2024 UK general election predictions and general discussion.

[cloudburster]

Reform is a vehicle for the BNP and UKIP lot, just with a social media friendly sheen applied across the whole murky affair. The same hideous views, the same phobic oiks, they just have to be a bit quieter about it. Nige may be right about some things, but that doesn't come with any solutions attached because, as has been said, he doesn't need solutions...he just needs slogans and issues to whip up the flag shaggers and anti-"woke" brigade. I've found myself in the territory of "politically homeless" myself, so to a certain extent I can resonate with some people's motivations behind voting for a party like Reform. Unfortunately, a few decent eggs among a very bad bunch doesn't change the fact that the party exists to drive bigotry and division, and pantomime-esque visions of Bri'un and Engerluuuund, and to make money, because of course.

 

[Ryan]

flag shaggers

teeehehehe

 

[cloudburster]

teeehehehe

As a Norn Irish, I should be one of them. Ban all flags, I say. I've grown to loathe the attachment people have to them.

 

[Matt.GC]

A Reform party standing on a small state, low taxes, low immigration, anti-EU, and 'sod the poor' agenda isn't inherently racist. But the vehicle they use is. And that's the intention.

It differs from the BNP. The BNP started life as being pure racist. They then tried to moderate that racism by adopting populist policies. UKIP, another Farage project, are routed in anti-EU theory. They then became, and remain, racist by shoring up awful people to achieve the main aim of the cause. Farage ditched them once Brexit had been won, something he wanted all his life.

Now, as a Mainstream Media personality and part of the Political Establishment, Farage is trying to get his way again. He wants to destroy the party that rejected him, and wants publicity. It's always about Farage. It's always been about Farage. He's a narcissist, who frequently exaggerates his power. He'll whip up hatred about foreigners without getting his hands dirty until the the Tories welcome him in with open arms and worship him as a saint. If that happens, he'll drop Reform and Richard Tice from a great height.

Why can no one see this? This guy leads people to the cliff edge and then pushes them off. Yet his hands always remain clean.

 

[Matt N]

On a minor side note, I’ll admit to being marginally confused about how immigration became such a huge part of our political discourse and how it’s become demonised as such a huge issue.

We need immigration, do we not? There are many vital parts of the UK workforce that rely heavily upon immigrant labour, and immigration will also be vital to prop up our aging population as the years go on. The country’s birth rate is sliding, and the cost of caring for our nation’s elderly is ever-increasing due to an ever-increasing number of pensioners. Due to the aforementioned sliding birth rate, the number of working taxpayers who can pay for this is decreasing, so something is going to have to give eventually. The way we can help to alleviate this is through immigration; immigrants are often young, which helps to boost the birth rate, and more immigrants equals more potential taxpayers.

Also, I find it perplexing how the issue seems to be most feared in areas with very, very low levels of immigration. As an example, I live in an area with a reasonable degree of anti-immigration sentiment. For context, UKIP did pretty well here in 2015, polls suggest considerable support for Reform UK, and nearly 60% of people in this area voted for Brexit, which is quite markedly higher than the national average. I’ve heard a fair share of people in this area talk animatedly about clamping down on immigration, and although perhaps less than it once was, there does still seem to be a bit of… suspicion and fear towards non-local people in some circles around here. On Facebook, I’ve noticed that all of the sponsored posts I receive from Forest of Dean parliamentary parties have at least a couple of comments on there talking about “stopping the boats” and “stopping the immigrants”. This is despite the fact that the area where I live was logged as 98% white at the last census and is among the least ethnically diverse local authority areas in the UK. I could easily walk the hour from my house to the nearest large town and not meet a single person who wasn’t White British. Yet immigration seems to be seen as a considerable problem around here, despite the area’s considerable lack of immigrants.

I’m not saying that illegal immigration isn’t a problem, but I do feel that the issue has been considerably blown out of proportion by the Tories and Reform, and the tough rhetoric on it ignores the benefits that immigration and diversity brings to our society.

 

[Ryan]

On a minor side note, I’ll admit to being marginally confused about how immigration became such a huge part of our political discourse and how it’s become demonised as such a huge issue.

We need immigration, do we not? There are many vital parts of the UK workforce that rely heavily upon immigrant labour, and immigration will also be vital to prop up our aging population as the years go on. The country’s birth rate is sliding, and the cost of caring for our nation’s elderly is ever-increasing due to an ever-increasing number of pensioners. Due to the aforementioned sliding birth rate, the number of working taxpayers who can pay for this is decreasing, so something is going to have to give eventually. The way we can help to alleviate this is through immigration; immigrants are often young, which helps to boost the birth rate.

Also, I find it perplexing how the issue seems to be most feared in areas with very, very low levels of immigration. As an example, I live in an area with a reasonable degree of anti-immigration sentiment. For context, UKIP did pretty well here in 2015, polls suggest considerable support for Reform UK, and nearly 60% of people in this area voted for Brexit, which is quite markedly higher than the national average. I’ve heard a fair share of people in this area talk animatedly about clamping down on immigration, and although perhaps less than it once was, there does still seem to be a bit of… suspicion and fear towards non-local people in some circles around here. On Facebook, I’ve noticed that all of the sponsored posts I receive from Forest of Dean parliamentary parties have at least a couple of comments on there talking about “stopping the boats” and “stopping the immigrants”. This is despite the fact that the area where I live was logged as 98% white at the last census and is among the least ethnically diverse local authority areas in the UK. I could easily walk the hour from my house to the nearest large town and not meet a single person who wasn’t White British. Yet immigration seems to be seen as a considerable problem around here, despite the area’s considerable lack of immigrants.

I’m not saying that illegal immigration isn’t a problem, but I do feel that the issue has been considerably blown out of proportion by the Tories and Reform, and the tough rhetoric on it ignores the benefits that immigration and diversity brings to our society.

I think a major factor is when times are hard, someone has to be blamed.

I'm not sure how old you are Matt, but when I was younger people were a lot more chill about immigration, but the demonisation of people 'below' in the food chain was exactly the same, both in intensity and frequency. But the demons of my teenage years and 20s were "common council estate trash" sponging off taxpayers and living the dream on benefits. Frightfully, it moved on to the genuinely disabled and people struggling to work, and it's moved on now to immigrants. Make no mistake, the anger and disgust towards ALL of the worst off in our country is still there, but the spotlight shifts when the Tories and the Right Wing Media decides it needs something fresh.

To me it looks like this. When times are tough, people need explanation for the lack of infrastructure, the decay of the nation, the hardship they're feeling, the queues at the hospital, the waiting time for ambulances, the pot holes. And we're told, always, without fail, to look down to work out who is sucking up all the resource. Never, ever look up.

The monsters of the week are immigrants. If we could just get rid of them all this resource would be freed up, and we'd be showered with the fruits of our hard earned taxes. It's not all being squandered on tax breaks for the rich, private enterprises and cronyism - it's getting hoovered up by the peasants on the bottom, we promise, don't look up.

From living in a few countries, something else I suspect comes into play, is the UKs struggle with it's culture and identity. It's SO messy, it's so intangible and unclear. Ask a handful of Brits what British culture is and they'll spout a bunch of general statements common either to the rest of the continent, or to the US. I suspect, that people feel an intense desire to protect their culture, a totally normal thing for humans to feel, but aren't sure how to actually achieve it...because they're not sure what they're trying to save. And any attempt to highlight English culture, just doesn't seem to sit right with a lot of people. Is that maybe a hangover of Empire? Is it a symptom of the set up of the UK's union? I'm unsure.

But I think that in lieu of laws, restrictions, education programs or cultural preservation efforts often used in other countries to protect language and dialect, cuisine, folk dance, dress, customs - the only thing left is just to get rid of anyone not 'from here'.

We can't resist the influence of incomers because we don't have a culture strong enough to push back, or for some reason we are reticent to even agree and explore what our culture is. It's a rough theory, and I'm not sure how much it rings true, but it's a gut feeling I have.

 

[Benzin]

Make safe routes and combat the traffickers that way would be a start.

And yes we (and many countries across the world) rely on an immigration workforce. The amount of industries that have struggled for staff in recent years because of Brexit (and the xenophobia that followed) is telling. But no one wants to acknowledge that Brexit was a bit of a mess so it gets ignored.

I think best way to describe it is Schrodinger's immigrants. Where they are simultaneously milking benefits everywhere but also taking jobs off of hard-working locals. And it feeds into the panic of certain demographics as "things were better in my day" and other such nonsense comes into play.

 

[Ryan]

I think best way to describe it is Schrodinger's immigrants.

I love this. And I think the idea of immigrants being a scapegoat for whoever needs it is so obvious it hurts.

They can be anything you want - benefits spongers, the hardest grafters in the world, they can all speak better English than most of the young uns these days, they can not know a word of the language, they can be legal migrants, illegal migrants or asylum seekers totally interchangeably.

Whatever your problem is, we've got a generalisation of immigrants to use as the excuse.

 

[Matt.GC]

I think a major factor is when times are hard, someone has to be blamed.

I'm not sure how old you are Matt, but when I was younger people were a lot more chill about immigration, but the demonisation of people 'below' in the food chain was exactly the same, both in intensity and frequency. But the demons of my teenage years and 20s were "common council estate trash" sponging off taxpayers and living the dream on benefits. Frightfully, it moved on to the genuinely disabled and people struggling to work, and it's moved on now to immigrants. Make no mistake, the anger and disgust towards ALL of the worst off in our country is still there, but the spotlight shifts when the Tories and the Right Wing Media decides it needs something fresh.

To me it looks like this. When times are tough, people need explanation for the lack of infrastructure, the decay of the nation, the hardship they're feeling, the queues at the hospital, the waiting time for ambulances, the pot holes. And we're told, always, without fail, to look down to work out who is sucking up all the resource. Never, ever look up.

The monsters of the week are immigrants. If we could just get rid of them all this resource would be freed up, and we'd be showered with the fruits of our hard earned taxes. It's not all being squandered on tax breaks for the rich, private enterprises and cronyism - it's getting hoovered up by the peasants on the bottom, we promise, don't look up.

From living in a few countries, something else I suspect comes into play, is the UKs struggle with it's culture and identity. It's SO messy, it's so intangible and unclear. Ask a handful of Brits what British culture is and they'll spout a bunch of general statements common either to the rest of the continent, or to the US. I suspect, that people feel an intense desire to protect their culture, a totally normal thing for humans to feel, but aren't sure how to actually achieve it...because they're not sure what they're trying to save. And any attempt to highlight English culture, just doesn't seem to sit right with a lot of people. Is that maybe a hangover of Empire? Is it a symptom of the set up of the UK's union? I'm unsure.

I think this is an excellent description. I completely agree.

No matter the facts, someone somewhere has to be the punching bag. If I think of my own lifetime, before I was born it was those pesky "coloured people" from the Africa's. Coming over here, stealing our culture and our jobs. This is despite the fact that immigration is a fraction of what it is now, and there isn't a single fact out there that proves that African nationals emigrating to this country from the old empire has been anything other than good. Farage has showered praise on the likes of Enoch Powerful, Rivers of Blood, and "If you want a ****** for a neighbour, vote Labour" and the like.

When I was a kid it was those damn ****'s. Coming over here, stealing our culture and our jobs. You know, another group of people that we ruled with the empire yet we hurled racist abuse at?

Then it was the gays. Mincing around the place, stealing our culture and corrupting our kids.

Then it was the Muslims. Coming over here, spreading their ideology, corrupting our women and blowing people up.

Then it was the polish and other Eastern Europeans. Coming over here stealing our culture and our jobs.

Then Round 2 for the Muslims. Coming over here, spreading their ideology, corrupting our women and blowing people up.

Then it was the Romanians. Coming over here, stealing our culture and our jobs.

Then it was ALL those "leftie" Europeans. Coming over here stealing our culture and our jobs.

Then it was the trans people. Invading locker rooms and toilets to prey on people.

Now it's the Muslims Round 3. Coming over here, indoctrinating our young and controlling the Mayor of London.

Someone has to be to blame. Not the corruption by the rich. Not companies. Not the politicians. Is British/English culture about an isolationist straight white person waving a flag whilst hanging out of a red telephone box? Or is it democracy, tolerance, respect, he rule of law, and individual liberty?

 

[Slugjc]

He sacked three of his "potential" MPs. Especially now he's been embarrassed on question time.

It will be interesting to see if he can recover. It may have swayed some folk away BUT. The hard core will still be there. That could be enough in some constituencys like mine.

 

[AT86]

He sacked three of his "potential" MPs. Especially now he's been embarrassed on question time.

But has followed that up by saying people who support Reform should still vote for them.

Such is the proof they ain’t really bothered by what these people have been saying.

 

[Tom]

On a minor side note, I’ll admit to being marginally confused about how immigration became such a huge part of our political discourse and how it’s become demonised as such a huge issue.

We need immigration, do we not? There are many vital parts of the UK workforce that rely heavily upon immigrant labour, and immigration will also be vital to prop up our aging population as the years go on. The country’s birth rate is sliding, and the cost of caring for our nation’s elderly is ever-increasing due to an ever-increasing number of pensioners. Due to the aforementioned sliding birth rate, the number of working taxpayers who can pay for this is decreasing, so something is going to have to give eventually. The way we can help to alleviate this is through immigration; immigrants are often young, which helps to boost the birth rate, and more immigrants equals more potential taxpayers.

Also, I find it perplexing how the issue seems to be most feared in areas with very, very low levels of immigration. As an example, I live in an area with a reasonable degree of anti-immigration sentiment. For context, UKIP did pretty well here in 2015, polls suggest considerable support for Reform UK, and nearly 60% of people in this area voted for Brexit, which is quite markedly higher than the national average. I’ve heard a fair share of people in this area talk animatedly about clamping down on immigration, and although perhaps less than it once was, there does still seem to be a bit of… suspicion and fear towards non-local people in some circles around here. On Facebook, I’ve noticed that all of the sponsored posts I receive from Forest of Dean parliamentary parties have at least a couple of comments on there talking about “stopping the boats” and “stopping the immigrants”. This is despite the fact that the area where I live was logged as 98% white at the last census and is among the least ethnically diverse local authority areas in the UK. I could easily walk the hour from my house to the nearest large town and not meet a single person who wasn’t White British. Yet immigration seems to be seen as a considerable problem around here, despite the area’s considerable lack of immigrants.

I’m not saying that illegal immigration isn’t a problem, but I do feel that the issue has been considerably blown out of proportion by the Tories and Reform, and the tough rhetoric on it ignores the benefits that immigration and diversity brings to our society.

We don’t need the numbers that are coming in.

700,000 net coming in versus going out. We have not built any significant infrastructure to align with population increases, and our GDP per capita and wages in certain sectors are being suppressed and/or eroded. Ironically, this is happening more rapidly since Brexit - despite the promises at the time.

 

[Ryan]

We don’t need the numbers that are coming in.

So why does legal, visa-based immigration, continue at the levels that it does? Why do so many health and social care visas get handed out every year? Where are these people going if not straight to work, therefore paying as much tax as everyone else and therefore paying their way, and giving the increase in tax revenue needed to increase the infrastructure needed to accommodate them in society?

That's not me being a knob, I actually don't get the reasons. I simply don't understand why, for example, the current government would just shoulder these massive migration figures, figures that stick out as a massive failure of their time leading the country?

Reducing the vast vast vast majority of immigration to the UK could happen overnight. So why doesn't the government press the button? The excuse used to be that the EU stopped us from reducing non-EU migration, what's the excuse now? And why do we need an excuse?

I have a hunch about how high migration benefits the people in charge of controlling it, but I'm not clued up enough to be sure!

EDIT - regarding the GDP reduction, do you have any source for that, because I can't find anything but the opposite even from very anti-migration sources. It's usually mentioned as "migration increases GDP...but..."

And regarding wage suppression in certain sectors, why are these sectors still on the "skilled workers needed" list in our points based system? What's the reason for that, does anyone know?

 

[Benzin]

Could've implemented immigration limits during EU membership but the government chose not to for... reasons.

Infrastructure could've been built. But look at the mess of HS2.

 

[Matt.GC]

Immigration is so high because jobs need to be filled.

8 million people on an NHS waiting list. Many people unable to see a GP. No workforce plan (for decades, under both parties) to train people up in professions like pharmaceuticals and nursing. Many public service workers like teachers and social workers getting paid disgracefully low wages and unable to buy homes. Furlough schemes and nonsensical qualifications luring people into the false pretences that they can graduate and work Mon-Fri 9-5 in made up jobs, working from home.

They're coming to treat us when we're ill, build our houses, fix our cars, teach our children, stop our leaking pipes, and produce and sell our food.

Despite the fact another country paid for their healthcare and education whilst they grew up, we're happy to take taxes off of them to pay our debts, benefits and pensions. Then we have the audacity to blame them for the fact that we haven't planned for them to be here, blaming them for daring to want to have a home to live in, travel on our roads (Farage has used immigration as an excuse for running late twice now), and use our services.

All this flag waving and "our culture" bullshit is laughable. What culture are we defending? Red phone boxes? A crap football team? Pretending we're still a world power that beat the Nazis when we didn't even have an air craft carrier a few years ago? Our major exports of banking, Insurance services and the Beatles? Pathetic.

 

[jon81uk]

They blamed the company they hired to vet potential candidates for the issue of having former BNP members in their party standing as candidates.

Reform didn’t even hire a company to do vetting, they bought a license to use vetting software without actually checking what they were purchasing. They thought a company was vetting for them when actually they just had some software.

 

[Jonathan]

Reform didn’t even hire a company to do vetting, they bought a license to use vetting software without actually checking what they were purchasing. They thought a company was vetting for them when actually they just had some software.

There's idiocy and incompetency, and there's this...

 

[rob666]

Immigration is so high because modern transport networks have made movement relatively easy and cheap...the real issue is inequality worldwide.
The west has traded off the backs of the third world...always has, always will.
Global monocultures are great for the west...not for the producing nations who are forced to pander to the western markets.
The massive profit the west has made from dominating the rest of the world...we weren't the only ones with a nice empire...has meant a massive division worldwide between the rich and poor nations, and gross poverty often leads to war, either internal or between nations.
We gave Indians and Pakistanis the right to English passports after the war, after we had stomped on their communities for a century or so...those people had a right to come here, and we gave their dependants those rights too.
Most immigration to this country falls back to out great empire.
People from poorer nations want to move here, and all other developed western nations, for the economic benefits of our great empire of the past, and they have every right to do so. We got there by living off the labours of the local communities efforts.

In my last hospital overnighter, I would guess the majority of the staff I came into contact with were not of British heritage...and I received a fantastic service from them. How would I receive such excellent service without immigration?

We have always had facist scum in this nation, in my lifetime, National Front, British National Party, England First, Britain First, Respect...amongst several dozen other racist smaller groups.
The only difference is, time.
They get a bit more publicity now with the depth and breadth of media coverage, but the scum have always been there around us.

And one last point, when we built our great empire, did we try to assimilate within the invaded communities, and use the local customs, language and culture?
Did we hell.
We taught the "uncultured" how to live a correct, western life and culture.

As a good gardener, I know all too well.
You reap what you sow.

 

[BarryZola]

The problem with the example of the evidently excellent nurses who treated you is, it's a similar issue that has happened in other industries too. We stopped training our own people in such industries as it was costing us money to do it, when we knew that because of freedom of movement we could just get in ready-trained people from other countries. Couple this with the fact that Blair wanted to get everyone to go to Uni and now you have a situation where instead of times gone by where you could just come out of school or whatever and go and learn the job on the ward (more or less) you now have to go to Uni and get yourself into £50,000 worth of debt. They even stopped the bursaries and I'm sure the research will show a large drop in domestic entry onto nursing courses since that happened. This at a time when the 'dream' of having a regular life with their own home to live in like their parents and their parents had is steadily moving further out of their grasp. There will be no motivation to work when life goals are simply unobtainable. What's the point?

The real kicker will be in 20/30/40 years when a large amount of people start retiring who never had the chance to own their own property due to the disparity between house prices and average wages. You'll have millions of people still in private rentals who just start depending on state pension. So who's going to pay their private rent for millions when the rent is more than their incoming pension? The tax-payer? We don't even have enough tax coming in now as a country. The biggest ticking time-bomb going and successive governments have ignored it.

 

[GaryH]

Genuine question here but Labour are very quiet with regards pensions, which makes me nervous. Apart from saying the triple lock will stay, the only other thing they have said is that they will be doing a pensions review. That’s it.

We know what happened last time Labour and Gordon Brown were in power with pensions…. Anyone else feeling nervous about their vagueness on this one?

Labour getting in does make me feel extremely on edge. While their manifesto is good at saying what they WILL do, it’s not telling us what they won’t…