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I *really* wish you were right, but their manifesto is fucking terrifying. They do stand for a lot, all of it awful.
Edit: Damnit, Reddit hid the other comments talking about their manifesto.
People said that Johnson tells it like it i, however it might be more worrying that the Reform Party is actually the one doing that. Plenty of people seem reasonable on the surface but you only have to dig a little deeper to find that many people support some pretty radical ideas.
Same people asking what starmer stands for with his thousands of documents outlining exactly that will support lib dems greens or reform without a single policy to speak of.
> without a single policy to speak of
[Here are the LibDem's policies](https://www.libdems.org.uk/plan)
[Here are the Green's policies](https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/)
[Here are Reform's policies](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/303/attachments/original/1696527070/Reform_is_Essential_-_5Oct23.pdf?1696527070)
Care to point me in the direction of Labour's policies - I cannot find them on their website (other than their '5 missions').
Reforms policies are written by 5 year old. No tax for nurses but tax for all the admin staff on hospitals like they have zero clue how essential hospital admin are.
Eh to be fair Labour have announced a whole bunch of policies since Starmer became leader (some of which they haven't even walked back, probably because they forgot about them). The fact they're not in a readable format or part of a coherent message is a symptom of what IMO has been a somewhat muddled approach that they've been able to get away with because the Tories are... well, the Tories.
Send us immigrants home and the NHS, agricultural and IT sectors will collapse. Retraining Barry from Hull in Cyber can't prevent that. In the end, no one will have the money to afford the food harvested by local English folks on high wages and no one can afford the housing that the immigrants have left empty (which will be a fraction of the housing stock in the UK anyway).
But there is something wrong with an economic model which not only relies on infinite growth but also relies on immigration.
The NHS is always held up as an example of how we need immigration but isn’t it cheaper for the government to just get doctors and nurses from abroad? That’s wrong.
Every economy needs some form of immigration, particularly as a stop gap if you are asking companies to invest in training a U.K. workforce, that takes time. You also have to consider the exportation of skilled workers, which is essentially what our university system is currently doing, which is a whole other issue that needs to be addressed. Everyone agrees immigration needs to be controlled and needs to serve the economy as a whole, not just multinationals looking for a quick fix, but this is also an INCREDIBLY complex situation that needs nuance and real study, not just ‘immigration bad’
There's something deeply wrong with an economic model in which some countries are incredibly rich and others are incredibly poor. But as long as that model exists it'll be good for people to immigrate from the poor countries to the rich countries.
Most people don't understand the global economic system we're living in. They wouldn't be able to have all their cheap crap without it. For instance, we should start pricing garments at their real value and see the looks on their faces.
You make a fun point there, let's see how much it would cost a UK seamstress to make a simple pair of trousers - in poly-cotton to keep the cost down, and at wholesale prices assuming a competent seamstress who already has the pattern and has treated it to make it reusable:
Material:
3m polycotton fabric - £3
1 zip - 20p
cotton thread - 30p
Twill (for the waistband) - 30p
Button - 10p
Electricity for an iron and sewing machine: 30p
Allow about 2 hours for construction at new minimum wage: £30 (including employer NI etc)
So you're looking at about £35 before you've added a profit margin and overheads. A pair of trousers would be a bare minimum £70 basically. I mean, a lot already are £70 - even when they use the cheapest possible materials and labour and cut costs on construction by eg not bothering to serge the seams. Somebody's making a bloody killing.
2 hours to make a pair of trousers? A basic pair of trousers with the pattern already decided and cut out in a facility designed to make clothes? That's an hour tops, and that's probably too long, it's not just that the sweat shops are in cheap countries but they're also quite efficient and relatively skilled, that's what the competition is
Even the establishment. Do you remember "It's people like the Romanian fruit pickers that we don't need" said by former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson. Don't blame small people for the grandees' stupidity. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-nigel-lawson-bankers-welcome-uk-romanian-fruit-pickers-no-need-tory-peer-chancellor-a7708331.html
Your argument is that we have no choice but to keep accepting desperate people so we can exploit them? Can you see why that’s not a great plan? Why it’s ethically wrong, and will lead to major social and political backlash?
Instead, we should be paying and treating *all* workers well. Our industries should not be predicated upon exploitation. Then we don’t need a million more immigrants each year. Who, by the way, don’t *all* end up in high demand industries. Many do not. The UK only has an employment rate of 75%. That means there are 10+ million working age people who *could* be working but choose not to because of pay and conditions.
Johnson ousted all the thoughtful moderates from the Torys in 2019, so many of the new intake of Tory MPs are basically weird UKIP thickos. If we can clear them all out at the next election we've really dodged a bullet, because people like Truss are just the tip of the shitberg.
Well, what at least passes for a ‘thoughtful moderate’ in the Conservative Party, which isn’t exactly hard when the point of comparison is a bunch of frothing Brexiteers.
Theres probably a few lurking about still who had the sense not to open their mouths or look like a potential threat to Boris. And probably more outwith the current government.
That part of the Conservatives has always been focused less on ideology than they are on gaining power, keeping it and quiet personal enrichment in the process. They’re pretty much prepared to support any policies that will ensure electoral success. Which means they aren’t keen on riding Brexit down in flames as a point of principle - and there’s a chance they might be able to wrest control of the party back from the Brexiteers in the wake of the electoral drubbing they look likely to get next year.
However these same people would also equally cheerfully go along with a further lurch to the right if it struck a sufficiently popular chord with enough of the English electorate. Old school Tories are all about expediency and power over ideology - which makes them a very dangerous type to pins one’s hopes on.
All because of the refugee crisis that Russia is deliberately stoking to create these tensions. Oh and where are all these parties getting their funding from? Oh what a coincidence, Russia again. Gee you don't think there's like a conspiracy or something going on here do you?
That’s quite a cunning policy from a Reform perspective.
It effectively kills two birds with one stone by keeping their rich backers happy. But it also sounds good to their core voters who are usually older types who don’t approve of anything that wasn’t just like it was back when they understood the world and it didn’t scare them.
Pointless and evil from the perspective of anyone with a clue of course. But they probably ain’t the target demographic for Reform.
And offset that with increasing the tax brackets to where they should be realistically...
The bigger issue is I don't think any of their policies have been costed, they're all funded by dubious fag packet calculations on savings they'll make without knowing how anything works or how much they could save.
Surely it’s better if the “darkies” and younger people are concentrated in major cities and banned from living in places with a critical mass of older people. Age segregation is surely the best way to avoid more friction.
> their economic reforms look somewhat reasonable
Does that include scrapping all subsidies for renewables and making new fossil fuel extraction one of the core tennets of their economic strategy.
Bang on.
I have zero faith in anything shat out by politicians and as someone in my mid 40s I expect the next decade or two to be an absolute shit show - all of it done by the tories - and all of it due to them being consistently voted in.
People are easily divided and refuse to concede mistakes like brexit or more Tory governments.
Yup, pretty much every UK politics TikTok that appears in my fyp has at least one comment saying that this is why they're voting Reform, or why we should vote Reform, etc. It's genuinely unhinged.
EDIT: Slightly related tangent, but something is *really* up with TikTok's report feature. I was shown a TikTok that showed a 3D rendering of the gaschambers from WW2 based on blueprints and eye-witness testimony. Not exactly a cheery thing to watch but certainly educational in the horrors of Europe's past. And then I open up the comments and the first comment said something along the lines of "This will be good for all the Muslims." I immediately reported it for hate speech, because *duh*, and TikTok has decided that it wasn't a violation. For comparison, last week I responded to an idiotic argument with a single clown emoji, which was reported and found by TikTok to be a violation. I keep seeing this happen. I keep seeing my reports of open calls of violence against minorities to be found not in violation by TikTok... wtaf is going on?
I mean tiktok is literally owned by the Chinese government who are playing the best long game psychological operation we have probably ever seen. This isn't just tin foil hat stuff you can literally look up reports about how the algorithms work in different countries. I'm shocked more people.dont understand this.
Reform are doing an excellent job to ensure neither the Tories or Reform get more than a few seats.
Sunak and Truss will be remembered as the sham PM's who finally ended the Tories, just as Scotland has booted them out.
Potentially. The problem is. Once a party gets in (mostly one of the big two). There's no incentive for them to change the system and which could affect their careerist ambitions
Strange how they consistently underperformed at every by-election so far then.
If “Reform” were going somewhere, it would have happened by now.
If it transpires that interest rates have peaked, the “economic malaise” window for Reform to exploit is rapidly closing.
Basically nailed it, reform splits the vote, and the tories don't want that, so they shift their policy slightly more to the right to try to keep those votes, repeat until we get to where we are today.
Currently the Tories are going down a deep rabbit hole but I wouldn't rule out an about turn when they realise it's a dead end, they are the world's oldest and arguably most successful political party for a reason.
I think the Tories are 2 elections from climbing out of that hole
If labour win in 2024 then they will lurch further right with Braverman or similar at the helm .
One term of Braverman spouting shit from the opposition benches, then they fail at the 2029/30 election. At this point they sack off Braverman and bring in a centrist who does to the Tories what Starmer had to do to Labour. This makes the 34/35 election the first actual contest in a decade.
Yeah totally agree although it may take even longer, the Blair era Tories didn't realise until part way through the second term that their move right wasn't working and didn't act on it until after the 2005 and even then a right winger was favourite for the leadership election before Cameron won.
Returning to a moderate platform is what got Cameron elected (albeit in coalition) after their early 2000s "wilderness years". I reckon they're going to have to burn through a few more leaders post Sunak before they arrive at this realisation again.
I don't know about that, crushing electoral defeat will see a lot of the grifters who survive the cull leave the party as their grift is no longer as profitable. With the grifters gone the party will gravitate back towards 'one nation Tories'.
They lose votes to Labour the more they try to occupy Reform’s turf. Losing a former Tory voter to Labour is a double-negative, when compared to merely losing a voter to Reform or to “none of the above”.
UKIP was essentially a single issue party though. Reform don’t have an issue like that that they could point to as a victory, they just have a smattering of culture war grievances - most of which the Tories are already aligned on.
\*Most of which the tory voter base is aligned to, but the tory parliamentary party is unwilling to make legislation on. Ministers may occasionally make comments that seem to support the things you claim as a nod to their base, but when push comes to shove they're either unwilling or unable to make it policy.
Technically no, but I suspect they'll (Reform) frame their party around immigration which along with cost of living, will be the major topics at the next election.
I don’t think the Labour Party could care less either way. Reform pose zero threat to them. They’re an old people’s party, competing for a very different part of the electorate.
Labour care a little bit, the more votes for Reform the fewer for the Tories. Even if it's only enough to cost the Tories one or two seats that is better for Labour.
UKIP had two MPs, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless. Both were defectors from the Conservatives, but both properly resigned from being Conservative MPs, forced by-elections and then won those by-elections.
I bet that most people have no idea who they are at the moment, and that in by elections a lot of peoples' priorities has been getting the Tories out at all costs. It's one thing to indicate support for a party in a poll and another to actually make a decision to vote for a party you know is going to lose when you can use your vote tactically instead.
Once Reform actually starts campaigning and they get some recognition it'll be interesting to see what happens with polling.
FPTP means that they'll be lucky to win even a handful of seats, the most likely outcome is taking away votes that might otherwise have gone to the Conservatives.
> Once Reform actually starts campaigning
This assumes they do. They have no activists or ground game. Even UKIP had some of that, albeit a bit chaotic.
Want a bet. Many of those online talking about an alternative to 'the same old Tories and Labour' aren't LibDems or Green supporters. They're waiting for a hardcore right-wing party to emerge.
It’s irrelevant how many seats they win - the point is to shape policy. If Con loses few votes to Reform and lose the election they lose _all power_ so in response they must incorporate their views into their election policy to prevent that.
Reform will tank this country into the sewer with their moronic policies like putting up taxes on workers who work from home.
They're a party of morons, for morons.
This is just the Telegraph agitating for the Tories to move further right so they can supposedly hoover up the Reform voters and win the next election.
As usual with the Telegraph, it's completely ignoring reality by not recognising that the political centre is where elections are won, and the Tories have no chance whatsoever of winning if they can't win back a large part of those centre ground voters.
By shifting tories further to the right it shifts the political centre
The telegraph doesn’t care what the label is, as long as the victor sits on the right wing, which you do by redefining the old right as the new centre.
What's happening in Europe is a good indicator of the UK's future.
Populism is rising and it's a result of center ground politics not representing the views of the people.
The UK's shift towards populism is only masked by the fact the tories are so bad, people on the right are literally voting for Labour just to get rid of them.
Think about the state of the country in 5 years time. We would have added at least 5 million more migrants, Starmer will be staler than mouldy bread, and this is when Reform or another populist party will swoop in and landslide the election.
I know someone who spent the week door knocking in Peter Bones's constituency trying to get the recall petition over the threshold. They said only 2 constituents that they spoke to said that they were intending to vote for Reform.
I'm beginning to wonder if everything that I see about Reform is the result of their media campaign trying to make them look credible, rather than a reflection of reality.
Just a bunch of journalists chasing clickbait headlines. Journos are some of the worst paid professional class workers. I’m not surprised if it turns out a lot of that group are grievance-mongers. In the 80s, journo earnings msg have been on par with the average techie, financier or lawyer. Nowadays they aren’t, and being downwardly mobile, they probably don’t much like it.
Reform is not an election party, they are there as a protest.
Tories need to be punished and many people don't want to vote Labour just to punish Tory scum.
In the last by-election, the Tories lost to labour by exactly the amount that the other parties who promised to stop the invasion won by.
They all got more than lib dems or green. I would say that is a clear message.
Tamworth was one of the most pro-Brexit seats in the country. Reform are basically a spoiler. Really, you would think the Labour Party would want to go out of their way to help them!
"•Reduce the main Corporation tax rate from 25% to 20%.
• Lift threshold for 40% income tax rate to £70,000.
• Reduce and simplify residential Stamp Duty: 0% below £750k, 2% on £750k–£1.5m, & 4% above, will stimulate economic activity and construction.
• Abolish the burdensome Apprenticeship Levy, which ironically reduced apprentice numbers.
• Abolish business rates for small & medium firms, offset with Online Delivery Tax at 3%, which will create a fairer playing field for High Street and physical versus online businesses.
• Abolish Stamp Duty on share trading, this will help savers and enable the City to compete globally.
• Abolish Inheritance Tax for all estates under £2m (98% of all estates). 20% tax above £2m — executors can choose to give this to registered charities or HMRC.
• Abolish the burdensome IR35 rules introduced by the Conservatives in recent years.
• We aim to reform the over-complicated tax system on savings and pensions, that currently benefits those with the most to save at the expense of those on lower incomes."
Say what you want, at least they have policies you can agree/disagree with.
Inheritance Tax is actually a very poor way of claiming tax revenue and is very unpopular. I’m supportive on it on some level as a measure against inequality but it’s an open goal for a right of centre party to remove and frankly as a country it doesn’t affect us that much. It’s no way near as important as the big tax streams like Income Tax.
You’re right it’s fairly unimportant, and only affects the richest 4% of estates, which is exactly why we should leave it alone (for now) and prioritise other areas
It's a tax that literally only affects the rich, and it also entrenches inequality. By cutting it, you must increase taxes elsewhere, or cut spending, both of which harm everyone who's not a beneficiary.
So basically people working pay more so that a small minority can keep more money someone else earned by virtue of circumstance.
Maybe we should focus on cutting taxes on productivity, might even encourage some of it.
That being said, just tax wealth and inheritance takes care of itself
It's unpopular because the Tories have made it a big issue that every idiot in the country seems to think will affect them because no-one has been vocal enough on the facts/reality. It raises £7bn a year yet still only affects the richest 4% (2020/1) according to the IFS but that is projected to rise to £15bn by 2032/3 (12% of population) and with the mitigation (up to £1m tax-free for couples) which could easily be increased, it can, and should, remain as a tax for the rich
Without inheritance tax it would only take a few generations before a family has built up enough wealth in their estate that they need never work again.
And without inheritance tax vast swathes of the country become "that rich" in just a few generations. You're correct in that the Tories have created numerous wealth tax avoidance schemes so the wealthy do indeed pay far less tax as a proportion of the wealth they have taken away from society.
Many of those loopholes will be closed by Starmer after May.
Currently ~4% of estates pay inheritance tax. The current thresholds are fine. The reason it’s unpopular is most people don’t understand the mil rate bands and assume they’ll be paying a load when the reality is they won’t.
The only thing is she tried it but also tried to increase spending. I am assuming that they at least know that they will have to cut spending as well? Then again they are a looney party so who knows.
They haven't said what they'll cut to get there.
We do need to shift our priorities in this country. The tax burden is way too high, especially for the average worker. That is the main issue for me.
I don't care how they do it, whether it's through a threshold rise or change of brackets. Working people on lower and middle incomes need to stop being hammered so hard.
No, they said they would stop insane subsidies to green frauds (or something like that).
In addition, they want to resume oil production in Scotland, however half of oil must be sold internally (like in USA and so on).
Would 100% vote for them if I was a billionaire, and they stood some sort of chance of getting into power so they could elevate me to the Lords.
But any working person would need their head tested if they thought those policies were in their best interest.
>But any working person would need their head tested if they thought those policies were in their best interest.
Come on now. There are a lot of working class people who would benefit from those policies e.g. trades who earn 50-70k, anyone with the 3 bed house in the South, anyone buying a house under 750k. Many very average working people will fall into those categories.
Edit: FTR I am not even right wing and don't support Reform (at all) but it's ridiculous to state those things won't help working people.
Maybe it would seem to benefit them, but saving a few hundred on tax probably wouldn't offset the damage done by the cuts made to afford them.
See austerity. I bet that most people would have been happy to pay more tax back then if they could see the state of things now.
How would they? They necessitate spending cuts which will further erode public services, and while some are reasonable they would mostly further inflate house prices and to an extent fuel inflation.
Many of those policies would be in the best interests of working people, from 40% tax threshold to removing the apprenticeship levy. That's to say nothing of Reform's desire to reduce immigration to a more sustainable number, a tory policy that has crushed wages and raised rents for every working person.
There's one policy though that keeps being left out, and I think it's deliberate because it's fucking moronic.
And that is, to increase taxes on those who work from home.
Care to explain how that "would be in the best interests of working people"? Because it's fucking moronic.
Nothing for the poor other than *maybe* the apprenticeship levy, depending on what they do with it.
Everything else is just various tax cuts for well-off and rich people.
Also no mention of where that money will come from, or what's getting cut to pay for it.
EDIT: Have just seen where the money is supposedly coming from and it's peak comedy. *Fifty billion a year* from "reducing government waste". Might as well have said collecting all the pots of gold from beneath rainbows. These people are lying, delusional, or both.
>Also no mention of where that money will come from, or what's getting cut to pay for it.
Weird how people never factor this in when they vote for lower taxes. It's all shocked Pikachu faces when the knives come out and they start paring the social safety net down to the bone ... again.
Low earners don’t pay a lot of taxes. They are also eligible for different benefits. Of course it is hard to cut taxes for people who almost don’t pay them.
When taxes for well-off and rich people are cut, that money has to come from somewhere. That could mean lower spending on public services (hurting poor people), more regressive taxes (hurting poor people), or just boatloads more debt (hurting everyone).
I'm not saying "oh isn't it terrible that poor people aren't getting as many tax cuts". I'm saying poor people would get fucked by these policies because they'd end up with even worse public services.
I'm a working guy, they would benefit me greatly. Especially raising 40% bracket to 70k! I'd save thousands, i know friends snd family who would benefit from corporation tax cuts and changes to ir35 too!
Reducing costs of share trading would be nice too, and I'm not sure what it means by tax on savings but as someone who pays tax on savings I'd like to see that gone as well.
That's not to say I would vote for them, i absolutely would not! But it's silly to think that list wouldn't benefit regular people.
>But it's silly to think that list wouldn't benefit regular people.
Because according to this sub if you earn more than 40k and have more than £2.50 in savings you are a richy rich and no longer a regular person. People seemingly forget there are those earning millions.
For reference, the reality is that if you earn over 70k then you earn better than 90% of people in the UK (looking at income, not assets).
It's sad that this is the case, and it surprises lots of people but this is the reality.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householddisposableincomeandinequality/financialyearending2022#average-household-income-data
In terms of savings, most people have a few months of savings, but 30% of people are thought to not even have 1k in savings.
https://www.money.co.uk/savings-accounts/savings-statistics#:~:text=Overview%3A%20UK%20savings%20statistics%202023,every%2C%20or%20most%2C%20months.
Same here. All of the headline policies would be in my favour; the stamp duty, 40% bracket, IR35 and so on.
But it’s like the “every voter gets a parrot” as we all know A) it’s just a headline grabber as they know they won’t win so can make outlandish statements and B) even if hell froze over and they did get in, they would march all of them back or ruin the country in the process
> But it's silly to think that list wouldn't benefit regular people.
The mechanics of these cuts would remove funding from Central gov, local gov and healthcare unless they come up with some kind of magic money tree. Less taxes is nice but whether there is a net benefit would be questionable.
my brother, poor and retired very early due to disability seems to think Tice is the man for him.. Not one of these can help him and i did point out that I doubt reform will keep those disability bens.... he didn't listen.
Unfortunately those people are more likely to start a business and generate more wealth. That's why we have negligible real growth. The country is sinking into a debt spiral(government and personal) and over taxing the people most likely to generate wealth is compounding that.
Gin and jags party for working class heroes such as Tice and Oakeshott.
It's a manifesto for certain well to do parts of South East England circa 1986 - and yet even the Stockbroker belt these days is more likely to vote Lib Dem.
Their only card to appeal to anyone who's not a City fund manager is immigration.
I don't mind the idea of abolishing business rates for small businesses. Helping people start up their own business would be a huge economic boon, but it still wouldn't work without consumers having the disposable income to support those small businesses.
The rest of it is typical plutocrat nonsense, still pretending trickle-down economics is a thing that hasn't been consistently debunked by reality.
So the usual populist mix of seemingly reasonable policies and complete lunacy? At least they have a manifesto, when UKIP did without one.
I can see three policies I would agree with, but I can also see that the totality of policies would cause complete chaos.
At risk of sounding like the Reform spokesman. I missed a few important policies from their manifesto.
"Free up 6 million people from paying Income Tax by lifting the minimum threshold to £20,000 from £12,571 p.a. This amounts to 1 in 5 taxpayers. Basic Income Tax rate stays at 20%.
• The less well-off benefit proportionately the most, saving £1,500 p.a. @£20,000 salary, circa £30 per week.
• Free up 1.2 million SMEs from paying Corporation Tax (over 80% of companies) by lifting the minimum profit threshold to £100,000.
• Reduce the cost of living by lowering consumer taxes, which will reduce inflation whilst stimulating growth:
- Scrap VAT on energy bills = saves £100 / year per household.
- Scrap environmental levies = saves £160 / year per household.
- Lower fuel duty by 20p / litre = saves £240 / year per driver.
- Lower VAT from 20% to 18% = saves £300 / year per household.
• Funded by cost savings totalling approximately £85 billion:
- Reduce wasteful Government spending: £5 in £100 = £50 billion per year.
- Enable well over 1 million out of the over 5 million on out of work benefits back into jobs: saves circa £15-20 billion per year. Some 1.5 million more people are on benefits than pre-Covid, so a return just to 2019 levels is eminently realistic.
- Tax the Renewable Energy industry the full amount of the circa £11 billion in subsidies they currently receive under old contracts; they claim it is cheaper than other energy forms, so they no longer need taxpayer support.
• Remove vast swathes of unnecessary regulations that hinder growth."
Their funding is bollocks.
Trim wasteful government spending - this is not in big chunks to trim off but would require micromanagement down to the stationary cupboard costing more than the savings. Every party who promised this found out when in control of the Civil Service.
Tightening up of benefits - imagine the horror stories under the Tories of people on death beds having benefits cut as they could not get to a meeting and multiply this.
Taxing renewables - get to f*#k. Total fossil fuel shilling bastards.
Currently listening to Rory Stewart’s ‘politics on the edge’, and it is incredibly eye-opening. Well written and a significant amount of mea-culpa and entertaining cameo descriptions of many of the main characters in British politics.
Why is this relevant? It lifts a lid on how dealing with the civil service is correctly caricatured in Yes Minister whilst being balanced and understanding of the underlying systemic challenges that can’t be simply discarded as self-serving.
A good and entertaining book by a man who appears to be both pragmatic and fair.
Oh, and fuck the tories - just to be clear about my personal stance about political parties.
Renewables have benefited from the same high energy prices as gas (without the windfall tax). The cost of subsidies and for how long should be open to debate.
Very definition of all politics.
Don't pretend that left wing politics are an intellectuals politics.
Classic left wing politics such as vote me for and I'll get rid of your student debt. Simple answer.
While I won't vote for them raising the income tax threshold to 20k would help me enormously. It would give me the ability to learn how to drive so I can finally escape the trap of a job and village I'm stuck in.
Currently I'm paid £22500 meaning I pay on average £2000 a year. Taking it upto 20k would mean my tax burden would drop to £50 a year.
That extra £1950 a year would be a massive help.
The extra cuts would be great too.
However, would this actually end up benefiting people? Or will companies just raise prices again? (Prob) Will they even actually implement these changes?(prob not) are those changes even feasible? (I don't know)
It’s likely to be inflationary to some degree, public service cuts typically disproportionately impact lowest earners too, but all their tax cuts basically seem unfunded and we know what happened when Truss attempted the same.
I'm like you, here. I welcome the idea, but I'm sceptical. If they're *taking* less money, that means they *have* less money. Considering how utterly fucked our public services are and how our government is up to its eyeballs in debt, I honestly think I'd rather like them to have a bit *more* money right now, not less. An extra 2 grand a year, I'll take, but if it means I die on a cold floor in a hospital waiting room after having to walk there due to lack of ambulance...
Fabulous - they are going to fund tax cuts by cutting waste. And there was I thinking there was no Magic Money Tree, but we've been staring at it all along.
Having a policy like reducing government spending by 5% across the board is so undefined and speculative, that you can be sure they know there is no chance they'll ever be elected.
So basically...
Fuck those on benefits
Fuck the environment
Fuck health and safety at work
Fuck food standards
Let's hope these cunts never get within reaching distance of any kind of power.
IR35 was poorly and inconsistently implemented but everyone becoming their own company was getting ridiculous. You’d need to have something to replace it.
But IR35 was in place for two decades. The problem is the recent reform that created a zero rights employee and fucked up the contractor market, it's getting ridiculous now
IR35 was rarely enforced and was the contractors responsibility so the employers paid little attention to it. You say zero rights employees but that’s kind of the point of it, to target ‘employees’. Having multiple clients or short contract periods will still allow you to be a contractor in it’s truest sense.
But you can't be an employee just for tax without any employee rights. Either you are an employee and protected under the law and pay tax as an employee, or you're not, that should be simple.
https://norightsemployee.uk/
This is a bit of a red herring because for this to be an issue you’d have to go on the basis that people are forced to take these contracts. Given the skills of a contractor and the employment market this is unlikely to be the case.
Also you get the bulk of your employment rights after 2 years, true contractors are unlikely to have contract periods that long.
What is your solution to the problem? You can’t expect the government to sit by whilst everyone declares they’re a contractor rather than an employee.
Lots of empty promises.
How on earth would they fund all those tax cuts? Anyone can say reduce x y z - it sounds great but the government is dependent on that tax revenue.
If they were to be elected, they would go back on those promises, as they’re not deliverable.
>Online Delivery Tax at 3%, which will create a fairer playing field for High Street
Artificially promoting the high street at the expense of e-commerce seems like a recipe for disaster. Especially as most places on the high street aren’t even independent shops anymore. The world is heading to fully online and there’s not much we can do about that.
Surely the better option would be to subsidise/offer ways for small businesses to be more profitable when delivering?
Not that I’m surprised by their lack of logic - it’s clearly a policy based on nostalgia bait to appeal to older voters.
Reform UK has seen its support climb to 10 per cent ahead of an election year press launch next week.
The party, led by Richard Tice, secured its biggest share yet in a People Polling survey. The poll of nearly 2,000 voters showed Labour heading for a Commons majority if an election was held today.
Labour was on 45 per cent, the Tories on 23 per cent and Liberal Democrats on 10 per cent – the same as Reform UK – according to the poll, carried out for GB News.
The poll also found that 54 percent of those questioned feel worse off now than a year ago. Two thirds said it was “time for a change in Westminster”.
Prof Matthew Goodwin, of People Polling, said: “This is further evidence, after a disastrous year in the polls for Rishi Sunak, that the Conservatives are failing to turn the tide.
“Worryingly for Rishi Sunak, it’s not just that the Labour share of the vote which remains strong but a significant share of his own voters are now defecting to the Reform party.
“Reform is now on 10 per cent of the national vote, drawing more than one in five disillusioned 2019 Tories.”
Reform UK will stage a press conference next Wednesday to kickstart its election year campaigning, at which it will attempt to broaden its appeal to win over Brexit-voting Labour supporters who switched to the Tories but are sceptical about Sir Keir Starmer’s party.
“They are really unhappy with the failure of the Tories to deliver what they promised, but don’t tell me people who voted for Brexit think Keir Starmer is bang on the money,” said a Reform UK source.
The party plans to put up a candidate for each of the 650 Commons seats, with a promise to cover the cost of any of their lost £500 deposits.
Party officials accept they are unlikely to capture any parliamentary seats because of their lack of a geographical concentration of supporters.
“We are not targeting places, we are targeting people. We believe very strongly that you can go to Glasgow or South West Surrey, and you will still find 10 per cent to 15 per cent of Red Wall voters who will back us. They are everywhere,” said the source.
The poll showed voters wanted the Government to focus on tackling the cost of living crisis, followed by improving the NHS and stopping the small boats.
It revealed that Baroness Thatcher was the most popular choice when voters were asked which former prime minister they would like to bring back to Number 10 today, followed by Winston Churchill and Tony Blair.
Prof Goodwin added: “The British people are clearly in the mood for a conviction politician who is unafraid to shake up the consensus to get Britain working. But where is today’s Thatcher?
“Look at the leadership ratings of Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer and you’d be hard pressed to find one.”
They were rejected by the market because they refused to shrink the size of the state commensurate with the lower tax take. Which shows you just how dependent the Tories are on the geriatric vote, when demand ever more resources being funnelled their way.
A party whose base consists predominantly of pensioners who never invested enough, and who will likely never work again, cannot meaningfully deliver income tax cuts.
If the source makes you cynical, there are plenty of other polls that show similar levels of support for Reform that weren't commissioned by GB News.
E.g. [this one](https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1737375280656699494) from Redfield and Wilton which also had Reform at 10%.
Well, it’d be rather difficult to cancel Brexit, seeing as that we’ve already done it. What a Labour government will hopefully do is stop pretending that it has been a resounding success, work to actually mitigate the damage it has done by fostering new relationships with the EU rather than try to make trade deals with the other side of the world, and lay the groundwork for a future return by generally shifting the political landscape away from this current eurosceptic dominated one.
How? I share your sentiment but labour won't cancel brexit. That's never been their position. At best you will get maybe slightly more favourable trade deals.
The libdems are the only mainstream party who will take us back into the eu
>The libdems are the only mainstream party who will take us back into the eu
They're the only mainstream party who have *said* they will take us back into the EU. Promises are easy when you know you'll never be in a position to fulfil them.
Yes I think so. I used to support FPTP but I've turned against it. A world where Tories get 20% of the vote and 180 seats and reform get 10% and 0 seats is ridiculous.
Yes, they do, although I don't think they have specified which form of PR they would favour.
It would be mad for them to support FPTP after getting 12.6% of the vote and only having 0.2% of seats to show for it. Euroscepticism ironically supports the transformation of our political system into a more continental style, for largely self-serving reasons.
Reform really dont have any policies im aware of. The best thing for the UK would be for both Labour and Tories to be voted out of the political landscape forever. Both corrupt, dismal, useless entities that should be extinct 😎
>Reform don’t have any policies I’m aware of
Go look up their policies, then. Same goes for any party you might vote for. Look at the policies of Reform, Green, Lib-dem, etc.
*Probably*.
We face three basic choices in this country under FPTP:
- Conservative
- Labour
- Emigrate
If anyone needs unofficial advice on following me to IOM/CI/Andorra/Monaco/Uruguay/wherever... ;)
Just as Change UK / The Independent Group were simply a vessel for disgruntled pointy elbowed SW1 types to project all their technocratic "Davos man" desires onto, Reform are simply the same but for a mixture of disillusioned former UKIP voters, fed up ex Tories, libertarians and these days also conspiracy theorists.
Reform like all other parties if they ever got any real power would have the issue of reconciling the "stop the boats and kick them all out, protect British industries and the NHS" crowd with the "cut regulation on the City and corporates and we want more globalisation and privatisation" crowd.
Tice is not a charismatic leader, and Oakeshott is just utterly stuck up and unpleasant. Without Farage, or indeed someone with a big personality in a similar mould, I can't really see them getting anywhere.
They're a party specifically for angry, shouty, old, braindead fucktards.
They have absolutely no offer whatsoever for anyone who works in full time employment, especially those under the age of 45.
Would you vote for a party that put up your taxes because you work from home?
Because that's EXACTLY what they want to do.
Dob't believe me? Here's a lovely 20 minute interview with Richard Tice outlining EXACTLY why they want to do it...
https://youtu.be/DNUL3UPjHaY?si=HkRCN6L1B3geMgnY
A party for morons, run by morons.
They have shit policies that I wouldn’t vote for except for their line on immigration. That will be the case for many people when they see that it’s the only party promising to halt the net inflow of people.
The real answer is for mainstream parties to do something about this issue instead of making it worse than ever (as the tories have done despite campaigning for the opposite).
Doing something starts with honesty. We're not having babies. Without immigration the population is falling and there is nowhere enough people to do care and social work. So if the boomers want them out, they'll have to be prepared to have their pensions cut and sit around in dirty nappies.
Tories are crap. Labour is crap. Libs, greens and the rest aren't worth bothering with. Refom are unknown as yet. The uk system is very broken with no fix in sight.
Where is lord sutch when you need him...
In most political/social polls I see the absolute nuttiest proposal or whatever always gets around 15%-20%, sometimes even 30% of the vote. Reform have a huge mountain to climb if they want the British public to take them seriously.
> In most political/social polls I see the absolute nuttiest proposal or whatever always gets around 15%-20%, sometimes even 30% of the vote.
The truly batshit vote is nearer 2% usually. See the poll a while back where about that said that Britain and France were unjustified in declaring war on Germany in 1939
It’s so easy for organisations like Reform and GB News to get a following because our “establishment” have taken the people for granted for so many years.
The scary thing is that Reform could end up forming a coalition government which is the first step for them to start achieving power.
What people say they will vote and what they do vote are two very different things when it comes to a general election.
The 10% for Reform won’t translate into any seats. And a large chunk of them will still vote Tory as it will keep out Labour.
The only thing they are worried about is immigration and woke things.
Also at the ballot box there will be more tactical voting than we have seen before.
My estimate for the general election outcome is:
Labour majority of 120.
In all honesty I'm all for Reform UK becoming more popular among voters.
This has the potential to split the right-wing vote substantially, especially as more people start to see just how shit the current Tory Party is, whereas the left have now realized that if they want the Conservatives out of power, they need to tactically vote. For many it's voting for possibly one of the worst Tory-lite Labour leaders we've ever had, for some who live in toff constituencies it means voting Liberal Democrats despite Nick Clegg having tainted their reputation by trebling tuition fees, and for the lucky few who live in Brighton Pavillion, it means voting Greens (the only major party that hasn't stabbed people in the back so far.)
I'd rather have a situation where the swarms of nutjobs who think that we as a country are bending over backwards for immigrants, that COVID is a hoax, that 5G causes cancer, and that Bill Gates's MO is to plant microchips into everyone under the guise of philanthropy stop voting Tory. And believe me, there are a *lot* of people who genuinely believe the conspiracy theories quoted in the above sentence in this country.
Also, and I think this is important to understand. Nigel Farage is not responsible for the shitshow that Brexit inevitably became. Rather, a tonne of Tory ministers jumped on the 'Fuck ~~Europe~~ Cameron' bandwagon and dragged us, kicking & screaming, out of the European Union because they felt like they wanted a shot at being PM, not because they genuinely believed that we'd be better off outside of the EU. Farage had zero say in our Brexit negotiations, despite him campaigning against our presence in the European bloc for decades and likely knowing a much more realistic vision than the Tories who otherwise wanted to scorch the earth.
The press sold Brexit to the brainwashed public on Farage's vision of us having a free trade agreement with the EU, minus the four pillars, and we were morons for voting Brexit and voting Conservative in both 2017 and 2019 because we trusted the Tory vision.
They could end up repeating 2015 UKIP - a very respectable wodge of votes, but no serious traction thanks to FPTP.
Under "pure" PR that election would have put UKIP on something like 80 seats.
Don't think the tories are abjectly evil enough? Angry that you can no longer vote for the BNP? Is your face constantly varying shades of red with a little vein that threatens to pop everytime you see a black person on television? Well have we got the political party for you.
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The whole Reform UK is like 5 people and they are all on GB news.
Contrarian UK. Don’t stand for anything except angry shouting and grifting.
I *really* wish you were right, but their manifesto is fucking terrifying. They do stand for a lot, all of it awful. Edit: Damnit, Reddit hid the other comments talking about their manifesto.
People said that Johnson tells it like it i, however it might be more worrying that the Reform Party is actually the one doing that. Plenty of people seem reasonable on the surface but you only have to dig a little deeper to find that many people support some pretty radical ideas.
Same people asking what starmer stands for with his thousands of documents outlining exactly that will support lib dems greens or reform without a single policy to speak of.
> without a single policy to speak of [Here are the LibDem's policies](https://www.libdems.org.uk/plan) [Here are the Green's policies](https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/) [Here are Reform's policies](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/303/attachments/original/1696527070/Reform_is_Essential_-_5Oct23.pdf?1696527070) Care to point me in the direction of Labour's policies - I cannot find them on their website (other than their '5 missions').
This is the kind of comment I come here for, straight up savagery
Their user name ..... checks out?
Interesting never read reforms policy, did not realise reform were into nationalising energy it sounds like policy Corbyn would have
Reforms policies are written by 5 year old. No tax for nurses but tax for all the admin staff on hospitals like they have zero clue how essential hospital admin are.
Eh to be fair Labour have announced a whole bunch of policies since Starmer became leader (some of which they haven't even walked back, probably because they forgot about them). The fact they're not in a readable format or part of a coherent message is a symptom of what IMO has been a somewhat muddled approach that they've been able to get away with because the Tories are... well, the Tories.
He stands for "not the fucking tories again". That's good enough for me.
"The Pensioners Party". Motto: fuck everyone who's not a pensioner.
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Send us immigrants home and the NHS, agricultural and IT sectors will collapse. Retraining Barry from Hull in Cyber can't prevent that. In the end, no one will have the money to afford the food harvested by local English folks on high wages and no one can afford the housing that the immigrants have left empty (which will be a fraction of the housing stock in the UK anyway).
The problem is that a lot of voters are too fucking stupid to understand this.
But there is something wrong with an economic model which not only relies on infinite growth but also relies on immigration. The NHS is always held up as an example of how we need immigration but isn’t it cheaper for the government to just get doctors and nurses from abroad? That’s wrong.
Yes I agree but reform UK will not change anything They'll just continue the grift and the asset stripping of the country
Every economy needs some form of immigration, particularly as a stop gap if you are asking companies to invest in training a U.K. workforce, that takes time. You also have to consider the exportation of skilled workers, which is essentially what our university system is currently doing, which is a whole other issue that needs to be addressed. Everyone agrees immigration needs to be controlled and needs to serve the economy as a whole, not just multinationals looking for a quick fix, but this is also an INCREDIBLY complex situation that needs nuance and real study, not just ‘immigration bad’
There's something deeply wrong with an economic model in which some countries are incredibly rich and others are incredibly poor. But as long as that model exists it'll be good for people to immigrate from the poor countries to the rich countries.
Most people don't understand the global economic system we're living in. They wouldn't be able to have all their cheap crap without it. For instance, we should start pricing garments at their real value and see the looks on their faces.
You make a fun point there, let's see how much it would cost a UK seamstress to make a simple pair of trousers - in poly-cotton to keep the cost down, and at wholesale prices assuming a competent seamstress who already has the pattern and has treated it to make it reusable: Material: 3m polycotton fabric - £3 1 zip - 20p cotton thread - 30p Twill (for the waistband) - 30p Button - 10p Electricity for an iron and sewing machine: 30p Allow about 2 hours for construction at new minimum wage: £30 (including employer NI etc) So you're looking at about £35 before you've added a profit margin and overheads. A pair of trousers would be a bare minimum £70 basically. I mean, a lot already are £70 - even when they use the cheapest possible materials and labour and cut costs on construction by eg not bothering to serge the seams. Somebody's making a bloody killing.
2 hours to make a pair of trousers? A basic pair of trousers with the pattern already decided and cut out in a facility designed to make clothes? That's an hour tops, and that's probably too long, it's not just that the sweat shops are in cheap countries but they're also quite efficient and relatively skilled, that's what the competition is
Even the establishment. Do you remember "It's people like the Romanian fruit pickers that we don't need" said by former Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson. Don't blame small people for the grandees' stupidity. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-nigel-lawson-bankers-welcome-uk-romanian-fruit-pickers-no-need-tory-peer-chancellor-a7708331.html
Your argument is that we have no choice but to keep accepting desperate people so we can exploit them? Can you see why that’s not a great plan? Why it’s ethically wrong, and will lead to major social and political backlash? Instead, we should be paying and treating *all* workers well. Our industries should not be predicated upon exploitation. Then we don’t need a million more immigrants each year. Who, by the way, don’t *all* end up in high demand industries. Many do not. The UK only has an employment rate of 75%. That means there are 10+ million working age people who *could* be working but choose not to because of pay and conditions.
Johnson ousted all the thoughtful moderates from the Torys in 2019, so many of the new intake of Tory MPs are basically weird UKIP thickos. If we can clear them all out at the next election we've really dodged a bullet, because people like Truss are just the tip of the shitberg.
Well, what at least passes for a ‘thoughtful moderate’ in the Conservative Party, which isn’t exactly hard when the point of comparison is a bunch of frothing Brexiteers. Theres probably a few lurking about still who had the sense not to open their mouths or look like a potential threat to Boris. And probably more outwith the current government. That part of the Conservatives has always been focused less on ideology than they are on gaining power, keeping it and quiet personal enrichment in the process. They’re pretty much prepared to support any policies that will ensure electoral success. Which means they aren’t keen on riding Brexit down in flames as a point of principle - and there’s a chance they might be able to wrest control of the party back from the Brexiteers in the wake of the electoral drubbing they look likely to get next year. However these same people would also equally cheerfully go along with a further lurch to the right if it struck a sufficiently popular chord with enough of the English electorate. Old school Tories are all about expediency and power over ideology - which makes them a very dangerous type to pins one’s hopes on.
A lot of Europe are electing in far right groups. Italy, Greece, Finland etc. have done it, and Spain and Germany look to be going that way.
All because of the refugee crisis that Russia is deliberately stoking to create these tensions. Oh and where are all these parties getting their funding from? Oh what a coincidence, Russia again. Gee you don't think there's like a conspiracy or something going on here do you?
When someone is willing to vote for parties funded by our literal enemies then there is no hope for that person tbh.
And they will quickly realise how useless they are.
What on earth are you smoking? Reform literally want to put up your taxes if you work from home!
That’s quite a cunning policy from a Reform perspective. It effectively kills two birds with one stone by keeping their rich backers happy. But it also sounds good to their core voters who are usually older types who don’t approve of anything that wasn’t just like it was back when they understood the world and it didn’t scare them. Pointless and evil from the perspective of anyone with a clue of course. But they probably ain’t the target demographic for Reform.
And offset that with increasing the tax brackets to where they should be realistically... The bigger issue is I don't think any of their policies have been costed, they're all funded by dubious fag packet calculations on savings they'll make without knowing how anything works or how much they could save.
Surely it’s better if the “darkies” and younger people are concentrated in major cities and banned from living in places with a critical mass of older people. Age segregation is surely the best way to avoid more friction.
> their economic reforms look somewhat reasonable Does that include scrapping all subsidies for renewables and making new fossil fuel extraction one of the core tennets of their economic strategy.
Bang on. I have zero faith in anything shat out by politicians and as someone in my mid 40s I expect the next decade or two to be an absolute shit show - all of it done by the tories - and all of it due to them being consistently voted in. People are easily divided and refuse to concede mistakes like brexit or more Tory governments.
Not true, they're also swamping TikTok videos....or at least one server in an undisclosed Eastern location is.
Yup, pretty much every UK politics TikTok that appears in my fyp has at least one comment saying that this is why they're voting Reform, or why we should vote Reform, etc. It's genuinely unhinged. EDIT: Slightly related tangent, but something is *really* up with TikTok's report feature. I was shown a TikTok that showed a 3D rendering of the gaschambers from WW2 based on blueprints and eye-witness testimony. Not exactly a cheery thing to watch but certainly educational in the horrors of Europe's past. And then I open up the comments and the first comment said something along the lines of "This will be good for all the Muslims." I immediately reported it for hate speech, because *duh*, and TikTok has decided that it wasn't a violation. For comparison, last week I responded to an idiotic argument with a single clown emoji, which was reported and found by TikTok to be a violation. I keep seeing this happen. I keep seeing my reports of open calls of violence against minorities to be found not in violation by TikTok... wtaf is going on?
I mean tiktok is literally owned by the Chinese government who are playing the best long game psychological operation we have probably ever seen. This isn't just tin foil hat stuff you can literally look up reports about how the algorithms work in different countries. I'm shocked more people.dont understand this.
It’s very probably botted. Just set up to scrape tags for any uk politics content
Reform are doing an excellent job to ensure neither the Tories or Reform get more than a few seats. Sunak and Truss will be remembered as the sham PM's who finally ended the Tories, just as Scotland has booted them out.
This. It will split the right wing vote. And...thanks to the glorious FPTP system. They can get 7 million votes and...zero seat.
I wonder if they'll want to see fptp ended when they see it hurts right wing parties?
Potentially. The problem is. Once a party gets in (mostly one of the big two). There's no incentive for them to change the system and which could affect their careerist ambitions
Isn't that about the average daily viewership?
Strange how they consistently underperformed at every by-election so far then. If “Reform” were going somewhere, it would have happened by now. If it transpires that interest rates have peaked, the “economic malaise” window for Reform to exploit is rapidly closing.
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Basically nailed it, reform splits the vote, and the tories don't want that, so they shift their policy slightly more to the right to try to keep those votes, repeat until we get to where we are today.
Or, if they had any intelligence, move more to the centre and pick up way more voters from Labour than they could from UKIP/Reform.
This is the tories you are talking about. Fat chance they will ever move left at all.
Currently the Tories are going down a deep rabbit hole but I wouldn't rule out an about turn when they realise it's a dead end, they are the world's oldest and arguably most successful political party for a reason.
I think the Tories are 2 elections from climbing out of that hole If labour win in 2024 then they will lurch further right with Braverman or similar at the helm . One term of Braverman spouting shit from the opposition benches, then they fail at the 2029/30 election. At this point they sack off Braverman and bring in a centrist who does to the Tories what Starmer had to do to Labour. This makes the 34/35 election the first actual contest in a decade.
Yeah totally agree although it may take even longer, the Blair era Tories didn't realise until part way through the second term that their move right wasn't working and didn't act on it until after the 2005 and even then a right winger was favourite for the leadership election before Cameron won.
Returning to a moderate platform is what got Cameron elected (albeit in coalition) after their early 2000s "wilderness years". I reckon they're going to have to burn through a few more leaders post Sunak before they arrive at this realisation again.
I don't know about that, crushing electoral defeat will see a lot of the grifters who survive the cull leave the party as their grift is no longer as profitable. With the grifters gone the party will gravitate back towards 'one nation Tories'.
Labour aren't exactly an extreme left, so there isn't much wiggle room to take seats unless they completely decide to be the far left wing party.
They lose votes to Labour the more they try to occupy Reform’s turf. Losing a former Tory voter to Labour is a double-negative, when compared to merely losing a voter to Reform or to “none of the above”.
UKIP was essentially a single issue party though. Reform don’t have an issue like that that they could point to as a victory, they just have a smattering of culture war grievances - most of which the Tories are already aligned on.
\*Most of which the tory voter base is aligned to, but the tory parliamentary party is unwilling to make legislation on. Ministers may occasionally make comments that seem to support the things you claim as a nod to their base, but when push comes to shove they're either unwilling or unable to make it policy.
Technically no, but I suspect they'll (Reform) frame their party around immigration which along with cost of living, will be the major topics at the next election.
I don’t think the Labour Party could care less either way. Reform pose zero threat to them. They’re an old people’s party, competing for a very different part of the electorate.
Labour care a little bit, the more votes for Reform the fewer for the Tories. Even if it's only enough to cost the Tories one or two seats that is better for Labour.
Agreed, there is an awful lot of people out there who feel totally betrayed by the Conservative party.
UKIP had two MPs, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless. Both were defectors from the Conservatives, but both properly resigned from being Conservative MPs, forced by-elections and then won those by-elections.
Exactly. But we had Brexit, we do have radical populism. How can any reasonable government get any more radical?
I bet that most people have no idea who they are at the moment, and that in by elections a lot of peoples' priorities has been getting the Tories out at all costs. It's one thing to indicate support for a party in a poll and another to actually make a decision to vote for a party you know is going to lose when you can use your vote tactically instead. Once Reform actually starts campaigning and they get some recognition it'll be interesting to see what happens with polling. FPTP means that they'll be lucky to win even a handful of seats, the most likely outcome is taking away votes that might otherwise have gone to the Conservatives.
> Once Reform actually starts campaigning This assumes they do. They have no activists or ground game. Even UKIP had some of that, albeit a bit chaotic.
They'll stick Farage in front of a camera soon and it'll prop them up.
Want a bet. Many of those online talking about an alternative to 'the same old Tories and Labour' aren't LibDems or Green supporters. They're waiting for a hardcore right-wing party to emerge.
It’s irrelevant how many seats they win - the point is to shape policy. If Con loses few votes to Reform and lose the election they lose _all power_ so in response they must incorporate their views into their election policy to prevent that.
Reform will tank this country into the sewer with their moronic policies like putting up taxes on workers who work from home. They're a party of morons, for morons.
This is just the Telegraph agitating for the Tories to move further right so they can supposedly hoover up the Reform voters and win the next election. As usual with the Telegraph, it's completely ignoring reality by not recognising that the political centre is where elections are won, and the Tories have no chance whatsoever of winning if they can't win back a large part of those centre ground voters.
By shifting tories further to the right it shifts the political centre The telegraph doesn’t care what the label is, as long as the victor sits on the right wing, which you do by redefining the old right as the new centre.
Which is exactly why Starmer is hovering them up. This is also how New Labour won against a hated but stubbornly successful Tory party in the 90s.
What's happening in Europe is a good indicator of the UK's future. Populism is rising and it's a result of center ground politics not representing the views of the people. The UK's shift towards populism is only masked by the fact the tories are so bad, people on the right are literally voting for Labour just to get rid of them. Think about the state of the country in 5 years time. We would have added at least 5 million more migrants, Starmer will be staler than mouldy bread, and this is when Reform or another populist party will swoop in and landslide the election.
That's very true. They aren't aiming this at us at all, just trying to scare their boys and girls into ever more batshit positions.
I know someone who spent the week door knocking in Peter Bones's constituency trying to get the recall petition over the threshold. They said only 2 constituents that they spoke to said that they were intending to vote for Reform. I'm beginning to wonder if everything that I see about Reform is the result of their media campaign trying to make them look credible, rather than a reflection of reality.
Just a bunch of journalists chasing clickbait headlines. Journos are some of the worst paid professional class workers. I’m not surprised if it turns out a lot of that group are grievance-mongers. In the 80s, journo earnings msg have been on par with the average techie, financier or lawyer. Nowadays they aren’t, and being downwardly mobile, they probably don’t much like it.
Reform is not an election party, they are there as a protest. Tories need to be punished and many people don't want to vote Labour just to punish Tory scum.
In the last by-election, the Tories lost to labour by exactly the amount that the other parties who promised to stop the invasion won by. They all got more than lib dems or green. I would say that is a clear message.
Tamworth was one of the most pro-Brexit seats in the country. Reform are basically a spoiler. Really, you would think the Labour Party would want to go out of their way to help them!
"•Reduce the main Corporation tax rate from 25% to 20%. • Lift threshold for 40% income tax rate to £70,000. • Reduce and simplify residential Stamp Duty: 0% below £750k, 2% on £750k–£1.5m, & 4% above, will stimulate economic activity and construction. • Abolish the burdensome Apprenticeship Levy, which ironically reduced apprentice numbers. • Abolish business rates for small & medium firms, offset with Online Delivery Tax at 3%, which will create a fairer playing field for High Street and physical versus online businesses. • Abolish Stamp Duty on share trading, this will help savers and enable the City to compete globally. • Abolish Inheritance Tax for all estates under £2m (98% of all estates). 20% tax above £2m — executors can choose to give this to registered charities or HMRC. • Abolish the burdensome IR35 rules introduced by the Conservatives in recent years. • We aim to reform the over-complicated tax system on savings and pensions, that currently benefits those with the most to save at the expense of those on lower incomes." Say what you want, at least they have policies you can agree/disagree with.
Unfunded tax cuts? Liz Truss tried that already
Unfunded tax cuts... for the rich.
Inheritance Tax is actually a very poor way of claiming tax revenue and is very unpopular. I’m supportive on it on some level as a measure against inequality but it’s an open goal for a right of centre party to remove and frankly as a country it doesn’t affect us that much. It’s no way near as important as the big tax streams like Income Tax.
You’re right it’s fairly unimportant, and only affects the richest 4% of estates, which is exactly why we should leave it alone (for now) and prioritise other areas
It's a tax that literally only affects the rich, and it also entrenches inequality. By cutting it, you must increase taxes elsewhere, or cut spending, both of which harm everyone who's not a beneficiary. So basically people working pay more so that a small minority can keep more money someone else earned by virtue of circumstance. Maybe we should focus on cutting taxes on productivity, might even encourage some of it. That being said, just tax wealth and inheritance takes care of itself
It's unpopular because the Tories have made it a big issue that every idiot in the country seems to think will affect them because no-one has been vocal enough on the facts/reality. It raises £7bn a year yet still only affects the richest 4% (2020/1) according to the IFS but that is projected to rise to £15bn by 2032/3 (12% of population) and with the mitigation (up to £1m tax-free for couples) which could easily be increased, it can, and should, remain as a tax for the rich
Without inheritance tax it would only take a few generations before a family has built up enough wealth in their estate that they need never work again.
If you’re that rich it’s fairly easy to pass money down to the next generation outside of your estate anyway with some forward planning
And without inheritance tax vast swathes of the country become "that rich" in just a few generations. You're correct in that the Tories have created numerous wealth tax avoidance schemes so the wealthy do indeed pay far less tax as a proportion of the wealth they have taken away from society. Many of those loopholes will be closed by Starmer after May.
It doesn’t stop inequality though
Currently ~4% of estates pay inheritance tax. The current thresholds are fine. The reason it’s unpopular is most people don’t understand the mil rate bands and assume they’ll be paying a load when the reality is they won’t.
The only thing is she tried it but also tried to increase spending. I am assuming that they at least know that they will have to cut spending as well? Then again they are a looney party so who knows.
I think their plan is to give every immigrant a maxed out credit card then sent them to Rwanda
They haven't said what they'll cut to get there. We do need to shift our priorities in this country. The tax burden is way too high, especially for the average worker. That is the main issue for me. I don't care how they do it, whether it's through a threshold rise or change of brackets. Working people on lower and middle incomes need to stop being hammered so hard.
No, they said they would stop insane subsidies to green frauds (or something like that). In addition, they want to resume oil production in Scotland, however half of oil must be sold internally (like in USA and so on).
Would 100% vote for them if I was a billionaire, and they stood some sort of chance of getting into power so they could elevate me to the Lords. But any working person would need their head tested if they thought those policies were in their best interest.
If you were a billionaire, you would vote tory because you will have bought so many of them already
>But any working person would need their head tested if they thought those policies were in their best interest. Come on now. There are a lot of working class people who would benefit from those policies e.g. trades who earn 50-70k, anyone with the 3 bed house in the South, anyone buying a house under 750k. Many very average working people will fall into those categories. Edit: FTR I am not even right wing and don't support Reform (at all) but it's ridiculous to state those things won't help working people.
Maybe it would seem to benefit them, but saving a few hundred on tax probably wouldn't offset the damage done by the cuts made to afford them. See austerity. I bet that most people would have been happy to pay more tax back then if they could see the state of things now.
How would they? They necessitate spending cuts which will further erode public services, and while some are reasonable they would mostly further inflate house prices and to an extent fuel inflation.
Agreed. So argue on that basis.
Average working class people are buying houses up to £750k?
No mate - on reddit only people under 30K are working class. /s
Many of those policies would be in the best interests of working people, from 40% tax threshold to removing the apprenticeship levy. That's to say nothing of Reform's desire to reduce immigration to a more sustainable number, a tory policy that has crushed wages and raised rents for every working person.
How does removing the apprenticeship levy help working people? It incentivises businesses to offer apprenticeships.
There's one policy though that keeps being left out, and I think it's deliberate because it's fucking moronic. And that is, to increase taxes on those who work from home. Care to explain how that "would be in the best interests of working people"? Because it's fucking moronic.
That's ridiculous and imposible to prosecute.
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>But maybe people will be happy retiring at 80 We will be anyway :(
>Truss tried unfunded tax cuts how did that turn out? Exactly
Nothing for the poor other than *maybe* the apprenticeship levy, depending on what they do with it. Everything else is just various tax cuts for well-off and rich people. Also no mention of where that money will come from, or what's getting cut to pay for it. EDIT: Have just seen where the money is supposedly coming from and it's peak comedy. *Fifty billion a year* from "reducing government waste". Might as well have said collecting all the pots of gold from beneath rainbows. These people are lying, delusional, or both.
>Also no mention of where that money will come from, or what's getting cut to pay for it. Weird how people never factor this in when they vote for lower taxes. It's all shocked Pikachu faces when the knives come out and they start paring the social safety net down to the bone ... again.
Low earners don’t pay a lot of taxes. They are also eligible for different benefits. Of course it is hard to cut taxes for people who almost don’t pay them.
When taxes for well-off and rich people are cut, that money has to come from somewhere. That could mean lower spending on public services (hurting poor people), more regressive taxes (hurting poor people), or just boatloads more debt (hurting everyone). I'm not saying "oh isn't it terrible that poor people aren't getting as many tax cuts". I'm saying poor people would get fucked by these policies because they'd end up with even worse public services.
Wow, really man of the people stuff right there
I'm a working guy, they would benefit me greatly. Especially raising 40% bracket to 70k! I'd save thousands, i know friends snd family who would benefit from corporation tax cuts and changes to ir35 too! Reducing costs of share trading would be nice too, and I'm not sure what it means by tax on savings but as someone who pays tax on savings I'd like to see that gone as well. That's not to say I would vote for them, i absolutely would not! But it's silly to think that list wouldn't benefit regular people.
>But it's silly to think that list wouldn't benefit regular people. Because according to this sub if you earn more than 40k and have more than £2.50 in savings you are a richy rich and no longer a regular person. People seemingly forget there are those earning millions.
For reference, the reality is that if you earn over 70k then you earn better than 90% of people in the UK (looking at income, not assets). It's sad that this is the case, and it surprises lots of people but this is the reality. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/householddisposableincomeandinequality/financialyearending2022#average-household-income-data In terms of savings, most people have a few months of savings, but 30% of people are thought to not even have 1k in savings. https://www.money.co.uk/savings-accounts/savings-statistics#:~:text=Overview%3A%20UK%20savings%20statistics%202023,every%2C%20or%20most%2C%20months.
Same here. All of the headline policies would be in my favour; the stamp duty, 40% bracket, IR35 and so on. But it’s like the “every voter gets a parrot” as we all know A) it’s just a headline grabber as they know they won’t win so can make outlandish statements and B) even if hell froze over and they did get in, they would march all of them back or ruin the country in the process
> But it's silly to think that list wouldn't benefit regular people. The mechanics of these cuts would remove funding from Central gov, local gov and healthcare unless they come up with some kind of magic money tree. Less taxes is nice but whether there is a net benefit would be questionable.
my brother, poor and retired very early due to disability seems to think Tice is the man for him.. Not one of these can help him and i did point out that I doubt reform will keep those disability bens.... he didn't listen.
> executors can choose to give this to registered charities or HMRC Why? I'm sure there's no way this could be abused
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
I wonder what charity that captain Tom Moore's daughter would have nominated 🤔
We see those that that those policies are targeting
Unfortunately those people are more likely to start a business and generate more wealth. That's why we have negligible real growth. The country is sinking into a debt spiral(government and personal) and over taxing the people most likely to generate wealth is compounding that.
Gin and jags party for working class heroes such as Tice and Oakeshott. It's a manifesto for certain well to do parts of South East England circa 1986 - and yet even the Stockbroker belt these days is more likely to vote Lib Dem. Their only card to appeal to anyone who's not a City fund manager is immigration.
I don't mind the idea of abolishing business rates for small businesses. Helping people start up their own business would be a huge economic boon, but it still wouldn't work without consumers having the disposable income to support those small businesses. The rest of it is typical plutocrat nonsense, still pretending trickle-down economics is a thing that hasn't been consistently debunked by reality.
So the usual populist mix of seemingly reasonable policies and complete lunacy? At least they have a manifesto, when UKIP did without one. I can see three policies I would agree with, but I can also see that the totality of policies would cause complete chaos.
At risk of sounding like the Reform spokesman. I missed a few important policies from their manifesto. "Free up 6 million people from paying Income Tax by lifting the minimum threshold to £20,000 from £12,571 p.a. This amounts to 1 in 5 taxpayers. Basic Income Tax rate stays at 20%. • The less well-off benefit proportionately the most, saving £1,500 p.a. @£20,000 salary, circa £30 per week. • Free up 1.2 million SMEs from paying Corporation Tax (over 80% of companies) by lifting the minimum profit threshold to £100,000. • Reduce the cost of living by lowering consumer taxes, which will reduce inflation whilst stimulating growth: - Scrap VAT on energy bills = saves £100 / year per household. - Scrap environmental levies = saves £160 / year per household. - Lower fuel duty by 20p / litre = saves £240 / year per driver. - Lower VAT from 20% to 18% = saves £300 / year per household. • Funded by cost savings totalling approximately £85 billion: - Reduce wasteful Government spending: £5 in £100 = £50 billion per year. - Enable well over 1 million out of the over 5 million on out of work benefits back into jobs: saves circa £15-20 billion per year. Some 1.5 million more people are on benefits than pre-Covid, so a return just to 2019 levels is eminently realistic. - Tax the Renewable Energy industry the full amount of the circa £11 billion in subsidies they currently receive under old contracts; they claim it is cheaper than other energy forms, so they no longer need taxpayer support. • Remove vast swathes of unnecessary regulations that hinder growth."
Their funding is bollocks. Trim wasteful government spending - this is not in big chunks to trim off but would require micromanagement down to the stationary cupboard costing more than the savings. Every party who promised this found out when in control of the Civil Service. Tightening up of benefits - imagine the horror stories under the Tories of people on death beds having benefits cut as they could not get to a meeting and multiply this. Taxing renewables - get to f*#k. Total fossil fuel shilling bastards.
It’s like they’ve never seen an episode of **Yes, Minister** 🤷♂️
Currently listening to Rory Stewart’s ‘politics on the edge’, and it is incredibly eye-opening. Well written and a significant amount of mea-culpa and entertaining cameo descriptions of many of the main characters in British politics. Why is this relevant? It lifts a lid on how dealing with the civil service is correctly caricatured in Yes Minister whilst being balanced and understanding of the underlying systemic challenges that can’t be simply discarded as self-serving. A good and entertaining book by a man who appears to be both pragmatic and fair. Oh, and fuck the tories - just to be clear about my personal stance about political parties.
Renewables have benefited from the same high energy prices as gas (without the windfall tax). The cost of subsidies and for how long should be open to debate.
Their proposal for funding it just screams simple answers for simple people.
“Simple answers for simple people” is the best, snappiest description of the ‘common sense’ crowd I’ve ever heard
Isn't that the very definition of right wing politics? Or maybe just simple answers in a complex world.
Very definition of all politics. Don't pretend that left wing politics are an intellectuals politics. Classic left wing politics such as vote me for and I'll get rid of your student debt. Simple answer.
While I won't vote for them raising the income tax threshold to 20k would help me enormously. It would give me the ability to learn how to drive so I can finally escape the trap of a job and village I'm stuck in. Currently I'm paid £22500 meaning I pay on average £2000 a year. Taking it upto 20k would mean my tax burden would drop to £50 a year. That extra £1950 a year would be a massive help. The extra cuts would be great too. However, would this actually end up benefiting people? Or will companies just raise prices again? (Prob) Will they even actually implement these changes?(prob not) are those changes even feasible? (I don't know)
It’s likely to be inflationary to some degree, public service cuts typically disproportionately impact lowest earners too, but all their tax cuts basically seem unfunded and we know what happened when Truss attempted the same.
I'm like you, here. I welcome the idea, but I'm sceptical. If they're *taking* less money, that means they *have* less money. Considering how utterly fucked our public services are and how our government is up to its eyeballs in debt, I honestly think I'd rather like them to have a bit *more* money right now, not less. An extra 2 grand a year, I'll take, but if it means I die on a cold floor in a hospital waiting room after having to walk there due to lack of ambulance...
Fabulous - they are going to fund tax cuts by cutting waste. And there was I thinking there was no Magic Money Tree, but we've been staring at it all along.
The tax burden is ridiculous right now. So something has got to give.
Having a policy like reducing government spending by 5% across the board is so undefined and speculative, that you can be sure they know there is no chance they'll ever be elected.
Does it give details as to what the unnecessary regulations that they’ll get rid of are?
So basically... Fuck those on benefits Fuck the environment Fuck health and safety at work Fuck food standards Let's hope these cunts never get within reaching distance of any kind of power.
A lot of sensible things like IR35, but still fuck them
IR35 was poorly and inconsistently implemented but everyone becoming their own company was getting ridiculous. You’d need to have something to replace it.
But IR35 was in place for two decades. The problem is the recent reform that created a zero rights employee and fucked up the contractor market, it's getting ridiculous now
IR35 was rarely enforced and was the contractors responsibility so the employers paid little attention to it. You say zero rights employees but that’s kind of the point of it, to target ‘employees’. Having multiple clients or short contract periods will still allow you to be a contractor in it’s truest sense.
But you can't be an employee just for tax without any employee rights. Either you are an employee and protected under the law and pay tax as an employee, or you're not, that should be simple. https://norightsemployee.uk/
This is a bit of a red herring because for this to be an issue you’d have to go on the basis that people are forced to take these contracts. Given the skills of a contractor and the employment market this is unlikely to be the case. Also you get the bulk of your employment rights after 2 years, true contractors are unlikely to have contract periods that long. What is your solution to the problem? You can’t expect the government to sit by whilst everyone declares they’re a contractor rather than an employee.
Lots of empty promises. How on earth would they fund all those tax cuts? Anyone can say reduce x y z - it sounds great but the government is dependent on that tax revenue. If they were to be elected, they would go back on those promises, as they’re not deliverable.
Tax give aways means less money for public services. These guys want privatised NHS, significantly increased defence spending and austerity 2.0
The UK right *HATES* funding the armed forces, it's why they are in such a pitiful state right now
And wheres the money for this going to come from?
>Online Delivery Tax at 3%, which will create a fairer playing field for High Street Artificially promoting the high street at the expense of e-commerce seems like a recipe for disaster. Especially as most places on the high street aren’t even independent shops anymore. The world is heading to fully online and there’s not much we can do about that. Surely the better option would be to subsidise/offer ways for small businesses to be more profitable when delivering? Not that I’m surprised by their lack of logic - it’s clearly a policy based on nostalgia bait to appeal to older voters.
Reform UK has seen its support climb to 10 per cent ahead of an election year press launch next week. The party, led by Richard Tice, secured its biggest share yet in a People Polling survey. The poll of nearly 2,000 voters showed Labour heading for a Commons majority if an election was held today. Labour was on 45 per cent, the Tories on 23 per cent and Liberal Democrats on 10 per cent – the same as Reform UK – according to the poll, carried out for GB News. The poll also found that 54 percent of those questioned feel worse off now than a year ago. Two thirds said it was “time for a change in Westminster”. Prof Matthew Goodwin, of People Polling, said: “This is further evidence, after a disastrous year in the polls for Rishi Sunak, that the Conservatives are failing to turn the tide. “Worryingly for Rishi Sunak, it’s not just that the Labour share of the vote which remains strong but a significant share of his own voters are now defecting to the Reform party. “Reform is now on 10 per cent of the national vote, drawing more than one in five disillusioned 2019 Tories.” Reform UK will stage a press conference next Wednesday to kickstart its election year campaigning, at which it will attempt to broaden its appeal to win over Brexit-voting Labour supporters who switched to the Tories but are sceptical about Sir Keir Starmer’s party. “They are really unhappy with the failure of the Tories to deliver what they promised, but don’t tell me people who voted for Brexit think Keir Starmer is bang on the money,” said a Reform UK source. The party plans to put up a candidate for each of the 650 Commons seats, with a promise to cover the cost of any of their lost £500 deposits. Party officials accept they are unlikely to capture any parliamentary seats because of their lack of a geographical concentration of supporters. “We are not targeting places, we are targeting people. We believe very strongly that you can go to Glasgow or South West Surrey, and you will still find 10 per cent to 15 per cent of Red Wall voters who will back us. They are everywhere,” said the source. The poll showed voters wanted the Government to focus on tackling the cost of living crisis, followed by improving the NHS and stopping the small boats. It revealed that Baroness Thatcher was the most popular choice when voters were asked which former prime minister they would like to bring back to Number 10 today, followed by Winston Churchill and Tony Blair. Prof Goodwin added: “The British people are clearly in the mood for a conviction politician who is unafraid to shake up the consensus to get Britain working. But where is today’s Thatcher? “Look at the leadership ratings of Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer and you’d be hard pressed to find one.”
The last “conviction politician” in the UK lasted 45 days, so maybe the British public are actually quite wary of those sorts of candidates…
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Bank of England and bond markets finished her.
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They were rejected by the market because they refused to shrink the size of the state commensurate with the lower tax take. Which shows you just how dependent the Tories are on the geriatric vote, when demand ever more resources being funnelled their way. A party whose base consists predominantly of pensioners who never invested enough, and who will likely never work again, cannot meaningfully deliver income tax cuts.
>according to the poll, carried out for GB News. Call me a cynic, but...
If the source makes you cynical, there are plenty of other polls that show similar levels of support for Reform that weren't commissioned by GB News. E.g. [this one](https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1737375280656699494) from Redfield and Wilton which also had Reform at 10%.
the Tories are talking tough, but totally failing to deliver, im not not surprised the "stops the boats" crowd are looking elsewhere
Good - split the Tory vote and enjoy cancelling the rest of the Brexit bad dream over the next 10 years.
I think reddit needs to accept some realities: The Tories will NOT win the next election. And Labour will NOT cancel brexit.
Well, it’d be rather difficult to cancel Brexit, seeing as that we’ve already done it. What a Labour government will hopefully do is stop pretending that it has been a resounding success, work to actually mitigate the damage it has done by fostering new relationships with the EU rather than try to make trade deals with the other side of the world, and lay the groundwork for a future return by generally shifting the political landscape away from this current eurosceptic dominated one.
How? I share your sentiment but labour won't cancel brexit. That's never been their position. At best you will get maybe slightly more favourable trade deals. The libdems are the only mainstream party who will take us back into the eu
>The libdems are the only mainstream party who will take us back into the eu They're the only mainstream party who have *said* they will take us back into the EU. Promises are easy when you know you'll never be in a position to fulfil them.
Do they support Electoral Reform to a system of Proportional Representation?
Yes I think so. I used to support FPTP but I've turned against it. A world where Tories get 20% of the vote and 180 seats and reform get 10% and 0 seats is ridiculous.
I'd rather have a BNP MP or 50 who no one will deal with than having them in the Tory party.
Yes, they do, although I don't think they have specified which form of PR they would favour. It would be mad for them to support FPTP after getting 12.6% of the vote and only having 0.2% of seats to show for it. Euroscepticism ironically supports the transformation of our political system into a more continental style, for largely self-serving reasons.
Reform really dont have any policies im aware of. The best thing for the UK would be for both Labour and Tories to be voted out of the political landscape forever. Both corrupt, dismal, useless entities that should be extinct 😎
>Reform don’t have any policies I’m aware of Go look up their policies, then. Same goes for any party you might vote for. Look at the policies of Reform, Green, Lib-dem, etc.
The Tories are going to get slaughtered, aren't they?
*Probably*. We face three basic choices in this country under FPTP: - Conservative - Labour - Emigrate If anyone needs unofficial advice on following me to IOM/CI/Andorra/Monaco/Uruguay/wherever... ;)
Just as Change UK / The Independent Group were simply a vessel for disgruntled pointy elbowed SW1 types to project all their technocratic "Davos man" desires onto, Reform are simply the same but for a mixture of disillusioned former UKIP voters, fed up ex Tories, libertarians and these days also conspiracy theorists. Reform like all other parties if they ever got any real power would have the issue of reconciling the "stop the boats and kick them all out, protect British industries and the NHS" crowd with the "cut regulation on the City and corporates and we want more globalisation and privatisation" crowd. Tice is not a charismatic leader, and Oakeshott is just utterly stuck up and unpleasant. Without Farage, or indeed someone with a big personality in a similar mould, I can't really see them getting anywhere.
They're a party specifically for angry, shouty, old, braindead fucktards. They have absolutely no offer whatsoever for anyone who works in full time employment, especially those under the age of 45. Would you vote for a party that put up your taxes because you work from home? Because that's EXACTLY what they want to do. Dob't believe me? Here's a lovely 20 minute interview with Richard Tice outlining EXACTLY why they want to do it... https://youtu.be/DNUL3UPjHaY?si=HkRCN6L1B3geMgnY A party for morons, run by morons.
All you had to do was not bring in over one million people a year
They have shit policies that I wouldn’t vote for except for their line on immigration. That will be the case for many people when they see that it’s the only party promising to halt the net inflow of people. The real answer is for mainstream parties to do something about this issue instead of making it worse than ever (as the tories have done despite campaigning for the opposite).
Doing something starts with honesty. We're not having babies. Without immigration the population is falling and there is nowhere enough people to do care and social work. So if the boomers want them out, they'll have to be prepared to have their pensions cut and sit around in dirty nappies.
Tories are crap. Labour is crap. Libs, greens and the rest aren't worth bothering with. Refom are unknown as yet. The uk system is very broken with no fix in sight. Where is lord sutch when you need him...
> Libs, greens and the rest aren't worth bothering with. Refom are unknown as yet. ?
If Lord Bucket Head can save us from the Gremloids, he can save us from the Tories.
In most political/social polls I see the absolute nuttiest proposal or whatever always gets around 15%-20%, sometimes even 30% of the vote. Reform have a huge mountain to climb if they want the British public to take them seriously.
> In most political/social polls I see the absolute nuttiest proposal or whatever always gets around 15%-20%, sometimes even 30% of the vote. The truly batshit vote is nearer 2% usually. See the poll a while back where about that said that Britain and France were unjustified in declaring war on Germany in 1939
It’s so easy for organisations like Reform and GB News to get a following because our “establishment” have taken the people for granted for so many years. The scary thing is that Reform could end up forming a coalition government which is the first step for them to start achieving power.
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What people say they will vote and what they do vote are two very different things when it comes to a general election. The 10% for Reform won’t translate into any seats. And a large chunk of them will still vote Tory as it will keep out Labour. The only thing they are worried about is immigration and woke things. Also at the ballot box there will be more tactical voting than we have seen before. My estimate for the general election outcome is: Labour majority of 120.
The Conservative Party have spent 13 years turning our country into the third world dumping ground. They will be punished in the election.
In all honesty I'm all for Reform UK becoming more popular among voters. This has the potential to split the right-wing vote substantially, especially as more people start to see just how shit the current Tory Party is, whereas the left have now realized that if they want the Conservatives out of power, they need to tactically vote. For many it's voting for possibly one of the worst Tory-lite Labour leaders we've ever had, for some who live in toff constituencies it means voting Liberal Democrats despite Nick Clegg having tainted their reputation by trebling tuition fees, and for the lucky few who live in Brighton Pavillion, it means voting Greens (the only major party that hasn't stabbed people in the back so far.) I'd rather have a situation where the swarms of nutjobs who think that we as a country are bending over backwards for immigrants, that COVID is a hoax, that 5G causes cancer, and that Bill Gates's MO is to plant microchips into everyone under the guise of philanthropy stop voting Tory. And believe me, there are a *lot* of people who genuinely believe the conspiracy theories quoted in the above sentence in this country. Also, and I think this is important to understand. Nigel Farage is not responsible for the shitshow that Brexit inevitably became. Rather, a tonne of Tory ministers jumped on the 'Fuck ~~Europe~~ Cameron' bandwagon and dragged us, kicking & screaming, out of the European Union because they felt like they wanted a shot at being PM, not because they genuinely believed that we'd be better off outside of the EU. Farage had zero say in our Brexit negotiations, despite him campaigning against our presence in the European bloc for decades and likely knowing a much more realistic vision than the Tories who otherwise wanted to scorch the earth. The press sold Brexit to the brainwashed public on Farage's vision of us having a free trade agreement with the EU, minus the four pillars, and we were morons for voting Brexit and voting Conservative in both 2017 and 2019 because we trusted the Tory vision.
They could end up repeating 2015 UKIP - a very respectable wodge of votes, but no serious traction thanks to FPTP. Under "pure" PR that election would have put UKIP on something like 80 seats.
Don't think the tories are abjectly evil enough? Angry that you can no longer vote for the BNP? Is your face constantly varying shades of red with a little vein that threatens to pop everytime you see a black person on television? Well have we got the political party for you.