Reform UK - A symptom of all that is wrong?

Welling would be a better fit (the BNP had their 'bookshop' there).

I think that is a fair analysis

I am not sure my subscription to the Spectator is going to radicalise me, especially if I am living and reading it in a Socialist-run country. Obviously, in this world, if the the Spectator was labelled as a hate speech site, it would not surprise me

In Spain though VOX is polling at almost the same level as Reform in the U.K, maybe there is a correlation, maybe not.

As a foreign immigrant who is learning a new language, you do discover a new found respect for immigrants in general but the debating point is the level and type of immigration to the UK, not to halt immigration entirely.

Weren't tighty righty types more likely to die from COVID?

Fixed it.

That trouble with this comment is that it is proof by assumption. You're taking as your starting point that lockdown / Covid were overblown from a Government perspective, and then using that assumption to attack anyone who accepted it. Around here (where right-wingers outnumber left-wingers about 5:1), I can assure you the "righties" were the first to police everyone else for moving too close, straying out for too long, and so on. It is not a right-wing position inherently to have opposed lockdown; but certain people who opposed lockdown are also right-wing.

If we all stopped talking in these absurd playground-style "leftie" and "righty" terms, we might actually make some progress as a society, and stop being so manipulated by those with an agenda!

I was using that as an example.

All of that sounds great in theory. But there are important things missing from that analysis.

First, the UK is almost exclusively an - on average - centre-left country. I think there may have been one general election in the last 60 years in which the majority of votes didn't go to left or centre-left parties. That's the majority. The Conservatives have held power for so long mainly because they were the only plausible centre-right party going. It is one of many reasons why our electoral system needs wholesale reform.

Second, the Conservative leadership is elected by a tiny number of party members. It is high time we introduced primary elections in this country, or some other attempt to align the candidates with the electorate, and especially the leadership. Truss was prime minister thanks to just 81k people. It is safe to say those are 81k people who have a far more extreme relationship to politics than the average voter. It is an absurd system, which is almost guaranteed to create outcomes that are unhelpful for the party, the country, or both.

Third, because of our electoral system, the Conservative party is especially susceptible to division, and to drunken shifts in stance in order to try to achieve "unity" (which is nothing of the sort - it just means trying to head off splinter groups and new parties). This has made it especially open to being influenced by some rather extreme views. When inevitably it cannot live up to the hopes of those groups, they make a vocal noise about how the party has lost the connection with the "true Tory voters" and here we are.

Reform have made a big noise. They've achieved an outrageously large amount of media coverage. Despite that, they've achieved nothing electorally in the local elections. Had, say, the Liberal Democrats or Greens got as much platform time as Reform, I suspect the Conservative losses would have been even greater.

We must reform our voting system. In some areas in the recent local elections, one party could (and did) end up with 90% of the seats in an area despite getting well under 50% of the votes. There's no sense in which councils represent the diversity of views of people who live in those communities. The same is true in Westminster. The STV system as used in Scotland (and until recently used for the London Mayoral election, but scrapped in an apparent attempt to unseat the incumbent) has been shown to create far more representative outcomes. Proper PR would do better still.

Once we get away from the idea that we need large, monolithic parties, a lot of political problems become easier. I've no problem with Reform winning a few seats in Parliament. They should get the tiny number of MPs their tiny vote share dictates. What they shouldn't be allowed to do is to cause a wholesale lurch to the right (a right that simply doesn't represent the UK) by holding a far larger party hostage.

The same logic applies on the left BTW. Labour was right to marginalise Militant back in the day; and is right to try to marginalise Momentum. In a sane world, both would have become different parties, and held a few seats in line with their true levels of support.

Let's be clear; Reform got 11% of the vote in the areas in which it put up candidates, despite enormous media coverage. At a national level, Reform's vote share was tiny. Just like the various right-wing lobbying groups who regularly get airtime on the BBC and elsewhere, Reform is being indulged because it is newsworthy, not because it is wildly popular.

The Conservative part of yore was a broadly principled, focussed, ideologically-consistent, centre-right party. It isn't that it has lost its core voters; it is that it has lost itself in trying to chase extremes, rather than recognising that electoral reform and an end to those battles is what is ultimately in the best interests of both party and country.

Twice in one day now we've had the same argument trotted out - that Reform is a consequence of the Tories not Torying enough. The idea that Conservatism isn't Conservative enough for proponents of this argument is both ludicrous & soley in the eyes of the beholders. The past eght years or so have seen a Conservative government divest itself of practically all moderate voices, legislate repeatedly to suppress public protest, shut down the entire democratic process in pursuit of a single policy goal, threaten time & again to break international convention & depart from pan European human rights safeguards & gerrymander via statute.

The idea that the Conservatives aren't doing the bidding of the right is risible, it's the clarion call of the fruitloop & both an excellent illustration of both how the hard right can never be appeased & why Reform, UKIP, whatever guise the same old schtick presents itself as with which ever fast talking chancer's name over the door is always never more than the 10% end of public life, because they're the ones at the extreme but they can never see it.

I think the tory party have focused on social agenda like boats and trans treatment but not on conservative economic policy. So higher taxes, more spending (but without great efficiency with cuts making things worse). So they have not been prudent masters of thr purse strings which we hope thr tories will be (hope not same as doing of course)