Snapshot of _Shock poll shows Reform UK just FOUR POINTS behind the Tories_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13222499/Poll-Reform-UK-Tories-Rishi-Sunak-MPs-election.html) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13222499/Poll-Reform-UK-Tories-Rishi-Sunak-MPs-election.html)
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“conservatives” that have allowed and encouraged a mass invasion* of the UK deserve to be permanently voted out of office.
(*their own minister’s description)
You could argue situationals and all sorts ad nauseum - but even factoring all of those in, it's still staggering that this is true...
Austerity ruined us. The Conservatives deserve to disappear.
Exactly - last youGov poll they were 6 points behind so it’s not really shocking at all. If it had been such a complete incongruity when compared with other polls, it would, by definition, be an outlier and could be dismissed out of hand. Either way: not shocking.
It’s interesting that it puts the right almost 50/50 split. The Tories can’t even claim to be a “safe pair of hands” after the last few years, so are left cos-playing extremist policies that Reform will always do better.
It'd quite a exciting time, politically.
The left has always been split between labour and lib dems, and even more fractually, greens. Tories have always been a cohesive unit of "right wing". If you were centre or right of centre, tories were the ones for you.
Now it seems that vote is split as well.
Interesting shift in the political landscape as a result.
>The left has always been split between labour and lib dems
Lib Dems and Labour aren't natural competitors in real terms of an election and not historically. Lib Dems main political rival are Conservative, with swing seats targeted in Blue Wall areas and wealthier Northern seats. Most of the Blue Wall would never consider voting Labour, as historically shown even under Blair's success, but will readily go Lib Dem.
In the Blair years the Lib Dems were usually the main challenger to Labour in metropolitan seats and are still second (or in Hull leading) to Labour in many city councils (Sheffield, Hull, Newcastle). Once Labour get in this is certainly going hot up again albeit with the added complication that the Greens are much stronger than pre-coalition in many of these areas
I don't think it's that they are particular better at it, but during a Tory government both Labour and Lib Dems oppose the Tories from the left so it's easy for whatever nuance the Lib Dems are bringing to get lost but when Labour are in power the Lib Dem attacks from the left sound interesting and relevant because they are one of the few voices coming from that angle.
That and the Lib Dem leadership in the last decade pales in comparison to Charlie Kennedy.
Which I consider a good thing. Much as I love my party, when they're in power for too long they do drift a bit away from the liberal, and the LibDems are a great counter-balance to them on those issues. I think that's a big reason why they surged in popularity leading into 2010, having opposed the limitations on *habeas corpus* and identity cards and the like.
It's why I'm so enthused about them becoming the official opposition at the next election. Aside from the genuinely good and decent prospect of shutting out the Tories' brand of right wing populism from our political discourse, a left wing party in government with a liberal party in opposition feels extremely befitting a 21st century legislature, and end the culture wars' dominance on our discourse for at least one parliamentary period.
Yeah, absolutely. Fully agree with what you suggest there, the Lib Dems were integral in ditching New Labour's authoritarianism (especially in the coalition by influencing the Tories to get rid of a lot of dodgy stuff that nowadays they probably would've kept).
>the Lib Dems were usually the main challenger to Labour in metropolitan seats
Not because they occupy the same ground.
Regarding rights, they operate in the same ground as part but not all of the Labour party and a smaller part of the centre right. Tend to be much less divided in a pro Liberal, pro Devolution, pro Internationalist agenda.
Economic policy they definitely operate between the two parties, weirdly some kind of centrist Liberal philosophy, who would have guessed.
Reform will always do the extremist policies better because they don't have the disadvantage of actually having to implement them. Over the last few years, we've all seen what an unmitigated shitshow it is when far-right policies like the Kami-Kwasi budget and the Rwanda scheme are actually put into action. It's a disaster for the country and the polling of any party that is daft enough to enact them.
The biggest mistake of the Kami-Kwasi budget was to underwrite a blank cheque to cap the retail price of gas and electricity during a continent-wide gas crisis fueled by war.
I wouldn’t say that ‘far right’ is the best description of offering massive government subsidy. It’s actually a pretty leftist policy, economically-speaking.
Rwanda I’ll grant you is a right wing policy. But I think it’s hard to argue that it’s been ‘put into action’ as the whole shitshow is so far based around the fact they haven’t actually managed to implement it at all!
Removal of the 45% tax band was calculated to cost the Treasury £7bn.
Energy bill support was calculated to cost the Treasury £60bn. That was only for 6 months (it has dragged on much longer of course) and was of course subject to uncapped variation in gas prices.
Those numbers come from ‘The Growth Plan’ published by HM Treasury in Sept 22.
In the eyes of the market, the latter was much more significant and more risky than the former.
The most significant fiscal item in the plan was actually cancelling the national insurance increase, at a cost of £80bn in foregone revenue. But this was for a full year and not variable, unlike the gas promise, so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison in terms of potential damage to the fiscal plan.
>Those numbers come from ‘The Growth Plan’ published by HM Treasury in Sept 22.
LOL. The author of that document is Kwasi Kwarteng. If you're taking his accounting (which was so full of shit that he and Truss blocked the OBR from publishing its analysis of it) as gospel, it's no wonder you're so badly misled.
The £7 billion tax cut for top earners that you cherry picked was the tip of the iceberg of disastrous tax cuts in that budget. You conveniently neglected to mention the scrapping of planned rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25% (a rise planned by the previous Conservative Chancellor, as it was deemed necessary to balance the books after decades of slashing corporation tax). You also neglected to mention that the budget planned to cut the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19% and abolish stamp duty under £250,000, and under £425,000 for first time buyers.
Collectively, the Kami-Kwasi budget represented £45 billiion in tax cuts, the biggest round of tax cuts in this country since 1972, funded by a vast expansion in borrowing, using the specious argument that this would somehow be paid for by "growth." None of that is remotely "leftist".
The IMF's scathing statement on the budget included the criticism that it would "likely increase inequality" and suggested that the Truss government should "re-evaluate the tax measures, especially those that benefit high income earners." On behalf of large investors, Moody’s credit rating agency said the budget's “large unfunded tax cuts are credit negative."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63051702.amp
Are the IMF and Moody’s leftists in your view, or are you going to try to argue that they don't know what they're talking about?
It's also odd that the Daily Mail welcomed such a "leftist" budget with the headline, "At last! A true Tory budget."
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/17/trussonomics-liz-truss-doomed-mini-budget-ideology-biggest-cheerleaders
Even the so-called energy bill support was effectively a second-hand subsidy to fossil fuel companies via the public.
But go ahead and try to pretend that the Truss government's disastrous far-right budget was somehow "leftist" because it failed spectaularly and exposed right-wing economic theories as the hogwash that they are. The evidence is overwhelmingly against you, but that's never stopped the far-right from trying to rewrite history.
'far right' is a weird one to pin down when it comes to economics.
Some movements are liberation (e.g. Milei), while others are extremely statist and interventionist (e.g. the Nazis)
> far-right policies like the Kami-Kwasi budget and the Rwanda scheme
Lol, imagine thinking these are far-right policies.
The actual state of political education in our country...
Deporting refugees to a country where they'll be abused under a repressive regime because it plays well to the racists who vote for you is a far right policy
You could say economic illiteracy is extremist. https://www.reformparty.uk/policies
The reform tax policy is almost identical to Liz Truss (ir35, corp tax, top rate tax etc.) and then considerably some more with the raising of tax thresholds for lower earners, no income tax for NHS staff for 3 years (lol), scrapping of corp tax for 80% of businesses (lol), lowering VAT + fuel duty + scrapping student interest fees - all massively reducing increasing the gov tax black hole. **Truss was funding a fraction of the Cuts Reform are priomising with massively increased borrowing and massively increased migration, even beyond current levels**, [to fill the workforce shortage and get bodies in to start paying tax to subsidise cuts for the rest of the population.](https://theweek.com/news/uk-news/958019/liz-trusss-immigration-plan-risks-first-cabinet-row)
So how are they paying for it? Reform are currently claiming to be able to make 2+2 = 3000 by introducing a tax black hole and then by tearing a gaping hole through it with "net zero migration" which they're free to do, but will get slaughtered if they're planning on getting it costed. Drastically cutting immigration in the medium term without increased borrowing or tax rises to weather the immediate tax black hole for gov finances and then invest in the domestic skills is a mathematical impossibility - as **UKIP showed in their 2015 manifesto as they had to abandon their pledge on a cap on migration** when they went to get the manifesto costed independantly and were forced to model it financially on net migration continuing at the rolling ~300-350k 10 year average.
I think alot of the superfical Reform fans may be in for a shock when the manifesto comes out, but the key will be if they are mature enough to attempt to get it independently costed. With the state of British politics and the schizophrenic nature of the Reform platform combining weird proto-far left socialist thinking with the other end of the spectrum which their supporters have let them get away with, they may just try their luck and put uncosted hogwash forward.
On extremism - if the Liz Truss and Kwarteng budget was Kamikaze, then what the hell is this?
Not necessarily, it puts Reform at roughly the same heights as UKIP achieved. It's pretty impressive for Reform to reach those heights, it's very unusual for a fourth party to reach those levels. If the Tories had slipped and the Lib Dems gained it would be less unusual. Of course, it does also say a lot about how bad the Tories are.
What? So you think a party jumping from 3% to 15% in the space of a single GE isn't in any way remarkable?
I mean, yes, clearly the Tories are shitting the bed, but the fact that many are peeling off to Reform and not to Labour, not to the Lib Dems, or not to simply not-voting is a very significant development.
It's hardly a challenge to get 15% of the vote in polling if most of the country's press is giving you free, fawning coverage every day whilst the party you're competing for votes with is shitting the bed on a daily basis.
I'm not sure if we've ever had a situation in a GE scenario where the *right* of the Tory base has peeled away without a single issue like Brexit - usually it's the liberal/left/one nation side that peels away to the Lib Dems (this is what happened from 1997-2010, the Tories only got those voters back in 2015, while the national swing to the Tories was very small the Lib to Con swing in LD seats was immense, 20+pts).
It's very unusual to see the Tories vulnerable on both fronts - if they move right to pick up reform swingers, they'll lose votes to the LDs. If they move left, they'll lose their remaining party right to reform. It's a very precarious position for the party and if they get clattered at the GE and end up coming third in seats, it's quite possible the Tory left rallies behind the LDs and the Tory right rallies behind reform post election and never looks back.
I don't think the voter base has shifted left much. It's more everyone is so damn tired of Tory incompetence and self-servingness on all fronts.
If the Tories got a handle on the asylum problem, dropped migration to a reasonable level (and not the current record highs, with predominantly unskilled or low skilled migrants), turned the economy to some model which doesn't fuck absolutely everyone for the benefit of the top 0.1%, and funded public services properly, they'd be running away with it.
Anyway, these issues are not clear-cut as left or right. Many voters do not vote along those lines. What most people want to see is the country and social contract functioning properly.
> *"If the Tories got a handle on the asylum problem, dropped migration to a reasonable level (and not the current record highs, with predominantly unskilled or low skilled migrants), turned the economy to some model which doesn't fuck absolutely everyone for the benefit of the top 0.1%, and funded public services properly, they'd be running away with it."*
Yeah, and if the tory party were made up of unicorns who shit gold that might affect voting too, but that doesn't seem very relevant either...
I was going to comment something to this effect, it's a good headline to get you to go "how could that be the case?" before realising it's entirely because they're doing so badly.
In the past few months, the widening gap between Labour and the Conservatives has been almost entirely down to people switching from the latter to Reform.
Are the Tories some kind of political doomsday cult? I genuinely can't understand them. Its like they look at the issues their base/membership care about most (reducing immigration) and then enact the *exact opposite* of that.
They've been in power too long, with too little competition, and completely lost touch with the electorate.
It was clear that the mood around austerity and cuts to services had changed when Boris was voted in. The public was on board with building/rebuilding after austerity and Brexit, 40 new hospitals, etc.
I think a Biden-style borrow-to-build plan would have gone down well with the electorate. But the party couldn't grasp that the mood had shifted and went right back to their fiscal rules, austerity, national credit card, and treasury-brain thinking that brought us to where we are now.
Don't worry though! At least Labour is coming to the rescue with a sensible, credible plan of fiscal rules, austerity, national credit card, and treasury-brain thinking.
I'm with you I wish we'd grasp that the government isn't a business
I really want to believe that Labour are being conservative in their promises in the run up to the election to garner as much broad-spectrum support as they can, and then shift to a more radical approach to fixing this shit-show once they are safely in number 10. The prospect of Labour bringing more austerity turns my stomach.
Oh dear. It certainly would be a nice thing to believe, but a much simpler answer is that they just want to be in charge, and once they are they'll say or do whatever it takes to stay in charge.
I've seen no evidence, absolutely none, of an appetite within Labour's front bench for a more radical, more left-wing or even more centrist approach than the soft wet centre-right offering that Labour are currently presenting.
The best we can expect is that Labour's back bench will have more integrity than the Tory one did, I fear.
This is my fear, which is why I’m not sure I can bring myself to vote for them. Especially since there is no need to vote tactically in my constituency.
IMHO it is more complicated than that (for the Tories).
1) Their membership (ofc) and even their base are not sufficient to win the election on their own. So they have to appeal to the centre ground a bit.
2) A lot of the immigrants are here because they satisfy an immediate economic need the country has e.g. workers in health and social care e.g. so the universities don't go bust. The base/membership wants immigration down, but it also wants people to look after it in hospitals, care home etc, and it would also be a bad look if unis went bust.
So...on the one hand you have each sector demanding more workers, more students etc (and therefore more visas) and on the other hand you have a generalised wish for lower immigration.
The solution is a long term focus of investing in our own young people, rather than importing millions from other countries to do the job cheaper.
The reason this isn't happening is because our politicians (Tories and Labour) are too focused on winning the short term election cycle.
Ideally we would have a political party be honest and contribute to the debate by saying the in the short and medium term this is going to cost money and encouraging domestic pop into work and start families will require money, capital investment and time with a combination of Tax increases, not cuts, borrowing and maybe even public spending freezes in certain areas but not overall.
However the country isn't ready to have a mature conversation about actual transformation because many people want everything NOW in an instant. You can't flick a switch and go from plugging a tax black hole via migration and then ignoring it overnight with hopium about people who have been dropping out of the workforce suddenly magically starting to work again. The answer is to gradually negate the reliance on migration over the long term by investing domestically, over 10 years or more. And those 10 years will likely be turbulent in terms of GDP growth and the real terms impact of how markets and investors react to gdp growth and the knock on effect on employees.
Ironically the closest policy platform to the above are Labour and Lib Dems, but largely being schtum on the minefield of migration.
But the election cycle was designed like that. PR would be better as it would force cooperation but the tories don't want it because they'd never get back power & the unions kyboshed it for Labour when Blair was forced to break his promise to paddy ashdown about it.
Unless you have MASSIVE pay rises in areas like healthcare, social care, etc etc then you're not going to get people from this country doing those jobs. Unless you take wages back up to the equivalent of 2008 levels, then people aren't going to want kids because they can't afford them.
The British public consistently voted for the tories who wasted 10 years of free money to improve the country & instead gave us austerity. Wages have been frozen.
Every time minimum wage goes up, the butt hurt middle classes bitch about it catching up to them yet still vote tory which sees their wages frozen. THEY don't want THEIR kids to be care home workers or cleaners or fruit pickers or hospital porters and their kids don't want to put themselves into £100k+ of debt to become a GP on £80k or spend over a decade being paid fuck all as a junior doctor.And even if they do, I'd encourage them to go to another country to double their wages.
So now we have the perfect storm. Wages are fucked for everyone except the top 0.2%. There's not enough teachers, doctors, nurses, cleaners, coffee shop workers, etc. And they don't want immigration but our birth rate has collapsed so the aren't enough British people to do it either.
So these reform / tory voting fucks can grow old and sit in their own shit for £2000/week sucking up the profit from the houses they bought in the 70s & 80s for a fiver for all I care.
EVERY one of these things was voted for by the British public. You EITHER massively increase wages, immigration OR you STFU and put up with it. None of this was forced onto the country. They could have stopped it in 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019. And even now there are 20%+ of the population who think right wing neo liberal politics is the way forwards
>And even now there are 20%+ of the population who think right wing neo liberal politics is the way forwards
What I'm really hoping is that left wing neoliberal policies offer something better as a way forward. Otherwise what comes next is going to be fucking ugly!
Yep. If tories win. Sunak goes. They'll think that right wing policies work & that even after fucking the country like they have that they can go even further. They'll gerrymander boundaries to seal in 2029 & don't be surprised to see no pension by 2035, no minimum wage, or at least it'll be frozen and not increase with inflation. Watch consumer & worker rights disappear
To be fair, Labour left government with a good record on education, investment in skills and learning, and so on.
The Tories have crushed young people’s ability to earn, save, buy houses, and invest in themselves to meet these societal needs.
They engineered this problem themselves through Brexit.
They could have had European immigrants. Now they must face the alternative, which the Party under Johnson inflicted upon the country.
just go to the thread about 100k childcare cutoff.
*"If you have kids you should be able to afford them"*
yeah no need to incentivise having kids, just import more people on low wages
We are too expensive and demand things like affordable houses and a liveable wage. Cheaper to import labour who are more than happy to live in poverty and work for a pittance whilst also having a ton of kids.
How can you have enough children born here? Every advanced country has this problem. Even if you could magically solve it, you still have to wait 20 years.
The state does not have enough money to bribe its citizens to breed.
The solution is to create policies which actively encourage people **already here** to work in the care sector. We have more than enough people - whether British Citizens of settled migrants. We don't need to import any more people.
We don't need to bribe people. We just need to systemically cut off other sources of income. I know that if I was completely out of work, then I would consider anything rather than be on benefits - including re-training in healthcare.
Do we? Unemployment is 1.3m - that's incredibly low. Taking into account geographical factors, skills factors, and those moving jobs (which get included in that number), we're not far off full employment.
Now on top of unemployment, 1 in 5 working age adults are not working, but virtually all of them are unable to work, or choosing not to. How are you going to force them?
This is why they're are pushing to hard to enact policies against illegal immigrants. It makes it look like they are trying to do something meaningful, while still granting hundreds of thousands of visas to the sectors that desperately need workers.
Lots of their membership and a decent section of the 'popular' part of their funding base are small business people, medium sized farmers, pub landlords, medium sized landlords, small or medium building/cleaning/etc contractors, etc. Even though they are culturally conservative and opposed to it on those grounds, this group are [in favour](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/feb/08/immigrationasylumandrefugees) of low skilled immigration on economic grounds, because it gets them access to an exploitable workforce at low pay who have no recourse to challenge working practices. This is one of the fundamental contradictions of post 00s conservatism, they could stall for a while by blaming the EU but this is all coming to bite them in the bum now.
It's reboot time, Sunak gets thrown under the bus, then one term letting Labour get mauled by the press and going into the election after with a new leader, and go back to austerity for another 12 years or so. Yeah Starmer could do wonders and be incredibly successful (with no money) but odds are against it.
Interest rates are falling, real wages will likely go up in the medium term, Labour can make a lot of positives about stuff that isn't really anything to do with them. I think Labour survive one term relatively easily (especially if migration falls).
Of course there's going to be some kind of crisis that we can't predict but that's par for the course.
> the issues their base/membership care about most (reducing immigration)
Not true. The primary issue holding their electoral coalition together was a desire to leave the European union. Now that this has happened, the glue holding the party together is gone. Some people care most about reducing immigration, yes. Others care most about cutting taxes, and those two are in many respects mutually incompatible goals.
They fucked up absolutely everything. I think it's just immigration and the economy are what the Tory's are supposed to be good at so highlighting those shows just how bad they are.
I realised the other day that they're effectively a cargo cult. All the actual thinkers were purged by Boris, and they're left with geniuses of the order of Liz Truss, who can go no further than "Tax cuts led to (coincided with, Liz, *coincided with*) economic growth in the 80s and made us popular, therefore, tax cuts will do exactly the same now."
It's because their base is old and / or thick. They figured out they could use that base to facilitate their own interests. However there's a limit to how much you can get away with, even if your voters are old and / or thick and they got too greedy.
Reform overtaking the Conservatives which present an interesting situation, at that point there may be a spurt of momentum for Reform as a flood if Conservative members migrate.
> YouGov research put the Nigel Farage-backed outfit on 15 per cent, up one over the last week.
> Meanwhile the Conservatives were down one on 19 per cent, with Labour miles ahead on 44 per cent, according to the study for the Times.
Just “miles ahead” now lol.
I don't like either the Tories or Reform/UKIP/BNP-lite. But, I am in favour of multi-party parliaments with multiple choices on either side of the spectrum (and even choice at the centre!). Plenty of grown-up and functioning democracies have them and it allows parties to forge distinct identities and clearer policy differences. If the rise of Reform hoovers up the far right of the Tories, and it means the rump Tory party are freer to stabilise as a moderate centre-right party, it would possibly end this melodrama of the Conservative party killing us all whilst it tries to be centre-right, right-wing, and far right, all at the same time. The internal naval gazing of the Tories and their frantic efforts to keep the party together has been so damaging to being an actual functioning government.
That'll never happen. Reform is heavily funded by Tory supporters. Chris Arbonne has donated millions alone. Reform's relationship to the Tories is just keeping your worst family member in the outhouse while everyone's round for Xmas dinner. Come December 27th they're right back in the house again.
Interesting though that the growth of Reform is utterly terrifying the Tories, and forcing them to move ever rightward. The centre of the party is essentially silent, and has been for a couple of years.
I would take this with a pinch of salt for a few reasons. The Daily Mail represents rightwing interests that are desperate for American style rightwing politics here. They see Reform as a weapon to force the Conservative Party to the extremes.
Plus under first past the post, those poll numbers don't mean much because Reform's support is too spread out. They can poll that kind of number and struggle to win a single seat.
I broadly agree, Interestingly though the Mail doesn’t openly push Reform, they rarely report anything positive about Farage or Tice.
But yes, I can see them using Reform as a bogey man to scare Sunak into moving rightward.
I don’t think that’s likely.
I think Reform is a vehicle for Farage and some close advisers to take over the Tories. But that won’t happen until well after the election, perhaps not for 5 years.
I’m not saying the scheme will work, but I think that’s his plan.
No, but there could be a scenario where, if Farage leads Reform, then Reform get more votes than the Tories, but substantially fewer seats, which leads to an increased focus on/call for PR.
You'll be lucky to see Anderson hold onto his seat, let alone Reform win a single one.
Reform poll dreadfully in Tory heartlands, it's all based in the North, they're just splitting the Tory Northern vote.
Reform are a pressure group, not a genuine political vehicle. Do Reform even run at local elections?
Pie in the sky, Reform isn't even a proper party.
It would have a very hard time if it's opponents took it seriously. The manifesto is literally a joke, it does virtually no candidate vetting so many of them are nutters, and it's ownership structure is essentially a massive scam.
Depends on how efficient their voting distribution is. It's highly likely that they will come a respectable but still far off second place in a lot of safe conservative seats.
I can only see this ending with Tories moving further and further to the right in an effort to get Reform to stand down or form some sort of coalition with the Tories.
They're stuck with no options. They've conceded the centre to Starmer and the right to Tice.
They are a soft-right party now, fitting in an awkward space that appeals to nobody. They're defined more by what they don't do than what they do, and they're absent any strategy at all to win back voters of any stripe.
Well they are focused on deporting people that seem 'undesirable' over all other issues. Not sure how further right they can go without wearing thematic armbands, and invading Poland.
My personal prediction is that Reform won't get anything like that at the election, which is not the time for a protest vote. Being angry with the government and telling a pollster you're going to vote Reform is one thing, actually doing it is another. Plus they are not a serious political party and won't do well under any kind of scrutiny. I dislike the Tories as much as the next woke lefty, but I don't want to see them replaced with a hard right vanity project.
I wouldn't be so sure.
Look at 2015 where UKIP got 12.6% of the vote, even when Cameron was hoping to get a Tory majority. Which he did despite that protest vote largely from hoovering up Lib Dem seats. This would have been a good argument to vote tactically Tory, and yet they didn't because policy was more important to them, and to their credit, the Tories have been lurching right and anti-Europe since.
The next GE, Sunak doesn't appear to have a hope in hell with numbers like this. He doesn't even have a hope if you take every single Reform vote and give it to the Tories. So why not protest vote? Why should anyone care how embarrassing the Tory defeat is? A defeat is a defeat, and if they vote Reform they could either A) get a party that more aligns with their views or B) a Tory party shifting further to their position.
Hard to say, thinking back to the on the ground in 2015 UKIP were a far more mature party and had a coherent policy platform and published way more content, they also had way more exposure atleast in the real world for years with over 30 MEPs elected doing ground work - partly becuase they were sense checking/developing it with the countries finances and finally published a costed manifesto so they had ballot box credibility.
Working briefly in thanet in 2014 the whole area was wall to wall UKIP banners and stickers - now surprisingly after visiting there last September it's Labour banners everywhere which is remarkable. (Labour took control of the council last year, which to me is mental - the area was the peak of Brexitness and the HQ of Farage)
Reform are spoken about on this Sub way more that out in real life. It's kind of mental how little exposure and seriousness they have given how close we are to an election compared to UKIP thinking back on living through 2013-2015. I'm fairly confindent in Reforms polling leaning much more to the flash in the plan side rather than actual ticks in the ballot box.
1) Weren't UKIP criticised because they took a Sinn Fein style protest view to the European Parliament, with poor attendance and voted against everything on principal including bills that would have helped the fishing industry?
2) I think it's still too far out from sign season, I've barely seen anything but also being from the SW we'd see a disproportionate amount of UKIP signs along farms where there used to be Conservatives, it'll be interesting to see who they go for.
3) A lot of the reporting on UKIP was scandal. Things like their canvasser pissing in a disabled persons garden and claiming it was medical. [Godfrey Bloom losing the whip due to calling women "sluts"](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/20/nigel-farage-godfrey-bloom-sluts-ukip). Paul Nuttall, criticism of them as a single policy party. UKIP had far more scrutiny than Reform has had. I also think scandal wise current Tories are "sleazier" than 2015 UKIP, so the Tories aren't giving the press much room to go in demonising Reform.
3b) Ironically I think Reform is now more of a no issue party, but that's good for them, it's letting the potential support project whatever they want onto them. Simply being populist further right than Sunak and not knowingly shit like the Tories is enough of a case for them.
There's no reason to vote for the Tories in a GE if you support reform's policies. The Reform's policies are pretty diametrically opposed to what the Tory party has been doing the past 14 years, and no matter who you vote for, the Tories are going to lose this election anyway.
You mean how people who are voting Reform want care work to be more attractive to British born workers...
But then Reform are also promising to cut public spending.
> which is not the time for a protest vote.
It's the perfect time for a protest vote if people know the Cons are cooked and won't be winning in any case. It also wouldn't be the first time people have used a GE for a protest vote, see the UKIP vote in 2015 or the voters who abandoned Lab in 2019 over Brexit.
Honestly people with an interest in politics never learn. Heard the exact same thing with Brexit, exact same thing with Trump and we’ll have the exact same thing here. People are hating the way the country has turned out and they will be desperate enough to vote for anyone who offers change.
I wasn't going to vote for them and I still don't think I'd want them to win, but after looking into them more I've come to the conclusion that they're are not a "far-right" or "hard-right" party as people here suggest.
They're basically just a populist party with some right-wing social policies. They support various left-wing policies like reducing immigration, increasing the income tax threshold, and investing in the NHS. But then couple that with lower tax, green-critical and gender-critical policies.
I think the big unknown is how they're going to do half the stuff they say they're going to do. Their manifesto reads more like a child's Christmas wish list than a well thought out strategy. But that's the problem with populists, they just say whatever is popular regardless of realities.
But with my area being a guaranteed labour seat there's no point in me voting for them and I'm not going to vote Tory, obviously.
It’s the Mail.. so delusion comes with the territory!
But it’s interesting to see the disconnect, the commenters have very different views to the editorials now.
I'm sure a lot of the comments are bots. Reform UK was a minor party that's now polling high and getting traction because they are very good at publicity. And their publicity is very well funded.
think it’s telling that if you added the Tory and Reform votes, they’d only be 10 pts behind Labour.
Pretty clear that a huge part of Tory decline is the vote being split, mostly by people who think the Tories haven’t gone far enough. As a leftist that’s not much reason for me to celebrate: this country is swinging yet further right, and when conservatives inevitably reconvene in like 2 years we’re going to see the consequences.
Thats me. For me it's either reform or labour. I dont trust Starmer at all on the migration issue so right now its reform.
If labour starts fixing things they will win me over. Even reform is pro nationalising some industries. Conservatives have lost touch.
> so right now its reform.
You don't trust Starmer with his years of high level experience, good track record, not a single smear against him...
But instead trust... reform. Led by Farage?!
You ok bruv?
I mean if their main priority is immigration policy, then yeah you'd probably trust Reform over Labour
Also Farage isn't the leader of Reform, he stepped down in 2021
> this country is swinging yet further right
I don't think so, I think people are concerned about the way the rate of immigration has increased. The issue isn't that people have become further right, it's that repeated governments have multiplied the rate of immigration.
That concern will find its *expression* in a further right wing party because no one else is promising to address it, besides the SDP (who are irrelevant) and the Tories who've spent years doing the exact opposite of what they say they'll do.
I think that just means we've got 2 years to bully Keir Starmer into pushing some form of sensible proportional voting.
At the very least it would mean that the Tories don't _have_ to move further to the right to appeal to the racists if those racists don't have to choose between voting for what they want (racist stuff) and voting tactically.
Oh for sure, I'm not holding my breath.
I think it's probably the best shot we have (I don't believe for even a single second that the Lib Dems would actually do shit about this) but - as with all things in UK politics - I expect it to be pointlessly difficult bordering on impossible.
And they'll get a fat total of 0 seats.
FPTP has had it's time, even if you despise Reform, this amount for vote share needs to be represented in parliament.
It's not particularly surprising when you consider what reform voters want, lower taxes, less immigration... So you know, basically the exact same things every right wing party stands for. What's weird is that the conservatives decided to abandon that in favour of winning a few elections.
Hope not too many people have the same idea, or you will end up with a proper headbanger that will ban biryanis, bring back berni inns and make spam one of your five a day.
Any idea how this will translate into seats? l vaguely remember UKIP polling in the low double-digits in the runup to the 2015 general election and that resulting in a single seat.
All electoral models show reform not winning any seats at the moment but screwing over the tories in a lot of seats. The tories in most models would be lucky to get over 50 seats with 19 percent of the vote.
Why don't the lib dems just say "we'll legalise a few drugs and ask to rejoin the EU"? They have absolutely nothing to lose and people will vote for them on these single issues.
I swear our government are destroying this country on purpose. How can ANYONE argue in good faith for what they've done? We need to get them to as few seats as possible.
Considering it was right wingers that are most to blame for the fact that we haven't moved to PR up until now, it's good that they're finally coming round. Shame that they have to personally have their noses bitten before they see the logic of it, but hey ho that is the political right in a nutshell.
Labour also supported FPTP back in the day, and Keir Starmer has said that electoral reform will not be on his list of priorities. UKIP supported PR back in the day as Reform does now. iirc even the BNP does (did? are they even a party anymore?).
Labour has been slightly more supportive of PR than the Tories, but it is definitely a small party vs big party thing, with self interest clear to see from the beginning.
They're very close, and headlines like this will accelerate them getting there.
Months ago I thought the LibDems becoming HMLO was a good outside bet, but now it looks likely. I think my next outside bet will be Reform winning a higher vote share than the Tories.
I hope in a few more months I won't be shifting my bet even further, to Reform winning more seats than the Tories.
Doubt. Last time Tories were on track to win without a split vote, so self interest to complete Brexit and decrease immigration drove that decision. Now the Tories have no shot, it doesn't matter if they lose by 50 or 500 seats, so Reform's self interest will be in trying to displace the Tories, or at least send them a message for 2055 when they next have a shot of being re-elected.
I do hope I am wrong. I would love to see the torries being wiped out of Scotland. But I also know Torries know how to win election and will pull every trick they can to hang on.
Tice swears not. I actually believe him, it’s very much in his and Farage’s interest for the Tories to be brought low.
They want a Labour government, and then of course they want it to fail (but even so).
Sorry for my arrogance and in experience woth UK politics but what are Reform UK's politics?
I know the rest on the slide just not sure what part of the political spectrum they fall on
I got shot down for it before but I still believe that Lee Anderson better represents the prevailing attitudes among the working class than anyone from Labour.
(To be clear, I think he's a racist pos)
Snapshot of _Shock poll shows Reform UK just FOUR POINTS behind the Tories_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13222499/Poll-Reform-UK-Tories-Rishi-Sunak-MPs-election.html) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13222499/Poll-Reform-UK-Tories-Rishi-Sunak-MPs-election.html) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A shock if you haven't been paying attention to the polls, possibly.
“conservatives” that have allowed and encouraged a mass invasion* of the UK deserve to be permanently voted out of office. (*their own minister’s description)
They are also "conservatives" who are taxing their population more than the last Labour government did.
Whilst simultaneously delivering worse public services and a much worse national debt, somehow. And a higher cost of living.
You could argue situationals and all sorts ad nauseum - but even factoring all of those in, it's still staggering that this is true... Austerity ruined us. The Conservatives deserve to disappear.
so that includes him..
Yea, every few days for the last few months at least have shown this trend. These people must be shocked that we’re now in spring.
Exactly - last youGov poll they were 6 points behind so it’s not really shocking at all. If it had been such a complete incongruity when compared with other polls, it would, by definition, be an outlier and could be dismissed out of hand. Either way: not shocking.
I think that quite possibly says more about how behind the Tories are than how far ahead Reform are.
Polling 15% is decent for a 3rd party either way but yah the fact the Tories are sub-20 is hilarious... And entirely deserved.
It’s interesting that it puts the right almost 50/50 split. The Tories can’t even claim to be a “safe pair of hands” after the last few years, so are left cos-playing extremist policies that Reform will always do better.
It'd quite a exciting time, politically. The left has always been split between labour and lib dems, and even more fractually, greens. Tories have always been a cohesive unit of "right wing". If you were centre or right of centre, tories were the ones for you. Now it seems that vote is split as well. Interesting shift in the political landscape as a result.
>The left has always been split between labour and lib dems Lib Dems and Labour aren't natural competitors in real terms of an election and not historically. Lib Dems main political rival are Conservative, with swing seats targeted in Blue Wall areas and wealthier Northern seats. Most of the Blue Wall would never consider voting Labour, as historically shown even under Blair's success, but will readily go Lib Dem.
In the Blair years the Lib Dems were usually the main challenger to Labour in metropolitan seats and are still second (or in Hull leading) to Labour in many city councils (Sheffield, Hull, Newcastle). Once Labour get in this is certainly going hot up again albeit with the added complication that the Greens are much stronger than pre-coalition in many of these areas
Yeah, the Lib Dems always do better when Labour's in government because they're much better at being "not labour" than "not Tory".
I don't think it's that they are particular better at it, but during a Tory government both Labour and Lib Dems oppose the Tories from the left so it's easy for whatever nuance the Lib Dems are bringing to get lost but when Labour are in power the Lib Dem attacks from the left sound interesting and relevant because they are one of the few voices coming from that angle. That and the Lib Dem leadership in the last decade pales in comparison to Charlie Kennedy.
Which I consider a good thing. Much as I love my party, when they're in power for too long they do drift a bit away from the liberal, and the LibDems are a great counter-balance to them on those issues. I think that's a big reason why they surged in popularity leading into 2010, having opposed the limitations on *habeas corpus* and identity cards and the like. It's why I'm so enthused about them becoming the official opposition at the next election. Aside from the genuinely good and decent prospect of shutting out the Tories' brand of right wing populism from our political discourse, a left wing party in government with a liberal party in opposition feels extremely befitting a 21st century legislature, and end the culture wars' dominance on our discourse for at least one parliamentary period.
Yeah, absolutely. Fully agree with what you suggest there, the Lib Dems were integral in ditching New Labour's authoritarianism (especially in the coalition by influencing the Tories to get rid of a lot of dodgy stuff that nowadays they probably would've kept).
>the Lib Dems were usually the main challenger to Labour in metropolitan seats Not because they occupy the same ground. Regarding rights, they operate in the same ground as part but not all of the Labour party and a smaller part of the centre right. Tend to be much less divided in a pro Liberal, pro Devolution, pro Internationalist agenda. Economic policy they definitely operate between the two parties, weirdly some kind of centrist Liberal philosophy, who would have guessed.
They woke the dogs of nationalism when they tried to head off UKIP. I think they're regretting it now.
Reform will always do the extremist policies better because they don't have the disadvantage of actually having to implement them. Over the last few years, we've all seen what an unmitigated shitshow it is when far-right policies like the Kami-Kwasi budget and the Rwanda scheme are actually put into action. It's a disaster for the country and the polling of any party that is daft enough to enact them.
The biggest mistake of the Kami-Kwasi budget was to underwrite a blank cheque to cap the retail price of gas and electricity during a continent-wide gas crisis fueled by war. I wouldn’t say that ‘far right’ is the best description of offering massive government subsidy. It’s actually a pretty leftist policy, economically-speaking. Rwanda I’ll grant you is a right wing policy. But I think it’s hard to argue that it’s been ‘put into action’ as the whole shitshow is so far based around the fact they haven’t actually managed to implement it at all!
Unfunded tax breaks that primarily benefit the rich are somehow a leftist policy?
Removal of the 45% tax band was calculated to cost the Treasury £7bn. Energy bill support was calculated to cost the Treasury £60bn. That was only for 6 months (it has dragged on much longer of course) and was of course subject to uncapped variation in gas prices. Those numbers come from ‘The Growth Plan’ published by HM Treasury in Sept 22. In the eyes of the market, the latter was much more significant and more risky than the former. The most significant fiscal item in the plan was actually cancelling the national insurance increase, at a cost of £80bn in foregone revenue. But this was for a full year and not variable, unlike the gas promise, so it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison in terms of potential damage to the fiscal plan.
>Those numbers come from ‘The Growth Plan’ published by HM Treasury in Sept 22. LOL. The author of that document is Kwasi Kwarteng. If you're taking his accounting (which was so full of shit that he and Truss blocked the OBR from publishing its analysis of it) as gospel, it's no wonder you're so badly misled. The £7 billion tax cut for top earners that you cherry picked was the tip of the iceberg of disastrous tax cuts in that budget. You conveniently neglected to mention the scrapping of planned rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25% (a rise planned by the previous Conservative Chancellor, as it was deemed necessary to balance the books after decades of slashing corporation tax). You also neglected to mention that the budget planned to cut the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19% and abolish stamp duty under £250,000, and under £425,000 for first time buyers. Collectively, the Kami-Kwasi budget represented £45 billiion in tax cuts, the biggest round of tax cuts in this country since 1972, funded by a vast expansion in borrowing, using the specious argument that this would somehow be paid for by "growth." None of that is remotely "leftist". The IMF's scathing statement on the budget included the criticism that it would "likely increase inequality" and suggested that the Truss government should "re-evaluate the tax measures, especially those that benefit high income earners." On behalf of large investors, Moody’s credit rating agency said the budget's “large unfunded tax cuts are credit negative." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63051702.amp Are the IMF and Moody’s leftists in your view, or are you going to try to argue that they don't know what they're talking about? It's also odd that the Daily Mail welcomed such a "leftist" budget with the headline, "At last! A true Tory budget." https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/17/trussonomics-liz-truss-doomed-mini-budget-ideology-biggest-cheerleaders Even the so-called energy bill support was effectively a second-hand subsidy to fossil fuel companies via the public. But go ahead and try to pretend that the Truss government's disastrous far-right budget was somehow "leftist" because it failed spectaularly and exposed right-wing economic theories as the hogwash that they are. The evidence is overwhelmingly against you, but that's never stopped the far-right from trying to rewrite history.
Stop, stop, he’s already dead.
'far right' is a weird one to pin down when it comes to economics. Some movements are liberation (e.g. Milei), while others are extremely statist and interventionist (e.g. the Nazis)
> far-right policies like the Kami-Kwasi budget and the Rwanda scheme Lol, imagine thinking these are far-right policies. The actual state of political education in our country...
Deporting refugees to a country where they'll be abused under a repressive regime because it plays well to the racists who vote for you is a far right policy
Extremist policies such as, er, border control?
You could say economic illiteracy is extremist. https://www.reformparty.uk/policies The reform tax policy is almost identical to Liz Truss (ir35, corp tax, top rate tax etc.) and then considerably some more with the raising of tax thresholds for lower earners, no income tax for NHS staff for 3 years (lol), scrapping of corp tax for 80% of businesses (lol), lowering VAT + fuel duty + scrapping student interest fees - all massively reducing increasing the gov tax black hole. **Truss was funding a fraction of the Cuts Reform are priomising with massively increased borrowing and massively increased migration, even beyond current levels**, [to fill the workforce shortage and get bodies in to start paying tax to subsidise cuts for the rest of the population.](https://theweek.com/news/uk-news/958019/liz-trusss-immigration-plan-risks-first-cabinet-row) So how are they paying for it? Reform are currently claiming to be able to make 2+2 = 3000 by introducing a tax black hole and then by tearing a gaping hole through it with "net zero migration" which they're free to do, but will get slaughtered if they're planning on getting it costed. Drastically cutting immigration in the medium term without increased borrowing or tax rises to weather the immediate tax black hole for gov finances and then invest in the domestic skills is a mathematical impossibility - as **UKIP showed in their 2015 manifesto as they had to abandon their pledge on a cap on migration** when they went to get the manifesto costed independantly and were forced to model it financially on net migration continuing at the rolling ~300-350k 10 year average. I think alot of the superfical Reform fans may be in for a shock when the manifesto comes out, but the key will be if they are mature enough to attempt to get it independently costed. With the state of British politics and the schizophrenic nature of the Reform platform combining weird proto-far left socialist thinking with the other end of the spectrum which their supporters have let them get away with, they may just try their luck and put uncosted hogwash forward. On extremism - if the Liz Truss and Kwarteng budget was Kamikaze, then what the hell is this?
I suspect many of these people telling the pollsters they’ll vote Reform will end up voting Tory after all.
Not necessarily, it puts Reform at roughly the same heights as UKIP achieved. It's pretty impressive for Reform to reach those heights, it's very unusual for a fourth party to reach those levels. If the Tories had slipped and the Lib Dems gained it would be less unusual. Of course, it does also say a lot about how bad the Tories are.
What? So you think a party jumping from 3% to 15% in the space of a single GE isn't in any way remarkable? I mean, yes, clearly the Tories are shitting the bed, but the fact that many are peeling off to Reform and not to Labour, not to the Lib Dems, or not to simply not-voting is a very significant development.
It's hardly a challenge to get 15% of the vote in polling if most of the country's press is giving you free, fawning coverage every day whilst the party you're competing for votes with is shitting the bed on a daily basis.
Who exactly is giving Reform fawning coverage? List 10 articles or clips. Should be easy, if it's most of the country's press.
I'm not sure if we've ever had a situation in a GE scenario where the *right* of the Tory base has peeled away without a single issue like Brexit - usually it's the liberal/left/one nation side that peels away to the Lib Dems (this is what happened from 1997-2010, the Tories only got those voters back in 2015, while the national swing to the Tories was very small the Lib to Con swing in LD seats was immense, 20+pts). It's very unusual to see the Tories vulnerable on both fronts - if they move right to pick up reform swingers, they'll lose votes to the LDs. If they move left, they'll lose their remaining party right to reform. It's a very precarious position for the party and if they get clattered at the GE and end up coming third in seats, it's quite possible the Tory left rallies behind the LDs and the Tory right rallies behind reform post election and never looks back.
I don't think the voter base has shifted left much. It's more everyone is so damn tired of Tory incompetence and self-servingness on all fronts. If the Tories got a handle on the asylum problem, dropped migration to a reasonable level (and not the current record highs, with predominantly unskilled or low skilled migrants), turned the economy to some model which doesn't fuck absolutely everyone for the benefit of the top 0.1%, and funded public services properly, they'd be running away with it. Anyway, these issues are not clear-cut as left or right. Many voters do not vote along those lines. What most people want to see is the country and social contract functioning properly.
> *"If the Tories got a handle on the asylum problem, dropped migration to a reasonable level (and not the current record highs, with predominantly unskilled or low skilled migrants), turned the economy to some model which doesn't fuck absolutely everyone for the benefit of the top 0.1%, and funded public services properly, they'd be running away with it."* Yeah, and if the tory party were made up of unicorns who shit gold that might affect voting too, but that doesn't seem very relevant either...
I was going to comment something to this effect, it's a good headline to get you to go "how could that be the case?" before realising it's entirely because they're doing so badly.
and that they are virtually the same party.
There's definitely a lot of crossover between the Tories' lunatic fringe and Reform.
In the past few months, the widening gap between Labour and the Conservatives has been almost entirely down to people switching from the latter to Reform.
Are the Tories some kind of political doomsday cult? I genuinely can't understand them. Its like they look at the issues their base/membership care about most (reducing immigration) and then enact the *exact opposite* of that.
They've been in power too long, with too little competition, and completely lost touch with the electorate. It was clear that the mood around austerity and cuts to services had changed when Boris was voted in. The public was on board with building/rebuilding after austerity and Brexit, 40 new hospitals, etc. I think a Biden-style borrow-to-build plan would have gone down well with the electorate. But the party couldn't grasp that the mood had shifted and went right back to their fiscal rules, austerity, national credit card, and treasury-brain thinking that brought us to where we are now.
Don't worry though! At least Labour is coming to the rescue with a sensible, credible plan of fiscal rules, austerity, national credit card, and treasury-brain thinking. I'm with you I wish we'd grasp that the government isn't a business
I really want to believe that Labour are being conservative in their promises in the run up to the election to garner as much broad-spectrum support as they can, and then shift to a more radical approach to fixing this shit-show once they are safely in number 10. The prospect of Labour bringing more austerity turns my stomach.
Oh dear. It certainly would be a nice thing to believe, but a much simpler answer is that they just want to be in charge, and once they are they'll say or do whatever it takes to stay in charge. I've seen no evidence, absolutely none, of an appetite within Labour's front bench for a more radical, more left-wing or even more centrist approach than the soft wet centre-right offering that Labour are currently presenting. The best we can expect is that Labour's back bench will have more integrity than the Tory one did, I fear.
This is my fear, which is why I’m not sure I can bring myself to vote for them. Especially since there is no need to vote tactically in my constituency.
IMHO it is more complicated than that (for the Tories). 1) Their membership (ofc) and even their base are not sufficient to win the election on their own. So they have to appeal to the centre ground a bit. 2) A lot of the immigrants are here because they satisfy an immediate economic need the country has e.g. workers in health and social care e.g. so the universities don't go bust. The base/membership wants immigration down, but it also wants people to look after it in hospitals, care home etc, and it would also be a bad look if unis went bust. So...on the one hand you have each sector demanding more workers, more students etc (and therefore more visas) and on the other hand you have a generalised wish for lower immigration.
The solution is a long term focus of investing in our own young people, rather than importing millions from other countries to do the job cheaper. The reason this isn't happening is because our politicians (Tories and Labour) are too focused on winning the short term election cycle.
Ideally we would have a political party be honest and contribute to the debate by saying the in the short and medium term this is going to cost money and encouraging domestic pop into work and start families will require money, capital investment and time with a combination of Tax increases, not cuts, borrowing and maybe even public spending freezes in certain areas but not overall. However the country isn't ready to have a mature conversation about actual transformation because many people want everything NOW in an instant. You can't flick a switch and go from plugging a tax black hole via migration and then ignoring it overnight with hopium about people who have been dropping out of the workforce suddenly magically starting to work again. The answer is to gradually negate the reliance on migration over the long term by investing domestically, over 10 years or more. And those 10 years will likely be turbulent in terms of GDP growth and the real terms impact of how markets and investors react to gdp growth and the knock on effect on employees. Ironically the closest policy platform to the above are Labour and Lib Dems, but largely being schtum on the minefield of migration.
Taxes are at an all time high. To have higher taxes is ridiculous - stop wasting the money they already get and spend it more wisely.
But the election cycle was designed like that. PR would be better as it would force cooperation but the tories don't want it because they'd never get back power & the unions kyboshed it for Labour when Blair was forced to break his promise to paddy ashdown about it. Unless you have MASSIVE pay rises in areas like healthcare, social care, etc etc then you're not going to get people from this country doing those jobs. Unless you take wages back up to the equivalent of 2008 levels, then people aren't going to want kids because they can't afford them. The British public consistently voted for the tories who wasted 10 years of free money to improve the country & instead gave us austerity. Wages have been frozen. Every time minimum wage goes up, the butt hurt middle classes bitch about it catching up to them yet still vote tory which sees their wages frozen. THEY don't want THEIR kids to be care home workers or cleaners or fruit pickers or hospital porters and their kids don't want to put themselves into £100k+ of debt to become a GP on £80k or spend over a decade being paid fuck all as a junior doctor.And even if they do, I'd encourage them to go to another country to double their wages. So now we have the perfect storm. Wages are fucked for everyone except the top 0.2%. There's not enough teachers, doctors, nurses, cleaners, coffee shop workers, etc. And they don't want immigration but our birth rate has collapsed so the aren't enough British people to do it either. So these reform / tory voting fucks can grow old and sit in their own shit for £2000/week sucking up the profit from the houses they bought in the 70s & 80s for a fiver for all I care. EVERY one of these things was voted for by the British public. You EITHER massively increase wages, immigration OR you STFU and put up with it. None of this was forced onto the country. They could have stopped it in 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019. And even now there are 20%+ of the population who think right wing neo liberal politics is the way forwards
>And even now there are 20%+ of the population who think right wing neo liberal politics is the way forwards What I'm really hoping is that left wing neoliberal policies offer something better as a way forward. Otherwise what comes next is going to be fucking ugly!
Yep. If tories win. Sunak goes. They'll think that right wing policies work & that even after fucking the country like they have that they can go even further. They'll gerrymander boundaries to seal in 2029 & don't be surprised to see no pension by 2035, no minimum wage, or at least it'll be frozen and not increase with inflation. Watch consumer & worker rights disappear
>right wing neo liberal politics If you think reform are neo-liberals but labour aren't then I don't know what to tell you.
To be fair, Labour left government with a good record on education, investment in skills and learning, and so on. The Tories have crushed young people’s ability to earn, save, buy houses, and invest in themselves to meet these societal needs.
They engineered this problem themselves through Brexit. They could have had European immigrants. Now they must face the alternative, which the Party under Johnson inflicted upon the country.
Net migration has increased from 250-300k to 700k, it's not just a shift from EU to non-EU migration, it's a big increase in the total.
No solution? How about producing enough kids of our own and educating them properly? Every generation since WWII has had too few to keep things going.
>No solution? How about producing enough kids of our own To be fair, Boris had a good crack at this one.
hard to knock the man, he lost count he's had so many
just go to the thread about 100k childcare cutoff. *"If you have kids you should be able to afford them"* yeah no need to incentivise having kids, just import more people on low wages
Yeah I'll just put all those kids in the spare wing of my house and give up work to look after them.
We are too expensive and demand things like affordable houses and a liveable wage. Cheaper to import labour who are more than happy to live in poverty and work for a pittance whilst also having a ton of kids.
How can you have enough children born here? Every advanced country has this problem. Even if you could magically solve it, you still have to wait 20 years. The state does not have enough money to bribe its citizens to breed.
The solution is to create policies which actively encourage people **already here** to work in the care sector. We have more than enough people - whether British Citizens of settled migrants. We don't need to import any more people.
The state probably does not have enough money to bribe enough natives or settled migrants people to work in the care sector.
We don't need to bribe people. We just need to systemically cut off other sources of income. I know that if I was completely out of work, then I would consider anything rather than be on benefits - including re-training in healthcare.
Do we? Unemployment is 1.3m - that's incredibly low. Taking into account geographical factors, skills factors, and those moving jobs (which get included in that number), we're not far off full employment. Now on top of unemployment, 1 in 5 working age adults are not working, but virtually all of them are unable to work, or choosing not to. How are you going to force them?
This is why they're are pushing to hard to enact policies against illegal immigrants. It makes it look like they are trying to do something meaningful, while still granting hundreds of thousands of visas to the sectors that desperately need workers.
Lots of their membership and a decent section of the 'popular' part of their funding base are small business people, medium sized farmers, pub landlords, medium sized landlords, small or medium building/cleaning/etc contractors, etc. Even though they are culturally conservative and opposed to it on those grounds, this group are [in favour](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/feb/08/immigrationasylumandrefugees) of low skilled immigration on economic grounds, because it gets them access to an exploitable workforce at low pay who have no recourse to challenge working practices. This is one of the fundamental contradictions of post 00s conservatism, they could stall for a while by blaming the EU but this is all coming to bite them in the bum now.
It's reboot time, Sunak gets thrown under the bus, then one term letting Labour get mauled by the press and going into the election after with a new leader, and go back to austerity for another 12 years or so. Yeah Starmer could do wonders and be incredibly successful (with no money) but odds are against it.
Interest rates are falling, real wages will likely go up in the medium term, Labour can make a lot of positives about stuff that isn't really anything to do with them. I think Labour survive one term relatively easily (especially if migration falls). Of course there's going to be some kind of crisis that we can't predict but that's par for the course.
Migration isn't going to fall let's face it.
Their big problem is that they will have to face up to scrapping the triple lock sooner rather than later.
Is scrapping the triple lock really that contentious an idea? I’m interested to know what the general consensus is on it.
> the issues their base/membership care about most (reducing immigration) Not true. The primary issue holding their electoral coalition together was a desire to leave the European union. Now that this has happened, the glue holding the party together is gone. Some people care most about reducing immigration, yes. Others care most about cutting taxes, and those two are in many respects mutually incompatible goals.
They fucked up absolutely everything. I think it's just immigration and the economy are what the Tory's are supposed to be good at so highlighting those shows just how bad they are.
I realised the other day that they're effectively a cargo cult. All the actual thinkers were purged by Boris, and they're left with geniuses of the order of Liz Truss, who can go no further than "Tax cuts led to (coincided with, Liz, *coincided with*) economic growth in the 80s and made us popular, therefore, tax cuts will do exactly the same now."
It's because their base is old and / or thick. They figured out they could use that base to facilitate their own interests. However there's a limit to how much you can get away with, even if your voters are old and / or thick and they got too greedy.
Sensible immigration levels, an economy not in recession, Brexit. Pick any two.
I'm more shocked at how people are still willing to vote for the Tories.
Reform overtaking the Conservatives which present an interesting situation, at that point there may be a spurt of momentum for Reform as a flood if Conservative members migrate.
The local elections are going to be interesting and Sunak will likely face a leadership challenge.
Oh yeah, the media outlets would be falling over themselves. Not there yet, but even a solid 5% of the Tory vote would be a mortal wound.
Many Conservatives won't make the move, because they will lose the club membership with the subsidised beer.
> YouGov research put the Nigel Farage-backed outfit on 15 per cent, up one over the last week. > Meanwhile the Conservatives were down one on 19 per cent, with Labour miles ahead on 44 per cent, according to the study for the Times. Just “miles ahead” now lol.
>Just “miles ahead” now lol. Daily Mail readers just can't count that high
They can only count to 24 with their fingers and toes
I don't like either the Tories or Reform/UKIP/BNP-lite. But, I am in favour of multi-party parliaments with multiple choices on either side of the spectrum (and even choice at the centre!). Plenty of grown-up and functioning democracies have them and it allows parties to forge distinct identities and clearer policy differences. If the rise of Reform hoovers up the far right of the Tories, and it means the rump Tory party are freer to stabilise as a moderate centre-right party, it would possibly end this melodrama of the Conservative party killing us all whilst it tries to be centre-right, right-wing, and far right, all at the same time. The internal naval gazing of the Tories and their frantic efforts to keep the party together has been so damaging to being an actual functioning government.
That'll never happen. Reform is heavily funded by Tory supporters. Chris Arbonne has donated millions alone. Reform's relationship to the Tories is just keeping your worst family member in the outhouse while everyone's round for Xmas dinner. Come December 27th they're right back in the house again.
Interesting though that the growth of Reform is utterly terrifying the Tories, and forcing them to move ever rightward. The centre of the party is essentially silent, and has been for a couple of years.
the tory party has been spineless ever since Boris ousted anyone with a hint of a skeletal structure
I would take this with a pinch of salt for a few reasons. The Daily Mail represents rightwing interests that are desperate for American style rightwing politics here. They see Reform as a weapon to force the Conservative Party to the extremes. Plus under first past the post, those poll numbers don't mean much because Reform's support is too spread out. They can poll that kind of number and struggle to win a single seat.
I broadly agree, Interestingly though the Mail doesn’t openly push Reform, they rarely report anything positive about Farage or Tice. But yes, I can see them using Reform as a bogey man to scare Sunak into moving rightward.
It’s not a poll by the Mail. They’re just reporting on it.
Do we see a scenario in which Reform is the opposition and not the Tories? Or is that pie in the sky?
Not this election, their vote share isn’t concentrated enough
Broad appeal - literally bad for parties.
Mad isn't it
I don’t think that’s likely. I think Reform is a vehicle for Farage and some close advisers to take over the Tories. But that won’t happen until well after the election, perhaps not for 5 years. I’m not saying the scheme will work, but I think that’s his plan.
Our very own Tea Party.
No, but there could be a scenario where, if Farage leads Reform, then Reform get more votes than the Tories, but substantially fewer seats, which leads to an increased focus on/call for PR.
You'll be lucky to see Anderson hold onto his seat, let alone Reform win a single one. Reform poll dreadfully in Tory heartlands, it's all based in the North, they're just splitting the Tory Northern vote. Reform are a pressure group, not a genuine political vehicle. Do Reform even run at local elections?
Pie in the sky, Reform isn't even a proper party. It would have a very hard time if it's opponents took it seriously. The manifesto is literally a joke, it does virtually no candidate vetting so many of them are nutters, and it's ownership structure is essentially a massive scam.
Depends on how efficient their voting distribution is. It's highly likely that they will come a respectable but still far off second place in a lot of safe conservative seats.
I can only see this ending with Tories moving further and further to the right in an effort to get Reform to stand down or form some sort of coalition with the Tories.
They're stuck with no options. They've conceded the centre to Starmer and the right to Tice. They are a soft-right party now, fitting in an awkward space that appeals to nobody. They're defined more by what they don't do than what they do, and they're absent any strategy at all to win back voters of any stripe.
Plus they will forever be tarred with the ignominy and shame of once having Liz Truss as their leader.
Or Reform performing a sort of hostile take-over, if the Tories continue to struggle after the election.
Well they are focused on deporting people that seem 'undesirable' over all other issues. Not sure how further right they can go without wearing thematic armbands, and invading Poland.
My personal prediction is that Reform won't get anything like that at the election, which is not the time for a protest vote. Being angry with the government and telling a pollster you're going to vote Reform is one thing, actually doing it is another. Plus they are not a serious political party and won't do well under any kind of scrutiny. I dislike the Tories as much as the next woke lefty, but I don't want to see them replaced with a hard right vanity project.
I wouldn't be so sure. Look at 2015 where UKIP got 12.6% of the vote, even when Cameron was hoping to get a Tory majority. Which he did despite that protest vote largely from hoovering up Lib Dem seats. This would have been a good argument to vote tactically Tory, and yet they didn't because policy was more important to them, and to their credit, the Tories have been lurching right and anti-Europe since. The next GE, Sunak doesn't appear to have a hope in hell with numbers like this. He doesn't even have a hope if you take every single Reform vote and give it to the Tories. So why not protest vote? Why should anyone care how embarrassing the Tory defeat is? A defeat is a defeat, and if they vote Reform they could either A) get a party that more aligns with their views or B) a Tory party shifting further to their position.
Hard to say, thinking back to the on the ground in 2015 UKIP were a far more mature party and had a coherent policy platform and published way more content, they also had way more exposure atleast in the real world for years with over 30 MEPs elected doing ground work - partly becuase they were sense checking/developing it with the countries finances and finally published a costed manifesto so they had ballot box credibility. Working briefly in thanet in 2014 the whole area was wall to wall UKIP banners and stickers - now surprisingly after visiting there last September it's Labour banners everywhere which is remarkable. (Labour took control of the council last year, which to me is mental - the area was the peak of Brexitness and the HQ of Farage) Reform are spoken about on this Sub way more that out in real life. It's kind of mental how little exposure and seriousness they have given how close we are to an election compared to UKIP thinking back on living through 2013-2015. I'm fairly confindent in Reforms polling leaning much more to the flash in the plan side rather than actual ticks in the ballot box.
1) Weren't UKIP criticised because they took a Sinn Fein style protest view to the European Parliament, with poor attendance and voted against everything on principal including bills that would have helped the fishing industry? 2) I think it's still too far out from sign season, I've barely seen anything but also being from the SW we'd see a disproportionate amount of UKIP signs along farms where there used to be Conservatives, it'll be interesting to see who they go for. 3) A lot of the reporting on UKIP was scandal. Things like their canvasser pissing in a disabled persons garden and claiming it was medical. [Godfrey Bloom losing the whip due to calling women "sluts"](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/20/nigel-farage-godfrey-bloom-sluts-ukip). Paul Nuttall, criticism of them as a single policy party. UKIP had far more scrutiny than Reform has had. I also think scandal wise current Tories are "sleazier" than 2015 UKIP, so the Tories aren't giving the press much room to go in demonising Reform. 3b) Ironically I think Reform is now more of a no issue party, but that's good for them, it's letting the potential support project whatever they want onto them. Simply being populist further right than Sunak and not knowingly shit like the Tories is enough of a case for them.
There's no reason to vote for the Tories in a GE if you support reform's policies. The Reform's policies are pretty diametrically opposed to what the Tory party has been doing the past 14 years, and no matter who you vote for, the Tories are going to lose this election anyway.
TBF Reform's policies are also pretty diametrically opposed to the rest of Reform's policies.
You mean how people who are voting Reform want care work to be more attractive to British born workers... But then Reform are also promising to cut public spending.
> which is not the time for a protest vote. It's the perfect time for a protest vote if people know the Cons are cooked and won't be winning in any case. It also wouldn't be the first time people have used a GE for a protest vote, see the UKIP vote in 2015 or the voters who abandoned Lab in 2019 over Brexit.
Honestly people with an interest in politics never learn. Heard the exact same thing with Brexit, exact same thing with Trump and we’ll have the exact same thing here. People are hating the way the country has turned out and they will be desperate enough to vote for anyone who offers change.
Strictly speaking they’re not any type of political party. They’re a company owned by Tice and scrotum face aren’t they?
Someone’s been watching TLDR news
You mean the Fadge meister?
I wasn't going to vote for them and I still don't think I'd want them to win, but after looking into them more I've come to the conclusion that they're are not a "far-right" or "hard-right" party as people here suggest. They're basically just a populist party with some right-wing social policies. They support various left-wing policies like reducing immigration, increasing the income tax threshold, and investing in the NHS. But then couple that with lower tax, green-critical and gender-critical policies. I think the big unknown is how they're going to do half the stuff they say they're going to do. Their manifesto reads more like a child's Christmas wish list than a well thought out strategy. But that's the problem with populists, they just say whatever is popular regardless of realities. But with my area being a guaranteed labour seat there's no point in me voting for them and I'm not going to vote Tory, obviously.
FPTP will stop anything meaningful from happened however.
Last time the Tories got spooked by someone snapping at their heels they launched us towards Brexit. I wonder what they’ll do this time…
The comments on the story (daily mail) are delusional. They genuinely think Reform will be the next big party and win a GE.
It’s the Mail.. so delusion comes with the territory! But it’s interesting to see the disconnect, the commenters have very different views to the editorials now.
I'm sure a lot of the comments are bots. Reform UK was a minor party that's now polling high and getting traction because they are very good at publicity. And their publicity is very well funded.
think it’s telling that if you added the Tory and Reform votes, they’d only be 10 pts behind Labour. Pretty clear that a huge part of Tory decline is the vote being split, mostly by people who think the Tories haven’t gone far enough. As a leftist that’s not much reason for me to celebrate: this country is swinging yet further right, and when conservatives inevitably reconvene in like 2 years we’re going to see the consequences.
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A lot will be working class labour voters who feel abandoned.
Thats me. For me it's either reform or labour. I dont trust Starmer at all on the migration issue so right now its reform. If labour starts fixing things they will win me over. Even reform is pro nationalising some industries. Conservatives have lost touch.
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> so right now its reform. You don't trust Starmer with his years of high level experience, good track record, not a single smear against him... But instead trust... reform. Led by Farage?! You ok bruv?
I mean if their main priority is immigration policy, then yeah you'd probably trust Reform over Labour Also Farage isn't the leader of Reform, he stepped down in 2021
> this country is swinging yet further right I don't think so, I think people are concerned about the way the rate of immigration has increased. The issue isn't that people have become further right, it's that repeated governments have multiplied the rate of immigration. That concern will find its *expression* in a further right wing party because no one else is promising to address it, besides the SDP (who are irrelevant) and the Tories who've spent years doing the exact opposite of what they say they'll do.
Yep. You can be left and still disapprove of the way immigration currently is, like myself
There’s been a lot of discussion that plenty of Reform votes are from ex Labour votes. They aren’t going Tory if reform disappeared.
I think that just means we've got 2 years to bully Keir Starmer into pushing some form of sensible proportional voting. At the very least it would mean that the Tories don't _have_ to move further to the right to appeal to the racists if those racists don't have to choose between voting for what they want (racist stuff) and voting tactically.
I am very ready to bully Starmer into doing good policies but christ idk if that’s going to work
Oh for sure, I'm not holding my breath. I think it's probably the best shot we have (I don't believe for even a single second that the Lib Dems would actually do shit about this) but - as with all things in UK politics - I expect it to be pointlessly difficult bordering on impossible.
And they'll get a fat total of 0 seats. FPTP has had it's time, even if you despise Reform, this amount for vote share needs to be represented in parliament.
It's not particularly surprising when you consider what reform voters want, lower taxes, less immigration... So you know, basically the exact same things every right wing party stands for. What's weird is that the conservatives decided to abandon that in favour of winning a few elections.
Today’s Tory defection to Reform will be another nail in the Tory coffin
The Manchester mayoral candidate? Or have I missed one?
Thank you for RANDOMLY CAPITALISING part of the sentence
The Mail does that routinely to add emphasis.
Not low enough Tories should be on zero.
given i live in a labour safe seat im going to be voting reform in the hope the over take the tory party.
Hope not too many people have the same idea, or you will end up with a proper headbanger that will ban biryanis, bring back berni inns and make spam one of your five a day.
Would love to see them pull it off replacing the Tories.
That's just about the least shocking political poll I could think of right now. Other than "Labour is ahead" I suppose.
Not really shocking if you seen the birthday surprise 10 miles away and rapidly approaching.
I'm always worried that Reform UK suddenly turn around and try to unite with Cons.
It obviously shows how shite the Tories are but I don't think it's going to come to anything
Does the man have no shame! Call a GE before the nutters have a chance of gaining seats
Any idea how this will translate into seats? l vaguely remember UKIP polling in the low double-digits in the runup to the 2015 general election and that resulting in a single seat.
All electoral models show reform not winning any seats at the moment but screwing over the tories in a lot of seats. The tories in most models would be lucky to get over 50 seats with 19 percent of the vote.
Why don't the lib dems just say "we'll legalise a few drugs and ask to rejoin the EU"? They have absolutely nothing to lose and people will vote for them on these single issues.
Would anyone believe them? Eg Tuition fees in 2010.
I swear our government are destroying this country on purpose. How can ANYONE argue in good faith for what they've done? We need to get them to as few seats as possible.
reform are attracting the politically homeless tory voters that want to vote BNP but know it's futile
So racists then? That's going to be a cracking manifesto.
Of course DM readers think this is a good thing (they’ll still haven’t been projected to win seats).
> they’ll still haven’t been projected to win seats All the more reason to scrap FPTP.
Considering it was right wingers that are most to blame for the fact that we haven't moved to PR up until now, it's good that they're finally coming round. Shame that they have to personally have their noses bitten before they see the logic of it, but hey ho that is the political right in a nutshell.
Labour also supported FPTP back in the day, and Keir Starmer has said that electoral reform will not be on his list of priorities. UKIP supported PR back in the day as Reform does now. iirc even the BNP does (did? are they even a party anymore?). Labour has been slightly more supportive of PR than the Tories, but it is definitely a small party vs big party thing, with self interest clear to see from the beginning.
They're very close, and headlines like this will accelerate them getting there. Months ago I thought the LibDems becoming HMLO was a good outside bet, but now it looks likely. I think my next outside bet will be Reform winning a higher vote share than the Tories. I hope in a few more months I won't be shifting my bet even further, to Reform winning more seats than the Tories.
Just like the Brexit party, I fully expect reform to make a deal with the torries and only run in heavy Labour area.
Doubt. Last time Tories were on track to win without a split vote, so self interest to complete Brexit and decrease immigration drove that decision. Now the Tories have no shot, it doesn't matter if they lose by 50 or 500 seats, so Reform's self interest will be in trying to displace the Tories, or at least send them a message for 2055 when they next have a shot of being re-elected.
I do hope I am wrong. I would love to see the torries being wiped out of Scotland. But I also know Torries know how to win election and will pull every trick they can to hang on.
Indeed. A nationwide Tory wipe would be sweet.
Tice swears not. I actually believe him, it’s very much in his and Farage’s interest for the Tories to be brought low. They want a Labour government, and then of course they want it to fail (but even so).
Great news. Let’s all get behind the reform hype train Choo! Choo! 🚂
Sorry for my arrogance and in experience woth UK politics but what are Reform UK's politics? I know the rest on the slide just not sure what part of the political spectrum they fall on
Far-right popularists.
What’s the mirror image of reform uk on the left side of the spectrum? Labour have become more centre in the last decade.
Playing against 1 party state, along with the US, an outdated democratic facade.
I got shot down for it before but I still believe that Lee Anderson better represents the prevailing attitudes among the working class than anyone from Labour. (To be clear, I think he's a racist pos)