telstarbox
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True true
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brad465
Established Member
It's been said the best way to defeat certain populists is to actually give them power somewhere, as then they can screw things up and opponents can expose this.
Of course Reform could also perform well on the job, but evidence so far doesn't support this, including Farage barely turning up to Clacton, Lowe having a spat with the party after been suspended pending investigation into certain allegations and a number of candidates' dodgy pasts being exposed through poor vetting. Winning mayoralties and councils off the back of this looks like creating some juicy news going forward (and not in a good way for Reform itself).
Grimsby town
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That was another particular lowlight
I have a cousin who was a UKIP councillor about ten years ago - having come into the party from the left, she found that once they’d got the referendum result they wanted, the rank and file activists found they didn’t really have very much in common with each other.
nlogax
Established Member
Current events suggest that's not an altogether reliable approach.
brad465
Established Member
Which is why I think some local wins are the best route: enough power to cause damage that can be used against them later on, but not enough power to cause serious damage nationally.
DarloRich
Veteran Member
The might be gifted one: Lord High Viz/"steel in the ground" Houchen has been making some obliging comments towards a Reform/Tory link up in recent days, I wouldn't be surprised if he jumps ship to Reform as a way to try to cling on to power.
@ainsworth74 will know more than me mind!
brad465
Established Member
The West of England Mayoral race is looking interesting, as it is effectively a FIVE horse race according to some recent polling:
Arron Banks in third could throw a spanner in the works, but if Reform (or anyone else) win this on something like the current polling distribution, this is going to be a significant case study in "Why FPTP doesn't work", the idea that someone doesn't even need a quarter of all votes to be elected.
Arron Banks in third could throw a spanner in the works, but if Reform (or anyone else) win this on something like the current polling distribution, this is going to be a significant case study in "Why FPTP doesn't work", the idea that someone doesn't even need a quarter of all votes to be elected.
Cloud Strife
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In a sense, I think the good thing about the rise of Reform is that the FPTP system will be completely broken if there are four parties that are polling like this nationally. Having said that, it's an absurdity that there's no second round run-off to make sure that a candidate wins at least 50% of the vote, even small mayoral elections in Poland in tiny municipalities have the second round if needs be.
Having said that, Arron Banks has resurfaced?
The problem is that populists are also very, very good at building their power bases. If you let Reform win a mayoralty, then they will find a way to use it to provide financing for party cronies who need employment. For instance, let's take a typical housing association: they are entirely dependent on the councils that they serve. It's very easy for an elected mayor to sit down with the housing association CEO and say "you know, Jim's a loyal activist of ours, what about a job for his wife?". In reality, that job is used to finance Jim's political career elsewhere, as he doesn't have to work.
Of course, the mainstream parties do exactly the same thing (usually via sitting on various boards), but populists are generally much more aggressive about doing it.
The other issue is that supporters of populism tend to overlook what the local populists actually do. So, the mayor might be completely useless, but they will be ranting about SINK THE BOATS, not EMPTY THE BINS.
Apparently the Scottish Government had an "anti far-right" conference last week. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cedywqeq18jo
This feels like a bit of an own goal, having not invited Reform UK then Farage et al can plug their narrative of being "anti-establishment" and that the major parties are running scared of them.
Exactly the same as them running so many supposedly Ghost candidates at the last general election to get access to "short money" for opposition parties . Reform UK gets about £290k a year from the house of commons as an opposition party . Of course this is meant to be money to help fund the oppositon party carrying out its parliamentary business . But it can be used to employ people , I cant find it at the minute but I am sure Farage or Tice said it was going to be used to pay for some regional managers or something for the party .
Short money is broadly speaking designed to support party machinery exactly like this. The cost of running parliamentary offices and carrying out parliamentary business is covered by MPs expenses.
styles
Member
They also have likely profiled which houses to visit.
Long established parties maintain lists of who has said they'll vote X, or maybe Y, or anti-Z. If you are party X and you have a house down as anti-Z, you don't knock their door (certainly not in the run up to an election anyway when the goal is Get Out The Vote). I wouldn't be surprised if Reform had started to establish such lists at the general election.
Cloud Strife
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A lot depends on the local branches of parties too. A friend for instance developed a very sophisticated canvassing system for his constituency, which used a lot of open source data to profile houses. By doing this, they could identify who they needed to talk to on the doors and what message they needed to hear. It took a lot of effort to build, but they are ruthlessly effective in elections by getting the relevant MP to visit the doors that matter.
One guy even asked how they knew that he was swithering when it came to the election, and my friend gave him the exact details: he was likely to be an ex-O&G worker, he had a fairly old but pricey car on the driveway in a nice house, the house had been bought about 20 years ago, and that he was likely to be very disappointed with the Westminster parties as they didn't provide the North Sea with the tax breaks needed. The MP had knocked on his door with a simple message: we need to take control of the North Sea energy reserves so that we can support the industry, and the guy responded positively. It turned out that he'd been made redundant about three years previously, and while he'd retrained into renewables, it wasn't giving him the money that he previously earnt.
All of this was obtained by doing groundwork prior to actually canvassing, it just took a huge amount of effort from the branch to actually catalogue everything and put it into the system. They knew the specifics of the area, they knew the general economic situation in Aberdeen, and they knew that there were a lot of people who were middle class and angry with Westminster over the lack of support for Aberdeen's industry in general.
telstarbox
Established Member
The other factor is turnout, which varies quite a bit across different demographics for example house owners are more likely to vote than flat renters.
I wonder what I’ve been categorised as. Never get anyone round except the lib dems, and I have to give them a hard time due to some of their ‘curious’ local decisions.
SuspectUsual
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I asked a mate of mine about this who owns a medium sized business in Stockton and who is pretty well connected and his reply was “there are a few rumours on Teesside that Bent Ben is making overtures to Reform”. Who knows what the truth is, but his comments did sound like a “come and get me”
(Mind you, the other rumours are that he’s going to jack in politics at the next election and make some serious money via his mates Musgrave and Corney)
Howardh
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So on the NHS they want it to be "free at the point of delivery" yet say the bill can't be covered by taxation (alone??); "we need a discussion about it". Sounds very Brexity, vote for us, now we're in what do we do about that...???
Frankly if they start talking about even the possibility of charging us, part charging, or insurance (or any mix of the three) it will probably kill them off. Yes, they mention European models (avoiding to mention the USA one) - one wonder why Europe is so popular with them - but I'm sure the majority of voters would be frightened off by any suggestion of paying for the NHS.
But, like the TV licence on a much smaller scale, all the parties need to work out the future of the NHS so we can prepare for major changes. My worry is it becomes means-tested and you start to pay if your income/savings are above certain levels; especially those of us who are pensioners now and can't rely on "employment insurance"?
Frankly if they start talking about even the possibility of charging us, part charging, or insurance (or any mix of the three) it will probably kill them off. Yes, they mention European models (avoiding to mention the USA one) - one wonder why Europe is so popular with them - but I'm sure the majority of voters would be frightened off by any suggestion of paying for the NHS.
But, like the TV licence on a much smaller scale, all the parties need to work out the future of the NHS so we can prepare for major changes. My worry is it becomes means-tested and you start to pay if your income/savings are above certain levels; especially those of us who are pensioners now and can't rely on "employment insurance"?
DarloRich
Veteran Member
I think Reform will win a decent number of seats today. They may even take control of several councils. lets see how they do once in charge of something. Slogans and memes about forigns and boats wont help you get the bins emptied!
Colour me surprised!
102 fan
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In my experience, if the party you like wins, there's no mention of FPTP. If, however it's a party you don't like, then FPTP doesn't work, needs replaced etc.
brad465
Established Member
Of course, I'd go far enough to say that Labour's 1997 manifesto talked about looking at PR, but obviously never got anywhere after Labour's stonking majority. In campaign talks on electoral reform that I've given in the past, I have put out a "What if?" regarding hypothetical situations if PR had been adopted then. They include the possibilities of the UK never getting involved in Iraq and Brexit not happening (or if it did it would only have been due to overwhelming support and a more competent handling via cross party consensus).
I suppose one other upside of a 4-5 horse race in regards to PR is that, even if there are lots of hypocrites about, 70-80% of the subject electorate will have some form of grievance with the FPTP system.
IIRC the SNP continued to support electoral reform for Westminster elections even during the ten years or so where FPTP really worked in their favour (3rd by seats and the privileges that come with this, even though they were a distant 4th by votes)
Purple Train
Established Member
The first council seat to declare has shown a 36% swing from Labour to Reform from just last year. Thank goodness it's four years before we have the chance to let them loose on the country. Link here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c39jedewxp8t
styles
Member
4:30am and looks like Reform are winning around two-thirds of the council seats, the MP by-election (knife-edge though and there's a recount!), and half the mayoral elections.
If that continues to hold true tomorrow, expect to see Farage turn up to the Runcorn and Helsby count to claim the night as a victory for Reform.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
I wonder if the 'shy Tory' voters are now 'shy Reform' voters.
If that continues to hold true tomorrow, expect to see Farage turn up to the Runcorn and Helsby count to claim the night as a victory for Reform.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
For context..
| Candidate | Prediction | Actual |
| Godwin LAB | 23% | 25% |
| Smith CON | 21% | 16.6% |
| Banks REF | 18% | 22.1% |
| Page GRN | 18% | 20% |
| Henman LDM | 15% | 14% |
| Scott IND | 5% | 2.3% |
I wonder if the 'shy Tory' voters are now 'shy Reform' voters.
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Reform has won Runcorn and Helsby by a margin of 6 votes
www.bbc.co.uk
Runcorn and Helsby by-election: Reform beats Labour by just six votes - BBC News
Sarah Pochin overturns a huge 14,696 majority to win Reform UK’s first by-election.
www.bbc.co.uk
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I hope a lot of people voted against Labour, as I took pleasure in doing so.
Strange to see changes to PIP being cited as reasons for Reform votes, but Labour deserve that. Alongside their great dumping on other minorities beside the disabled.
Britain is a miserable mess.
Strange to see changes to PIP being cited as reasons for Reform votes, but Labour deserve that. Alongside their great dumping on other minorities beside the disabled.
Britain is a miserable mess.
DelW
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How will voting for a party led by rich, privileged, privately educated bankers help that?
Reform is a get rich quick scam by Farage and his cronies. Remember how they promised that Brexit would solve all Britain's problems? That went well, didn't it.
Well it won’t, will it?
However Labour deserve it, having gone too far to the right on things like PIP changes. A disgusting party unworthy of the name “Labour” given its record of crapping on minorities since it took office.
Obviously I didn’t vote for Reform but millions did.
Labour are getting a kicking, but traditionally by elections and council elections are the time for the protest vote against the government of the day. It'll result in a focussing of minds at Labour HQ, and brings home the fact that they are in power because they are the least worst, not because they are the best.
The Conservatives on the other hand are in deep trouble. They are the ones that should be capitalising on Labour's misfortunes. But they are nowhere to be seen.
The Conservatives on the other hand are in deep trouble. They are the ones that should be capitalising on Labour's misfortunes. But they are nowhere to be seen.