Yep. Gullible voters and a media landscape that is largely controlled by far-right billionaires.
Huge disadvantage to having a national broadcaster imo - I do see that it is hard for them to resist the temptation to say no.
It’s the presentation that annoys me. Labour, which are (at least in its current guise) a centrist party, are presented as “the left wing” whilst Reform are presented as “the right wing”. This is why the Overton Window has shifted so far to the right in the last decade or so, political parties which are on the extreme right are now presented as mainstream whilst political parties on the extreme left are excluded from the conversation.
The right wing is not a threat to the neoliberal economic consensus that has made so many of these billionaires.
Reform got almost as many votes as the LibDems and the SNP put together at the last general election. That they didn't get an equivalent number of seats is down to the voting system. At the last European election held in the UK (where it's PR so you don't have the same tactical voting clouding the count that FPTP has), Farage's party was the largest with 30% of the vote.
Quite. I can appreciate that they're unhappy with the change and I can see that it perhaps wasn't as clearly communicated as it should have been but, in reality, this requires some personal responsibility. If you're planning on retiring when you reach 60 then it seems like it would be sensible to check at some point in advance of that date that the assumptions you made when you were in say your 40s are still true when you're in your 50s. In which case that would have revealed the change in pension age.
First Past The Post isn't fit for purpose, we all know that. Sadly the electorate had the choice to abolish it and they overwhelmingly rejected that choice.
I don't dismiss them at all. I think they are a very real danger.
The initial changes in 1995 were very well communicated, the right wing media was full of people blaming "feminism" for the fact that pension ages for men and women were to be equalised.
Yep, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour was very much on their side. Corbyn still is, to be fair.
Yes I should have been a bit clearer, I have some sympathy for those that got hit worst by the 2011 changes but that's it. And, as you say, I find their name to be somewhat eyebrow raising as what they're actually arguing for is more inequality.
AIUI, the compensation recommended by the Ombudsman which the government have just decided not to pay is for failures in communication by the DWP. This 'maladministration' began in the 2000s. What's not clear to me is whether the £10.5bn bill is just for that, or whether that's the potential bill for restoring that group to the pre-95 scheme.
I don't think that figure proves anything much. That election was strongly effectively irrelevant due to the imminence of Brexit, so even more ideal as a place for a protest vote than previous European elections.
Reform UK mainly exists to force the Tories to move further to the right, just as UKIP did pre-2016. FPTP has helped in this context, as UKIP/Reform effectively hijacked the Tories to achieve this; under PR this wouldn't have been necessary. The left wing equivalent was Momentum hijacking Labour.
It was around 3000 per person, so definitely not enough to restore them to the pre 95 scheme.
I still think he would be too extremist to get in.
What tax do you propose increasing or spending you would cut to pay any compensation?
Or to put it another way, which of our young people with limited means of building capital will be taxed the most to funnel yet more money to older people? Gross. Hope my generation never feels so entitled, and glad we are slowly moving beyond the supine and servile "respect your elders" and treating these people the same as every other cohort of grown adults.
I wonder how many of these women voted for labour on the promise of support.
I believe the Tories are so much of a busted flush after 15 years of failure that there is little point in Reform trying to influence them. Instead the threat now comes from Reform itself getting significant numbers of seats.
I agree with that part thought.
On the flip side, you have Scotland or Israel, where smaller parties demand extreme policies as the price of joining a coalition.
And the LibDems were standing up for the right for farmers to pay less tax than the rest of us!
Precisely.
Now that might be true, but while the Tories were in government UKIP/Reform's main purpose was to influence the Tories rather than replace them.
True, but that still happens under FPTP too: the DUP's confidence and supply deal with the Tories was a strong example of this.
The UK political and voting system prevents the likes of Farage ever gaining power. Also the fact Farage has proven to be a rather useless MP for Clacton doesn't help him either.
He's also a 60-year old alcoholic chain smoker. Add another 4-5 years and he could easily not be in the best of health to lead a party, let alone a government. Furthermore, being tied to Trump might be working out well for Farage and other equivalents around the world, but if it all goes wrong in the US, they'll be exposed and trying hard to pretend they had nothing to do with him (and by all probability failing).
I discussed this with a friend of mine the morning after the American election, and we both agreed that no one like Farage or Trump would ever get in, much like you say, simply due to the mathematics of our voting system. But after four and a half more years of the Reform elites greasily persuading the gullible that they are the antidote to this nasty establishment, numerical psephology will, I fear, go sharply out the window...at least there are two votes his band of snake oil salesmen won't be getting in 2029!
