Is the country ready for a Farage government?

Which problems? Let’s think. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people entering the country with no documentation to prove who they are or where they’ve come from for a start. How many times do we discuss all this and yet there are still those who bury their heads in the sand and think everything is ok.

Immigration is a problem. But if we get a Farage Govt, nothing, not even the gift of a grandson due soon, would keep me from emigrating, except my age.
Americans. I'm sure. felt the same about a Trump Govt except - could it be as excrutiating as it promised to be? The USA have already gone there, and, Yes, it is.

Been away for a couple of days so didn't catch all the details.
Did a Reform ex-minister just plead guilty to bribery charges? Bribed by the Russians no less. So, when Farage says 'take back control', does he actually mean, and give it to Putin?

Skydancer

Which problems? Let’s think. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people entering the country with no documentation to prove who they are or where they’ve come from for a start. How many times do we discuss all this and yet there are still those who bury their heads in the sand and think everything is ok.

Nope! Not burying my head on the sand or thinking everything's OK, but it's not the disaster some people have a vested interest in claiming it is.

Advance UK with Ben Habib as leader have 35,000 members in just a few months. I don’t understand why a hotel were threatened with violence to staff if the launch of Advance UK was held on their premises. Someone’s cage has been rattled.
My assumption is that in 4 years, Advance UK will be an alternative to Reform on the ballot paper.
I don’t think that it’s a foregone conclusion that Nigel Farage will be prime minister so Starmer might need to rethink his strategy?

Was typo not were

I dont understand why people keep saying that there are no policies

assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/253/attachments/original/1718625371/Reform_UK_Our_Contract_with_You.pdf?1718625371

If I was very concrened about Reform, I would be disecting them, not pretending they dont exist, or ignoring them.

RTF. The Reform "contract" you link to was withdrawn two months after the 2024 election with Yusuf claiming it was more "philosophy" than policy. To my knowledge, nothing has replaced it.

Does anyone know what was achieved in terms of policy development at conference?

I don't know if I am talking about the same poll that WWM2 refers to but the modelling on the More in Common poll - which gives Reform a 96 seat majority -is dubious anyway. It polled fewer than 20,000 people and used that data to represent 631 constituencies (excludes Northern Ireland).

It says:

How does the model account for those who don't know how they will vote?


^When we ask people their voting intention, some people say they don’t know. We push them to say who they would vote for if they were forced to choose, and we use this response as their expected vote. Some people, when asked to imagine that they were forced to choose, still don’t know who they would vote for.^

Using our MRP model, we’re able to make a better guess at how these double don’t knows might end up voting. When training the model to predict people’s voting intention based on their demographics, voting behaviour and information about their constituency, we excluded the responses of people who didn’t know who they would vote for (after the squeeze) from the training data. When we apply the model to all the voters in the constituency, it effectively means we estimate the votes of people who don’t know, according to how people like them (in terms of demographics and past voting behaviour) but who do know, intend to vote.

So if someone lives in a rural area, is over 75 and voted Conservative in 2024, the model uses the fact that most over 75s in rural areas who voted Conservative in 2024 and do know who they’ll vote for say they will vote Conservative, to guess that if they do vote it will likely be for the Conservatives.


*Is this a snapshot or a projection?*

With four and a half years before the next General Election must be called this model is unlikely to represent anything close to the ultimate result and should not be seen as a projection of the election.

As well as not knowing what might happen between now and 2029, we also don’t know which parties will stand in different seats, what tactical voting might look like exactly and who will ultimately turn out to vote. What’s more, the degree of electoral fragmentation makes individual seat dynamics even more difficult to project than previously.

Why does the model show X party winning in Y constituency?


^MRP models are a good way to estimate how the parties might perform across different constituencies based on their demographic makeup. However, they don’t account for local factors that impact a small number of constituencies, such as a popular incumbent, well known or controversial council policy. These factors make it difficult to predict exact vote shares even in the best of times, but even more so when three parties are polling at over 20%, making three-way races more common. Therefore it would be a mistake to draw too much from the estimated vote share in an individual constituency.^

And why are MiC they saying four and half years before the next election when the fieldwork was said to be done over six weeks in August and September 2025? The next general election must be called by August 2029.

A party needs at least 326 seats to have a HoC majority. In 2024, 46 seats were won with a margin of less than 2%.

I think we are more likely to end up with a hung parliament.

Farage has copied Trump’s methodology in every way. Trump has copied Hitler’s. The rabble rousing, isolating minorities, blaming people ‘not like us’ and the empty promises that you have the solutions for everything - a path taken before that leads to divisions, hatred, abandonment of compassion and morals.
Ready for Farage - no. Heaven help us all if that happens.

Babs03

Listening to the concerns of ordinary people is very much one thing but simply playing to the lowest denominator and preying on people’s fears and prejudices is very much another.
Ordinary people have concerns about education, homelessness, the cost of living crisis, a lack of public services, a demolished health service, and climate change etc.
You can’t address all that simply by sending small boats back.
Farage is a one trick pony.

👏👏👏👏👏

StoneofDestiny

Farage has copied Trump’s methodology in every way. Trump has copied Hitler’s. The rabble rousing, isolating minorities, blaming people ‘not like us’ and the empty promises that you have the solutions for everything - a path taken before that leads to divisions, hatred, abandonment of compassion and morals.
Ready for Farage - no. Heaven help us all if that happens.

I totally agree

Maremia

Been away for a couple of days so didn't catch all the details.
Did a Reform ex-minister just plead guilty to bribery charges? Bribed by the Russians no less. So, when Farage says 'take back control', does he actually mean, and give it to Putin?

Reform UK's former leader in Wales has admitted taking bribes to make statements in favour of Russia while being a Member of the European Parliament.
Nathan Gill, 52, from Llangefni, Anglesey, pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery between 6 December 2018 and 18 July 2019.”
The politician took money from Oleg Voloshyn - a man once described by the US government as a "pawn" of Russian secret services - and made speeches in the parliament, statements to a TV channel and arranged an event with a pro-Russian politician.
Gill will be sentenced in November and his defence barrister said he expected to be jailed.
The Old Bailey was told he was tasked by Ukrainian Oleg Voloshyn on at least eight occasions to make specific statements in return for money and there was evidence of WhatsApp messages between the two men.
Mr Voloshyn is a former member of the Ukrainian parliament for the pro-Russian Opposition Platform for Life party

Just another discredited Reform member…

Just to say I heard the poll being quoted on the radio as I was walking past the radio on the way into the garden. I didn’t stop to listen to any more details, but PaynesGrey is probably correct. ClassicFM news I think it was.

Still gives me the whim whams though !

Maybe England, in some parts, ARE ready for Reform and Farage as PM. I’m pretty sure that Wales,Scotland and NI will NOT, in the main, support Farage.

Yes, immigration needs reforming, but it does not require “Reform”.

Let’s just say all the boats were stopped tomorrow AND all unprocessed Asylum Seekers send away - then what?

Would this resolve our post Brexit trade issues? Would the NHS suddendly be fixed? Would the shortages in teaching, nursing, the police, doctors, AI professionals suddenly vanish? Would the huge numbers of 18-25 years out of work suddenly be in work? Etc etc.

It’s so irresponsible and divisive of Reform and our media to just blame all our issues on asylum seekers, which is actually a world issue, and they are neither “illegals” nor “invaders”

Frankly, I despair 😩😢

And now we have Arron Banks (the man who bankrolled Farage and Leave, whose book The Bad Boys of Brexit: Tales of Mischief, Mayhem & Guerrilla Warfare in the EU Referendum Campaign ghostwritten by Isabel Oakeshott) saying this week that he would like to see the Electoral Commission abolished if Nigel Farage wins power.

UK government urged to restore Electoral Commission’s independence to protect democracy

The independence of the Electoral Commission must be fully restored to protect the UK’s electoral integrity from a future authoritarian government, a new report warns.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/28/uk-government-urged-to-restore-electoral-commissions-independence-to-protect-democracy

RTF. The Reform "contract" you link to was withdrawn two months after the 2024 election

No idea what RTF means.

The policies are on their website right now.

Farage gets an easy run from the media. Take the ludicrous accusations about the swans being stolen and eaten from the Royal Parks. That was in the Sun 22 years ago and subsequently retracted as untrue. Any other party leader who made a statement like that would be a laughing stock.
Reform are using classic populist rhetoric.
1) Identify a minority who arouse strong feelings.
2) Blame them for each and every problem regardless.
3) Reap the benefits.
As for the polls I can remember when BNP led the polls. What happened there?
The next election is over three and a half years away and a hell of a lot will happen in that time

I’m in total agreement with Cossy.
Anyway where will Reform find all these potential MPs? Are they hiding under the rocks somewhere? No knowledge or experience. The perfect government!

Read the thread.

I have said twice now that the Reform contract was withdrawn two months after the general election. It was a major news story.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-reform-uk-election-b2605214.html

If it is on their website, it must be back on. In my opinion.
Cant see how it could be anything other.

^PaynesGrey and I can agree to differ.

Everyone else can go on the Reform Uk webiste.
And press the arrow which says Reform Uk, your contract with us, and up pop 28 pages of pdf.

But the contract been withdrawn!!! Did you read the news link? The party chairman Zia Yusuf was interviewed and said it had been withdrawn.

How can an election manifesto be back on? The election has been and gone. The only party being held to account over their manifesto is the one which won power. I’ve seen interviews with Tice since the election where he has been challenged over what was in the contract and he’s brushed it off as in the past.

If it is still on then the party is either deliberately deceiving the public over a contract that was held up as unworkable by political commentators and the party itself or the webmaster is not on top of their job.

If you look at the webpage information you will see it was last updated on 17 June 2024 i.e. before the election.

Believe it if you want to but it isn’t current. Over a year on, you would do better to consider what policy was discussed at the party conference. This is about the measure of it.

politicsuk.com/reform-uk-conference-what-we-learnt-about-policy/

Immigration, opposition to climate change and welfare cuts.