Is the country ready for a Farage government?

Going back to the original question my impression is that a lot of people want Britain to go back to a time around 1900, however, going by my GC they don’t feel that at all, they have grown up in a multicultural society and seem to muddle along

I’d think back to approx 1968 - full of hope and promise. Swinging London and all that. The UK felt very positive in those days.

Oreo

I have no idea if Farage can eventually stop the flow of small boats, depends how draconian he’s prepared to be, but it isn’t working with Labour and it wasn’t with the Conservatives so you can see why people may be prepared to give Reform a chance.
You also use the word racist again.It’s not helping your case.

It an international problem Oreo. You need international negotiations to get it under legal and humain control. Who do you think wants to talk to a Farage government? We/they have to talk to any leader of the US until they get their ducks in a row.

The UK has been good at negotiations in the past. We learnt to be because we had to be. The large increase in numbers happened under Boris egged on by Farage. Why does this give any hope to those who shout so much about immigration that such people can do the opposite to what they brought about?

nanna8

I’d think back to approx 1968 - full of hope and promise. Swinging London and all that. The UK felt very positive in those days.

What proportion of the population do you think can remember 1968 as an adult? I didn't have a vote then and I'm old!

Oreo

PaynesGrey

Perhaps Oreo you would care to explain then why Reform is so obsessed with removing Pride flags and mimicking Trump in his hated of diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policies. Reform’s election contract (albeit withdrawn by September 2024 but still up on its website) cleary stated Scrap all Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DE&I) roles which Reform councils have sought to do.

Please explain why Pride flags and DEI policies are so offensive to Reform.

Please explain?😄
I won’t be a Reform voter but on the flags issue I bet most people are sick and tired of all the Pride nonsense in the streets, including flags.

Pride flags don't bother me in the slightest. They're harmless.

OTOH, the plethora of drooping St George's crosses and union Jacks which abound in the areas around me speak to demonising immigrants and anyone who doesn't conform to a narrow vision of 'patriotism'. I detest them but I can live with them. That's what freedom of expression is all about.

Oreo

And there you go with the insults, honestly they’re counterproductive, if you or anyone else wants to win over someone who’s thinking of voting Reform then leave that last bit out.

If you think calling people out for not being able to come up with a coherent answer and parroting myths is an insult, I'm surprised. The way you dish it out, I would have thought you are made of sterner stuff.

MaizieD

Oreo

PaynesGrey

Perhaps Oreo you would care to explain then why Reform is so obsessed with removing Pride flags and mimicking Trump in his hated of diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policies. Reform’s election contract (albeit withdrawn by September 2024 but still up on its website) cleary stated Scrap all Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DE&I) roles which Reform councils have sought to do.

Please explain why Pride flags and DEI policies are so offensive to Reform.

Please explain?😄
I won’t be a Reform voter but on the flags issue I bet most people are sick and tired of all the Pride nonsense in the streets, including flags.

Pride flags don't bother me in the slightest. They're harmless.

OTOH, the plethora of drooping St George's crosses and union Jacks which abound in the areas around me speak to demonising immigrants and anyone who doesn't conform to a narrow vision of 'patriotism'. I detest them but I can live with them. That's what freedom of expression is all about.

I don't think I've ever seen a Pride flag - certainly not in this town. On the other hand, a couple of mini roundabouts have been daubed with red crosses and look a mess.

DaisyAnneReturns

nanna8

I’d think back to approx 1968 - full of hope and promise. Swinging London and all that. The UK felt very positive in those days.

What proportion of the population do you think can remember 1968 as an adult? I didn't have a vote then and I'm old!

You'd have to be in your mid 70s at least. I was 13 and I can't really remember how I felt - probably looking forward to the day I could leave school.

Oreo

I have no idea if Farage can eventually stop the flow of small boats, depends how draconian he’s prepared to be, but it isn’t working with Labour and it wasn’t with the Conservatives so you can see why people may be prepared to give Reform a chance.
You also use the word racist again.It’s not helping your case.

Are you suggesting people cover up the truth?

growstuff

Oreo

And there you go with the insults, honestly they’re counterproductive, if you or anyone else wants to win over someone who’s thinking of voting Reform then leave that last bit out.

If you think calling people out for not being able to come up with a coherent answer and parroting myths is an insult, I'm surprised. The way you dish it out, I would have thought you are made of sterner stuff.

Oh I’m made of very stern stuff indeed, and the insults aren’t to me they’re to anyone on the forum, or the public who may look at GN and think they may vote for Reform.
Telling them they’re dim turkeys and suchlike isn’t going to win them over is it?
The electorate will vote with their feet over many big issues and immigration is a very big one.

growstuff

Oreo

I have no idea if Farage can eventually stop the flow of small boats, depends how draconian he’s prepared to be, but it isn’t working with Labour and it wasn’t with the Conservatives so you can see why people may be prepared to give Reform a chance.
You also use the word racist again.It’s not helping your case.

Are you suggesting people cover up the truth?

Except it isn’t the truth.

nanna8

I’d think back to approx 1968 - full of hope and promise. Swinging London and all that. The UK felt very positive in those days.

Rose-tinted spectacles. Some 1968 events:

•People were asked to work longer hours without pay.

•First test firing of a nuclear missile by the Royal Navy.

•Job losses in the coal mining industry.

•Sterling crisis.

•Police and protesters clash over the Vietnam War.

•Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech.

•Kray twins arrested for murder, fraud, blackmail and assault.

•Ronan Point tower block collapses.

•Ford Motor Company “Made in Dagenham” strike - a good result in the end but why was it necessary? Because women did not have equal pay.

•NHS reintroduces prescription charges

•The South East of England flooded.

•The Race Relations Act - another good thing but why was it necessary? Because people were being refused housing, employment and access to public services because of their skin colour.

•Eleven year old killer Mary Bell sentenced to life detention.

• Hong Kong flu. 80,000 died.

There were some good things too but let’s not pretend things were hunky dory in 1968 and more than they are now.

Oreo

growstuff

Oreo

And there you go with the insults, honestly they’re counterproductive, if you or anyone else wants to win over someone who’s thinking of voting Reform then leave that last bit out.

If you think calling people out for not being able to come up with a coherent answer and parroting myths is an insult, I'm surprised. The way you dish it out, I would have thought you are made of sterner stuff.

Oh I’m made of very stern stuff indeed, and the insults aren’t to me they’re to anyone on the forum, or the public who may look at GN and think they may vote for Reform.
Telling them they’re dim turkeys and suchlike isn’t going to win them over is it?
The electorate will vote with their feet over many big issues and immigration is a very big one.

They’ll vote for which party Rupert Murdoch tells them to vote for. Imo

I'm sorry, Dd but I don't understand your first paragraph at all. Can you expand a little on it?
My first paragraph was I’ve all but given up posting on here, particularly on N&P. If posts not toeing the Reform line aren’t nitpicked into oblivion (ie one word disagreed with and pulled apart to the point of tedium) they are ignored and argued against as if they weren’t there.

What’s not to understand? I’ll rephrase, although doing so illustrates my point, really.

At times, people who are not in support of Reform will post to say so, and their posts are subjected to having one word singled out, or a turn of phrase ‘misunderstood’ and are asked to explain themselves over and over instead of a discussion of the topic in hand. At other times their posts are ignored altogether, as though the points they have made don’t matter, whilst the ones they have countered already are rehashed repeatedly with no reference to the counter-arguments.

Agree or disagree with that statement by all means, but I don’t think it is difficult to understand, is it?

Thank you for the kind comments. I do feel frustrated, but will no doubt ride the wave and hang around* for a while longer. I have a lot on my mind just now and probably shouldn’t come on here in the small hours in the hope of being distracted .

* unless someone pretends not to be able to get her head around mixed metaphors, that is .

fancythat

I refer you to my post of 21.54pm.
Other posters know that I dont keep repeating myself.

www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/reform-uk-rows-back-on-its-contract-with-the-people-reports-382122/

"Reform UK has rowed back on its so-called “contract with the people”, saying it was supposed to be more of a “philosophy of what the party wants to achieve rather than policy details”.

Speaking to the Independent, the party’s new chair, Zia Yusuf said the faux manifesto unveiled by Nigel Farage in Merthyr Tydfil wasn’t supposed to be taken too literally.

Instead, he said, it should be considered “more as a philosophy” of where the party wants to head over time.

When the “contract with the people” (so-called because Mr Farage claimed manifestos were considered to be lies) was launched in Wales ahead of the General Election it was lampooned for being “Liz Truss economics on steroids”.

The party promised £140 billion in tax cuts including raising the threshold of income tax to £20,000, claiming it could find £156 billion in spending cuts.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank said the plans were based on “extremely optimist assumptions” about growth and the sums “do not add up”, meaning the manifesto as a whole was “problematic”.

But speaking to The Independent, Yusuf said that the contract with the people should now be considered in a new light.

Addressing the problematic sums, he said: “They don’t add up on the basis that you implement everything in there on day one for arriving in Downing Street. That’s fair. But that was never going to be the plan.”

The Independent has an article on this, but it is behind a paywall -
www.independent.co.uk › UK › UK Politics
2 Sept 2024 "Nigel Farage ditches Reform UK's 'contract with the people'"

Thanks for the clarification, Dd. I do see what you were getting at now

It's annoying and frustrating, but I'd say ignore or report. There's no mileage in a slanging match.

The last paragraph on my last quote from Yusouf in that post should be read again by those who think that Starmer should have solved all the UK's problems by now, and that Farage will have everything OK at a stroke.

. "Addressing the problematic sums, he said: “They don’t add up on the basis that you implement everything in there on day one for arriving in Downing Street. That’s fair. But that was never going to be the plan.”" .

How long did it it take for the problems to accumulate to this current point? Why does anyone think that those tangled interconnecting threads can be fixed and running perfectly in one brief year? Even Reform admits that they can't.

If my old dad could see how far right politics has moved, creeping inexorably towards fascism, and I don’t just mean here, he would turn in his grace after fighting against it in the 1940s.
He was the generation that did well under Attlee and a Keynesian economy.
If we want a better country that we can be proud of like my old dad was at the time we should be looking back to that political era instead of towards the kind darker days this country thought it had fought to eradicate.

Correction - turn in his grave

My dad would too, Babs03.

At times, people who are not in support of Reform will post to say so, and their posts are subjected to having one word singled out, or a turn of phrase ‘misunderstood’ and are asked to explain themselves over and over instead of a discussion of the topic in hand.

Exactly that on another thread. Rather like dealing with small children but such a waste of time. Perhaps we/I should remind ourselves/myself that talking to childish bullies is a waste of time. But I do keep wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt!

Quote from Doodledog 29-Sept-25 12:02:07

And like children, they expect the grownups to fix everything with their grownup magic wand. If it takes longer than immediately they drum their little heels on the floor in a strop and scream "I hate you! Go away!"

Elegran, you are so right when you say it has taken many years to get into this mess and it will take time to get out of it.

DaisyAnneReturns

^At times, people who are not in support of Reform will post to say so, and their posts are subjected to having one word singled out, or a turn of phrase ‘misunderstood’ and are asked to explain themselves over and over instead of a discussion of the topic in hand.^

Exactly that on another thread. Rather like dealing with small children but such a waste of time. Perhaps we/I should remind ourselves/myself that talking to childish bullies is a waste of time. But I do keep wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt!

Possibly 😀

Without reference to the other thread about bullies, it’s difficult to tell though. I’m not deliberately misunderstanding, just a bit bewildered.

I sense a subtext being hinted at, but have no way of joining the dots, I’m afraid.