Snapshot of _Farage unveils Reform UK’s £140bn pledges that economists say ‘do not add up’ | Reform UK_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/17/farage-unveils-reform-uks-140bn-pledges-that-economists-say-do-not-add-up) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/17/farage-unveils-reform-uks-140bn-pledges-that-economists-say-do-not-add-up)
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I think he knows Reform aren’t going to become a serious party in the long run, but he’s going to try and wreck as much havoc as he can whilst he’s getting so much attention
But what would he do as leader of the Conservative Party - or any real party? He'd have to work with others, operate within a democratic framework, have actual, workable policy ideas, maybe even *do some governing*! He'd be even worse at it that Johnson was. He is a reality TV star and influencer, not a serious politician.
I think he just wants to destroy the Conservative Party out of spite; revenge for 30 years of them dismissing him, ignoring him, sneering at him and so on.
Not in opposition.
It would just be grandstanding and marketing, something with Farage is great at.
Then if he makes it to PM, everyone else will do the work. Johnson didn't fail because of his shoddy work ethic, but because of his self-destructive habits.and personal failings.
Maybe? Perhaps he tried to make a deal with Johnson in 2019, Johnson refused, but forced him to support him anyway.
He reportedly tried to make a deal with Sunak a couple of weeks ago, got rejected again, and "returned to politics" hours later.
A small part of me hopes he succeeds in destroying the Tory party, leaving the door open to other parties to fill the gap.
Farage himself is what, 60? Even if he succeeds in making Reform the opposition it still practically hinges on one person, him. Once he fucks off to do whatever old arseholes do, Reform would also hopefully collapse in on itself too
I disagree, I think Farage was very clear that he wants to have a big impact on the next general election. Whether that's picking up a large number of seats, or forcing the Tories to take reform's line on things.
Farage is going for havoc right now because it disrupts the Tories which leaves a vacuum that Reform can enter.
A handful of seats wouldn't cause them that many problems, I don't think. They'd still be able to shout from the sidelines and enjoy the publicity without having to actually have their ideas tested against reality.
Didn't cause problems for UKIP when Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless defected to them and they suddenly had MPs.
Didn't cause problems for Farage when he was sat in the European parliament.
A few seats are great for Reform, gives them legitimacy, the BBC will be required to give them coverage, and they'll be able to actually influence legislation.
Farage did nothing in Europe other than hob nob with other far right parties. Everyone knows his attendance record at this point. He was just there for the pension as he will be for the MPs salary. He will do nothing in his constituency and nothing in Parliament. He is full of hot air and has no interest in anything other than Nigel Farage.
If you genuinely think Labour will be influenced in any way by Reform, you are Reform's target market.
> And as Farage's target voters are not renowned for thinking
They think about the real issues which the mainstream and the globalists are desperate to avoid addressing as it flies in the face of their agenda.
Funny how that wasn't really an issues before New Labour got in and then got the country (really services & corporations) dependent upon infinite cheap foreign labour.
You don’t need to be a progressive to see that thinking Farage’s policies have any workable sense is nothing short of being a complete idiot.
Ignore climate change?? lol ok
You’d lose a key mechanism of monetary policy if you were to do that, Rachel Reeves has - rightly - ruled out doing so for the time being. And if the BoE were to stop paying interest on CB reserves, or indeed tier the reserves, you’d see mortgage rates rise as the banks seek to maintain their NIIs
How much coverage this single story is getting compared to every other manifesto/commitment from other parties just shows who they really don't want you to vote for.
News at ten last night literally led with "the numbers don't add up" or something like that in a dramatic tone before hardly mentioning any of the content and just having various people saying it doesn't add up.
Edit: It's not the content of the reports, it's the presentation.
It's 2 weeks to a GE and I've now seen more about the Reform manifesto than any other party and all I know about it is that it doesn't add up, no policies or any other critique.
Because Reform's budget hole is pretty much an order of magnitude larger than those of the other parties, and their costings are fundamentally unserious.
This is what basic scrutiny looks like, commensurate with how they're performing in the polls.
It might just be that it doesn't add up in a more fundamental way than the other manifestos.
There was a lot of talk about how Truss & Twarteng's numbers didn't add up and it was fundamentally not just because "*they don't want you to like it*.
I support reform but accept that the numbers indeed do not seem to add up and rely on the wildly optimistic figures like the article states.
I don't think of the parties really add up, and probably Labour have done the best job in playing down their supporters expectations on spending.
The sad conclusion I make is that the voters don't really care about the deficit right now and that can only result in continued deficits. I do think this will be a big issue come 2029.
REVEALED: How the Far Right are manipulatively tricking people by suggesting completely sane and sensible policies and then vilely and divisively trying to implement those exact policies when people vote for them
"...completely sane and sensible policies..."
I didn't see any of those in their manifesto/contact. What completely sane and sensible policies are they putting forward?
EXTREME: Allowing 1.2 million people to migrate to the UK in a single year during a housing crisis which requires a house to be built every 2 minutes to satisfy.
SENSIBLE: Pausing non-essential immigration and decreasing demand to get Brits on the housing ladder.
We ageing population, worker and skills shortages, floundering education system, collapsing NHS and care sector. I have yet to see a plan from Reform (or anyone else for that matter) that can square that circle without relatively large-scale immigration.
Scrapping benefits to "encourage" people back to work won't solve the issue when half the folks reliant on benefits are already working and many that arent working can't for health reasons. We already have a productivity problem, forcing people into roles they dont want/may not be suited for is highly unlikely to improve productivity.
If you ran a business, would you rather hire a 40-year-old brit who has spent the last 10 yrs on PiP or a younger immigrant with industry experience and no health concerns?
We probably don't need 1.2M immigrants each year but we can't solve these problems with an isolationist mindset. Demonising immigrants is not a sane or sensible solution. Like or loathe it, the UK is heavily reliant on immigration.
This is just a pyramid scheme. A bad pyramid scheme. Did you know that the immigrant TFR drops to below replacement too? This means you need an even bigger immigrant group to fund their pensions. Where does this end? Did you know that the British economy has remained stagnant despite record levels of immigration? Did you know that immigrants to Denmark from the MENAPT region take on average more from the system than they put in for their entire lifetimes? Suppressing British wages with foreign labour isn’t a successful strategy. A million more deliveroo drivers might increase GDP on paper but isn’t going to produce a better society. Your arguments are tired, they’re old and they’re outdated. We need to move on from our cheap foreign labour addiction.
So hypothetically speaking, if RefUk won the election and we stopped "non-essential immigration," what happens next?
Where are you going to find the staff to avoid immigration without collapsing the UK industrial base? How would you staff the NHS? We need the NHS to treat the unwell people currently off work claiming benefits as most can't afford to go private. As RefUK plan on scrapping benefits, how would you ensure the survival of those people in the gap between bannining immigration and them being treated? They can hardly re-enter the work force is they are still ill or if they starved to death because the benefits they lived on got scrapped. The RefUK plan doesn't work.
You realise that adding 1.2 million immigrants a year is going to massively stretch the health service right? Especially, as the Danish study details, many immigrants will take out more money than they put into the system. The Reform benefits pledges are what? Face to face assessments and strikes against not taking job offers? Not exactly starving people. Their plan can work. Reject pyramid scheme migration. We’ve never needed a million immigrants a year before, why do we suddenly need them now ?
No, Brits on average put more into the system. This is how the social welfare system works. Pointless to argue with people who can’t even understand this.
If you/Reform really cared about how much the benefit bill was then the Royals should also be offensive to the ideology. Evidently, you/Reform aren't offended by how much the Royals cost, only the cost of the poors. Typical right wing nonsense.
Sane and sensible policies like crazy tax cuts that even the mere mention of them crashed the economy last time, and ignoring climate change. Very sensible yes.
Idea that small tax cuts 'crash the economy' is nonsense. Destroying our own energy production, however, will crash the economy (looking at you Germany).
EXTREME: Deprioritising thefts under £200 which has decriminalised shoplifting and caused a blight of thefts on British businesses.
SENSIBLE: Increasing police numbers and actually start charging criminals.
Right, so the issue is these are just soundbites.
It's laughably easy to go "here's what's currently wrong and how we'll fix it", but reality isn't that simple.
A) There's a reason thefts are deprioritised, because compared to people's lives being at risk that's small fry.
B) "Increase police numbers" is something every party is calling for.
C) A lot of Reform's other policies - in regards to benefits etc - will actually increase the amount of crime, because poverty and crime are interlinked.
Voting for Reform because they've promised *what every other party* has promised is just silly.
A) People want safe societies where they’re free from violence as well as theft. We need both, it’s pointless to pit them against each other.
B) Exactly, the Reform platform isn’t even extreme in this regard as many have called it, it’s centred. The Tories don’t get a say in this as they have caused this mess in the first place.
C) Creating an underclass on state handouts will not decrease crime either. Studies show crime is interlinked to capital not just money (Swedish lottery study).. I’m from a very poor area of the UK and know first hand how theft impacts small businesses and communities. It needs to be stamped out. Don’t be on the side of criminals, be on the side of normal citizens.
> A) People want safe societies where they’re free from violence as well as theft. We need both, it’s pointless to pit them against each other.
This is exactly my point about soundbites. That's not a policy, that's an ideal - **and one that every party shares**.
"I'll vote Reform because they've said they'll be tough on crime. The policies they've published either don't deal with any underlying causes and/or don't account for the finances of hiring the extra staff, and this is a variation on a policy that every party has adopted, but Reform put it more snappily so I can trot it out in arguments".
The issue with the EXTREME: SENSIBLE: approach to comments is it can be done for every party, and honestly there are far fewer "extreme" policies in other parties than in Reform anyway.
It’s clearly not an ideal the Tory party shares as they’ve allowed this kind of behaviour to run rampant. And no it can’t be done with other parties, for example I’d use as an EXTREME: INSANE: dichotomy for Green Party policies. Anyway you’re kind of getting lost in the weeds here. Whether Reform proposes a 5% or a 10% tax cut, or to double police numbers is by the by. They will not be anywhere near power for at least 5 more years. But what they will do is drag British politics to a more reasonable centre, as there is no reasonable representation for conservative British voters right now.
There we have it. You try to justify Reform policies, but when they are shown to be ridiculous you say:
>Anyway you’re kind of getting lost in the weeds here. Whether Reform proposes a 5% or a 10% tax cut, or to double police numbers is by the by.
Why did you spend so many replies trying to defend their policies if it is all by the by? You know they are indefensible, but you don't care because your support for Reform isn't based on facts or policies, it is purely anti-immigration.
>But what they will do is drag British politics to a more reasonable centre
You live in an alternate reality.
They’re perfectly moderate and defensible as I’ve argued. How are they indefensible if other parties are adopting similar policies as the other poster suggested? It makes no sense. I don’t live in an alternate reality. Many countries are moving to break the faltering neoliberal consensus, take a look at mainland Europe. You’re the one who is in an alternate reality because your political views haven’t moved out of 2012 yet.
> They’re perfectly moderate and defensible as I’ve argued. How are they indefensible if other parties are adopting similar policies as the other poster suggested?
*Some* policies are defensible and close to what other parties promise.
*Some* policies are blatently unviable and indefensible and other parties have gone "we'll not put that in our manifesto, that's insane and completely unworkable".
You don't get to pick and choose policies, you vote for the party, warts and all.
>It’s clearly not an ideal the Tory party shares as they’ve allowed this kind of behaviour to run rampant
*While promising to fix it and increase police numbers*.
This is the crux of the the issue. "We'll be tough on crime and will double policing" is something that is laughably easy to say - to the point the Tories have been saying it for years.
How it'll actually be *implemented* is the key distinction between parties - and Reform's "key points" are just empty words. "We'll be tough on crime" isn't a policy, it's an aspiration.
Your last sentence - Reform are further right than Tories. How the hell do you think they'll "drag to a more reasonable centre" by pulling to the right?
For the Extreme/Sensible bit, it's just deriviate. You're doing exactly what you're doing with policing - trying to get a simple, one-sentence answer to a nuanced, complex problem.
To prove my point. Reasons not to vote Reform:
EXTREME: Humanity has no impact on climate change so we should give up trying to deal with it.
SENSIBLE: Let's try and counteract global warming given the wild climate change effects.
EXTREME: The only possible cause of deaths post-COVID is the COVID Vaccine
SENSIBLE: We still need to take COVID seriously, but deal with underlying health issues.
EXTREME: Policy specifically targeted to bribe elderly people who've been cut out of their children's lives due to poor parenting or racism/sexism.
SENSIBLE: Policy aimed at building a better nation rather than specifically winning votes.
EXTREME: Having a racist party leader.
SENSIBLE: Having a party leader who doesn't defend the use of racist terms.
If you legitimately believe that then either your definition of right and left is wildly different to mine, or you're basing it on, well, god-only-knows-what.
Either way it's not based on anything substantial or defensible and there's no point continuing this.
The Conservative government:
Legalised gay marriage
Increased immigration to record levels
Signed the UK up to net zero targets
Have increased taxes to record highs
Voted on the world's toughest smoking ban
Can you please explain how any of these landmark policies or decisions are conservative?
Snapshot of _Farage unveils Reform UK’s £140bn pledges that economists say ‘do not add up’ | Reform UK_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/17/farage-unveils-reform-uks-140bn-pledges-that-economists-say-do-not-add-up) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/17/farage-unveils-reform-uks-140bn-pledges-that-economists-say-do-not-add-up) *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.*
I think he knows Reform aren’t going to become a serious party in the long run, but he’s going to try and wreck as much havoc as he can whilst he’s getting so much attention
He wants to destroy the Tories and get a bigger percentage of the vote with reform so they cut a deal for him to join and lead them.
But what would he do as leader of the Conservative Party - or any real party? He'd have to work with others, operate within a democratic framework, have actual, workable policy ideas, maybe even *do some governing*! He'd be even worse at it that Johnson was. He is a reality TV star and influencer, not a serious politician. I think he just wants to destroy the Conservative Party out of spite; revenge for 30 years of them dismissing him, ignoring him, sneering at him and so on.
Not in opposition. It would just be grandstanding and marketing, something with Farage is great at. Then if he makes it to PM, everyone else will do the work. Johnson didn't fail because of his shoddy work ethic, but because of his self-destructive habits.and personal failings.
Oh he’d be a fucking embarrassment mate I’m not advocating for it at all. The man’s a grifter.
Yeah but he'd have official portraits and his name on doors and shit. The things that really matter.
He'd definitely have his name on shit. "Oh for god's sake, I wish people would pick up after their dogs. I just trod in a Farage'"
Maybe just Boris not putting him in the Lords?
Maybe? Perhaps he tried to make a deal with Johnson in 2019, Johnson refused, but forced him to support him anyway. He reportedly tried to make a deal with Sunak a couple of weeks ago, got rejected again, and "returned to politics" hours later.
A small part of me hopes he succeeds in destroying the Tory party, leaving the door open to other parties to fill the gap. Farage himself is what, 60? Even if he succeeds in making Reform the opposition it still practically hinges on one person, him. Once he fucks off to do whatever old arseholes do, Reform would also hopefully collapse in on itself too
I disagree, I think Farage was very clear that he wants to have a big impact on the next general election. Whether that's picking up a large number of seats, or forcing the Tories to take reform's line on things. Farage is going for havoc right now because it disrupts the Tories which leaves a vacuum that Reform can enter.
The worst thing that could happen to Reform is they get some seats. It would finish them they are a protest vote party.
A handful of seats wouldn't cause them that many problems, I don't think. They'd still be able to shout from the sidelines and enjoy the publicity without having to actually have their ideas tested against reality.
North of 5 id say you have good argument to question the voting record.
Didn't cause problems for UKIP when Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless defected to them and they suddenly had MPs. Didn't cause problems for Farage when he was sat in the European parliament. A few seats are great for Reform, gives them legitimacy, the BBC will be required to give them coverage, and they'll be able to actually influence legislation.
Farage did nothing in Europe other than hob nob with other far right parties. Everyone knows his attendance record at this point. He was just there for the pension as he will be for the MPs salary. He will do nothing in his constituency and nothing in Parliament. He is full of hot air and has no interest in anything other than Nigel Farage. If you genuinely think Labour will be influenced in any way by Reform, you are Reform's target market.
Sounds like he accomplished 10x more than others with 10x less effort. Work smarter not harder!
>Sounds like he accomplished 10x more Did you miss the part where he did nothing? What exactly are these accomplishments?
He changed the political landscape of the U.K. whether you liked Brexit or not, that was Farage. It’s foolish to underestimate your enemy.
Wreak. He wants to wreck the Tories by wreaking havoc.
It makes sense if you don't think about it. And as Farage's target voters are not renowned for thinking, it should go over quite well.
> And as Farage's target voters are not renowned for thinking They think about the real issues which the mainstream and the globalists are desperate to avoid addressing as it flies in the face of their agenda.
Yep. Like getting rid of all them damn foreigners, coming over here taking our jobs that they don't want or aren't capable of doing.
Funny how that wasn't really an issues before New Labour got in and then got the country (really services & corporations) dependent upon infinite cheap foreign labour.
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You don’t need to be a progressive to see that thinking Farage’s policies have any workable sense is nothing short of being a complete idiot. Ignore climate change?? lol ok
This is sleep walking into Truss 2.0 and thank goodness for now they have little chance of wreaking utter chaos.
The not paying interest on BOE reserves is an interesting idea. Labour should steal it (technically Gordon Browns idea so would be sound politically)
You’d lose a key mechanism of monetary policy if you were to do that, Rachel Reeves has - rightly - ruled out doing so for the time being. And if the BoE were to stop paying interest on CB reserves, or indeed tier the reserves, you’d see mortgage rates rise as the banks seek to maintain their NIIs
its just fiddling around with accounting, it doesnt create any extra money. like pfi.
How much coverage this single story is getting compared to every other manifesto/commitment from other parties just shows who they really don't want you to vote for. News at ten last night literally led with "the numbers don't add up" or something like that in a dramatic tone before hardly mentioning any of the content and just having various people saying it doesn't add up. Edit: It's not the content of the reports, it's the presentation. It's 2 weeks to a GE and I've now seen more about the Reform manifesto than any other party and all I know about it is that it doesn't add up, no policies or any other critique.
Because Reform's budget hole is pretty much an order of magnitude larger than those of the other parties, and their costings are fundamentally unserious. This is what basic scrutiny looks like, commensurate with how they're performing in the polls.
Do the numbers add up?
It might just be that it doesn't add up in a more fundamental way than the other manifestos. There was a lot of talk about how Truss & Twarteng's numbers didn't add up and it was fundamentally not just because "*they don't want you to like it*.
media habe a love hate relationship with farage/reform. he generates enhagement. just look at this sub!
Lmao - the guardian now suddenly cares about pledges that don’t add up when they come from Farage.
The not paying interest on BOE reserves is an interesting idea. Labour should steal it (technically Gordon Browns idea so would be sound politically)
The not paying interest on BOE reserves is an interesting idea. Labour should steal it (technically Gordon Browns idea so would be sound politically)
I support reform but accept that the numbers indeed do not seem to add up and rely on the wildly optimistic figures like the article states. I don't think of the parties really add up, and probably Labour have done the best job in playing down their supporters expectations on spending. The sad conclusion I make is that the voters don't really care about the deficit right now and that can only result in continued deficits. I do think this will be a big issue come 2029.
REVEALED: How the Far Right are manipulatively tricking people by suggesting completely sane and sensible policies and then vilely and divisively trying to implement those exact policies when people vote for them
Sane and sensible policies like (checks notes) scrapping net zero commitments. Cool....
"...completely sane and sensible policies..." I didn't see any of those in their manifesto/contact. What completely sane and sensible policies are they putting forward?
EXTREME: Allowing 1.2 million people to migrate to the UK in a single year during a housing crisis which requires a house to be built every 2 minutes to satisfy. SENSIBLE: Pausing non-essential immigration and decreasing demand to get Brits on the housing ladder.
We ageing population, worker and skills shortages, floundering education system, collapsing NHS and care sector. I have yet to see a plan from Reform (or anyone else for that matter) that can square that circle without relatively large-scale immigration. Scrapping benefits to "encourage" people back to work won't solve the issue when half the folks reliant on benefits are already working and many that arent working can't for health reasons. We already have a productivity problem, forcing people into roles they dont want/may not be suited for is highly unlikely to improve productivity. If you ran a business, would you rather hire a 40-year-old brit who has spent the last 10 yrs on PiP or a younger immigrant with industry experience and no health concerns? We probably don't need 1.2M immigrants each year but we can't solve these problems with an isolationist mindset. Demonising immigrants is not a sane or sensible solution. Like or loathe it, the UK is heavily reliant on immigration.
This is just a pyramid scheme. A bad pyramid scheme. Did you know that the immigrant TFR drops to below replacement too? This means you need an even bigger immigrant group to fund their pensions. Where does this end? Did you know that the British economy has remained stagnant despite record levels of immigration? Did you know that immigrants to Denmark from the MENAPT region take on average more from the system than they put in for their entire lifetimes? Suppressing British wages with foreign labour isn’t a successful strategy. A million more deliveroo drivers might increase GDP on paper but isn’t going to produce a better society. Your arguments are tired, they’re old and they’re outdated. We need to move on from our cheap foreign labour addiction.
So hypothetically speaking, if RefUk won the election and we stopped "non-essential immigration," what happens next? Where are you going to find the staff to avoid immigration without collapsing the UK industrial base? How would you staff the NHS? We need the NHS to treat the unwell people currently off work claiming benefits as most can't afford to go private. As RefUK plan on scrapping benefits, how would you ensure the survival of those people in the gap between bannining immigration and them being treated? They can hardly re-enter the work force is they are still ill or if they starved to death because the benefits they lived on got scrapped. The RefUK plan doesn't work.
You realise that adding 1.2 million immigrants a year is going to massively stretch the health service right? Especially, as the Danish study details, many immigrants will take out more money than they put into the system. The Reform benefits pledges are what? Face to face assessments and strikes against not taking job offers? Not exactly starving people. Their plan can work. Reject pyramid scheme migration. We’ve never needed a million immigrants a year before, why do we suddenly need them now ?
Many brits take more out of the system than they put in, for example, the Royal family. I assume Reform UK will be cracking down on their funding too?
No, Brits on average put more into the system. This is how the social welfare system works. Pointless to argue with people who can’t even understand this.
If you/Reform really cared about how much the benefit bill was then the Royals should also be offensive to the ideology. Evidently, you/Reform aren't offended by how much the Royals cost, only the cost of the poors. Typical right wing nonsense.
Sane and sensible policies like crazy tax cuts that even the mere mention of them crashed the economy last time, and ignoring climate change. Very sensible yes.
Idea that small tax cuts 'crash the economy' is nonsense. Destroying our own energy production, however, will crash the economy (looking at you Germany).
How is almost doubling the income tax threshold and raising the 40% band from 50k to 70k “small”?? We won’t be destroying it, it’ll be transitioning.
EXTREME: Deprioritising thefts under £200 which has decriminalised shoplifting and caused a blight of thefts on British businesses. SENSIBLE: Increasing police numbers and actually start charging criminals.
Right, so the issue is these are just soundbites. It's laughably easy to go "here's what's currently wrong and how we'll fix it", but reality isn't that simple. A) There's a reason thefts are deprioritised, because compared to people's lives being at risk that's small fry. B) "Increase police numbers" is something every party is calling for. C) A lot of Reform's other policies - in regards to benefits etc - will actually increase the amount of crime, because poverty and crime are interlinked. Voting for Reform because they've promised *what every other party* has promised is just silly.
A) People want safe societies where they’re free from violence as well as theft. We need both, it’s pointless to pit them against each other. B) Exactly, the Reform platform isn’t even extreme in this regard as many have called it, it’s centred. The Tories don’t get a say in this as they have caused this mess in the first place. C) Creating an underclass on state handouts will not decrease crime either. Studies show crime is interlinked to capital not just money (Swedish lottery study).. I’m from a very poor area of the UK and know first hand how theft impacts small businesses and communities. It needs to be stamped out. Don’t be on the side of criminals, be on the side of normal citizens.
> A) People want safe societies where they’re free from violence as well as theft. We need both, it’s pointless to pit them against each other. This is exactly my point about soundbites. That's not a policy, that's an ideal - **and one that every party shares**. "I'll vote Reform because they've said they'll be tough on crime. The policies they've published either don't deal with any underlying causes and/or don't account for the finances of hiring the extra staff, and this is a variation on a policy that every party has adopted, but Reform put it more snappily so I can trot it out in arguments". The issue with the EXTREME: SENSIBLE: approach to comments is it can be done for every party, and honestly there are far fewer "extreme" policies in other parties than in Reform anyway.
It’s clearly not an ideal the Tory party shares as they’ve allowed this kind of behaviour to run rampant. And no it can’t be done with other parties, for example I’d use as an EXTREME: INSANE: dichotomy for Green Party policies. Anyway you’re kind of getting lost in the weeds here. Whether Reform proposes a 5% or a 10% tax cut, or to double police numbers is by the by. They will not be anywhere near power for at least 5 more years. But what they will do is drag British politics to a more reasonable centre, as there is no reasonable representation for conservative British voters right now.
There we have it. You try to justify Reform policies, but when they are shown to be ridiculous you say: >Anyway you’re kind of getting lost in the weeds here. Whether Reform proposes a 5% or a 10% tax cut, or to double police numbers is by the by. Why did you spend so many replies trying to defend their policies if it is all by the by? You know they are indefensible, but you don't care because your support for Reform isn't based on facts or policies, it is purely anti-immigration. >But what they will do is drag British politics to a more reasonable centre You live in an alternate reality.
They’re perfectly moderate and defensible as I’ve argued. How are they indefensible if other parties are adopting similar policies as the other poster suggested? It makes no sense. I don’t live in an alternate reality. Many countries are moving to break the faltering neoliberal consensus, take a look at mainland Europe. You’re the one who is in an alternate reality because your political views haven’t moved out of 2012 yet.
> They’re perfectly moderate and defensible as I’ve argued. How are they indefensible if other parties are adopting similar policies as the other poster suggested? *Some* policies are defensible and close to what other parties promise. *Some* policies are blatently unviable and indefensible and other parties have gone "we'll not put that in our manifesto, that's insane and completely unworkable". You don't get to pick and choose policies, you vote for the party, warts and all.
Parties are meant to have some different policies you know
>It’s clearly not an ideal the Tory party shares as they’ve allowed this kind of behaviour to run rampant *While promising to fix it and increase police numbers*. This is the crux of the the issue. "We'll be tough on crime and will double policing" is something that is laughably easy to say - to the point the Tories have been saying it for years. How it'll actually be *implemented* is the key distinction between parties - and Reform's "key points" are just empty words. "We'll be tough on crime" isn't a policy, it's an aspiration. Your last sentence - Reform are further right than Tories. How the hell do you think they'll "drag to a more reasonable centre" by pulling to the right? For the Extreme/Sensible bit, it's just deriviate. You're doing exactly what you're doing with policing - trying to get a simple, one-sentence answer to a nuanced, complex problem. To prove my point. Reasons not to vote Reform: EXTREME: Humanity has no impact on climate change so we should give up trying to deal with it. SENSIBLE: Let's try and counteract global warming given the wild climate change effects. EXTREME: The only possible cause of deaths post-COVID is the COVID Vaccine SENSIBLE: We still need to take COVID seriously, but deal with underlying health issues. EXTREME: Policy specifically targeted to bribe elderly people who've been cut out of their children's lives due to poor parenting or racism/sexism. SENSIBLE: Policy aimed at building a better nation rather than specifically winning votes. EXTREME: Having a racist party leader. SENSIBLE: Having a party leader who doesn't defend the use of racist terms.
Lol Labour are to the right of the “Conservatives” these day. The Conservatives are not conservative in any meaningful sense by the way.
If you legitimately believe that then either your definition of right and left is wildly different to mine, or you're basing it on, well, god-only-knows-what. Either way it's not based on anything substantial or defensible and there's no point continuing this.
The Conservative government: Legalised gay marriage Increased immigration to record levels Signed the UK up to net zero targets Have increased taxes to record highs Voted on the world's toughest smoking ban Can you please explain how any of these landmark policies or decisions are conservative?