My only concern is that the Lib Dems seem to mostly be dicking about on surfboards and not being aggressive in trying to capture the Tory vote when it's there to be had.
Reform is gaining ground because the Tories are eminently unelectable. Reform is the Brexit alternative - Believe in whatever unique flavour of right-wing bullshit you want and think that Nige will magically deliver it
They don't really need to "win" the Tory vote.
Lib Dems will do well largely in Tory marginals where voters are angry with the Tories but still not willing to vote Labour, so Lib Dem becomes the default.
To some extent, the less the Lib Dems say on policy, the better they might do in those places. No need to start scaring the voters...
The Lib Dems need to accept and embrace what they are; Team Two-Party-System-Is-Bad.
When electoral reform finally happens, the three big parties are going to dissolve into factions anyway, and no-one will dissolve faster than the Lib Dems. Just accept what you are, and what you're fighting for, and you might actually get it.
4 big parties if you count the SNP, they exist on a base level because of a single issue, proportional representation will shatter them into a million pieces
I personally reckon they'll limp on for a couple more years after the others have all disintegrated. I think they represent something a SMIDGE beyond IndyRef, but... factionalism will get them too. I didn't really count them as part of the big parties, because I think they're an exception to the Current Hegemony.
The Scottish Parliament has proportional representation and the SNP is still the majority dominant independence party. Alba has consistently failed to win any seats. FPTP is not the only thing keeping parties together.
We'll never have either PR or AV. The politicians stand to lose too much.
We might, *might* get another 2010-style referendum on the issue with huge amounts of media scare-mongering which will ensure most of the sheeple will vote against it.
The Lib Dems are dicking around on surfboards and shit like that because that's the only way they can get any attention from the majority of the billionaire media moghoul owned press and media, who still support Brexshit.
This is why Reform, which is essentially a right-wing pressure group created to force the Conservative Party to the extreme right, can get media attention at the drop of a hat.
Yep. I’m a Lib Dem in a target seat and if you were in one of these marginals you’d notice us! We can’t spend enough nationally so have to focus on efficiency and target growing our MP numbers more steadily. After the election we’ll see if it works!!
I think it would be good for the political health of the country for Labour to see the Tories taken to the brink of extinction because and realise the same could happen to them. It’s been Labour and Tory in power and opposition for 102 years. For far too long both of them have thought the worst case scenario was walking across the aisle.
This is absolutely *not* good. Labour doesn't need a split Tory vote to win a large majority, and the rise of Reform is just going to cement the complete replacement of the political right in the UK by lunatics.
Yeah and the inevitable next decade of labour pussyfooting around immigration is only going to further fuel the fire. There’s a real prospect of a far right uk government in the not so distant future if something isn’t done.
Once your area becomes a migrant dispersal zone the shift towards anti immigration is huge once the effects kick in. Most of the original zones are full now so the dispersal is going to hit a lot of new towns across the country and that's just at the current 800,000 new arrivals a year (Gross 1.2 Million) if Labour doesn't do anything then that's nearly 5 Million immigrants in the next electoral term and that's going to create an enormous swing to Reform once the effects set in.
In FPTP you can't just replace one party with another one. If the Conservative party dies, Reform won't replace them in terms of seats.
It would take many election cycles for Reform to build up enough seats to pose a serious challenge to Labour, and by that time they might just have died out themselves. Both Reform and the Tories are heavily dependent on boomer votes, but the boomers' influence is rapidly diminishing and this is probably one of the last elections where boomer pandering still works.
More likely that there will be a realignment around Labour vs Lib Dem, and the Greens fulfilling the role that the Lib Dems do now.
The point isn’t about them gaining seats this election. It’s their increasing influence over a significant part of the electorate and the rise of the ideals they embody.
The political right everywhere is going to be replaced by lunatics, now things like owning a home and having a stable job and a nice retirement have gone down the shitter.
The entire economic model that generated their voters is bust, and their elderly voters who benefitted from it are dying, never to be replaced.
Authoritarianism, climate change and war, it's not looking too rosey. The number of idiotic people who seem to welcome Authoritarianism with open arms doesn't give me much hope, especially seeing younger people falling for it. Just a few years ago, I thought things might get better once older, more bigoted attitudes had mainly died out, but now we're heading backwards.
>Just a few years ago, I thought things might get better once older, more bigoted attitudes had mainly died out, but now we're heading backwards.
A bigoted 75 year old of today will have been one of the love-everything hippy generation.
Every generation gets older, every generation gets less accepting, every generation becomes less tolerant as they age.
The social media generation are no different, for all they might wish to believe they are.
If anything, they're becoming less tolerant and less accepting more quickly than the older generations did: it's the social media generation who are labelling everyone as generation this, that or the other, calling people boomers and so on, in order to exaggerate the supposed difference between the generations.
This has shown to not actually be the case in the UK. Studies show that people aren't becoming more conservative as they age.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/financial-times-millennials-conservatives-age-b2253902.html
It already happened around when Boris became PM and expunged all talent from the tory party. Now either Reform UK cannibalise the tories or the tories become a carbon copy of Reform to avoid political extinction. The lunatics have overrun the asylum.
And they'll lose again badly.
This is a hole they'll not climb out of for at least a decade. UK elections are won from the center, and lurching to the right is the wilderness.
I wouldn't be so sure. The Tory+Reform vote combined is already close to Labours. Given the uneven distribution of votes if those votes were combined today it would be enough to prevent Labour getting an overall majority. Add in the fact that Farage usually rallies in the polls as it gets closer to elections it wouldn't be crazy to imagine if they did combine right now with Farage as leader/deputy leader there is a reasonable chance they'd do really well.
>This is a hole they'll not climb out of for at least a decade
We all said the same about Labour after 2019's result
Anythings possible, can't get complacent!
>UK elections are won from the center, and lurching to the right is the wilderness.
Remember when Farage used a single issue party to move the Tories to the right and pull the UK out of the European Union?
Is remembering things illegal in this country?
>5 years of Labour not magically fixing everything and Nigel will be PM.
Anyone who is truly paying attention and not thinking dogmatically can see this happening.
Reform is playing for the 2029 election, not this one. It's clearly a process.
Which will be as effective as labour under corbyn. The UK votes centre-centre right. Those on the extremes of either side will never capture enough of the vote under FPTP
Pretty much every potential reform voter interact with are well aware of the allowing labour a bigger majority and don’t care. It’s the destruction of the tories for their betrayal on immigration that’s the goal and the establishment of either a new right wing party or a shift to the right for the tories (with Farage as leader) for the next GE
Sunak did this to himself. He shouldn't have made immigration such a major part of his strategy because it's such a tricky issue to solve and if you fail to solve it, you boost parties like Reform.
Sunak is a smart bloke. He knew Rwanda wouldn't work but went along with it anyways. He knew immigration was difficult but kept talking about "stopping the boats".
The Tories will look back and see this as a major mistake.
I always say don’t pay attention to what an incumbent party says. Look at what they do. If you think about it this way, you’ll see that the Conservative Party is in fact pro-immigration, just like back in the day when Labour were the anti-mass immigration party. They never changed, except for their lip service to appease their voter base.
Why would a party of business and property owners be against immigration? It makes no sense.
I think 1.4 million is just the net figure, gross was like 2.2 million or something stupid.
Somehow, the "hard hitting anti immigration" ministers, ended up allowing hundreds of thousands more than the "pro immigratio" ministers.
Baffles the brain tbh.
And the vast majority of that number is legal migration, yet the narrative in the press and from the Tory party is to focus purely on people crossing the channel in small boats.
They picked the emotive fairly insignificant issue to drum up outrage and support and it has spectacularly backfired on them.
I do wonder how much of the net migration figure is skewed by the fact we had 2 full years universities being remote taught, did a lot of the foreign students not come to the UK in 2020 and 2021 and therefore there isn't as large a block of students graduating and leaving as there normally would be to balance the new incoming students?
He's made mistakes from day 1. This Rwanda policy was off the hoof bullshit to save BJ, he could have binned it quietly in his first week.
Alternatively, he could have called an election the second the Lords rejected it and gone "Get Rwanda Done".
Instead he's got a crap scheme that pleases no-one. He is singularly bad at politics.
(Edit: and I'm very happy he is, I hope Farage and the Tories kill each other).
I think there will be a bit of this. I expect the Tories to still get over 100 seats.
That's still 65 less than Major in 1997. And it took them 3 elections, several leaders and 13 years to climb out of that hole
That an easy assumption to make in an election campaign that is close or could be seen as close.
That is not this election cycle. Labour have already won. There's no benefit in people voting Tory to try and block labour. Likely hood is people are going to vote for what they want most, even though winning isn't possible.
I don’t think this is the case this time with reforms core support (I am one). The people interact with online and offline are well aware that reform are not going to win the GE. The also know that Labour will win even bigger if reform put on a show and that is exactly what they want. Core reform supporters want zero seats for the tories
I just looked into it and that's not really the case.
In 2015 and 2017 Farage's party never got much closer than 15 points (on the polling average).
In 2019 The Brexit Party breifly overtook the Conservatives but that was 4 months before the election was called. Then Boris Johnson become the Conseravtive leader and Brexit Party support fell. By the time the election was called, Brexit Party was back down to 4th place and Tories had a healthy first place lead.
If there are more polls like this, it's easily the strongest Farage's party has been this close to an election.
See [2019 average polling here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#/media/File:Uk2022polling15average.png).
I'll sleep easy tonight knowing that at least one Tory MP is crying themselves to sleep over this news. But fuck, Reform being larger than the Tories would be scary af
While it would on one hand. The more scrutiny they get the better, their policy’s or pledges or whatever they’re calling them on x and how they say they’ll fund them are fanciful nonsense. Easy to do when you’re aiming for ~10% of the vote and maybe 1 MP to put pressure on the tories.
The Tories have experience in government, and experience in the world stage. Call them evil but they do run a country.
Reform UK, once you read their lit on their website, are clearly quite bonkers. They're caricatures of Brexit baz.
There's actually loads, just one example is that Reform straight up don't think we should be doing anything at all about climate change and think we should be adapting to it instead. I know the Tories are hardly Greta Thunberg but lord, Reform essentially deny its existence.
> Reform straight up don't think we should be doing anything at all about climate change and think we should be adapting to it instead
To be fair I think we should invest more to adapting to it as well, but for a different reason
We're not convincing the US, China, India etc to drop everything they do and work on reducing their climate impact
Also we’re pretty much past the point of no return. Unless someone creates a cheap and extremely efficient machine that can capture and store the extra carbon in the atmosphere over the next couple of years, we’re just going to keep getting warmer, even if the world drastically reduced its GHG emissions tomorrow.
Reform would already be bigger than the tories in many European countries these days. The irony of this being the thing that we have in common with them.
This is amazing for a number of reasons.
Since the rise of UKIP, the basically everything the Tories have done has been to defeat UKIP/BrexitParty/Reform. The Brexit vote itself was to convince voters jumping to UKIP to stay Tory. The anti-immigration and anti-trans stuff was entirely to appeal to the same group. Remember that early David Cameron Tories were pro-environment, legalised same-sex marriage, and was a lot more positive towards immigration. Then UKIP shot up and the Tories realised their biggest threat to their voter support wasn't people going to Labour. They shot like a bullet to the Right.
And after more than ten years of that, it's completely failed. They tried beating Farage and his goons for ten years. A handful of far-right agitators who couldn't even win seats in the commons fought the Tory machine for over ten years and won. *To my mind, this is one of the greatest failures in the history of British politics*. Hell, when Britain lost the Suez Canal, at least the enemy had guns.
>David Cameron Tories... legalised same-sex marriage...
This bullshit lie needs to die.
136 conservative MPs voted against this bill. Only 127 voted for it. On the other hand only 22 Labour MPs voted against compared to 217 for.
Labour got that bill over the line and if it had been left to the conservatives it would not have been passed.
The amazing thing with farage is that he'll lend his credence to a party, it'll become really popular and then he'll abandon it before anything significant happens.
He's either - a paid actor who works for the oligarchs who gatekeep...everything or he's a troll.
He's a career populist politician. He maximises his own gain. He's not interested in his party succeeding, he's interested in using the party so _he_ can succeed. He wants to win a seat, then join the tories, then lead the tories. It might just work.
Don't forget that a large portion of Tories did not want to leave the EU. And I'm willing to bet that a lot that did vote leave have serious regrets.
Johnson's purge made the Tories look a hell of a lot more pro Brexit than they actually were, non of the "sensible" ones wanted it.
This is the road England are going down. All failing countries lurch hard to the right, as it offers the only certainties. Completely false and reductive ones, but certainties. Accountability seeps away because people are invested only in the present, so the fact the fascists never deliver anything for the good of the country is ignored.
The utterly amoral, cynical leadership failures of Cameron & Johnson have led us here. The English (and specifically English) public's unwillingness to confront its mistakes have exacerbated it.
Reform are Mosley's fascists in clown form, history repeating as farce.
I just read their (draft) statement on their website and it's laughable. How the word reform can be used to take politics back 50 years is just silly, and yes they actually use "woke" as some kind of enemy. Their environmental policy is appalling too.
Of course. The collective tactic of far-right populist politicians is to cover their ears and pretend the climate crisis isn’t real. And they will double down and argue for things that make it way worse. They will always be utterly heinous for that reason alone, if nothing else.
While things may be a bit different this time, it’s a bit difficult to judge just how much of a foothold they will actually get. Far-right parties have historically risen and fallen in this country because FPTP doesn’t allow them to get much power.
In 4 weeks we’ll see where we are at, but the most likely outcome (imo) is that Reform get a seat or two, the Tories go away with a massive defeat but with the giant party mechanism are able to re-group and recover (as Labour have done since 2019), and they cannibalise the Reform vote by the next election. How they do that we’ll see and there is a possibility they end up lurching even more to the right to do it, but there will still be the ‘centrist’ arm in the party stopping it going too far (probably).
The Tories route back to some form of redemption was to reach out to many of the moderates who Johnson ousted in his Brexit purge. Instead, little rishi decided to double down on the shift towards the rabid right and is reaching deep into fuck around, find out territory. Before there can be any renaissance from the party, they would need to demonstrate an extended period of positive and constructive opposition, but I doubt that many of the current crop have got that ethos within them.
Wow. Sure was worth going through with Brexit to save your party, wasn't it Dave?
What a truly spectacular fuck up of truly spectacular and historic proportions.
Doubt it given what happened in Blackpool. They're competing for exactly the same voters as the Tories. Their polling overlaps exactly with Tory patterns.
It's worth noting YouGov changed their methodology for their polling just before doing this one.
Which could be why there's a big change since the last polls.
+- the new methodology with their [MRP poll](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49061-yougov-mrp-labour-now-projected-to-win-over-400-seats) (ctrl+f 'headline results'), since this seems to be the same methodology as that:
* Labour 40% (-1%)
* Tory 19% (-5%)
* Reform 17% (+5%)
* Lib Dem 10% (-2%)
* Green 7% (=)
I hate the fact these are now going to be the oldies go to party. They are not happy with Tories but won’t vote for Labour so decide to go deeper doen the crazy route.
Every one needs to vote for change, whomever that may be. In Scotland folk are choosing Labour to get rid of the SNP. They don’t want Labour and they don’t like Labour, but they want change.
This is my take as well.
Enjoy the split vote next month but for the next GE and beyond the combined percentage of both of these parties will be the worry.
conservatives deserve to be politically destroyed for allowing the mass invasion-
if you vote for conservatives you are allowing them to inevitably bounce back in 5 year’s time.
I don’t care which party you vote for - it should never be Tories
I think Reform will finally finish off the Tory Centre as they lurch further right to try to match Farage. Then Farage will cross the aisle to join the Tories as leader.
I wanted to post here, I am Muslim and British and mixed race with an Irish dad. Yesterday we saw our neighbours cover their house with union jacks and have an all day party. My dad wished them a happy birthday, thinking they were celebrating and they had a go about him not knowing about 'sovereignty' and insulted him. Then I went and met a friend in an area where Islamism and extremists is rife - She is Muslim too, hijabi and concerned about the two sides of the far right now - the reform sort and the Muslim sort in politics. We drive to a more 50/50 mix part of town and have a coffee and it just feels calmer. Immigration has gone wrong, although neither of our parents were born here, we are in our 30's and have British-ness in our ways, we feel the threat to our liberties too. Its this horrible feeling of no side to pick and nowhere to belong. Later that day, I visit a halal butcher who is making amazing sausages and still has a small minded sort outside spreading conspiracy theories because they don't feel Muslims should eat sausages despite this being 100 percent above board. I wish Reformers knew that some of the things you fear, about the loss of liberal laws, we do too, but you will never accept us as members.
In a PR system this could mean something in a FPTP system all it does it cost the Tories seats as it is splitting their already diminishing vote. I'd be more than happy for reform party supporters to vote for them as essentially they are still unlikely to return more than a couple of seats (this is best case and unlikely) but what it does do is hands Labour the red wall back and creates two more seats the Tories will have to win back to get back in.
Entirely predictable. It’s what happens when a government is meant to be Conservative but isn’t.
Alienated a large part of their voters trying to appeal to people who call them fascists despite their left of centre policies.
Won’t be long until Reform overtake them, as their policies are the sort an actual Conservative party would have.
'You know them Tories.'
'Yeah'
'They're shite aren't they'
'Oh yes'
'You know what we need?'
'A shittier, madder, even less competent, more chancerish bunch instead?'
'No. Fuck Reform.'
---
This country, if one collates general centre-centre-left-left and centre-centre-right-right tallies, tends to the former more often than not. But the system collapses us down to this endless fucking charade of useless Tories and their endless being out-flanked by a bunch of chancers who are simultaneously excellent at capitalising on Tory weakness and *absolutely fucking useless* when they ever get near power (rarely, locally, thankfully).
Yet to read the news we're all Farage-niks now, and I resent that, not least because of the first point: Green-Lib-Dem-Labour polling far, far outweighs Reform+Tory. But the noise is all from/of/about the 'cancelled', the 'silent majority', the 'disenchanted'.
Get tae fuck.
**Alternate Sources** Here are some potential alternate sources for the same story: * [Nigel Farage's return boosts UK's right wing Reform UK party, poll shows](https://reuters.com/world/uk/nigel-farages-return-boosts-uks-right-wing-reform-uk-party-poll-shows-2024-06-05/), suggested by Madisupercool - reuters.com
I wonder how long it will take for them to leap frog the tories in the polls. Edit: I don’t support Reform.
I was about to say ‘why add the edit? You didn’t even say they were good’ but then I realised people on this site will always assume the worst.
It's really sad that you have to add a disclaimer to posts saying you adhere to the consensus opinion to avoid a hail of downvotes lmao
Folk worry too much about karma I’ll be happily trotting off to the polling booth to vote Reform come July 4th.
Why?
I like how that dude has done his performative 'I'll vote Reform, come at me bruh' routine but simply asking 'Why?' is the thing that gets downvoted lol. I've listened to our local Reform reps - they're fucking morons, quite obvious they're wayward Tories who've just come out of decades long careers of being a 'I have no policy ideas'-backbencher and just see Reform as a means to try to cling onto what's left of their career. Frankly if you give a shit about voting for a party with cohesion/a vision for the future, then they're not worth the time - they have no vision, and I pity anyone who buys their blatant bullshit for even a moment.
I don’t need to buy their full range of ideas - I mainly care about immigration and that’s the main issue they want to solve - once that’s done I can then vote for a party to fix everything else
> and that’s the main issue they want to solve No far right party has ever delivered this for any country over multiple terms. Capitalism will never allow it. For example, Austria had one of the first significant far right anti immigration parties in the latter half of the 20th century. Yet go check their immigration rates by year and see if that made a difference. Hell, America has been moaning about immigrants for the past 200 years. Still immigration always ticks upwards. Because the Treasury demands several hundred thousand immigrants every quarterly, because it knows that capitalism is a debt ponzi which requires a constant influx of immigrants to expand its consumer/producer base and so avoid collapse. And note that far right parties like Reform tend to be militantly capitalist. So they hate the symptoms of the religion they love, and are ideologically opposed to the few economic policies which would make their anti immigration stance marginally workable.
Outright lie, multiple countries and multiple parties have done this, I am not sure why your lying. Japan, Singapore, Australia, South Korea, Poland and so on so fourth.
Australia has a huge intake of immigrants, they can just afford to be picky about who they take
Japan seems to not go overboard on immigration.
They still have net immigration though, and they're currently facing a population crisis as their population ages but young people aren't having *nearly* enough babies to achieve even replacement levels (1.3 kids rather than 2.1). Japan is *famously* facing a demographic crisis, as (like many developed nations) its native population fertility has dropped below replacement rate but it's also culturally opposed to bolstering its population with large-scale immigration. If they don't change something soon their population is actually going to start shrinking, and the effects on a capitalist society of population *reduction* from generation to generation are economically disastrous, as there simply aren't enough productive young workers to offset the economically unproductive old people. **Edit:** Holy shit, it's [already happening](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan#Population_Projection) - Japan's population peaked around 2010 and has already started declining. Unless something changes quickly their economy is *toast* in the next few decades.
Yeah but any party here that puts out a manifesto anywhere near what is normal in Japan would be called Neo Nazi here lol
Statement re- capitalism, is indeed correct.
Yeah, Reform aren't fixing immigration. Not in their interests to do so. They wouldn't have anything to run on next time, would they? They're just lining their pockets, don't fall for it.
So labour wont reduce inequality then, afterall they wouldnt have anything to run on next time would they?
They won’t fix it because they won’t get elected. But if they do well enough then it might make the main two parties think about actually addressing the issue instead of ignoring it.
They won't fix it because they don't want to. I'm sorry, they just don't. They know that *you* want it fixed, so they'll say whatever they need to say to get your vote. That's what the people in Reform have done for their careers before, and they'll continue to do it now. They're noise makers. Populists. They're not credible politicians with any ability or will to execute on what they're selling you.
They won’t fix anything though… they are a party chock full of grifters. If they actually do anything about immigration, their grift would be over. They’ll do absolutely naff all, pin any blame on someone else, and try to keep their scam going. With regards literally anything else about the country, and their policies, the terms piss up, and brewery, come to mind.
Plus people voted for Brexit which is fairly reform like lol and legal immigration figures shot up. Visas were the price of poorly negotiated trade deals the tories desperately needed to sign for some good news. The bad news is thpse deals were crap for many and some feel sold out. The dingys? I maintain they never wanted them stopped. They dominate headlines that might otherwise go on an NHS strike, state of social care, state of the roads, lack of 40 hospitals, party gate etc. Useful are dinghys.
Just like Brexit; the people who lent their vote to the tories got what they wanted and now they've moved on. It didn't do anyone any *good* but hey, what's another single issue among friends? My point is; you should be voting based on a whole range of concerns not just one thing, because everything is connected and if a gov decides the only way it can cling on is by 'doing the one thing' like it was with Brexit, then everything else is on the chopping block, including a lot of things we need!
And you would say the same to anyone who votes for the SNP or Greens? They are largely single issue parties - like reform they have other policies but they largely are unachievalbe or make no sense. Many many people are single issue voters and it’s fine - neither 100% of Tory or labours policies make complete sense and not all of them will be achieved anyway (typically only a few things will be achieved)
I very much would say the same to SNP and Green voters, yes! I'll grant that the SNP seemed to buck the trend for awhile but they're set to lose like, 60%+ of their MPs for a reason. And the less said about the Green's various failings the better, for brevity's sake.
>I mainly care about immigration Why? You don't like the fact that our entire healthcare system is kept alive by the working multi-generational immigrant population in the UK?
This is commonly quoted. Immigrations only overcontribute 0.2% to the NHS. Our white population is 74.5% whilst 74.3% of NHS workers are white British.
Why are you making it about skin colour? You don’t think we have black British people?
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Why wouldn’t it? Housing - we would need 600k houses to maintain our currently level of housing standard. Labour plans to build 300k houses per year. Reducing immigration would mean this 300k results in a surplus NHS and school usage - immigrants typically have more children. Less immigrants (especially unskilled ) results in less pressure for both
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Honestly, it’s refreshing to see you admitting this *and* (except that one guy who was the classic redditor with a superiority complex) people generally giving you a fair listen. Personally, I’m a bit sceptical about Reform’s ability to actually *do* anything about immigration. And I absolutely think something does need to be done about it. So I’m one of those undecided voters at the moment.
Oh I have little faith in politicians enacting what’s promised in their manifestos. But Ive gotta put that cross somewhere. I do feel Reform see this as more a priority issue than the other parties.
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+1 *ducks*
+1 plus my kids who are 19 and 18. Farage is a bit of cult figure to their peer group
> +1 plus my kids who are 19 and 18. Farage is a bit of cult figure to their peer group Are you also ex Torries?
Voted conservative last time and prior to that Labour
yes please split the "I'm an old fart" vote :D
Can i ask, why? Out of pure curiosity
I gave a reason in response to someone else. Seems they just asked to create an argument though. But briefly, we need to build 530,000 new homes each year just to stay still with current migration levels. That’s according to the FT. What kind of future is that for school leavers, knowing there’s a good chance they’ll never be able to afford a home? A lifetime of renting with nothing to show for it? I don’t trust the Tories on this issue given that they tripled net migration. And Labour can’t commit to saying roughly how much they’d like to reduce it by. Migration added 1% to our population last year. GDP grew at around 0.2%. We all got slightly poorer. I think it’s the longest recession in terms of GDP per capita that we’ve had in a long while. Folk should be able to look forward to owning a home for their families after working hard.
I actually saw that as I scrolled on after commenting. But i appreciate the response, I'm not looking to give you a lecture. Il be honest with you. I watched the press conference of farages the other day, just to see what he was saying. I ended up watching the whole thing, even the press questions after. I thought at the time that what he was saying, especially at the start is going to resonate with alot of people. I even felt a bit stirred myself. I'm really interested to see how it all plays out. I think if they manage to snatch some traditional labour red wall votes they could do rather well, votes wise. I wouldn't vote for reform myself. But I can really see a fair amount of people doing it. Thanks again for the answer. It's nice to sometimes come here and ask questions and get information on how others are feeling and thinking.
No problem. I’m not voting for them because I think they will win the election or anything. But I feel every vote they pick up will add to the pressure to reduce net migration. It disgusts me that folk will have to spend a lifetime renting and we’re just making the situation ever worse with each year that passes. Who’s gonna want to start a family when they’re living in a HMO house share?
That's exactly what farage said himself. He's aiming to use it as a pressure group in the same way ukip was. Any seats or mps are a bonus. I'm surprised they havent got Lee Anderson out yet as he's a very effective communicator to a certain part of the electorate aswell.
Fellow Reform voter checking in.
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Likewise. Lifelong Tory voter, who wants to see them utterly destroyed due to their manifest failures and continued leftist policies.
What Leftist policies are you worried about? Genuine question, because the current Tory party is as far to the right as I can remember
Let me see... Highest tax burden in 70 years Massive state interference Increasing corporation tax by 30% Record immigration Soaring benefits bill Lack of punishment for criminals Net Zero All of those for a start.
I’ve downvoted you just to help you make your point ;)
Sheep mentality
You don’t. Reddit is not a game to win upvotes despite what they want you to believe.
I had someone t'other day accused me of supporting Farage because I was explaining that no matter what they *thought* that the milkshake incident met the *legal* requirements of assault.
You're technically correct, and I think throwing the milkshake was pretty childish, but the people yesterday banging on about it being 'A Violent Assault' as if someone had actually kicked the shit out of him were making a McDonalds value meal out of it.
Most were worried that it might set a precedent that you can just attack politicians you don’t like if you see them. The milkshakes of today can be the acid of tomorrow
I'd agree, but I also doubt they even realised that Jo Cox was politically assassinated during Brexit.
Sadly, it does. What a truly poor indictment of our society.... throwing a cold drink at a bloke is at worst comical. It's literally been the clichéd response to things for decades, and at blokes who are far less disruptive and damaging than Farage. Yet today, we recognise that as assault upon a person, whilst letting those who are killing us in the tens of thousands every year through air pollution, amongst others, be protected from any shame... What a truly mad world. Got perma banned from ukpolitics for making a joke about it... ... ... perhaps social media's approach to requires a second look.
Person A: “I like burgers” Person B; “So you’re saying you hate hot dogs?” Every time.
I’ve heard this version as “I love pancakes” - “So you hate waffles?” by someone describing typical Twitter discourse. I’ve found it’s easier to immediately dismiss anyone who starts their sentence with “so you…”.
I’ve been accused of all sorts of nonsense for fact checking fake news. I don’t support the tories, I do support the truth. I don’t think we need lies when they have so catastrophically fucked up for real.
I think far too many people look to the news for what they want to hear now, as opposed to what they need to know.
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Some decent policies put forward by grifters who will never deliver.
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Could be some time- [https://www.economist.com/interactive/uk-general-election/polls](https://www.economist.com/interactive/uk-general-election/polls) [https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/](https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/) [https://www.ft.com/content/c7b4fa91-3601-4b82-b766-319af3c261a5](https://www.ft.com/content/c7b4fa91-3601-4b82-b766-319af3c261a5)
It's hard to say. The purpose is more to swing the Tories to the right. One hopes this will lead to more moderate voters leaving the Tories in droves.
> leap frog I see what you did there...
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Best case scenario would be a Labour government with a Lib Dem opposition. Its not looking unlikely at this point
My only concern is that the Lib Dems seem to mostly be dicking about on surfboards and not being aggressive in trying to capture the Tory vote when it's there to be had. Reform is gaining ground because the Tories are eminently unelectable. Reform is the Brexit alternative - Believe in whatever unique flavour of right-wing bullshit you want and think that Nige will magically deliver it
They don't really need to "win" the Tory vote. Lib Dems will do well largely in Tory marginals where voters are angry with the Tories but still not willing to vote Labour, so Lib Dem becomes the default. To some extent, the less the Lib Dems say on policy, the better they might do in those places. No need to start scaring the voters...
The Lib Dems need to accept and embrace what they are; Team Two-Party-System-Is-Bad. When electoral reform finally happens, the three big parties are going to dissolve into factions anyway, and no-one will dissolve faster than the Lib Dems. Just accept what you are, and what you're fighting for, and you might actually get it.
4 big parties if you count the SNP, they exist on a base level because of a single issue, proportional representation will shatter them into a million pieces
I personally reckon they'll limp on for a couple more years after the others have all disintegrated. I think they represent something a SMIDGE beyond IndyRef, but... factionalism will get them too. I didn't really count them as part of the big parties, because I think they're an exception to the Current Hegemony.
The Scottish Parliament has proportional representation and the SNP is still the majority dominant independence party. Alba has consistently failed to win any seats. FPTP is not the only thing keeping parties together.
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We'll never have either PR or AV. The politicians stand to lose too much. We might, *might* get another 2010-style referendum on the issue with huge amounts of media scare-mongering which will ensure most of the sheeple will vote against it.
The Lib Dems are dicking around on surfboards and shit like that because that's the only way they can get any attention from the majority of the billionaire media moghoul owned press and media, who still support Brexshit. This is why Reform, which is essentially a right-wing pressure group created to force the Conservative Party to the extreme right, can get media attention at the drop of a hat.
It's the only press they get. Go to work tomorrow and ask 100 people who the Lib Dem leader is.
Easy - Paddy Ashdown. Right?
It’s Charles Kennedy, you muppet.
Jack Johnson or John Jackson?
What are you talking about Edmania is in full effect! He's been on a water slide and everything.
Ed Davey, the orange hammer.
no doubt they are also busy campaigning on the streets and at the front doors in their target seats.
Yep. I’m a Lib Dem in a target seat and if you were in one of these marginals you’d notice us! We can’t spend enough nationally so have to focus on efficiency and target growing our MP numbers more steadily. After the election we’ll see if it works!!
I hope they get just enough influence to push PR through before they wither and die.
It's the dream. I don't think we'll progress much as a country much until we get rid of the political parry that thinks it was born to rule.
God this would be perfect
I think it would be good for the political health of the country for Labour to see the Tories taken to the brink of extinction because and realise the same could happen to them. It’s been Labour and Tory in power and opposition for 102 years. For far too long both of them have thought the worst case scenario was walking across the aisle.
This is absolutely *not* good. Labour doesn't need a split Tory vote to win a large majority, and the rise of Reform is just going to cement the complete replacement of the political right in the UK by lunatics.
People are too keen to witness the death of the Conservative party to realise Reform UK is a much worse alternative.
Yeah and the inevitable next decade of labour pussyfooting around immigration is only going to further fuel the fire. There’s a real prospect of a far right uk government in the not so distant future if something isn’t done.
Once your area becomes a migrant dispersal zone the shift towards anti immigration is huge once the effects kick in. Most of the original zones are full now so the dispersal is going to hit a lot of new towns across the country and that's just at the current 800,000 new arrivals a year (Gross 1.2 Million) if Labour doesn't do anything then that's nearly 5 Million immigrants in the next electoral term and that's going to create an enormous swing to Reform once the effects set in.
Like how people cheered for trump against Jeb bush
Why didn't we clap? He begged us, pleaded with us to clap, and we abandoned him.
I think it’s spelt Jeb! Bush
In FPTP you can't just replace one party with another one. If the Conservative party dies, Reform won't replace them in terms of seats. It would take many election cycles for Reform to build up enough seats to pose a serious challenge to Labour, and by that time they might just have died out themselves. Both Reform and the Tories are heavily dependent on boomer votes, but the boomers' influence is rapidly diminishing and this is probably one of the last elections where boomer pandering still works. More likely that there will be a realignment around Labour vs Lib Dem, and the Greens fulfilling the role that the Lib Dems do now.
The point isn’t about them gaining seats this election. It’s their increasing influence over a significant part of the electorate and the rise of the ideals they embody.
The political right everywhere is going to be replaced by lunatics, now things like owning a home and having a stable job and a nice retirement have gone down the shitter. The entire economic model that generated their voters is bust, and their elderly voters who benefitted from it are dying, never to be replaced.
Authoritarianism, climate change and war, it's not looking too rosey. The number of idiotic people who seem to welcome Authoritarianism with open arms doesn't give me much hope, especially seeing younger people falling for it. Just a few years ago, I thought things might get better once older, more bigoted attitudes had mainly died out, but now we're heading backwards.
>Just a few years ago, I thought things might get better once older, more bigoted attitudes had mainly died out, but now we're heading backwards. A bigoted 75 year old of today will have been one of the love-everything hippy generation. Every generation gets older, every generation gets less accepting, every generation becomes less tolerant as they age. The social media generation are no different, for all they might wish to believe they are. If anything, they're becoming less tolerant and less accepting more quickly than the older generations did: it's the social media generation who are labelling everyone as generation this, that or the other, calling people boomers and so on, in order to exaggerate the supposed difference between the generations.
This has shown to not actually be the case in the UK. Studies show that people aren't becoming more conservative as they age. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/financial-times-millennials-conservatives-age-b2253902.html
It already happened around when Boris became PM and expunged all talent from the tory party. Now either Reform UK cannibalise the tories or the tories become a carbon copy of Reform to avoid political extinction. The lunatics have overrun the asylum.
I mean farage will end up taking over the conservative party come next election
And they'll lose again badly. This is a hole they'll not climb out of for at least a decade. UK elections are won from the center, and lurching to the right is the wilderness.
I wouldn't be so sure. The Tory+Reform vote combined is already close to Labours. Given the uneven distribution of votes if those votes were combined today it would be enough to prevent Labour getting an overall majority. Add in the fact that Farage usually rallies in the polls as it gets closer to elections it wouldn't be crazy to imagine if they did combine right now with Farage as leader/deputy leader there is a reasonable chance they'd do really well.
The age of that vote though is a massive problem . It's stacked massively in the oldest cohort. Time is not their friend .
>This is a hole they'll not climb out of for at least a decade We all said the same about Labour after 2019's result Anythings possible, can't get complacent!
>UK elections are won from the center, and lurching to the right is the wilderness. Remember when Farage used a single issue party to move the Tories to the right and pull the UK out of the European Union? Is remembering things illegal in this country?
Cameron, Brexit, Trump, Boris, Liz, Trump again. 5 years of Labour not magically fixing everything and Nigel will be PM.
>5 years of Labour not magically fixing everything and Nigel will be PM. Anyone who is truly paying attention and not thinking dogmatically can see this happening. Reform is playing for the 2029 election, not this one. It's clearly a process.
He might be dead by then. I don't think he's a particularly healthy man.
He won't. People like him and Trump have a unique tenacious grasp that enables them to do as much damage as possible.
Yeah fueled by hatred like fucking palpatine :(
Which will be as effective as labour under corbyn. The UK votes centre-centre right. Those on the extremes of either side will never capture enough of the vote under FPTP
Pretty much every potential reform voter interact with are well aware of the allowing labour a bigger majority and don’t care. It’s the destruction of the tories for their betrayal on immigration that’s the goal and the establishment of either a new right wing party or a shift to the right for the tories (with Farage as leader) for the next GE
*labour win election* Telegraph: the results are clear, it's time to give Nazism a fair shot
Sunak did this to himself. He shouldn't have made immigration such a major part of his strategy because it's such a tricky issue to solve and if you fail to solve it, you boost parties like Reform. Sunak is a smart bloke. He knew Rwanda wouldn't work but went along with it anyways. He knew immigration was difficult but kept talking about "stopping the boats". The Tories will look back and see this as a major mistake.
Tories letting in a net 1.4 million in 2 years ensured immigration was on the agenda.
The Tories lying about how they felt about immigration did not help either.
I always say don’t pay attention to what an incumbent party says. Look at what they do. If you think about it this way, you’ll see that the Conservative Party is in fact pro-immigration, just like back in the day when Labour were the anti-mass immigration party. They never changed, except for their lip service to appease their voter base. Why would a party of business and property owners be against immigration? It makes no sense.
I think 1.4 million is just the net figure, gross was like 2.2 million or something stupid. Somehow, the "hard hitting anti immigration" ministers, ended up allowing hundreds of thousands more than the "pro immigratio" ministers. Baffles the brain tbh.
And the vast majority of that number is legal migration, yet the narrative in the press and from the Tory party is to focus purely on people crossing the channel in small boats. They picked the emotive fairly insignificant issue to drum up outrage and support and it has spectacularly backfired on them. I do wonder how much of the net migration figure is skewed by the fact we had 2 full years universities being remote taught, did a lot of the foreign students not come to the UK in 2020 and 2021 and therefore there isn't as large a block of students graduating and leaving as there normally would be to balance the new incoming students?
So hard to solve, just so hard to not let 1.2 million people in to the UK. So hard!
He didn’t like it, but he had to go along with it
PETER YOU'VE LOST THE NEWS!
Peter, next time you cross the road, don’t bother looking.
Under new debate rules Sunak must inhale helium every time he accuses Labour of raising taxes by £2000.
He's made mistakes from day 1. This Rwanda policy was off the hoof bullshit to save BJ, he could have binned it quietly in his first week. Alternatively, he could have called an election the second the Lords rejected it and gone "Get Rwanda Done". Instead he's got a crap scheme that pleases no-one. He is singularly bad at politics. (Edit: and I'm very happy he is, I hope Farage and the Tories kill each other).
Maybe he isn’t that smart after all.
Obviously smart but out of touch with reality
There’s nothing difficult about it, they could stop immigration overnight if they wanted to
This happens with Farage's party every election then come election day his voters realise it's a two horse race and vote red or blue.
I think there will be a bit of this. I expect the Tories to still get over 100 seats. That's still 65 less than Major in 1997. And it took them 3 elections, several leaders and 13 years to climb out of that hole
But Blair was a way more charismatic, convincing, and just overall better leader/PM than Starmer is
No one said that at the time
People absolutely said Blair had more charisma than Major at the time.
That an easy assumption to make in an election campaign that is close or could be seen as close. That is not this election cycle. Labour have already won. There's no benefit in people voting Tory to try and block labour. Likely hood is people are going to vote for what they want most, even though winning isn't possible.
Not bothering is also an option. I suspect many Tory voters will do that.
We will find out in a month
I don’t think this is the case this time with reforms core support (I am one). The people interact with online and offline are well aware that reform are not going to win the GE. The also know that Labour will win even bigger if reform put on a show and that is exactly what they want. Core reform supporters want zero seats for the tories
This election is already Labour's. Better to set up a real right wing option that can make a run at in 2029.
I just looked into it and that's not really the case. In 2015 and 2017 Farage's party never got much closer than 15 points (on the polling average). In 2019 The Brexit Party breifly overtook the Conservatives but that was 4 months before the election was called. Then Boris Johnson become the Conseravtive leader and Brexit Party support fell. By the time the election was called, Brexit Party was back down to 4th place and Tories had a healthy first place lead. If there are more polls like this, it's easily the strongest Farage's party has been this close to an election. See [2019 average polling here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#/media/File:Uk2022polling15average.png).
UKIP got a lot of votes in 2017 but they were very spread out across the country. FPTP hurt them a lot and it'll probably be the same with Reform.
Farage used UKIP to move the Tories to the right and cause Brexit.
UKIP got nearly 13% of the vote in the 2015 election, not impossible that Reform could perform similarly in this election.
I'll sleep easy tonight knowing that at least one Tory MP is crying themselves to sleep over this news. But fuck, Reform being larger than the Tories would be scary af
While it would on one hand. The more scrutiny they get the better, their policy’s or pledges or whatever they’re calling them on x and how they say they’ll fund them are fanciful nonsense. Easy to do when you’re aiming for ~10% of the vote and maybe 1 MP to put pressure on the tories.
Is there a lot of difference between their policies? 30p Lee was a Tory until recently.
The Tories have experience in government, and experience in the world stage. Call them evil but they do run a country. Reform UK, once you read their lit on their website, are clearly quite bonkers. They're caricatures of Brexit baz.
There's actually loads, just one example is that Reform straight up don't think we should be doing anything at all about climate change and think we should be adapting to it instead. I know the Tories are hardly Greta Thunberg but lord, Reform essentially deny its existence.
> Reform straight up don't think we should be doing anything at all about climate change and think we should be adapting to it instead To be fair I think we should invest more to adapting to it as well, but for a different reason We're not convincing the US, China, India etc to drop everything they do and work on reducing their climate impact
Also we’re pretty much past the point of no return. Unless someone creates a cheap and extremely efficient machine that can capture and store the extra carbon in the atmosphere over the next couple of years, we’re just going to keep getting warmer, even if the world drastically reduced its GHG emissions tomorrow.
Reform would already be bigger than the tories in many European countries these days. The irony of this being the thing that we have in common with them.
This is amazing for a number of reasons. Since the rise of UKIP, the basically everything the Tories have done has been to defeat UKIP/BrexitParty/Reform. The Brexit vote itself was to convince voters jumping to UKIP to stay Tory. The anti-immigration and anti-trans stuff was entirely to appeal to the same group. Remember that early David Cameron Tories were pro-environment, legalised same-sex marriage, and was a lot more positive towards immigration. Then UKIP shot up and the Tories realised their biggest threat to their voter support wasn't people going to Labour. They shot like a bullet to the Right. And after more than ten years of that, it's completely failed. They tried beating Farage and his goons for ten years. A handful of far-right agitators who couldn't even win seats in the commons fought the Tory machine for over ten years and won. *To my mind, this is one of the greatest failures in the history of British politics*. Hell, when Britain lost the Suez Canal, at least the enemy had guns.
What amazed me about reform was they only managed to scrape 2 seats in the council elections. The old National Front used to do better than that.
>David Cameron Tories... legalised same-sex marriage... This bullshit lie needs to die. 136 conservative MPs voted against this bill. Only 127 voted for it. On the other hand only 22 Labour MPs voted against compared to 217 for. Labour got that bill over the line and if it had been left to the conservatives it would not have been passed.
The amazing thing with farage is that he'll lend his credence to a party, it'll become really popular and then he'll abandon it before anything significant happens. He's either - a paid actor who works for the oligarchs who gatekeep...everything or he's a troll.
He's a career populist politician. He maximises his own gain. He's not interested in his party succeeding, he's interested in using the party so _he_ can succeed. He wants to win a seat, then join the tories, then lead the tories. It might just work.
Don't forget that a large portion of Tories did not want to leave the EU. And I'm willing to bet that a lot that did vote leave have serious regrets. Johnson's purge made the Tories look a hell of a lot more pro Brexit than they actually were, non of the "sensible" ones wanted it.
The amazing thing is that 10% of the country still take that moron seriously.
If Labour came out as net 0 immigration they would get every single seat for 200 years
Until people realized what implementing that policy would mean for other things (tax rises, pension cuts, NHS cutbacks etc.)
We are on track for all of those things whilst still having ridiculously high immigration too.
Universities would go broke too, no international students to prop them up.
This is the road England are going down. All failing countries lurch hard to the right, as it offers the only certainties. Completely false and reductive ones, but certainties. Accountability seeps away because people are invested only in the present, so the fact the fascists never deliver anything for the good of the country is ignored. The utterly amoral, cynical leadership failures of Cameron & Johnson have led us here. The English (and specifically English) public's unwillingness to confront its mistakes have exacerbated it. Reform are Mosley's fascists in clown form, history repeating as farce.
Ironically they voted for Brexit that is in a big part responsible for the country's problems. Now, they think the same liar can get them out of it.
All indicators are currently pointing towards a massive labor landslide - possibly the largest in history - in England too….WTF are you talking about.
I just read their (draft) statement on their website and it's laughable. How the word reform can be used to take politics back 50 years is just silly, and yes they actually use "woke" as some kind of enemy. Their environmental policy is appalling too.
Of course. The collective tactic of far-right populist politicians is to cover their ears and pretend the climate crisis isn’t real. And they will double down and argue for things that make it way worse. They will always be utterly heinous for that reason alone, if nothing else.
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While things may be a bit different this time, it’s a bit difficult to judge just how much of a foothold they will actually get. Far-right parties have historically risen and fallen in this country because FPTP doesn’t allow them to get much power. In 4 weeks we’ll see where we are at, but the most likely outcome (imo) is that Reform get a seat or two, the Tories go away with a massive defeat but with the giant party mechanism are able to re-group and recover (as Labour have done since 2019), and they cannibalise the Reform vote by the next election. How they do that we’ll see and there is a possibility they end up lurching even more to the right to do it, but there will still be the ‘centrist’ arm in the party stopping it going too far (probably).
The Tories route back to some form of redemption was to reach out to many of the moderates who Johnson ousted in his Brexit purge. Instead, little rishi decided to double down on the shift towards the rabid right and is reaching deep into fuck around, find out territory. Before there can be any renaissance from the party, they would need to demonstrate an extended period of positive and constructive opposition, but I doubt that many of the current crop have got that ethos within them.
Wow. Sure was worth going through with Brexit to save your party, wasn't it Dave? What a truly spectacular fuck up of truly spectacular and historic proportions.
Is reform evenly distributed? I know labour pile up the votes in London. Is it Labour vs Reform up north and then Labour v conservatives down south?
Doubt it given what happened in Blackpool. They're competing for exactly the same voters as the Tories. Their polling overlaps exactly with Tory patterns.
The same person who, arguably, was the key figure for Brexit, and upon winning, disappeared into thin air the next day...
It's worth noting YouGov changed their methodology for their polling just before doing this one. Which could be why there's a big change since the last polls.
+- the new methodology with their [MRP poll](https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49061-yougov-mrp-labour-now-projected-to-win-over-400-seats) (ctrl+f 'headline results'), since this seems to be the same methodology as that: * Labour 40% (-1%) * Tory 19% (-5%) * Reform 17% (+5%) * Lib Dem 10% (-2%) * Green 7% (=)
I hate the fact these are now going to be the oldies go to party. They are not happy with Tories but won’t vote for Labour so decide to go deeper doen the crazy route.
Every one needs to vote for change, whomever that may be. In Scotland folk are choosing Labour to get rid of the SNP. They don’t want Labour and they don’t like Labour, but they want change.
They could barely manage councillors, I'd be surprised if their MP prospects were any better in reality.
They'll wipe out the trad Tory party, then be absorbed back into it with Farage as leader ready for the next GE.
This is my take as well. Enjoy the split vote next month but for the next GE and beyond the combined percentage of both of these parties will be the worry.
And that is just the beginning. 2 points in one day. Farage uses Trump’s playbook: Talk shit, but talk about me. Tories are so screwed.
Remember how the main reason for Brexit is that Cameron wanted to end the right wing split. How's that going?
Wouldn't that be great to be accountable for the talk, rather than just a mouth for hire with no consequences???
Not a fan of the Tories at all, but Reform is way lower on the bottom of that ladder.
conservatives deserve to be politically destroyed for allowing the mass invasion- if you vote for conservatives you are allowing them to inevitably bounce back in 5 year’s time. I don’t care which party you vote for - it should never be Tories
I think Reform will finally finish off the Tory Centre as they lurch further right to try to match Farage. Then Farage will cross the aisle to join the Tories as leader.
Farage is the closest thing the UK has to Trump (not Boris, despite the hair)
People supporting this charlatan are hilarious. His lies regarding brexit are one of the major reasons the country is in tatters.
I wanted to post here, I am Muslim and British and mixed race with an Irish dad. Yesterday we saw our neighbours cover their house with union jacks and have an all day party. My dad wished them a happy birthday, thinking they were celebrating and they had a go about him not knowing about 'sovereignty' and insulted him. Then I went and met a friend in an area where Islamism and extremists is rife - She is Muslim too, hijabi and concerned about the two sides of the far right now - the reform sort and the Muslim sort in politics. We drive to a more 50/50 mix part of town and have a coffee and it just feels calmer. Immigration has gone wrong, although neither of our parents were born here, we are in our 30's and have British-ness in our ways, we feel the threat to our liberties too. Its this horrible feeling of no side to pick and nowhere to belong. Later that day, I visit a halal butcher who is making amazing sausages and still has a small minded sort outside spreading conspiracy theories because they don't feel Muslims should eat sausages despite this being 100 percent above board. I wish Reformers knew that some of the things you fear, about the loss of liberal laws, we do too, but you will never accept us as members.
In a PR system this could mean something in a FPTP system all it does it cost the Tories seats as it is splitting their already diminishing vote. I'd be more than happy for reform party supporters to vote for them as essentially they are still unlikely to return more than a couple of seats (this is best case and unlikely) but what it does do is hands Labour the red wall back and creates two more seats the Tories will have to win back to get back in.
Idk man, I wouldn't be surprised if when he writes his memoires in like 30 years, he'll reveal that this whole thing was an anti-Tory psy ops.
Entirely predictable. It’s what happens when a government is meant to be Conservative but isn’t. Alienated a large part of their voters trying to appeal to people who call them fascists despite their left of centre policies. Won’t be long until Reform overtake them, as their policies are the sort an actual Conservative party would have.
'You know them Tories.' 'Yeah' 'They're shite aren't they' 'Oh yes' 'You know what we need?' 'A shittier, madder, even less competent, more chancerish bunch instead?' 'No. Fuck Reform.' --- This country, if one collates general centre-centre-left-left and centre-centre-right-right tallies, tends to the former more often than not. But the system collapses us down to this endless fucking charade of useless Tories and their endless being out-flanked by a bunch of chancers who are simultaneously excellent at capitalising on Tory weakness and *absolutely fucking useless* when they ever get near power (rarely, locally, thankfully). Yet to read the news we're all Farage-niks now, and I resent that, not least because of the first point: Green-Lib-Dem-Labour polling far, far outweighs Reform+Tory. But the noise is all from/of/about the 'cancelled', the 'silent majority', the 'disenchanted'. Get tae fuck.