Reform UK discussion

[Tetchytyke]

But the success of Reform in places like Boston reflects the disruptive effect of migration from EU nations in central and Eastern Europe, which has had a visible and audible impact on the area.

Boston is an interesting one. The most recent data I can find is from the 2021 Census, where Boston had a higher than average population growth together with 25% of people who state they were not born in England (N.B. the Census recorded England, not UK). It's still 94% white, though; as you say, the immigration into Boston has largely come from Poland and Lithuania.

Boston's population change seems to be mostly due to the agriculture industry bringing in lower-paid casual labour from EU countries. You can see that with the number of household types listed as 'other' in the census data: for Boston, this is over 20% and appears to be related to individuals living in agricultural dormitories or HMOs. Boston also has a relatively low average age.

I'd be very interested in how things have changed there in the last six years since Brexit. The agriculture industry is experiencing severe labour shortages and data suggests that the industry in England has lost more than 20% of its casual workforce since 2020. Other data shows that significant volumes of EU migrant workers, especially those who had more casual or insecure employment in the agriculture and hospitality industries, have left the UK.

Boston is also a bit of a localised outlier, though, I suspect because of its particularly labour-intensive agriculture: fruit and flower picking is still largely a manual process. Even down the road in Skegness- which is part of the same parliamentary constituency- you're back up to 94% of people being born in the UK.

The BNP also enjoyed significant support in that part of Lincolnshire even as long ago as the late 90s and early 2000s, so support for the more right-wing parties is certainly not new in that part of the world. EU national migrants (unlike Commonwealth national migrants) can't vote in general elections, either.

 

[Broucek]

Nevertheless, much as the majority on here detests Reform and Restore Britain we would be negligent to ignore the logic that drives the desire to repel apparent invaders, especially when they appear to be successful in large numbers.

[snip]

Meanwhile we have many thousands of mostly young men with no legitimate way to earn their keep. Is it any wonder that many will be tempted into low level crime, and a few to worse?

The mainstream traditional parties haven't found good answers that work. As Spain has just discovered wiping the slate clean for hundreds of thousands has attracted many more. Hand wringing is not a solution, but what is?

Thank you. It's easy to sneer at the leaders of Reform and Restore but I'm less comfortable with sneering at voters who have legitimite concerns that the mainstream parties are, at best, ignoring (and at worst dismissing as racism).

I personally have had mostly great experience of immigration around me. But I'm a middle class professional who lives in a leafy part of London. Lived experience may be less positive for people who have limited skills, live in regions with limited employement opportunities and/or are in social housing.

 

[SuspectUsual]

If you assume that the dislike of migration is solely to do with skin colour, then that's credible. But the success of Reform in places like Boston reflects the disruptive effect of migration from EU nations in central and Eastern Europe, which has had a visible and audible impact on the area. Large scale migration is something they have experience of, and which has disproportionately impacted those in the community that research shows are also especially likely to vote for Reform.

Impacted in what way? By doing the jobs the natives were too bone idle to do themselves? I know quite a few people who work in agriculture in Lincolnshire and Norfolk and they all wish more of the Eastern Europeans had stayed

 

[D6130]

Impacted in what way? By doing the jobs the natives were too bone idle to do themselves? I know quite a few people who work in agriculture in Lincolnshire and Norfolk and they all wish more of the Eastern Europeans had stayed

This.

 

[AlterEgo]

Impacted in what way? By doing the jobs the natives were too bone idle to do themselves? I know quite a few people who work in agriculture in Lincolnshire and Norfolk and they all wish more of the Eastern Europeans had stayed

You should only be allowed to trot out this lazy stereotype if at the same time you have the guts to list other ethnicities you consider to be too lazy to do certain jobs.

 

[The exile]

Impacted in what way? By doing the jobs the natives were too bone idle to do themselves? I know quite a few people who work in agriculture in Lincolnshire and Norfolk and they all wish more of the Eastern Europeans had stayed

People (not all people, I grant you) tend to be conservative and like the comfort blanket of things that stay the same. Look at all the campaigns to “save xyz” (and indeed the reactions in these circles to the withdrawal of services /stock). Most can accommodate to subtle change that happens slowly - especially if it has no impact on their immediate “nest”, but when it’s quicker or “nearer” they get unsettled and much easier to whip up. Add in a feeling of resentment that the powers that be have always been indifferent and no one has “got your back” (it only has to be a perception) and you’ve got the beginnings of a powder keg.
Migration (be that immigration to the uk or the annual influx of Brits to Magaluf or Ibiza) removes people from the controlling influence of their roots - groups of young single males aren’t exactly famed for their considerate behaviour to others, whatever their race or ethnicity.

 

[D1537]

You should only be allowed to trot out this lazy stereotype if at the same time you have the guts to list other ethnicities you consider to be too lazy to do certain jobs.

I don't believe ethnicity is a factor here. No-one is saying it's only white British that don't want to do these jobs, it's black British, Asian British, etc.

Take home visiting care for elderly/disabled people. Not a massively pleasant job in many cases. We are very rural and there's one firm round here that does pretty much every village (indeed, we know the carers by name now in some cases). Every single care operative is a recent immigrant. Is it laziness by the Brits? Perhaps in some cases, but I suspect mostly it's not wanting to do a sometimes unpleasant job for minimum wage (and in some cases on zero hours contracts). See also: hotel cleaners, hospital and care home orderlies, etc.

 

[SuspectUsual]

You should only be allowed to trot out this lazy stereotype if at the same time you have the guts to list other ethnicities you consider to be too lazy to do certain jobs.

Maybe sometimes it is a lazy stereotype but in this case it’s the direct lived experience of a number of ex-colleagues who farm out there and work in associated roles like logistics. There was never a shortage of jobs, but there was a shortage of people prepared to do them. Eastern Europeans filled that gap.

A lot of the natives (obviously largely white but by no means exclusively, but that’s the regional demographic) just didn’t see the point of grafting and a fair percentage of those that did try it soon went on the sick

I am, naturally, a soft liberal, and I find it difficult coming to opinions like this because it doesn’t feel how I should be feeling and it’s worryingly right wing, but there we are

Similarly, I found myself for the first time ever earlier today agreeing with Rupert Lowe about something. A stopped clock and all that

 

[AlterEgo]

I don't believe ethnicity is a factor here. No-one is saying it's only white British that don't want to do these jobs, it's black British, Asian British, etc.

Take home visiting care for elderly/disabled people. Not a massively pleasant job in many cases. We are very rural and there's one firm round here that does pretty much every village (indeed, we know the carers by name now in some cases). Every single care operative is a recent immigrant. Is it laziness by the Brits? Perhaps in some cases, but I suspect mostly it's not wanting to do a sometimes unpleasant job for minimum wage (and in some cases on zero hours contracts). See also: hotel cleaners, hospital and care home orderlies, etc.

The idea that British people are uniquely lazy (and are being bailed out by hero immigrants) isn't true or fair. And in the case of people who live in Lincolnshire, it is about ethnicity. Because there is just a small percentage of non-white people living there.

Next time someone tells you something like people from India are lazy and won't do X job, will you claim it isn't about ethnicity because some white people also live in India?

The perception by some British people that predominantly white Brits in places like Clacton or Boston or Scunthorpe are undeserving poor (because they are lazy) really underlines that it is forbidden to talk about any other group of people in this derogatory way. And the people who live there know that, and will vote against it, because they feel disliked.

Maybe sometimes it is a lazy stereotype but in this case it’s the direct lived experience of a number of ex-colleagues who farm out there and work in associated roles like logistics. There was never a shortage of jobs, but there was a shortage of people prepared to do them. Eastern Europeans filled that gap.

I could give you a number of lived experiences I've been told about black people in South Africa from my white in-laws, but I wouldn't care to do so because I don't think what they say about them is fair or could be true about a cohort of millions of people.

The reasons for people not wanting to work picking vegetables are more complex than that, not least that the work is organised by gangmasters who recruit from certain pools of labour. You often have to live in a caravan, be very physically fit, and the work is seasonal and requires a lot of flexibility. Of course farms are going to recruit 100 single Kazakhs to do it if they can send half the money back home to save and live like they are in the army for three months. Thats because the UK minimum wage goes a lot further for those sorts of people in terms of building an actual life in Kazakhstan whereas here it does not even keep you out of poverty.

 

[35B]

Impacted in what way? By doing the jobs the natives were too bone idle to do themselves? I know quite a few people who work in agriculture in Lincolnshire and Norfolk and they all wish more of the Eastern Europeans had stayed

I live in Grantham, having moved from London. In the decade between moving and the Brexit referendum, I noticed significant change in accents, businesses, and community. Friends who worked in town noticed deeper changes - especially teachers who had to adapt rapidly to a changing population). The effect is much less visible than where I grew up in London, but equally pervasive.

All of those were impacts, and the majority of the change was at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. People I know with rental properties have done well, with rents staying up and strong competition for every house. These are all impacts, even before you get to the much more vexed questions about who are willing to do/offered jobs.

 

[D1537]

The idea that British people are uniquely lazy (and are being bailed out by hero immigrants) isn't true or fair.

Which is exactly what I said; not (usually) laziness, but an unwillingness to do unpleasant minimum wage jobs. They're not the same thing.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The idea that British people are uniquely lazy (and are being bailed out by hero immigrants) isn't true or fair.

But nor is the directly converse idea that those evil immigrants are coming here and stealing our jobs.

The reasons why people don't take jobs in certain sectors are complex, but largely come down to one thing: money.

If you're young and fit and on a short-term contract then you'll put up with things for a summer harvest season if the money you can earn in Boston is more than you can earn in Lithuania or Poland or wherever. Take the hit, count the cash, go home. You saw the same in the 1980s with all the out-of-work tradies who went to West Germany in search of good pay, and you see the same now with all the young Instagram types going off to Dubai for the hustle.

If you have all the trappings of a settled life in the UK then you can't do this so easily. Your wages need to be enough to live on. In these sorts of sectors they're not. They never have been, even if you go back 300 years they weren't.

Which is exactly what I said; not (usually) laziness, but an unwillingness to do unpleasant minimum wage jobs. They're not the same thing.

It's not unwillingness so much as it not being economically viable.

Care work is the perfect example of all that's wrong. It is badly paid work with awful terms and conditions. They can't recruit staff locally who can work under those terms, so they ship carers in from places like the Philippines or parts of Africa. Those carers will come over for a bit, do the grafting, then go home with the cash in their pocket.

The owners of care homes do incredibly well financially though. Same with childcare, you never see a poor nursery owner but you see plenty of poor and badly treated nursery staff.

But here's the thing: ship all those Filipinos and Ghanaians back home tomorrow and nothing will improve. People still won't be able to raise a family on the wages being offered by these employers, and these employers will still be just as exploitative as they always were.

It's why I despair of people from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds uniting so strongly behind Reform. They're the living embodiment of that meme about the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

 

[jon0844]

The reasons for people not wanting to work picking vegetables are more complex than that, not least that the work is organised by gangmasters who recruit from certain pools of labour. You often have to live in a caravan, be very physically fit, and the work is seasonal and requires a lot of flexibility. Of course farms are going to recruit 100 single Kazakhs to do it if they can send half the money back home to save and live like they are in the army for three months. Thats because the UK minimum wage goes a lot further for those sorts of people in terms of building an actual life in Kazakhstan whereas here it does not even keep you out of poverty.

You've perfectly described what happened with a lot (most?) of these jobs. If you can slum it for a few months in the UK, sharing a bed with 1 or 2 others (you sleep when the others work) and have your transportation and food taken care of, then send most of the money home that's equivalent to 2, 3 or 4 times the income you'd make there, why wouldn't you do it? We know people would as they did just that.

If you lived here, you'd presumably not want to sleep multiple people to a home, sharing a bed, and would have no chance of getting to a site by public transport so would either need to cycle potentially miles in the dark, or have a car - which itself would probably make the income insufficient to make the job worthwhile. So you simply wouldn't do it, at all.

Does that make someone lazy? Well, it's only really possible to tell if the farms set up caravans and invited people to live on site to do the work and offered the necessary transportation. I don't know if this is a thing, but it seems that while many will say it was wrong to have people from abroad coming in to work for so cheap, we never thought of a viable alternative.

 

[35B]

It's not unwillingness so much as it not being economically viable.

Care work is the perfect example of all that's wrong. It is badly paid work with awful terms and conditions. They can't recruit staff locally who can work under those terms, so they ship carers in from places like the Philippines or parts of Africa. Those carers will come over for a bit, do the grafting, then go home with the cash in their pocket.

The owners of care homes do incredibly well financially though. Same with childcare, you never see a poor nursery owner but you see plenty of poor and badly treated nursery staff.

I must have imagined the tightness of the (family business) care homes I've had to deal with, then. Or the reduction in the number of them in recent years.

But, more widely, especially given the existence of minimum wage rules, I'm not sure that it is whether local staff "can work under those terms". It is more that they won't do that work, on those shift patterns, at those wages. That's not about laziness, but the whole range of factors that influence who will take what jobs. Just as an example, given the predominantly female workforce, I'd bet that one of the factors will be the ability of mothers to combine the work with their own childcare responsibilities where they can't rely on a partner to take up the slack during the shift - whether because they're single parents, they're both working, or whatever else.

 

[quantinghome]

Which is exactly what I said; not (usually) laziness, but an unwillingness to do unpleasant minimum wage jobs. They're not the same thing.

It's less to do with unwillingness and simply the fact that most British people have better paying and more pleasant employment options available to them. "Now, you could take this IT job, or you could to do some cleaning work..."

Anti-immigrant sentiment is nothing new e.g. Irish itinerant labour in Britain was a common thing even before the famine. Lithuanians were brought in to Scottish ironworks in the 19th century, earning a pretty xenophobic response from none other than Keir Hardie. His least worst habit was to call them 'Poles' (ironic considering the Scottish reaction to being mislabelled as the neighbouring country). The only difference is that 21st transport and communications has made the world much much smaller place.

 

[jon0844]

I think we need to continue to allow people to come here and do the jobs we can't afford to do. As long as people are not mistreated or missold what the job entails and the arrangements (living, eating, travel - and certainly not gangmasters holding passports or trafficking workers) are clear, what's the harm?

If the answer is the loss of local jobs, well that then means you need to find a way to have the natives able to do the jobs for a fair wage and able to get to/from their places of work for however many months of the year.

Likewise to a degree for the care home jobs, although I'd argue that we've allowed care homes and nurseries to be taken over by those who earn significant sums of money but don't seem to allow it to trickle down to those who do the frontline work.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I must have imagined the tightness of the (family business) care homes I've had to deal with, then. Or the reduction in the number of them in recent years.

Family businesses have been hoovered up by private equity who then offshore their profits. Same as in the veterinary sector. Care homes fees have risen exponentially (literally) but the staff still get paid minimum wage.

But yes, the big corporate care homes take more- including all the hidden profits from loans and property rents, the Centre for Health and the Public Interest reckon £13 out of every £100 gets swallowed up in profit.

But, more widely, especially given the existence of minimum wage rules, I'm not sure that it is whether local staff "can work under those terms".

A 40 hour week at National Minimum Wage won't pay the bills, which is the real issue, especially if you have any dependents. You can't work under those terms. That's why even a single parent with one child working 40 hours a week on NMW will still get about another £600 a month in Universal Credit. And that extra money doesn't take into account childcare costs, which even for daytime office hours work can make work not economically viable.

Of course there are all the other issues too, especially to do with shift patterns. It's not uncommon for the Filipino care workers to leave their children behind in the care of family, just to let them come here and make some money. So it's not that the Filipinos are hard working and the British are lazy, as you say, but the British simply can't make the work become economically viable at those wages.

 

[Sorcerer]

The irony remains that the areas with the strongest Reform support are the areas where the impact of migration is the least. People in Reform heartlands are overwhelmingly both white and born in the UK.

These people are pumped full of scare stories about the towns where migration does have more of an impact, stories about how you'll get stabbed to death by a migrant on the platform at Kings Cross if you ever go up to Londonistan. They don't go to London so all they can do is go off the news, and the news is pumping them full of fear.

So I am a bit late today getting to this, but my understanding is that many seaside towns in the South East are areas where old Cockneys moved to after London became more multicultural and gentrified, and then when Reform and right-wing propaganda campaigns start telling stories about people being stabbed in Sharia-based London they put the pieces together and start thinking "immigrants are moving in, causing crime and ruining everything". That's my theory was to why white areas like Clacton are overwhelmingly Reform.

One shouldn't underestimate the power of these propaganda campaigns by the way. I for a while thought London had become a crime-ridden dystopia just because I heard stories about stabbings but didn't make much of an effort to look into it because our political climate is so dreary and I was already feeling grumpy from the winter weather. It was only when I visited London again in person that I realised it was still the city I knew and loved and that Sadiq Khan is probably a big part of why they peddle all this Londonistan nonsense.

 

[BAFRA77]

You should only be allowed to trot out this lazy stereotype if at the same time you have the guts to list other ethnicities you consider to be too lazy to do certain jobs.

An interesting take that bears no resemblance to the gist of the original post.

 

[AlterEgo]

An interesting take that bears no resemblance to the gist of the original post.

The gist - which the poster later doubled down on by the way, not that you read beyond firing off your pithy missive - is that the locals were lazy; it is not exactly In Search of Lost Time by Proust. If you ever wonder why Reform keep getting votes it is partly because the voters look at people who say or agree with things like that and decide to vote against Whatever That Is. And sometimes, who can blame them? This is why we are out of the EU as well.

 

[Bald Rick]

Large scale migration is something they have experience of, and which has disproportionately impacted those in the community

I live in Grantham, having moved from London. In the decade between moving and the Brexit referendum, I noticed significant change in accents, businesses, and community. Friends who worked in town noticed deeper changes - especially teachers who had to adapt rapidly to a changing population). The effect is much less visible than where I grew up in London, but equally pervasive.

All of those were impacts, and the majority of the change was at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum.

This all sounds like positive impacts to me.

(Former Grantham resident)

 

[35B]

This all sounds like positive impacts to me.

(Former Grantham resident)

I'm not passing comment on whether positive or negative; different people will have felt them in different ways. The point is that they were genuine impacts

 

[martin butler]

The appeal for some people of reform, and the social media campaigns that amplify the scare tactics is that people feel ignored, left behind, often it's the poorer less well educated often white people, and the picture painted by a very well targeted, and funded media campaign, makes it easier for marginalised people to blame someone they can easily identify, such as immigrants,

In my own area, some areas, that once were strong labour areas voted in reform councillors, and others like where i am, went green, Yet, we all have the same problems, not enough social housing, rents are too high, high levels of crime and deprivation, and a feeling that politicians were ignoring us, certainly when the likes of Amber Rudd and Sally Anne Hart were our MP's,

so why is it that some locals, in Hastings, thought that electing people who were in favour of an even more draconian version of austerity would benefit them, when much of what affects us can be laid at the door of past policies over many years?

 

[The exile]

so why is it that some locals, in Hastings, thought that electing people who were in favour of an even more draconian version of austerity would benefit them, when much of what affects us can be laid at the door of past policies over many years?

That requires you to think. Blaming it on “the others” (given the fact that somewhere buried in the hatred and rabble rousing there are some uncomfortable truths - just not the ones that the rabble rousers want us to see) is a lot easier and offers a much “simpler” (as if!) “solution” (not!)

 

[jon0844]

The appeal for some people of reform, and the social media campaigns that amplify the scare tactics is that people feel ignored, left behind, often it's the poorer less well educated often white people, and the picture painted by a very well targeted, and funded media campaign, makes it easier for marginalised people to blame someone they can easily identify, such as immigrants,

In my own area, some areas, that once were strong labour areas voted in reform councillors, and others like where i am, went green, Yet, we all have the same problems, not enough social housing, rents are too high, high levels of crime and deprivation, and a feeling that politicians were ignoring us, certainly when the likes of Amber Rudd and Sally Anne Hart were our MP's,

so why is it that some locals, in Hastings, thought that electing people who were in favour of an even more draconian version of austerity would benefit them, when much of what affects us can be laid at the door of past policies over many years?

Reform tell us they'll cut taxes so how is that not a good thing? More money in our pockets! And they'll stop giving benefits to the lazy and immigrants, so even better, no? So much money saved... And we should be looking after our own, right?

It's clear people look out for their own interests but ironically they don't seem to realise that Reform isn't cutting taxes and wanting to keep funding essential services. They'll willingly reduce funding for services so any savings in income tax are immediately wiped out - and then some.

More expensive public transport (why subsidise that when the successful people drive?), free healthcare transitioned to an insurance based system (there goes more of those taxes saved) and if you gain a disability in the future, don't count on much support. You're no longer beneficial to society so you're on your own. Same if you're unemployed.

Once they've done what they want because people allowed them to, they'll go after pensions. Again, if you're not able to work then what good are you?

 

[AlterEgo]

so why is it that some locals, in Hastings, thought that electing people who were in favour of an even more draconian version of austerity would benefit them, when much of what affects us can be laid at the door of past policies over many years?

Because they don't like you and consider you patronising and therefore will vote against you. This is one of the most important things to understand.

(By "you" I don't mean literally you, but rather you as the embodiment typical anti-Reform voter. It includes me too!)

It is true that the English working class has numerous problems but the solution has to tread a fine line between buying into their unjustified victim mentality and simply telling them what's good for them. That is a narrow tightrope to tread.

 

[brad465]

Because they don't like you and consider you patronising and therefore will vote against you. This is one of the most important things to understand.

(By "you" I don't mean literally you, but rather you as the embodiment typical anti-Reform voter. It includes me too!)

It is true that the English working class has numerous problems but the solution has to tread a fine line between buying into their unjustified victim mentality and simply telling them what's good for them. That is a narrow tightrope to tread.

Basically certain people need to "campaign" for the opposite of what they actually believe is right. I firmly believe Remain would have won had Cameron backed Leave, or at the very least stayed out of it, because some Leave voters did so to spite Cameron.

 

[NeilCr]

So I am a bit late today getting to this, but my understanding is that many seaside towns in the South East are areas where old Cockneys moved to after London became more multicultural and gentrified, and then when Reform and right-wing propaganda campaigns start telling stories about people being stabbed in Sharia-based London they put the pieces together and start thinking "immigrants are moving in, causing crime and ruining everything". That's my theory was to why white areas like Clacton are overwhelmingly Reform.

One shouldn't underestimate the power of these propaganda campaigns by the way. I for a while thought London had become a crime-ridden dystopia just because I heard stories about stabbings but didn't make much of an effort to look into it because our political climate is so dreary and I was already feeling grumpy from the winter weather. It was only when I visited London again in person that I realised it was still the city I knew and loved and that Sadiq Khan is probably a big part of why they peddle all this Londonistan nonsense.

I live in a seaside area (Thanet) which had the first UKIP council in the UK and where Farage lost in the general election in 2015 (first time I had voted Tory )

By then I had been here about eight years. I had retired and was volunteering in an advice bureau. Certainly a lot of people had moved down from South and East London (indeed I did) and the immigrant population were mostly Eastern Europeans. As with a previous poster they did the lower paid jobs - care, hospitality, fruit and vegetable picking

I can say that there was an amount of hostility towards the Eastern Europeans then. We had it expressed to us in the advice bureau - sometimes based on apocryphal stories. IIRC Khan became mayor in 2016 so, in this instance anyway, I don't believe that the stories about what London is like under his rule influence(d) these folks views. They were there already although I guess it maybe reinforces them

Fwiw the UKIP council was awful - fair to say that we have had bad Tory and Labour administrations too.

 

[35B]

Basically certain people need to "campaign" for the opposite of what they actually believe is right. I firmly believe Remain would have won had Cameron backed Leave, or at the very least stayed out of it, because some Leave voters did so to spite Cameron.

I fear you may be right. But if Cameron deserves credit for anything around the referendum, it was leading for the campaign he believed in.

If we're going to re-litigate that period, I'd focus on a couple of other matters before getting anywhere near that. One was the failure of Corbyn to campaign effectively for Remain, the other was how rubbish and complacent the Remain campaign were.

 

[Bald Rick]

If we're going to re-litigate that period, I'd focus on a couple of other matters before getting anywhere near that. One was the failure of Corbyn to campaign effectively for Remain

or even at all. I blame him more than Cameron!