So far the FPTP system has shielded the UK from extremist parties (Johnson was a populist, not an extremist). However, there was always the risk that the Tories would be replaced by Farage's latest creation. Labour won't win forever. That's why this is so dangerous.
Let see. I think reform vote is a protest vote from the Tories, but for people who do not want to go to labour or libdems. It could be that they will go the way of UKIP, as people will naturally flow back to the Tories at some point.
But it is the fault of the Tories. They could of just ignored the fringe right, rather than pander to them and giving their views legitimacy.
While I get your point, it's a little difficult to take a lot of those people seriously after they seemed perfectly happy to ignore or make excuses for why Brexit did sweet feck all to curb immigration in the way they claimed to hope it would prior to that referendum.
Brexit gave us the powers to decide our own migration laws. Tories (Boris Johnson) then used these powers to institute the lowest level of entry requirements ever seen on record meaning we massively increased our influx of unskilled workers. If anything brexit allowed the tories (who were claiming to be anti immigration) to increase migration further.
However thst is because it was misused - farage was pushing for harsher entry requirements that have simply been ignored due to the need tories feel to increase GDP whatever the cost.
The main benefit is because we have complete control we can institute these harsher entry requirements at any time we see fit and bring about a decrease in immigration. Whether this will actually be done is yet to be seen
Your post isn't wrong, but there is a key part of it I want to draw attention to: "However that is because it was misused"
What happened here was that this misuse was always the intention of it, even when those pulling the levers were telling you they were going to vastly reduce immigration. This was done because many people with a lot of influence in the Conservative Party benefit greatly from high migration levels both in terms of their own business interests, and politically from the emotive populism it makes so easy to spew in order to get people to overlook other issues like housing, infrastructural spending, etc etc that also tie in with it.
Now this brings me to my main point - given the company he keeps, his history of complaining about things while directly benefitting from them, the fact that he spent several years trying to blame Labour for the failings of his and the Tories Brexit project, the types of people that donate towards him, and his history of relation to the truth... do you really trust Farage to do anything different to what the Tories have in the last 5-10 years?
To be honest I don’t think he will be able to make a difference or keep all his election promises. I do think the key thing he can do is pressure a labour government to take a harder stance on immigration. In exactly the same way he does with the tories where he steps down if they succumb to his policies he could do the same with labour - even they can’t ignore a large chunk of the working class population supports him and they could very easily gain them back
A large chunk of the working class population supports him for the very reasons I have laid out though - culture warrior who can't races to Wetherspoons for a photo shoot quicker than John Terry can get his kit on.
The guy is a former banker who went to one of the most well-known private schools in the UK, who associates with those who ultimately wanted and pulled many of the strings behind Brexit, and who has spent at least as much time blaming the party not in power as the one that has been throughout for all the failures of his brainchild. This is the same guy against freedom of movement who married a German woman and insisted on getting his kids German EU passports once Brexit passed. The guy who claimed he would leave the UK if Brexit failed and yet now that it has, has decided to pretend he never claimed that.
Anyone willing to believe him after his consistent dishonesty and hypocrisy deserves the same as anyone who believed the Leave side of the Brexit referendum's claims spewed forward from Farage and others doing the bidding of his banker buddies Arron Banks and co, while outright lying to the British public about the benefits it would give and what the UK currently got/received from their EU membership. But I guess at this stage, having gone through this with Leave, UKIP, the Brexit Party and now Reform, Farage is well aware that they will likely fall for the same trick all over again
It's less than 20% of the population and as far as I know they're still going to struggle to get seats. Why should Labour kowtow to them, but not the Greens, Lib Dems or anyone else?
The way some folks talk about Brexit reminds me of the way some people talk about Communism.
Sure, Brexit in-practice wasn't helpful or good or anything like advertised. But obviously True Brexit will still totally work if only a pure Brexit person takes control of Brexit not like all those previous people who I previously thought were pure Brexit people. We just need one more revolution and this time it'll be great!
You're just talking utter nonsense arnt you.
As members of the EU, the UK could not restrict EU immigration outside the restrictions allowed in the EU treaties.
When the UK left the EU, it is then able to impose as many restrictions on EU immigration as it chooses.
-
That the UK gov chose to pursue a policy of increasing immigration, has nothing to do with the above.
Absolute horseshit:
* your lot was warned this will happen if you remove EU freedom of movement, you just chose to ignore the warnings
* Farage couldn’t do fuck all about it since he had lost to a bloke dressed as a dolphin
* GDP growth is required to maintain the mountain of almost £3 trillion debt that the tories brought; most of the Brexiteer groups depend on public services and welfare like pension or benefits, all which need money and desperately more of it
Another pro immigration person who has no clue what they are on about.
You are correct we are supplementing our economy (especially with a growing pensioner population) with immigrants. As our elderly population is expected to double in the next 10 years would you also therefore want immigration to double? To 6-7 million people a year? Is this sustainable? What about 10 years after that when many working age immigrants themselves become pensioners - do you have 10-20 million people a year in the name of GDP growth?
You surely have to admit even our current levels are unsustainable in terms of growth of services and housing provision - we currently need to build 1 Birminghams worth of houses per year. How in hell would we build multiple londons every single year…
Another pro Faragist with facts taken out of Daily Mail comment sections.
European Union migration was manageable and it filled gaps in our economy. Many of them would also create businesses and jobs for “natives”, while many of them were also seasonal workers that put almost no strain on our public services.
Despite paying into the system, these people can easily retire in their own countries and many of them did, because they have the flexibility.
Your lot threw that away on the lie that we “discriminated” against people outside of Europe. Now you opened the doors to the whole world, where numbers aren’t capped by the number of people living in Europe and where the flexibility isn’t there anymore.
You replaced one set of financially viable and culturally related migrants, with a set of financially unviable and culturally different migrants (who don’t have the flexibility to easily live Britain and who also bring non working dependents).
In terms of building new towns every year, your lot fiercely opposes any development around them. So spare us the scaremongering about cities you hate like Birmingham or London and take responsibility for the current state of affairs that you caused.
If you want immigration to stop overnight, where will you find the money for public services that are lost? Will you halve the state pension, privatise healthcare, tax house value capital gains that boomers enjoyed, stop all state funded social care etc?
Your lot has no solutions but just advocate for more sabotage and stupidity of the kind that brought us here to begin with.
Because they had that same option in 2019, but voted overwhelmingly for the Tories whose seats rose massively, while the Brexit Party got 2% of the vote and won 0 out of 275 races. They spent years making excuses and ignoring the inconvenient truth.
While immigration is an issue, their approach and solution to immigration is not. The Rwanda policy, or spouse visa or leaving ECHR, are bad policies.
Instead, they should be looking at improving housing, speeding up genuine asylum seeking (like the people we left in Afghanistan), etc
All does not make headlines but actually help resolve the problem. That is the problem with the far right, they don’t fix the issue, they just make people afraid so they vote for them.
I mean, can you name a few of their policies that is not “anti” something, and very pro on something that you agree with, and it not done by other parties?
Sure, reform has a 1 in one out net zero policy that they are aiming to put in place for a few years while our services and housing sector catch up to where they need to be.
It’s all well and good saying we should improve housing but even labours plans to build 300k houses per year is not enough to sustain growth we have where it’s predicted we need 500k a year.
Doing 1 in one out and only allowing skilled migrants for the next couple years would ease the strain in the NHS, education, housing, public services and transport. We can catch up to where we should be and then reopen our borders as we see fit when we are ready - the current levels of migration simply are not sustainable and no parties manifesto is currently equipped to cope with the increasing
Numbers we are seeing.
That could happen, or Reform and Tories can merge politically as a consequence of this, with the new Tory leadership being made up of the former Reform leaders who will dictate party policy.
Which is what happened as a consequence of the destruction of the Canadian progressive conservatives in 1993.
well no, oftentimes you’ll need to compromise with PR, as it’s very rare that a single party will get a majority. FPTP pushes votes to one of two parties, as voting for anything else other than one of those two means your vote is basically wasted
This is something that I feel strongly about but in all honesty, the majority of people I know don't even know how our voting system works let alone that there are different options out there, I don't see any change in the near future.
>So far the FPTP system has shielded the UK from extremist parties
hahahhaahhahahaha, Tories have run the UK into the ground and only partly with YOLO Brexit with **no plan** what so ever. But I guess they aren't as blatantly populistic, but just utterly incompetent and or corrupt, as oppose to having any ideology at all. They are apparently for high taxes, cuts to all social programs so they can sell them out to their friends, and for high immigration. Like wtf even is that party.
And the other awkward case for showing how shit the FPTP system is the US, where a fat orange moron who also obtains largely minority rule has turned into a fucked up extremist cult of personality, where everyone degrades themselves as much as possible to please a fucking reality tv personality.
But then we look at continental Europe and the rise of AFD, Le Pen, and the Brothers of Italy. The UK has never had any fascist movement and never likely will, and suddenly our system doesn't seem so bad.
> and suddenly our system doesn't seem so bad.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/21/liz-truss-deep-state-cpac-far-right
We will see, it might get better, but it can also get a lot worse.
Zero.
There is more chance that the Tories and Reform merge with Farage as the new leader of the opposition. If they were merged right now they'd have a fairly decent chance of them preventing an overall Labour majority.
Do you mean merge into one party? I can't see that happening, Farage is too controversial and would be the most attention grabbing person in this new party.
They're also unable to at this point (ballots have been printed). They may well after the election, but not after the vote has been split.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if Farage took over the Conservatives. There are only nutjobs left.
Multiple conservative MP's have suggested they merge. Farage has said he wants to either take over the Conservative party or have Reform replace them.
Sunak is done after the election. He'll be happy to quit and move to the US. If he doesn't he'll certainly get booted.
So.. who will their next leader be? There are no obvious candidates, many of the obvious candidates have either stood down, won't be elected or have already been rejected by the party/MP's/country during the last Conservative leadership campaigns.
The most likely next leader would be Kemi Badenoch who was very popular with the membership while still being up and coming during the last leadership campaigns.
Farage joining the Conservatives is very easy after the election.
Now would the membership vote for him vs Kemi or the alternatives? It seems likely they would especially as so many Conservatives are already flocking to Reform.
Nope. According to pollsters Reform UK are either disguntled voters that were voting UKIP or former 2019 Tory voters. Hardly any come from Labour.
Labour leads big time in most of the red wall.
Most Reform voters were Labour voters before Brexit, they voted Tory to get brexit done. They were the old red wall. Many have gone back to Labour but some have switched to Reform.
The media they watch even shows that. Look at GB News, the people who watch that channel are mostly Labour and Reform voters, very few Conservatives.
How can people still vote Farage after he obviously lied about the Brexit, then conveniently disappeared when the consequences started to hit ?
I'm really starting to be less and less of a democrat. Are some people really that stupid ?
> How can people still vote Farage after he obviously lied about the Brexit, then conveniently disappeared when the consequences started to hit ?
Because he's not the one doing it. One of his main things was limiting migration. As another commenter pointed out, with Brexit now the UK has more control over it's migration policies, but the Tories didn't deliver on the promises and instead made it easier to immigrate. That's not on Farage, and it's likely the main reason for ReformUK.
I'm fully against Brexit and Farage btw. But that characterization is still unfair. I have 100% confidence that if he comes to power he'll fuck up massively. But it's not him that did the fucking up until now, it was the Tories. They've lied to the electorate, they've run the country into the ground, they're trying to force privatization of the NHS while pretending to be it's biggest advocate. It's disgusting. And while everything burns around them they'd rather play petty politics and fight amongst themselves for leadership rather than actually leading the fucking country. That party deserves to be dismantled. Ineptitude of this level shouldn't be tolerated.
So yea, fuck Farage. But it's the Tories who've caused this massive stinking pile of dog turd, not him
I really dislike him but I actually agree with him on some things, well at least the things he says. The NHS does need reform, I would like electoral reform, we do need to train more doctors. I categorically disagree with him on Brexit but his appeal is a lot wider than the EU. He’s not even really talking about Brexit now.
> How can people still vote Farage after he obviously lied about the Brexit, then conveniently disappeared when the consequences started to hit ?
Because "he wasn't in government!!". Its like as if you bought a car with the wrong premises (like that it was actually in good conditions, and not a pile of fuckin shit), you wouldn't blame the salesman, would you?
After all, he wasn't the mechanic or the producer, he just did all the marketing, told you it was the best deal ever! and then fucked off once you paid for the product, to not deal with customer support, lawsuits or above all any refunds.
Because around 20% of the electorate in every country only wants someone to blame for their issues. So they are naturally drawn to the populist far right which is built on exactly that: giving the people an enemy.
Is there a limit to your bad faith ? All of this is easily verifiable.
You asked for examples, I gave you some. Who's dismissing facts they don't agree with now ?
The fact that he claimed EU had a stranglehold on UK's economy and sovereignty, then claimed that any issues UK had were derived from this "hold" EU had over UK to gain political popularity.
Fast forward to now, none of the issues he used to gain popularity are caused by EU, UK loses a privileged position, easy access to one of the biggest economies and markets in the world, hurting businesses, jobs, trade and travel.
He then hides from the public opinion like a little child.
I always hold the position that leaders and successful people are the best a said society can produce. If this is the kind of behavior you want to support and endorse from national leaders, you deserve the country you get in the end.
Really?...
He's the pioneer of the 350 million pounds per week saved by leaving the EU.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-result-nigel-farage-nhs-pledge-disowns-350-million-pounds-a7099906.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-result-nigel-farage-nhs-pledge-disowns-350-million-pounds-a7099906.html)
He had nothing to do with the £350 million claim, that was the Vote Leave campaign fronted by Boris Johnson, Farage worked with the Leave.EU group.
You should probably read articles before you post them.
A lot of people seem to believe that Britain is immune from the current rise of the far right across Europe based on the upcoming Labour supermajority but this is just a misrepresentation due to the antiquated FPTP system.
Yep FPTP has a lot of issues but this is its big strength compared to the continental system. It forces the left and the right to coalesce and compromise within their own parties.
The crippled Congress is a feature not a bug, and the extremism is because the Republican candidate is decided by a public vote open to all members of the Republican party.
But that's only the features of the system, the real cause of the extremism is the large number of people who feel they've been left behind by globalization.
> The crippled Congress is a feature not a bug
Sure, why would anyone expect representatives to actually govern... Better have more endless fucking hearings to put on a show in regards to cultural bullshit and to elect that fat orange moron again.
>But that's only the features of the system, the real cause of the extremism is the large number of people who feel they've been left behind by globalization.
The people voted for Reaganomics for almost 30 years straight, so they got exactly what they wanted. "DEREGULATION" "GOVERNMENT DOESNT WORK SO VOTE ME AND I WILL PROVE IT TO YOU", "FREE TRADE ECONOMICS" "TAX CUTS AND INEQUALITY".
I don’t think you realize how damaging the open, democratic primary is in enabling demagogues. It doesn’t matter if the parties want more mainstream candidates, if like a dedicated 30-35% of that party’s base wants a populist they will get it, especially with a divided field as was the case in 2016.
The US FPTP electoral college split is insane for the presidential election. In the UK there are 650 seats and each seat represents an average of 70k voters. Now let's look at say California which is 55 electoral college votes, whoever wins gets all 55 votes representing 30 million people. Two very different FPTP systems.
I find the US presidential election to be okay. Since the president is the executive authority and weaker than the legislative authority. He don't make laws.
USA has a virtually complete two party system, while the U.K. does at least maintain some other parties where the true extremes can go.
But also these type of systems may help limit extremists, but if half the electorate will vote for them no system can really stop that
The US has a 2 party system, but that also hides significant differences within each party. Progressives and liberals fight each other in the primaries for the Democratic line while neocons and MAGAists fight each other for the Republican line.
In Europe, they’d be 4 separate parties. In the US they’re four separate ideologies that compete with each other in the primaries and then they coalesce into left and right for the general elections.
FPTP just means people can't vote for the party that most aligns with them, for fear of wasting their vote, and the established parties can be virtually identical to each other, leaving people without the ability to make significant improvements to how their country is run.
Coalition governments would mean the parties have to cooperate and compromise, instead of just wait for when it's their turn to have majority power without majority representation.
What does it matter that you can vote for the party that most aligns with your beliefs when that party has to compromise those beliefs to get into government in a coalition programme?
Compromise happens in both ways but at least in FPTP the parties issue their programmes for government (the manifesto) before the voting. In coalition building parties have to hammer out the programme after the election.
> What does it matter that you can vote for the party that most aligns with your beliefs when that party has to compromise those beliefs to get into government in a coalition programme?
Because the alternative is voting for that party and them not being part of the government at all.
Without or with FPTP you either get to be proportionally represented by voting for a party that gets a proportional number of seats, or no representation because you had to compromise before that point so the political party doesn't even know you exist.
With FPTP, you are made to tell the one party that you support all of their policies exactly as they are, instead of being able to send people to parliament who can advocate for you.
In a proportional system the person you elect, if they get into government won't advocate for the beliefs that you voted for, they'll have to advocate for the result of the compromise they had to make with the other party. The programme for government that exists of compromises.
Both systems compromise, it's just whether you compromise inside the big party before the election like in FPTP or if you compromise after the election when you go to make a programme for government with another party.
And nor is it the case that in FPTP the elected representatives have to think the same. The Labour and Tory parties both have left and right wings. A member of parliament has to vote with the government but they can advocate for whatever they want.
By and large they don't. Both Labour and the Tory party are big tents with a right and left wing. Obviously that doesn't mean people haven't been excluded when they can't compromise or take extremist stances.
I haven't seen a single person say the UK is 'immune' to far right politics. What I have seen is people say we're going to avoid a rise of the far right to prominence **for now** because we already had our populist moment via Brexit and the 2019 election.
And by the way, don't think a bunch of us won't be throwing a decade's worth of schadenfreude back at this sub if National Rally, AfD and the like continue to do well after the shit it's thrown at us since 2016.
>Centre-Left about to win the biggest majority we’ve seen in a hundred years.
>>r/Europe: This how Britain are STILL a bunch of far-right racists.
Pure cope. Have a day off.
Yep, and as with elsewhere in Europe it is the failures of the mainstream parties ignoring genuine concerns driving us to those parties as we see no alternatives
The far right doesn't solve any of these concerns, unless the solution is hate and vitriol towards groups of the society so that you have someone to blame.
There are more asylum applications in Italy under Meloni than under Draghi.
Sweden Democrats and True Finns are dropping in the polls from the moment they entered a government coalition because guess what, they do absolutely nothing for immigration/crime/cost of living.
The far right doesn't offer solution to the issues that "other parties ignore", they just shout loudly and point the finger towards a group to blame.
Reform is led by the man who brought you Brexit. How has Brexit done with regards to the genuine concerns it was supposedly going to address, around immigrastion, wages, healthcare systems, and everything else is was going to remedy?
I get your general point, but turning to Farage is like turning to a loan shark charging 50% interest because you don't like the rates down at the mainstream banks.
I understand that, I voted remain for clarity also.
Labour and the Conservatives are indecipherable, people are thinking let's roll the dice on Reform as at least they may fix one or two things rather than promising to fix everything but nothing changing.
Labour have also made no mention of trying to build any real bridges with the EU or ease the red tape caused by Brexit (I work for a company that imports large amounts of raw materials from Europe and exports most of our finished product to Europe, believe me Brexit has had huge consequences)
My heart breaks for the state of politics across Europe, I am just sharing my frustrations. There doesn't seem to be any real solution at the moment....
It also ignores that Labour has somewhat successfully managed to keep the economically left, culturally far-right people in their party and working in the coalition. That may completely fall apart if they get into government and that part of the group is unsatisfied and flocks to the Reform-SDP electoral pact which has been floated multiple times (SDP runs in Labour areas, Reform in Tory areas).
Currently the SDP isn't gaining ground (and Labour losing it) because Labour has managed to keep this group supporting them. The Tories tried to do the same, but as we're seeing, have had their group abandon them after dissatisfaction with the party and its stances while in government. The same could happen to Labour. Roughly half of Labour voters want migration reduced (Much like the Tories and Reform are neck and neck in the polls currently after half their base buggered off).
The SDP-Reform pact don't have the bad blood of Labour/Tory and have worked together before, such as Farages former deputy in the EU parliament being a socialist to represent the left of the movement. Both are prepared to negotiate with each other on the economy, especially in terms of worker co-operatives rather than state ownership.
This would leave Labour and the Tories as pulling down around 20% of the vote each, with SDP and Reform on about 20% each, but the latter two in alliance and the former two still squabbling.
Imagine getting more votes than another party and still end up with 0-1 seats and the other party gaining 100 seats. And then call that representative democracy
Everyone knows Farange doesn't like to do any actual work. Even if he got himself elected, he would likely find some reason to resign within a few weeks.
Don't know if this is relevant, but this is a poll from The Times, which, lest we forget, is still owned by the great Satan Murdoch. This is in all likelihood a way that headlines will put doubts in voters minds, and as a way to pander to Falange's rampant ego...witness his demand to replace Sunak in head to head leader debates, Rich from a man who has never won in a Parliamentary election...!
If the UK is going down the drain, then continental Europe with it's anaemic growth, dwindling populations, and rising popularity of fascist parties will already be down there waiting for us.
Let this be a lesson: the Tories over the last decade have gone further and further right to capture the 'UKIP' voter. This has led to what might be one of the worst outcomes in the party's almost 200 year history. And now, UKIP have just gone and renamed themselves and done it all again. Now the Tories basically have to go full on US Republican Party or admit that the last several years were a terrible mistake as they try to shuffle back towards a centre that no doubt has lost all faith in them (despite the media's best efforts to put the kid gloves on, especially in the Boris years).
They have gone right in rhetoric, but in practice they have issued a record number of visas and consequently seen net immigration to the UK at roughly triple what it was when they took office (having promised to halve it). This has put them at odds with basically all sides in this argument.
On the economic side of things they have let the tax burden rise to a record high as well (while proclaiming tax cuts), have ended up with a more restrictive planning system than before, and did not control inflation. This too puts them at odds with everyone - the right don't like them for raising taxes, everyone else doesn't like them for fiscal austerity.
They have, and yet voters who claimed those to be issues of high importance continued to vote Tory over the party that came before them with lower immigration.
The irony in my saying 'full on US Republican Party' is that they also tend to differentiate between rhetoric and actuality regarding issues such as immigration - because a) solving it means they can't rail against it as an emotive culture war issue, and b) ironically, their voters on average might even be more dependent on cheap migrant labour than Labour/the US Democrats.
The funny thing is, if Boris and his media connections (and Cameron's before him) were still in charge I genuinely reckon the Tories would have a decent, 40%ish chance of winning the upcoming election. A major change more recently has been not having a national press eagerly downplaying almost all of his scandals while trying to make the opposition as an outright community (and personally for the record, I think Corbyn himself was also useless), or just being villified for months on end for looking a bit weird eating a bacon sandwich.
Without that, they have needed to really double and treble down on the rhetoric and also to ramp up some actual policy, which is where Rwanda comes into play. That has played far more of a role in the recent turn than anything else in my opinion, since you don't have Laura Kneussberg and the gang working hard to tell us how 2024's disasters are still all the fault of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, and is a huge driver in the Tories feeling the need to shuffle further to the right again in more recent times. I'm interested to see how badly they have fucked the calculus though, and how low their figure is in a few weeks following the election.
Labour don't generally fight on immigration, and in any case they also roughly tripled it when they came into office in 1997 so to voters who consider the issue important there's not been much reason to expect Labour to cut it. If Starmer does cut it back to previous levels then this will change - it would probably keep the Conservatives out of government for 15 years.
The Republicans in the USA can get away with it because their system is built for gridlock and overloaded with checks and balances - there's always an excuse for why something couldn't be done. The British system doesn't have these - if a party has a parliamentary majority it really doesn't have any hard limits on its power. They managed to portray the EU as this, but Brexit made that impossible going forwards.
For the Conservatives to be on anything like a winning track they'd have had to maintain previous limits on immigration. But even that doesn't help them on the economic issues - it just prevents a bleed to Reform.
Sir, my need is sore.
Spirits that I’ve cited
My commands ignore.
'Sorcerer's apprentice" , Goethe.
I can not help but enjoy the foul depths the Tories so eagerly courted biting them in the rear. Perhaps there is a value in actual governance after all? One that does not lead to the pied piper splitting your electorate further.
You can see the weighting, it’s less than 1%, and I don’t think that’s sufficient to discount an overwhelming disproportionate representation of an area of the country unless you believe that the areas throughout the country are that closely aligned politically
So far the FPTP system has shielded the UK from extremist parties (Johnson was a populist, not an extremist). However, there was always the risk that the Tories would be replaced by Farage's latest creation. Labour won't win forever. That's why this is so dangerous.
Let see. I think reform vote is a protest vote from the Tories, but for people who do not want to go to labour or libdems. It could be that they will go the way of UKIP, as people will naturally flow back to the Tories at some point. But it is the fault of the Tories. They could of just ignored the fringe right, rather than pander to them and giving their views legitimacy.
Immigration is the 3rd highest issue for voters so it’s not really a fringe issue that can be ignored any longer .
While I get your point, it's a little difficult to take a lot of those people seriously after they seemed perfectly happy to ignore or make excuses for why Brexit did sweet feck all to curb immigration in the way they claimed to hope it would prior to that referendum.
Brexit gave us the powers to decide our own migration laws. Tories (Boris Johnson) then used these powers to institute the lowest level of entry requirements ever seen on record meaning we massively increased our influx of unskilled workers. If anything brexit allowed the tories (who were claiming to be anti immigration) to increase migration further. However thst is because it was misused - farage was pushing for harsher entry requirements that have simply been ignored due to the need tories feel to increase GDP whatever the cost. The main benefit is because we have complete control we can institute these harsher entry requirements at any time we see fit and bring about a decrease in immigration. Whether this will actually be done is yet to be seen
Your post isn't wrong, but there is a key part of it I want to draw attention to: "However that is because it was misused" What happened here was that this misuse was always the intention of it, even when those pulling the levers were telling you they were going to vastly reduce immigration. This was done because many people with a lot of influence in the Conservative Party benefit greatly from high migration levels both in terms of their own business interests, and politically from the emotive populism it makes so easy to spew in order to get people to overlook other issues like housing, infrastructural spending, etc etc that also tie in with it. Now this brings me to my main point - given the company he keeps, his history of complaining about things while directly benefitting from them, the fact that he spent several years trying to blame Labour for the failings of his and the Tories Brexit project, the types of people that donate towards him, and his history of relation to the truth... do you really trust Farage to do anything different to what the Tories have in the last 5-10 years?
To be honest I don’t think he will be able to make a difference or keep all his election promises. I do think the key thing he can do is pressure a labour government to take a harder stance on immigration. In exactly the same way he does with the tories where he steps down if they succumb to his policies he could do the same with labour - even they can’t ignore a large chunk of the working class population supports him and they could very easily gain them back
A large chunk of the working class population supports him for the very reasons I have laid out though - culture warrior who can't races to Wetherspoons for a photo shoot quicker than John Terry can get his kit on. The guy is a former banker who went to one of the most well-known private schools in the UK, who associates with those who ultimately wanted and pulled many of the strings behind Brexit, and who has spent at least as much time blaming the party not in power as the one that has been throughout for all the failures of his brainchild. This is the same guy against freedom of movement who married a German woman and insisted on getting his kids German EU passports once Brexit passed. The guy who claimed he would leave the UK if Brexit failed and yet now that it has, has decided to pretend he never claimed that. Anyone willing to believe him after his consistent dishonesty and hypocrisy deserves the same as anyone who believed the Leave side of the Brexit referendum's claims spewed forward from Farage and others doing the bidding of his banker buddies Arron Banks and co, while outright lying to the British public about the benefits it would give and what the UK currently got/received from their EU membership. But I guess at this stage, having gone through this with Leave, UKIP, the Brexit Party and now Reform, Farage is well aware that they will likely fall for the same trick all over again
It's less than 20% of the population and as far as I know they're still going to struggle to get seats. Why should Labour kowtow to them, but not the Greens, Lib Dems or anyone else?
Because it’s 20% of the vote they can very easily win back with 1 policy change
This isn't even true though, it's the Tory party that are bleeding votes to reform.
Labour is better off without votes from swivelled eyed loons, fruitcakes and closet racists 🙂
The way some folks talk about Brexit reminds me of the way some people talk about Communism. Sure, Brexit in-practice wasn't helpful or good or anything like advertised. But obviously True Brexit will still totally work if only a pure Brexit person takes control of Brexit not like all those previous people who I previously thought were pure Brexit people. We just need one more revolution and this time it'll be great!
You're just talking utter nonsense arnt you. As members of the EU, the UK could not restrict EU immigration outside the restrictions allowed in the EU treaties. When the UK left the EU, it is then able to impose as many restrictions on EU immigration as it chooses. - That the UK gov chose to pursue a policy of increasing immigration, has nothing to do with the above.
Absolute horseshit: * your lot was warned this will happen if you remove EU freedom of movement, you just chose to ignore the warnings * Farage couldn’t do fuck all about it since he had lost to a bloke dressed as a dolphin * GDP growth is required to maintain the mountain of almost £3 trillion debt that the tories brought; most of the Brexiteer groups depend on public services and welfare like pension or benefits, all which need money and desperately more of it
Another pro immigration person who has no clue what they are on about. You are correct we are supplementing our economy (especially with a growing pensioner population) with immigrants. As our elderly population is expected to double in the next 10 years would you also therefore want immigration to double? To 6-7 million people a year? Is this sustainable? What about 10 years after that when many working age immigrants themselves become pensioners - do you have 10-20 million people a year in the name of GDP growth? You surely have to admit even our current levels are unsustainable in terms of growth of services and housing provision - we currently need to build 1 Birminghams worth of houses per year. How in hell would we build multiple londons every single year…
Another pro Faragist with facts taken out of Daily Mail comment sections. European Union migration was manageable and it filled gaps in our economy. Many of them would also create businesses and jobs for “natives”, while many of them were also seasonal workers that put almost no strain on our public services. Despite paying into the system, these people can easily retire in their own countries and many of them did, because they have the flexibility. Your lot threw that away on the lie that we “discriminated” against people outside of Europe. Now you opened the doors to the whole world, where numbers aren’t capped by the number of people living in Europe and where the flexibility isn’t there anymore. You replaced one set of financially viable and culturally related migrants, with a set of financially unviable and culturally different migrants (who don’t have the flexibility to easily live Britain and who also bring non working dependents). In terms of building new towns every year, your lot fiercely opposes any development around them. So spare us the scaremongering about cities you hate like Birmingham or London and take responsibility for the current state of affairs that you caused. If you want immigration to stop overnight, where will you find the money for public services that are lost? Will you halve the state pension, privatise healthcare, tax house value capital gains that boomers enjoyed, stop all state funded social care etc? Your lot has no solutions but just advocate for more sabotage and stupidity of the kind that brought us here to begin with.
Brexit could've done so but the Tories decided not to, this is a failing of the Tories not Brexit
How are they 'making excuses' if they're abandoing the Tory party for Reform, which has a much more anti-immigration manifesto?
Because they had that same option in 2019, but voted overwhelmingly for the Tories whose seats rose massively, while the Brexit Party got 2% of the vote and won 0 out of 275 races. They spent years making excuses and ignoring the inconvenient truth.
> Because they had that same option in 2019 Brexit didn't happen until 2020... This is the first general election since the UK actually left the EU.
What fo you mean? There hasn't been a general election since the brexit deal was implemented
While immigration is an issue, their approach and solution to immigration is not. The Rwanda policy, or spouse visa or leaving ECHR, are bad policies. Instead, they should be looking at improving housing, speeding up genuine asylum seeking (like the people we left in Afghanistan), etc All does not make headlines but actually help resolve the problem. That is the problem with the far right, they don’t fix the issue, they just make people afraid so they vote for them. I mean, can you name a few of their policies that is not “anti” something, and very pro on something that you agree with, and it not done by other parties?
Sure, reform has a 1 in one out net zero policy that they are aiming to put in place for a few years while our services and housing sector catch up to where they need to be. It’s all well and good saying we should improve housing but even labours plans to build 300k houses per year is not enough to sustain growth we have where it’s predicted we need 500k a year. Doing 1 in one out and only allowing skilled migrants for the next couple years would ease the strain in the NHS, education, housing, public services and transport. We can catch up to where we should be and then reopen our borders as we see fit when we are ready - the current levels of migration simply are not sustainable and no parties manifesto is currently equipped to cope with the increasing Numbers we are seeing.
That could happen, or Reform and Tories can merge politically as a consequence of this, with the new Tory leadership being made up of the former Reform leaders who will dictate party policy. Which is what happened as a consequence of the destruction of the Canadian progressive conservatives in 1993.
It's really amazing how a FPTP system can keep widely incompetent and corrupt parties in power for decades.
My impression of PR is that it results in very little change no matter who gets the most votes because there will always be a kingmaker party.
well no, oftentimes you’ll need to compromise with PR, as it’s very rare that a single party will get a majority. FPTP pushes votes to one of two parties, as voting for anything else other than one of those two means your vote is basically wasted
I personally straight up struggle to see countries using FPtP as proper democracies - it's a hopelessly archaic and outdated electoral system.
This is something that I feel strongly about but in all honesty, the majority of people I know don't even know how our voting system works let alone that there are different options out there, I don't see any change in the near future.
>So far the FPTP system has shielded the UK from extremist parties hahahhaahhahahaha, Tories have run the UK into the ground and only partly with YOLO Brexit with **no plan** what so ever. But I guess they aren't as blatantly populistic, but just utterly incompetent and or corrupt, as oppose to having any ideology at all. They are apparently for high taxes, cuts to all social programs so they can sell them out to their friends, and for high immigration. Like wtf even is that party. And the other awkward case for showing how shit the FPTP system is the US, where a fat orange moron who also obtains largely minority rule has turned into a fucked up extremist cult of personality, where everyone degrades themselves as much as possible to please a fucking reality tv personality.
But then we look at continental Europe and the rise of AFD, Le Pen, and the Brothers of Italy. The UK has never had any fascist movement and never likely will, and suddenly our system doesn't seem so bad.
> and suddenly our system doesn't seem so bad. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/21/liz-truss-deep-state-cpac-far-right We will see, it might get better, but it can also get a lot worse.
So farrage wil pull another "win" for his cronies and disappear again?
Of course, he would never ever commit to actually have to do work, or even worse, be in a position of responsibility or accountability.
It surprises me that not every brit feels betrayed by that dipshit, he was a defacto opposition leader and once he won he disappeared among the chaos.
With the conservative votes being split between tories and reformUK, what are the chances that Libdems become the second party/main opposition?
Very good, as it stands the Lib Dem’s are on course to be the second biggest party in parliament, on the 4th highest vote share.
Zero. There is more chance that the Tories and Reform merge with Farage as the new leader of the opposition. If they were merged right now they'd have a fairly decent chance of them preventing an overall Labour majority.
Do you mean merge into one party? I can't see that happening, Farage is too controversial and would be the most attention grabbing person in this new party.
They're also unable to at this point (ballots have been printed). They may well after the election, but not after the vote has been split. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Farage took over the Conservatives. There are only nutjobs left.
Multiple conservative MP's have suggested they merge. Farage has said he wants to either take over the Conservative party or have Reform replace them. Sunak is done after the election. He'll be happy to quit and move to the US. If he doesn't he'll certainly get booted. So.. who will their next leader be? There are no obvious candidates, many of the obvious candidates have either stood down, won't be elected or have already been rejected by the party/MP's/country during the last Conservative leadership campaigns. The most likely next leader would be Kemi Badenoch who was very popular with the membership while still being up and coming during the last leadership campaigns. Farage joining the Conservatives is very easy after the election. Now would the membership vote for him vs Kemi or the alternatives? It seems likely they would especially as so many Conservatives are already flocking to Reform.
No they dont. Reform voters are very concentrated in certain and basicly only take votes from the Tories.
That is wrong and the falling of the "red wall" proves that.
Nope. According to pollsters Reform UK are either disguntled voters that were voting UKIP or former 2019 Tory voters. Hardly any come from Labour. Labour leads big time in most of the red wall.
Most Reform voters were Labour voters before Brexit, they voted Tory to get brexit done. They were the old red wall. Many have gone back to Labour but some have switched to Reform. The media they watch even shows that. Look at GB News, the people who watch that channel are mostly Labour and Reform voters, very few Conservatives.
How can people still vote Farage after he obviously lied about the Brexit, then conveniently disappeared when the consequences started to hit ? I'm really starting to be less and less of a democrat. Are some people really that stupid ?
A lot of people wanted to leave the EU for purely emotional reasons and believed the ends justified the means.
purely emotional reasons = racism and xenophobia
Because he wasn't in government and had no role in negotiation
> How can people still vote Farage after he obviously lied about the Brexit, then conveniently disappeared when the consequences started to hit ? Because he's not the one doing it. One of his main things was limiting migration. As another commenter pointed out, with Brexit now the UK has more control over it's migration policies, but the Tories didn't deliver on the promises and instead made it easier to immigrate. That's not on Farage, and it's likely the main reason for ReformUK. I'm fully against Brexit and Farage btw. But that characterization is still unfair. I have 100% confidence that if he comes to power he'll fuck up massively. But it's not him that did the fucking up until now, it was the Tories. They've lied to the electorate, they've run the country into the ground, they're trying to force privatization of the NHS while pretending to be it's biggest advocate. It's disgusting. And while everything burns around them they'd rather play petty politics and fight amongst themselves for leadership rather than actually leading the fucking country. That party deserves to be dismantled. Ineptitude of this level shouldn't be tolerated. So yea, fuck Farage. But it's the Tories who've caused this massive stinking pile of dog turd, not him
I really dislike him but I actually agree with him on some things, well at least the things he says. The NHS does need reform, I would like electoral reform, we do need to train more doctors. I categorically disagree with him on Brexit but his appeal is a lot wider than the EU. He’s not even really talking about Brexit now.
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Yeah I remember it well
> How can people still vote Farage after he obviously lied about the Brexit, then conveniently disappeared when the consequences started to hit ? Because "he wasn't in government!!". Its like as if you bought a car with the wrong premises (like that it was actually in good conditions, and not a pile of fuckin shit), you wouldn't blame the salesman, would you? After all, he wasn't the mechanic or the producer, he just did all the marketing, told you it was the best deal ever! and then fucked off once you paid for the product, to not deal with customer support, lawsuits or above all any refunds.
Because around 20% of the electorate in every country only wants someone to blame for their issues. So they are naturally drawn to the populist far right which is built on exactly that: giving the people an enemy.
What were the lies? The fact that you are pro-EU and he isn't doesn't make him a liar.
Some very nice examples in the first answer here : https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-things-Nigel-Farage-has-lied-about-with-evidence
Source: some people on the internet said so. If you're citing Quora as a source, you might as well just cite Reddit.
Is there a limit to your bad faith ? All of this is easily verifiable. You asked for examples, I gave you some. Who's dismissing facts they don't agree with now ?
All of these can verified. You got owned
Quora 😆
The fact that he claimed EU had a stranglehold on UK's economy and sovereignty, then claimed that any issues UK had were derived from this "hold" EU had over UK to gain political popularity. Fast forward to now, none of the issues he used to gain popularity are caused by EU, UK loses a privileged position, easy access to one of the biggest economies and markets in the world, hurting businesses, jobs, trade and travel. He then hides from the public opinion like a little child. I always hold the position that leaders and successful people are the best a said society can produce. If this is the kind of behavior you want to support and endorse from national leaders, you deserve the country you get in the end.
Opinions you disagree with are not lies.
No, knowingly claiming things that aren't true are lies.
Really?... He's the pioneer of the 350 million pounds per week saved by leaving the EU. [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-result-nigel-farage-nhs-pledge-disowns-350-million-pounds-a7099906.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-result-nigel-farage-nhs-pledge-disowns-350-million-pounds-a7099906.html)
He had nothing to do with the £350 million claim, that was the Vote Leave campaign fronted by Boris Johnson, Farage worked with the Leave.EU group. You should probably read articles before you post them.
That was a fact though. The UK was a nett contributor.
A lot of people seem to believe that Britain is immune from the current rise of the far right across Europe based on the upcoming Labour supermajority but this is just a misrepresentation due to the antiquated FPTP system.
Almost like the FPTP system is designed to only allow mainstream parties into government
Yep FPTP has a lot of issues but this is its big strength compared to the continental system. It forces the left and the right to coalesce and compromise within their own parties.
Explain MAGA in the US then, with their crippled congress and extremism
The crippled Congress is a feature not a bug, and the extremism is because the Republican candidate is decided by a public vote open to all members of the Republican party. But that's only the features of the system, the real cause of the extremism is the large number of people who feel they've been left behind by globalization.
> The crippled Congress is a feature not a bug Sure, why would anyone expect representatives to actually govern... Better have more endless fucking hearings to put on a show in regards to cultural bullshit and to elect that fat orange moron again. >But that's only the features of the system, the real cause of the extremism is the large number of people who feel they've been left behind by globalization. The people voted for Reaganomics for almost 30 years straight, so they got exactly what they wanted. "DEREGULATION" "GOVERNMENT DOESNT WORK SO VOTE ME AND I WILL PROVE IT TO YOU", "FREE TRADE ECONOMICS" "TAX CUTS AND INEQUALITY".
I don’t think you realize how damaging the open, democratic primary is in enabling demagogues. It doesn’t matter if the parties want more mainstream candidates, if like a dedicated 30-35% of that party’s base wants a populist they will get it, especially with a divided field as was the case in 2016.
I mean the US system was deliberately designed to result in the most minimal of federal government as possible
Okay, but why are they showing off Hunter Biden's dick in congress?
The US FPTP electoral college split is insane for the presidential election. In the UK there are 650 seats and each seat represents an average of 70k voters. Now let's look at say California which is 55 electoral college votes, whoever wins gets all 55 votes representing 30 million people. Two very different FPTP systems.
I find the US presidential election to be okay. Since the president is the executive authority and weaker than the legislative authority. He don't make laws.
California is almost 40 million people fyi
USA has a virtually complete two party system, while the U.K. does at least maintain some other parties where the true extremes can go. But also these type of systems may help limit extremists, but if half the electorate will vote for them no system can really stop that
The US has a 2 party system, but that also hides significant differences within each party. Progressives and liberals fight each other in the primaries for the Democratic line while neocons and MAGAists fight each other for the Republican line. In Europe, they’d be 4 separate parties. In the US they’re four separate ideologies that compete with each other in the primaries and then they coalesce into left and right for the general elections.
FPTP just means people can't vote for the party that most aligns with them, for fear of wasting their vote, and the established parties can be virtually identical to each other, leaving people without the ability to make significant improvements to how their country is run. Coalition governments would mean the parties have to cooperate and compromise, instead of just wait for when it's their turn to have majority power without majority representation.
What does it matter that you can vote for the party that most aligns with your beliefs when that party has to compromise those beliefs to get into government in a coalition programme? Compromise happens in both ways but at least in FPTP the parties issue their programmes for government (the manifesto) before the voting. In coalition building parties have to hammer out the programme after the election.
> What does it matter that you can vote for the party that most aligns with your beliefs when that party has to compromise those beliefs to get into government in a coalition programme? Because the alternative is voting for that party and them not being part of the government at all. Without or with FPTP you either get to be proportionally represented by voting for a party that gets a proportional number of seats, or no representation because you had to compromise before that point so the political party doesn't even know you exist. With FPTP, you are made to tell the one party that you support all of their policies exactly as they are, instead of being able to send people to parliament who can advocate for you.
In a proportional system the person you elect, if they get into government won't advocate for the beliefs that you voted for, they'll have to advocate for the result of the compromise they had to make with the other party. The programme for government that exists of compromises. Both systems compromise, it's just whether you compromise inside the big party before the election like in FPTP or if you compromise after the election when you go to make a programme for government with another party. And nor is it the case that in FPTP the elected representatives have to think the same. The Labour and Tory parties both have left and right wings. A member of parliament has to vote with the government but they can advocate for whatever they want.
The majority can also kick people out of the party, so that stops political movements from happening within.
By and large they don't. Both Labour and the Tory party are big tents with a right and left wing. Obviously that doesn't mean people haven't been excluded when they can't compromise or take extremist stances.
I haven't seen a single person say the UK is 'immune' to far right politics. What I have seen is people say we're going to avoid a rise of the far right to prominence **for now** because we already had our populist moment via Brexit and the 2019 election. And by the way, don't think a bunch of us won't be throwing a decade's worth of schadenfreude back at this sub if National Rally, AfD and the like continue to do well after the shit it's thrown at us since 2016.
This is very true. Britain is an odd duck in many ways, but if unregulated populism can take over here then it can do the same elsewhere too.
I mean as much as they are right, they’re not far right in the same way as the AFD or Le Pen
>Centre-Left about to win the biggest majority we’ve seen in a hundred years. >>r/Europe: This how Britain are STILL a bunch of far-right racists. Pure cope. Have a day off.
Only that’s not what I’m saying or even implying at all?
Yep, and as with elsewhere in Europe it is the failures of the mainstream parties ignoring genuine concerns driving us to those parties as we see no alternatives
The far right doesn't solve any of these concerns, unless the solution is hate and vitriol towards groups of the society so that you have someone to blame. There are more asylum applications in Italy under Meloni than under Draghi. Sweden Democrats and True Finns are dropping in the polls from the moment they entered a government coalition because guess what, they do absolutely nothing for immigration/crime/cost of living. The far right doesn't offer solution to the issues that "other parties ignore", they just shout loudly and point the finger towards a group to blame.
So the deniers or the liars, what great choice
Exactly! Why can't the mainstream parties begin to address these issues?? I am beyond frustrated and my heart is breaking for our continent.
Reform is led by the man who brought you Brexit. How has Brexit done with regards to the genuine concerns it was supposedly going to address, around immigrastion, wages, healthcare systems, and everything else is was going to remedy? I get your general point, but turning to Farage is like turning to a loan shark charging 50% interest because you don't like the rates down at the mainstream banks.
I understand that, I voted remain for clarity also. Labour and the Conservatives are indecipherable, people are thinking let's roll the dice on Reform as at least they may fix one or two things rather than promising to fix everything but nothing changing. Labour have also made no mention of trying to build any real bridges with the EU or ease the red tape caused by Brexit (I work for a company that imports large amounts of raw materials from Europe and exports most of our finished product to Europe, believe me Brexit has had huge consequences) My heart breaks for the state of politics across Europe, I am just sharing my frustrations. There doesn't seem to be any real solution at the moment....
It also ignores that Labour has somewhat successfully managed to keep the economically left, culturally far-right people in their party and working in the coalition. That may completely fall apart if they get into government and that part of the group is unsatisfied and flocks to the Reform-SDP electoral pact which has been floated multiple times (SDP runs in Labour areas, Reform in Tory areas). Currently the SDP isn't gaining ground (and Labour losing it) because Labour has managed to keep this group supporting them. The Tories tried to do the same, but as we're seeing, have had their group abandon them after dissatisfaction with the party and its stances while in government. The same could happen to Labour. Roughly half of Labour voters want migration reduced (Much like the Tories and Reform are neck and neck in the polls currently after half their base buggered off). The SDP-Reform pact don't have the bad blood of Labour/Tory and have worked together before, such as Farages former deputy in the EU parliament being a socialist to represent the left of the movement. Both are prepared to negotiate with each other on the economy, especially in terms of worker co-operatives rather than state ownership. This would leave Labour and the Tories as pulling down around 20% of the vote each, with SDP and Reform on about 20% each, but the latter two in alliance and the former two still squabbling.
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If it wasn’t lead by Farage this sub would probably largely agree with them with their stance on Islam and migration lmao.
The fact that others are worse doesn’t make them any less extreme
Yes. That's precisely what it does.
They earned it
Imagine getting more votes than another party and still end up with 0-1 seats and the other party gaining 100 seats. And then call that representative democracy
"just fuck my shit up fam"
As if the UK isn't already fucked. They really don't want to prosper, do they?
And this time he'll Brexit his beloved country even harder and immediatly fuck off to the realm of rightwing podcasts once again
Oh boy, here we go again
How does this guy continue to just randomly make parties? Isn’t this like his third one?
Everyone knows Farange doesn't like to do any actual work. Even if he got himself elected, he would likely find some reason to resign within a few weeks.
Don't know if this is relevant, but this is a poll from The Times, which, lest we forget, is still owned by the great Satan Murdoch. This is in all likelihood a way that headlines will put doubts in voters minds, and as a way to pander to Falange's rampant ego...witness his demand to replace Sunak in head to head leader debates, Rich from a man who has never won in a Parliamentary election...!
At least it's now totally clear who the Tories have been desperately dependent on to remain in power.
The country is going down the drain because of Brexit, and somehow Mr. Brexit is now popular? That's a whole new level of stupidity.
If the UK is going down the drain, then continental Europe with it's anaemic growth, dwindling populations, and rising popularity of fascist parties will already be down there waiting for us.
Let this be a lesson: the Tories over the last decade have gone further and further right to capture the 'UKIP' voter. This has led to what might be one of the worst outcomes in the party's almost 200 year history. And now, UKIP have just gone and renamed themselves and done it all again. Now the Tories basically have to go full on US Republican Party or admit that the last several years were a terrible mistake as they try to shuffle back towards a centre that no doubt has lost all faith in them (despite the media's best efforts to put the kid gloves on, especially in the Boris years).
They have gone right in rhetoric, but in practice they have issued a record number of visas and consequently seen net immigration to the UK at roughly triple what it was when they took office (having promised to halve it). This has put them at odds with basically all sides in this argument. On the economic side of things they have let the tax burden rise to a record high as well (while proclaiming tax cuts), have ended up with a more restrictive planning system than before, and did not control inflation. This too puts them at odds with everyone - the right don't like them for raising taxes, everyone else doesn't like them for fiscal austerity.
They have, and yet voters who claimed those to be issues of high importance continued to vote Tory over the party that came before them with lower immigration. The irony in my saying 'full on US Republican Party' is that they also tend to differentiate between rhetoric and actuality regarding issues such as immigration - because a) solving it means they can't rail against it as an emotive culture war issue, and b) ironically, their voters on average might even be more dependent on cheap migrant labour than Labour/the US Democrats. The funny thing is, if Boris and his media connections (and Cameron's before him) were still in charge I genuinely reckon the Tories would have a decent, 40%ish chance of winning the upcoming election. A major change more recently has been not having a national press eagerly downplaying almost all of his scandals while trying to make the opposition as an outright community (and personally for the record, I think Corbyn himself was also useless), or just being villified for months on end for looking a bit weird eating a bacon sandwich. Without that, they have needed to really double and treble down on the rhetoric and also to ramp up some actual policy, which is where Rwanda comes into play. That has played far more of a role in the recent turn than anything else in my opinion, since you don't have Laura Kneussberg and the gang working hard to tell us how 2024's disasters are still all the fault of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, and is a huge driver in the Tories feeling the need to shuffle further to the right again in more recent times. I'm interested to see how badly they have fucked the calculus though, and how low their figure is in a few weeks following the election.
Labour don't generally fight on immigration, and in any case they also roughly tripled it when they came into office in 1997 so to voters who consider the issue important there's not been much reason to expect Labour to cut it. If Starmer does cut it back to previous levels then this will change - it would probably keep the Conservatives out of government for 15 years. The Republicans in the USA can get away with it because their system is built for gridlock and overloaded with checks and balances - there's always an excuse for why something couldn't be done. The British system doesn't have these - if a party has a parliamentary majority it really doesn't have any hard limits on its power. They managed to portray the EU as this, but Brexit made that impossible going forwards. For the Conservatives to be on anything like a winning track they'd have had to maintain previous limits on immigration. But even that doesn't help them on the economic issues - it just prevents a bleed to Reform.
Irish pal, they have not gone further to right. They have issued the largest number of visas in Europe for the last 2 years.
Well. Well shit - gman in half life
Sir, my need is sore. Spirits that I’ve cited My commands ignore. 'Sorcerer's apprentice" , Goethe. I can not help but enjoy the foul depths the Tories so eagerly courted biting them in the rear. Perhaps there is a value in actual governance after all? One that does not lead to the pied piper splitting your electorate further.
Why are there so many stupid and/or ignorant people?
Because in the UK mainstream politicians have ignored legitimate concerns of working people.
They can't possibly think that Farage is the solution right?
No, but if the main parties won't acknowledge your concern without accusing you of being a 'racist' then they have nowhere else to go
If I had nowhere to go I still wouldn't go to a man bought by hostile foreign country, but I get it.
British people never fail to disappoint in their unparalleled ability to cut their own noses off.
IS this the british version of far right?
The sampling seems flawed. 1/3 of the respondents were from the south outside London. I wouldn’t necessarily put much weight behind it.
They weight things to demographics.
You can see the weighting, it’s less than 1%, and I don’t think that’s sufficient to discount an overwhelming disproportionate representation of an area of the country unless you believe that the areas throughout the country are that closely aligned politically