Reform UK discussion

[Tetchytyke]

It's a populist and anti-intellectual party which generally holds academia in contempt and blames the academy and elites for the country's failure (and they might have a point!).

That is the paradox at the heart of Reform. They are a party which seeks to blame "the elite" for all that is wrong with the country but the senior politicians in Reform are the elite.

I am left wondering where some of the Reform members I have met, and some I know, such as a professor, a headteacher, a medical doctor and others fit into that?

I can't comment about your friends, but it is perfectly possible to be a professor or a headteacher or a medical doctor and be a headbanger at the same time. There are countless examples on all sides of the political space.

Reform illustrated this last year when they had Dr Aseem Malhotra speak at their conference last year. He is a qualified cardiologist and previously had some very sensible things to say about ultra-processed food, sugar, and how the food industry requires more regulation. He also stood up at the Reform conference and said that the Covid vaccine is why the King and the Princess of Wales had cancer.

Same with the likes of Dr Andrew Wakefield or Michael Yeadon. Very qualified, very experienced men. Also complete fruitcakes.

 

[m0ffy]

That is the paradox at the heart of Reform. They are a party which seeks to blame "the elite" for all that is wrong with the country but the senior politicians in Reform are the elite.


I can't comment about your friends, but it is perfectly possible to be a professor or a headteacher or a medical doctor and be a headbanger at the same time. There are countless examples on all sides of the political space.

Reform illustrated this last year when they had Dr Aseem Malhotra speak at their conference last year. He is a qualified cardiologist and previously had some very sensible things to say about ultra-processed food, sugar, and how the food industry requires more regulation. He also stood up at the Reform conference and said that the Covid vaccine is why the King and the Princess of Wales had cancer.

Same with the likes of Dr Andrew Wakefield or Michael Yeadon. Very qualified, very experienced men. Also complete fruitcakes.

Point of order - Wakefield isn’t a doctor and cannot legally use the title.

 

[TUC]

That is the paradox at the heart of Reform. They are a party which seeks to blame "the elite" for all that is wrong with the country but the senior politicians in Reform are the elite.


I can't comment about your friends, but it is perfectly possible to be a professor or a headteacher or a medical doctor and be a headbanger at the same time. There are countless examples on all sides of the political space.

Reform illustrated this last year when they had Dr Aseem Malhotra speak at their conference last year. He is a qualified cardiologist and previously had some very sensible things to say about ultra-processed food, sugar, and how the food industry requires more regulation. He also stood up at the Reform conference and said that the Covid vaccine is why the King and the Princess of Wales had cancer.

For what it's worth, my wife and I were both open-mouthed at Malhotra's comments at last year's comments. We both thought 'these kind of bonkers comments are totally unhelpful to Reform'.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Point of order - Wakefield isn’t a doctor and cannot legally use the title.

True, he was struck off because of his headbangery.

He was a doctor though.

 

[TUC]

I don't think you're very interested in examining this given you've started sealioning about "data" when you don't even contest the facts as stated. And I have to say this interaction has only reinforced my view that Reform members in general do not really prefer to engage with intellectual argument.

As someone whose career has been focussed upon identifying evidence-based clinical interventions I'm really not sure how to respond to that, except that you would probably say I'm another exception.

 

[35B]

True, he was struck off because of his headbangery.

He was a doctor though.

Point of order, he was struck off because his papers were based on trials that breached all ethical guidelines, and he was dishonest about that.

While I agree that he was and is a complete headbanger, that was not enough to get him struck off - nor, sadly, will it be for Malhotra.

For what it's worth, my wife and I were both open-mouthed at Malhotra's comments at last year's comments. We both thought 'these kind of bonkers comments are totally unhelpful to Reform'.

I am glad there is some sense within Reform. However, my view is that this kind of comment is not a bug but a feature of the party, and the willingness to platform him was an illustration of the real nature of the party.

 

[nlogax]

For what it's worth, my wife and I were both open-mouthed at Malhotra's comments at last year's comments. We both thought 'these kind of bonkers comments are totally unhelpful to Reform'.

Malhotra's comments were just the forbidden icing on what is already the turd-like cake of Reform. These are the people Reform attracts. These are the lunatics that you'll be associated with as a Reform supporter.

 

[Tetchytyke]

For what it's worth, my wife and I were both open-mouthed at Malhotra's comments at last year's comments. We both thought 'these kind of bonkers comments are totally unhelpful to Reform'.

Sadly, I think the opposite. Reform's whole schtick is anti-establishment and anti-elite, that there is a secret cabal of people working to undermine Britain, the "woke mind virus." It's the same schtick that Liz Truss peddles- she failed because of the 'deep state,' not because she's madder than a bag of cut snakes.

Reform's senior politicians are generally clever enough to walk the tightrope and not peddle outright conspiracy theories. But Dr Malhotra's presence was deliberate, a bat signal out to those further down the rabbit hole.

 

[AlterEgo]

As someone whose career has been focussed upon identifying evidence-based clinical interventions I'm really not sure how to respond to that, except that you would probably say I'm another exception.

Indeed, you aren't interested and still refuse to engage in that discussion. Point proven.

Malhotra's comments were just the forbidden icing on what is already the turd-like cake of Reform. These are the people Reform attracts. These are the lunatics that you'll be associated with as a Reform supporter.

Exactly. Imagine going to conference and seeing a really far gone headbanger like Aseem Malhotra. He, by the way, was very Covid-positive at the outset of the pandemic and even co-authored a paper warning of structural racial bias in research into Covid outcomes - how incredibly woke of him!

His dad then died of heart disease and he started saying vaccines were responsible and then also that the royal family was getting cancer due to taking mRNA vaccines, for which there is no evidence at all - and aligning himself with the antivax movement in the USA. It is a classic case of a personal tragedy invoking a decline in reason and anchoring to reality and I do feel a bit sorry for him. Reform platformed him for a reason and it is because he appeals to other desperate conspiracists - people who have the awareness they are not especially bright and have been frustrated by it all their lives, who then find an alternative way of thinking which provides all the answers while also baffling traditional elites, who they have an inferiority complex about.

Many such cases on the conspiracy-adjacent right in particular, where oddballs and kooks become harmful personalities. People like Jordan Peterson and James Lindsay. And then you have the captured grifters like Douglas Murray. Murray is an interesting one. He's a very intelligent man who began his career by, unusually, criticising the actions of the British state at Bloody Sunday from a conservative perspective. It was fiercely intellectually honest. These days he is a firm fixture on the far right speaking circuit and trolling on Twitter. That's where the money is for him. As it is indeed for so many fellow-travellers. And all it takes is useful idiots to enable it. Don't be one!

 

[Purple Train]

I think it's quite likely that most people in the room only saw a protestor being removed and not the violence that went along with it, so perhaps most people were indeed cheering at her simple removal. But the people surrounding the incident seemed very keen at the goings on, as she got her hair pulled and her head yanked off her neck and she got smacked with a metal crutches. Those people got their digs in as she was being appropriately restrained and lawfully removed by security because they're thick cowards who felt safe and enabled to it.


A good start to this sort of analysis is to ask the question:

Are there any political parties in the Western world which are definitely, absolutely sexist and do stand for the reversal of women's rights? And, given those parties invariably have plenty of women in them, does this provide a defence to the allegations that they are sexist?

Reform is more popular among men compared to women. This is also reflected in the fact that only about 20% of their elected representatives are women, which is the lowest percentage of any large UK political party. And Reform is much more popular amongst men than it is women - and particularly young women, who strongly disfavour them. That's probably largely because Reform's stated policy is to revoke the Equality Act and replace it with something cooked up by its overwhelmingly male hierarchy, and also because women don't necessarily like the abrasive style and authoritarianism which defines the party.

Nonetheless, I do think it is unfair that you are being asked to account for the actions of others in the party. I voted Green and said so at the time of the last elections. Nobody asked me about any of the problematic actions of its leader or some of its radical members whose actions can amount to antisemitism. There would be a multitude of difficult questions anyone might be asked about party members regardless of affiliation. Many of us use voting or political affiliation as vehicles to enact some sort of change; I lent the Greens my vote and don't regret it although I'm unlikely to lend it to them again.

I live in rural Northamptonshire. West Northamptonshire Council is run by Reform who have an absolute majority. They won more than half the seats. But I cannot live my life going around and talking to parents at nursery and going to the local beer festival or the bale push or the dads' support group or the supermarket etc etc...and think half the people I bump into are "bad". I don't recognise the criticism that Reform voters are all unpleasant or stupid; it stands to reason that most of them are decent and hard working and want certain political objectives met. And some of those objectives I personally support, even if I disagree with the method by which they are achieved.

A lot of Reform voters are just like about half the population - floating and transactional voters who are with Reform because they want a small number of political objectives met, like a reduction in asylum claims or a reduction in welfare dependency. The question always has to be how those people can be won back by other parties.

I know I'm digging back into the depths of this thread a bit, but that is very well said - thank you. I'm not going to pretend that I haven't found Reform voters figuring disproportionately highly in the "like arguing with a brick wall" stakes, given most of Reform's policies seem to be just "vibes" with scant detail on them, but I think that anybody who assumes that Reform voters are all lunatics are kidding themselves, particularly if they also believe that Reform is a "big" party. Reform cannot be both a big party and populated entirely by racists with no grasp of reality. I may be tempted to apply that description to the majority of the leadership, though.

We can't have it both ways, complaining that politics is too polarised these days and then dismissing an entire political party as fruitcakes. Surely nobody on this thread is going to argue that I should have an innate prejudice against all members of Your Party just because I disapprove of its leadership?

Reform and their talking points will not go away if those of us who are against them and everything they stand for just bury our heads in the sand and expect to have a silent majority on our side. You don't rebut a party built on a real sense of "us and them" by refusing to engage with them.

I suppose we should see it as deeply fortunate that Reform are doing their best to self-destruct anyway.

 

[edwin_m]

I would guess many who currently support Reform do so because they saw the Tory government as an abject failure, they perceived the same of the Starmer government, and thought the only remaining viable alternative couldn't really be any worse. They see Farage (like Johnson before him) as one of the few relatable figures in politics and decide he should have a chance.

These are probably people who don't pay too much attention to politics, and that's not a criticism because many have other concerns to worry about or just aren't that interested. They are unlikely to go to Reform conferences or even to express extreme opinions in general conversation and the casual observer might not realise their political inclination unless the subject happens to come up. It's important to make a distinction between this group, who may be more swayed by Farage's scandals and more influenced by Burnham, and those who are actively aware of and support what Reform is trying to do.

 

[Sorcerer]

I would guess many who currently support Reform do so because they saw the Tory government as an abject failure, they perceived the same of the Starmer government, and thought the only remaining viable alternative couldn't really be any worse. They see Farage (like Johnson before him) as one of the few relatable figures in politics and decide he should have a chance.

These are probably people who don't pay too much attention to politics, and that's not a criticism because many have other concerns to worry about or just aren't that interested. They are unlikely to go to Reform conferences or even to express extreme opinions in general conversation and the casual observer might not realise their political inclination unless the subject happens to come up. It's important to make a distinction between this group, who may be more swayed by Farage's scandals and more influenced by Burnham, and those who are actively aware of and support what Reform is trying to do.

I would guess much the same, and your last point about making a distinction already seems to be in motion given that Nigel Farage's popularity is now at an all time low. I like to think of this as evidence that while the British electorate might be swayed towards someone like Farage and Johnson, they have little actual tolerance for those who take the mick as evidenced by Johnson's downfall after the Partygate scandal. Reform's dodgy donations are certainly not sitting right with some people.

Nigel Farage more unpopular than ever, new poll shows

Nigel Farage now has a net favourability rating of -45, identical to Sir Keir Starmer’s score just before his resignation as prime minister

www.independent.co.uk

Nigel Farage‘s popularity has reached a record low, a new poll has shown, weeks after Reform’s annual party conference was overshadowed by allegations surrounding donations to the party.

A new poll conducted by YouGov shows that almost seven in ten Britons (69 per cent) say they have an unfavourable opinion of the Reform leader.

While this is within the margin of error of last month’s figure (67 per cent), it is the highest figure recorded by YouGov's tracker for Mr Farage in the ten years it has run.

This includes nearly six in ten Britons (57 per cent) seeing Mr Farage very unfavourably, while just 24 per cent have a favourable opinion of the Reform UK leader.

Mr Farage now has a net favourability rating of -45, identical to Sir Keir Starmer’s score just before his resignation as prime minister. This is down from a rating of -31 this time last year, with Britons now nearly three times as likely to see him negatively than positively.

Personally I've been somewhat sympathetic to those casually supporting Reform because they are tired of the status quo. The Reform voters I don't really sympathise with are those who don't draw the line anywhere. I am okay with someone admitting maybe Reform isn't the right party for them even if they are concerned about things like immigration, but it would be a fool's errand trying to appeal to those who think a party of millionaires funded by crypto billionaires is somehow "one of us" because Farage set up a publicity stunt picture drinking a pint in a local pub in Clacton.

 

[AlterEgo]

I know I'm digging back into the depths of this thread a bit, but that is very well said - thank you. I'm not going to pretend that I haven't found Reform voters figuring disproportionately highly in the "like arguing with a brick wall" stakes, given most of Reform's policies seem to be just "vibes" with scant detail on them, but I think that anybody who assumes that Reform voters are all lunatics are kidding themselves, particularly if they also believe that Reform is a "big" party. Reform cannot be both a big party and populated entirely by racists with no grasp of reality. I may be tempted to apply that description to the majority of the leadership, though.

We can't have it both ways, complaining that politics is too polarised these days and then dismissing an entire political party as fruitcakes. Surely nobody on this thread is going to argue that I should have an innate prejudice against all members of Your Party just because I disapprove of its leadership?

Reform and their talking points will not go away if those of us who are against them and everything they stand for just bury our heads in the sand and expect to have a silent majority on our side. You don't rebut a party built on a real sense of "us and them" by refusing to engage with them.

It is very difficult to do when many of them don't really want engagement. There is a strong thread of performative cruelty which runs through the party. A lot of the voters do come from backgrounds where hardship, stress and insecurity are normal, whether they be from disadvantaged backgrounds or simply small business/sole trader people who are living contract to contract and chasing invoices.

there can be a tendency to romanticise hard experiences and describe them as beneficial, which makes them indifferent to inflicting more suffering. You can see this in how many Reform voters don't *really* care if human beings drown in the English Channel as long as it maybe serves some other purpose.

Many of Reform's key policies are centred around making things harder for other groups of people as a first principle and then hoping to reap some specious or unknown benefit.

One of the key challenges is not necessarily around policy but our inbuilt cultural bias as a country to validate and celebrate hardship and poverty as character building traits. This was evident during covid, where quite a few people (and not Reform type people either!) really liked the idea of curfews and lockdowns and limits of associating with people for its own sake despite evidence questioning the efficacy of some of those measures.

The idea being if it's difficult and unpleasant - like a child eating vegetables - it's probably good for you in the long run. Reform is simply riffing on an existing theme here.

The other parties need to exude a lot more competence. The collapse of the Tories has led to Reform's popularity and that started a decade ago or more. Boris' purge of 2019 was a significant event too. Now the Tories have very little talent left.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Reform cannot be both a big party and populated entirely by racists with no grasp of reality.

I wouldn't be as blunt as to say they're "racists with no grasp of reality." But yes, a party can be a big party yet its supporter base can be concentrated around one or two topics. A "big party" is one which has support of perhaps 25%-35% of people; a hefty minority, but still only a minority.

Back in June the National Centre for Social Research released a paper about the demographics and political outlook of Reform supporters. It is worth a read: https://natcen.ac.uk/publications/bsa-43-who-supports-reform

Some of it covers what we already know: Reform supporters tend to be older, whiter, poorer, and have lower levels of academic attainment than the average population.

But they also researched how socially conservative Reform voters are:

Reform supporters are especially conservative on cultural issues and are less supportive of welfare provision.

75% of Reform supporters believe that migrants who come to Britain undermine the country’s culture. Only 35% of the general public agree with them.

Support for the party stands at 49% among those who would vote to stay out of the EU, while just 9% of those who would vote to rejoin back Reform.

88% of Reform supporters believe that attempts to give equal opportunities to transgender people have ‘gone too far’, well above the proportion among the public in general (48%).

78% of Reform supporters say that ‘benefits for unemployed people are too high’, compared with 60% of the general public.

I think the first statistic is particularly startling. Only 35% of people overall believe that migration undermines British culture, however 75% of Reform voters think this. This applies to other equalities policies too:

It shows that Reform supporters are markedly more inclined to be sceptical about attempts to increase equal opportunities for those belonging to minority groups. As many as 88% believe that attempts to give equal opportunities to transgender people have ‘gone too far’, well above the 48% figure among the general public. Similarly, 52% of Reform supporters express that view about opportunities for lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, while 51% say the same of Black and Asian people. Among people in general the figures were 27% and – most notably - just 17% respectively.

What was also interesting was the research into whether Reform voters are economically left-wing or economically right-wing. The answer was marginally more right wing- 21% of those on the economic right support Reform and 15% on the economic left support Reform- but only marginally. Only 37% of Reform supporters are on the economic right, though, compared to 58% for the Conservatives.

Reform supporters are not so distinctive on this dimension. At 22%, support for the party among those on the right is somewhat higher than among those on the left (15%), but the gap is only seven percentage points. Just 37% of Reform supporters are on the right – well below the equivalent figure for the Conservatives (58%), for whom the gap between left and right is as much as 21 points. Meanwhile, Labour and (especially) the Greens are more popular among those on the left than those on the right; just over half (53%) of Green supporters stand on the left, which means that, in contrast to Reform, the party’s support is ideologically concentrated on both dimensions.

The research does, therefore, tend to suggest that Reform voters are congregating around Reform's socially conservative policies, particularly in relation to immigration, rather than anything else.

The last thing to note is that Reform voters are more likely to be struggling financially:

Reform supporters are certainly relatively unhappy about their personal economic circumstances. Support for the party stands at 23% among those who are struggling on their household income (with those who do not support any party now included in the denominator), compared with 15% among those who say they are living comfortably. As a result, almost as many Reform supporters say they are struggling on their current income (27%) as say they are living comfortably (30%). In contrast, among the public in general those living comfortably (37%) considerably outnumber those who say they are struggling (22%)

.

So whilst they may be socially conservative and anti-immigration, it's hard to know whether this is driven by racism or xenophobia or whether it is driven by economic hardship. They may be racist or they may be blaming the wrong people for their financial woes, or maybe both.

There is a strong thread of performative cruelty which runs through the party.

That's because their supporters are far more authoritarian than the average:

Table 5 shows, for each of the five main political parties in Britain, their level of support in our latest survey broken down by where they stand on our libertarian-authoritarian dimension. It reveals that support for Reform is heavily concentrated among those at the authoritarian end of the spectrum. No less than 34% of authoritarians support Reform, enough to make it by far the most popular party among this group, whereas just 5% of libertarians regard themselves as a supporter of the party. As many as three in five (60%) Reform supporters hold views that put them among the one-third most authoritarian.

 

[AlterEgo]

That's because their supporters are far more authoritarian than the average:

Yes but they aren't serious about it.They say they want an authoritarian state but are voting for a party proposing the smallest state of the lot.

 

[35B]

Yes but they aren't serious about it.They say they want an authoritarian state but are voting for a party proposing the smallest state of the lot.

The two are not necessarily inconsistent. Since Thatcher, there's been a growing tension between social and economic conservatism (and a parallel tension to the left).

Whatever the size of state that a Reform Chancellor would deliver (and the mixed messaging there is in itself enough to tell us what we need to know about their integrity), I have no doubt that their social policy would be regressive and with significant expenditure on law enforcement as their authoritarian streak would come out. This is a party that regards Nayib Bukele as an example to admire, not a sign of what to avoid.

 

[Three-Nine]

I am left wondering where some of the Reform members I have met, and some I know, such as a professor, a headteacher, a medical doctor and others fit into that?

There are PhDs who believe in Intelligent Design or Creationism, medical doctors who don’t believe in vaccines, and I know of at least one English journalist with a university education who has stated in one of their columns that evolution is “only a theory” [1]. Fred Hoyle, a Nobel prize winning scientist (though not a palaeontologist or biologist) believed Archaeopteryx was a hoax. Having a qualification does not necessarily make one immune from believing in dubious or crackpot things.

[1] In the usual scientific meaning, “theory” is a much stronger term than in the common English usage which more often uses the word “theory” to mean what science would call a “hypothesis”.

 

[BAFRA77]

Leader of Reform UK in Wales stands down after arrest on suspicion of assault​

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...s-dan-thomas-arrested-on-suspicion-of-assault

The leader of Reform UK in Wales is standing down after he was arrested and bailed on suspicion of assault and coercive or controlling behaviour.

Dan Thomas, a former Tory councillor, was announced as Reform UK’s Welsh leader by Nigel Farage in February. He was elected to the Senedd as leader of the opposition in May’s election.

In a statement, Gwent police said: “On Sunday 13 September a 45-year-old man, from the Aberbargoed area, was arrested on suspicion of assault and engaging in controlling/coercive behaviour. He has been bailed pending further inquiries.”

 

[edwin_m]

Leader of Reform UK in Wales stands down after arrest on suspicion of assault​

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...s-dan-thomas-arrested-on-suspicion-of-assault

That's two Reform leaders for Wales who have faced criminal charges.

 

[35B]

There are PhDs who believe in Intelligent Design or Creationism, medical doctors who don’t believe in vaccines, and I know of at least one English journalist with a university education who has stated in one of their columns that evolution is “only a theory” [1]. Fred Hoyle, a Nobel prize winning scientist (though not a palaeontologist or biologist) believed Archaeopteryx was a hoax. Having a qualification does not necessarily make one immune from believing in dubious or crackpot things.

[1] In the usual scientific meaning, “theory” is a much stronger term than in the common English usage which more often uses the word “theory” to mean what science would call a “hypothesis”.

Indeed, one of the academic staff when my wife was studying geology was a creationist.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Leader of Reform UK in Wales stands down after arrest on suspicion of assault​

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...s-dan-thomas-arrested-on-suspicion-of-assault

Nice phrasing by the Reform bod. The polis have said he's been bailed pending further enquiries; he's spun it as the technically true but somewhat misleading "released without charge"

 

[Bald Rick]

Now the Tories have very little talent left.

I’d argue that’s true of Westminster Politics as a whole. We simlly don’t pay MPs enough for what is expected of them. Increasingly, talent follows cash.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

I’d argue that’s true of Westminster Politics as a whole. We somply don’t pay them enough for what is expected of them. Increasingly, talent follows cash.

Which also raises the wider question of how politics should be funded, both in terms of what politicians should be paid and how much political parties should have their fund-raising regulated. And that leads to the issue of controlling lobbying too. But politicians tend to run scared when these issues are raised.

 

[AlterEgo]

MP salaries really need to be about double what they are currently, though we are getting a bit off topic!

 

[Mojo]

MP salaries really need to be about double what they are currently, though we are getting a bit off topic!

Agreed. Perhaps if we didn't have such weak and useless people leading politics and public services in this country people wouldn't be tempted to try something new.