#Reform Party

[riotinyellow]

the government is more likely to call stop oil a terrorist organisation before they do the EDL

[itsallpoliticsstupid]

Reform voters not understanding consequences of their choice

There are reports of Reform voters complaining that they didn't expect to end up with a Labour Government by voting Reform.

And all I can ask is, how?!

Having the right to participate in free and fair elections is one of the cornerstones of democracy and why I vehemently defend living in one. That being said, I also fear people have such low Political literacy that they can't really make an informed choice on the matter.

I believe that Politics should be mandatory in schools. Why are we teaching children about Philosophy, but not something that they will be participating in for their adult lives.

Maybe it's time to start considering bringing this subject in to schools.

(Just to note, I'm not having a go at people voting Reform. I've always had the view political literacy is low across all sides of the political spectrum and it should be taught in schools by teachers who do not have any political alignment. This whole deal just cements that fact for me.

[sylviii]

Jon Bois making a documentary about the last time the two-party system in the US faced a major challenge... and releasing it during an election season where both major party candidates suck ass and have little appeal.... hmmmm...

[angelholme]

The former leader of Reform described this as "saying a daft thing"

And that suggestions that women are "spongers", that "women soldiers make him sick", that "women should be deprived of healthcare" and "men subsidise women to breath" were supposed to be funny.

This is apparently the safe alternative to the Tory party.

[feckcops]

What can the Left learn from Nigel Farage?

“Farage’s mercilessness is notable. Only once did he hold back from running against the Tories – in the 2019 election when Boris Johnson’s Brexit purism and the threat of a Jeremy Corbyn-led government persuaded him to stand down ... In 2015, he almost cost the party its slim majority ...

“Contrast this with the approach of the ‘green blob’ of centre-left climate NGOs ... Their strategy was also clear: ask nicely and get what you can, not what’s needed to avert the climate crisis. Don’t take risks or rock the boat ... This focus on soft power alone – the inside game of cajoling and persuasion, being in the room and having the ear of a potentially sympathetic minister – is extremely limited ...

“The election of five pro-Palestinian independents – including Corbyn – along with four Green MPs has changed Starmer’s electoral calculation. Assumptions about the viability of independent and third party candidates have been swept away. The Greens came in second in 39 constituencies (most with a suspiciously Corbynite demographic), and some pollsters have suggested the collapse in Labour’s Muslim vote isn’t a momentary response to the party’s blunders on Gaza, but part of a longer-term trend.

“The left would do well to look to Farage for instruction. With a club in one hand and an olive branch in the other, he torments the Tories from the outside while organising sympathetic MPs within. He wages war on the party, while openly flirting with the idea of swooping in and rescuing it from the carnage he helped create ...

“If Farage was paying attention, he’d laugh at the never-ending argument on the left about whether to stay in Labour or leave ... Farage has always cultivated links with ideologically aligned MPs within the Conservative party. He’s left open the idea that he may one day join. Every vote he takes from them strengthens the hand of hard right Tory MPs. And the more viable Reform becomes, the more leverage his Tory allies have, as they can always go elsewhere ...

“The relative silence of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs wasn’t due to a moral failing, but their status as Labour MPs being in the gift of a hostile leadership. They fairly assumed that running as independents was electoral suicide ...

“Now, emboldened by the success of independent and Green candidates, these Labour MPs can be strident in their criticism of Starmer and leverage the public’s indifference towards him. They can form a leftwing caucus across party lines, exposing the prime minister’s politics by forcing him into deals with the Lib Dems. They can identify their own small boats issue, and use their platform to court controversy. And they can do all of this safely in the knowledge that they can cross the floor to the Greens or run as independents and have a decent chance of success.”

[python-nebula]

As anxious as I am about Reform potentially winning, it's hilarious to watch the Labour rep completely obliterate the Reform rep

[head-post]

UK Farage fires campaign members for racist remarks

Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage sacked members of his campaign team on Thursday after they were caught on video making racist and homophobic comments.

Farage, a former EU MP who has tried and failed seven times to run for the UK parliament, is seeking a seat in next month’s general election, called by the UK’s embattled Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

An undercover investigation broadcast on Channel 4 filmed campaigners from his Reform UK party making racist and homophobic comments in Farage’s constituency of Clacton-on-Sea in south-east England last week.

One campaigner, Andrew Parker, labelled Islam “the most disgusting cult” and called for Muslims to be kicked “out of mosques” which should be turned into pubs. Speaking to the electorate, Parker also called for army recruits to carry out “target practice” by shooting migrants trying to cross the Channel illegally by boat.

Channel 4 also filmed George Jones, Reform UK’s campaign organiser, explaining why the party is focusing on Clacton:

“Look around you. The real England. You know what I mean? Not like London when you’re a foreigner in your own country.”

He later made homophobic remarks, including calling the LGBT flag “degenerate.”

Farage was “appalled”

In a statement to Channel 4, Farage said he was “appalled” by the comments from “a handful of people associated with my local campaign” and announced they would no longer be involved. Farage also added:

“The appalling sentiments expressed by some in these exchanges bear no relation to my own views, those of the vast majority of our supporters or Reform UK policy.” 

In a separate statement, Parker said that “neither Nigel Farage personally nor the Reform Party is aware of my personal views on immigration”.

According to anti-racism organisation Hope Not Hate, Reform UK has had to withdraw 166 candidates since the start of the year, most of whom have made racist or offensive remarks.

Farage’s party is third in the polls behind the ruling Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party.

Read more HERE

[tomorrowusa]

The New Statesman produced a video endorsing Labour in the July 4th general election.

In some ways this shouldn't surprise anybody. But in 2019 they did remain neutral. Labour back then was under the leadership of neo-Trotskyite Jeremy Corbyn and the Lib Dems were still recovering from their disastrous 2010-2015 coalition with the Conservatives.

In addition to the Labour endorsement, The New Statesman urged viewers and readers to vote tactically for maximum effect. In this election, tactical voting prioritizes defeating as many Tories as possible even if that means choosing not to vote for your personal first choice but instead for the candidate most likely to defeat a Conservative in one's constituency.

Here are a couple of tactical voting sites.

+ GetVoting.org

+ Tactical voting list for every constituency | General Election 2024 | tactical.vote

Although it's dated June 22nd, this projection of number of seats in Parliament by Electoral Calculus was published online just yesterday. While it shows Labour still firmly in the lead, the distribution of seats for some of the other parties shows almost startling movement.

The Conservatives are down to 61 seats while the Lib Dems have risen to 70. If such a result happens next week, the Lib Dems would replace the Tories as the official opposition.

HOWEVER, the far right Reform Party led by Brexiteer Nigel Farage has a predicted 19 seats. There had been some talk about Farage being invited into the Conservative Party to lead it after Rishi Sunak's likely political demise. With these numbers, if Reform and the Tories united then they would have 80 seats – 10 more than the Lib Dems. As head of this faction, Farage would become the official leader of the opposition and would use his high profile, including time at Prime Minister's Questions, to promote his far right agenda.

A recent incident reminded everybody just how extremist the Reform Party really is.

Reform UK activist filmed using racial slur to describe Rishi Sunak while campaigning for Nigel Farage

So any tactical voting plan should include efforts to minimize Reform Party gains and boost the number of seats which the Lib Dems pick up.

The UK electorate has an excellent opportunity to strike a blow against the international far right in this election.

[medjoul]

On Nigel Farage:

Chloe Deakin, an English teacher at Dulwich college, wrote in 1981: “You will recall that at the recent, and lengthy, meeting about the selection of prefects, the remark by a colleague that Farage was ‘a fascist but that was no reason why he would not make a good prefect’ invoked considerable reaction from members of the common room.

“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views, and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson.”

One Jewish pupil claimed Farage would sidle up to him and say: “Hitler was right,” or “Gas ‘em.” Another claimed Farage had a preoccupation with his initials, NF, as they were the same as those of the National Front. [x]

[bitter69uk]

The Reform candidate for the Mid-Bedfordshire by-election yesterday looks like he’s about to headbutt you outside a pub while his goth “biker mama” watches. (Labour won – phew!). Is it wrong that I do love his powder blue suit? (I would wear it with a ruffled shirt).

[riotinyellow]

lol, do it again

[anyoneknowwhatbrexitmeans]

[bluepecanpie]

I'm legit asking on here having actually gone through the process of how electoral politics works, including and especially canvassing, and candidate selection, how much disaffection and local resentment can play in deciding an sway an election, and how a very media-savvy charismatic candidate saying the right keypoints around a constituency, particularly one that's really deprived and one of many regions which experiend the brunt of deindustrialisation.

Like, I want people to really think about what happened during the rochdale by-election and why the result happened. This was a by-election where:

We had three candidates who were had either been Labour MPs at one point, or within the party machine only to fall into disfavor - including within the by-election itself.

Speaking of the Labour candidate, the reason why he fell into disfavour despite up until that point being a 'company man' is that he said in an event that the October 7 events happened with Israel's foreknowledge. Saying that like that on its own whether it's true or not (it isn't) is deeply embarassing for Labour which is committed to supporting Israel, and weaponised antisemitism to clear out/suppress its left-wing - especially if you can't switch out a new candidate in time.

The Green Party candidate was found to have posted Islamophobic remarks years before and also had to stop campaigning, and likewise, the Green Party couldn't change their candidate cos it was too late.

The local Labour branch quietly mouthed support for someone booted out of their tribe: Simon Dancuzk, a nasty dude selected for the Reform Party, a metamorphosed UKIP - who basically was only out because he was sexxting an underage girl - all to keep out Galloway. Yes, Labour was banking on a sex pest that they booted out to keep out a political nemesis.

A well-known vehicle shop owner presumably with his own money, was able to get out his messaging better than the establishment candidates, and was rewarded in the by-election with second-place.

Yes, Galloway is a vain, chauvinistic blowhard but he understands what the miasma of labourism in dissaffected areas does, and that's basically why the Worker's Party basically exists - Galloway also happens to legitimately hate Britain's foreign policy in the Middle East, something that will bring the support of the Muslim base. They're not going to care about that time he pretended to be a cat on big brother twenty years ago, if right now he's saying what Labour and the Tories won't say - that what's happening in Gaza is a genocide conducted by Israel with the material support of the British government. Labour is pissed as the main opposition not because they actually think Galloway's an antisemite, but because he represents the very real possibility that they could leak blocs of so-called 'natural voters' to independent candidates just when they thought they had a tight election program, and Galloway's gonna be slamming them from the left, which the Tories may capitalise on. They'll blame Galloway but they honestly it is no-one but themselves that they should blame.

So that's the rub. It's amazing that after ten years of shit like this going back to the Scottish referendum, nobody seems to have lerned anything, and on here what comes out is this moralistic chastising. It's not about whether what happened is 'good', it's about understand the conditions for why it happened, and why things like it will happen again.

[cynicalclassicist]

I'd love the Tories to go the way of the Liberals... but I'm worried that they may merge with the fascists in Reform.

manifesting the worst tory election result in history tomorrow. like to charge reblog to cast and reply to send the tories to a shadow dimension for 3000 years

[phaon1]

somehow I'm only just finding out about this.

[helrae]

Joining the X-odus: How Elon Musk Drove Me Off His Platform

I wasn’t going to leave the social media site better known, better loved – better, period – as Twitter. Not yet, anyway. Maybe not at all, if (my best-case scenario), it collapsed under the weight of Musk’s mismanagement, got bought out by a new broom, and swept clean of the toxic dross it’s accumulated since he took over. In that happy eventuality I’ll return; meanwhile, hoping daily to hear of…