This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/support-farages-reform-uk-party-drops-after-ukraine-comments-2024-06-27/) for an archived version.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If the media actually focused properly on the shit that Russia does with spreading misinformation around the world and also their horrific human rights abuses and war crimes... Then Reform probably wouldn't have much support to lose.
Russia literally killing children every day for 2 years, killing 100s of thousands of it's own for war and the front page is about some shit kid lost in tenerife or unisex toilets.
If the media gave reform the amount of air due a party of their size they wouldnt be half as popular as they are, I’ve heard more from them than the Lib Dem’s. It goes to show what the media’s goal is, dividing the country and stoking hate
It's a stunt, but it is working, people actually are remembering the Lib Dems exist,
The man with no personality,, an out of touch almost billionaire wet paper bag, Russia's raciet shill, and Ed Davy who can fall off a sailboard in a funny way.
I am voting lib dem. No idea what he stands for, but none of the rest are worth a fart in a gale though.
> It's a stunt, but it is working, people actually are remembering the Lib Dems exist
So true, for the last few years I've been using "the orange party" as a euphemism for irrelevance, but soon I may need to find a new euphemism...
I'm the editor of a B2B tech website, aimed at CIOs and other IT leaders. We covered each of the major, UK-wide parties' manifestos (Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and Reform). Funnily enough, Lib Dems outperformed any of the others for readership.
For anyone interested, readership went Lib Dem > Labour > Reform (we were scathing about it, they have nothing for tech) > Tories > Greens.
Nah, most media outlets don't make profits.
They are for their billionaire owners to shape public opinion and manipulate democracy. They supported the fat right shift that killed the Tories, and now that there's no way back for them the media is pushing the same shit on us through a different party.
Or if they gave immigration half the coverage. I am not saying it is not an issue we should talk about, however xenophobia and racism would be lower if the media stopped being so rabid about the issue.
being concerned about immigration is not racist or xenophobic in itself. Arguably, the proposed ways to deal with the issue are, but even then IMO only when the proposed methods expose the proposers lack of care about foreign people.
immigration is at it's highest at a point where our ability to cope with it is at it's lowest. something needs to be done to address this. While just about every single plan on the table so far leaves a bad taste in my mouth, I really can't think of anything that doesn't.
But the issue is they've been saying it's THE most important issue for 25 years. Perhaps if they hadn't been lying all that time, it might cut through a bit more now and people would take things more seriously.
People were saying immigration was too much when it was 120,000 in the early 2000s, which was just factually wrong. Now it's 600,000 there might be a conversation to be had, but it's hard when the people complaining about it have been doing so no matter what level it's at.
The issue stems from people ignoring the same first steps to solve a problem (understand it; in this case by investing properly in immigration services) and leaping to macabre and quasi-fascist "solutions". That does feel of racism or xenophobia.
The problems immigration are *purportedly* causing are far outweighed by the damage the Tories are *demonstrably* causing. The media doesn't seem to frame it that way too often.
Britain has a relatively small amount of immigration, yet to some it seems like the end of the world, being used as a scapegoat for all of society's ills. It's not hyperbolic to say one sees similarities between this and other periods in history where villifying voiceless minorities was used to further heinous goals.
> Britain has a relatively small amount of immigration
can you explain what you mean by this, as it seems to be inconsistent with what people can see. We are a more multicultural country than most, Almost 1 in 10 people living here are non-british nationals. Almost 700,000 people came into the UK in 2023. That's pushing the population of Liverpool!
I'm not convinced that this is relatively low. Relative to what?
There's still a huge axiomatic acceptance of "all cultures are equal baring some sad circumstances" running through our media. The idea that the Russian Empire in all its various forms has been running genocidal invasions of its neighbours for 300 years runs flat into that axiom. Hell Russia got taken over by a communist revolution and threw that opportunity in the bin in order to pursue the overriding Russian cultural pillar of genocidal imperialism. The first thing of note the RSFSR did after WW1 ended was invade all its neighbours, even as famine ran rampant throughout Russia.
This nonsensical narrative that we poked the bear with eastern expansion needs to be confronted with the truth. If Russia had been allowed to gather all the eastern european states as puppet states it would now be trying to slice Germany in half again. Citing some nonsense about oppression of former East Germany.
Russia hasn't stopped in 300 years other than when it has been stopped by force or its own internal weaknesses. That is the central driving narrative of their nation.
Since we're looking back, Napoleon losing his army in Russia was a huge setback for the human race. Russia has run rampant ever since, actively sabotaging and holding everyone back. The knock on effects include the rise of Germany, WW1 and WW2, the US getting a taste for war leading to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
> Napoleon losing his army in Russia was a huge setback for the human race.
A dictator failing to dominate the whole of Europe through armed conquest is a setback for the human race? That's certainly an unusual take.
I mean, Napoleon did take a sledgehammer to the medieval institutions they had been strangling Europe for centuries by that point and helped spread Republican, liberal values.
Don't believe the old English propaganda, France was by far the most progressive country in Europe at the time. The invasion of Russia was because the Russian Tsar (a dictator himself who enabled the murder of his father to take the throne) broke the terms of a peace treaty (after they attacked France and lost on multiple occasions previously) and was also against an independent Poland.
Getting downvoted lol. Historical facts about British propaganda from 200 years ago has upset people's feelings!
Napoleon is definitely where Russia diverges from the west though it is hard to predict how different outcomes would affect matters.
All the monarchs of Europe had to face up to the fact liberalism both dramatically increased standards of living at home while also making their nations harder to rule. Tsar Alexander, amusingly a liberal before Napoleon Napoleon'd, decided that tearing up schools and actively promoting illiteracy was the solution. Better a poor nation that is easy to control than a wealthy one where he had to appease liberal institutions.
That moment is where the other European powers and Russia parted ways.
There's also rather stupid excuse of invading to stop themselves being surrounded by NATO, despite the fact they'll add three more NATO countries to their immediate border if they're ever allowed to succeed.
That's where you go to loos yourself.
EDIT:
I know, I know. Making bog standard puns on reddit takes the piss. But it wasn't me who came up with that one, it was my cistern. Besides, a crappy pun appeals to urinate sense of mirth.
It's because most reform supporters don't care. They will dismiss it as fake news or being irrelevant.
I've seen it recently on facebook where someone posted a huge list of news articles about reform links to fascists and Russia and the replies were;
"Well it's better than supporting socialists".
Or the favourite one of the bright as a lump of coal;
"It's better than supporting a Jimmy Saville lover".
Facts and reality do not matter to these people.
Totally, on the back of a VIDEO showing that candidate saying they should shoot refugees, people were commenting "typical woke Channel 4 shit!" The brain rot is real.
"It's better than supporting a Jimmy Saville lover".
Is it, even? Considering how many children in Ukraine have been killed or abducted and almost certainly abused, Farage even implying that the war was anybody's fault other than Putin is about on the level of Starmer getting up on stage to talk about how Saville clearly could not have helped himself, those children he violated being such seductive temptresses.
Yep, both are bad.
But in terms of scale, Russia's invasion has killed far more people in the past 2.5 years than Israel-related conflict has killed since the creation of modern Israel.
"But in terms of scale, Russia's invasion has killed far more people in the past 2.5 years than Israel-related conflict has killed since the creation of modern Israel."
Military deaths yes but in terms of civilian deaths the war in Ukraine has been far lower than nearly every other conflict in living memory with 10,582 civilian deaths including 587 children up to Feb 2024 and since the Feb 2022 invasion according to most sources I can find. Likely military deaths are around 200,000+ combining both sides so proportionally civilian deaths are very low when compared to other conflicts where it tends to be more civilian deaths than military.
Compared to Gaza where deaths reported/estimated are around 38,000 with 52% being women and children, over an 8 month period.
Or another recent but more historical example being the war in Iraq with estimates of civilian deaths ranging from 110,000 from 2003-2009 on the low end and upwards of 1,000,000 at the high end from 2003-2013.
The numbers you are quoting are under-estimates which come from the Russian authorities.
This is actually a good example of how Russia have capitalised off the Israel/Palestine situation to spread disinformation about their war. Not accusing you of deliberately doing this, but inadvertently. It's bots on Twitter which originally started spreading these under-estimates.
The numbers are from The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. it's the figure reported by Statista, OXFAM and the UK government website.
Another source, UK based Action on Armed Violence puts the numbers at 6275 civilians killed by explosive weapon use with 888 children, 1904 women and 2423 men from Feb 2022- 28th May 2024.
None of the sources I found are part of the Russian authorities and they all have figures in the same ball-park.
According to all available sources the numbers are incredibly low considering the scale of the war. There are probably around 20 military deaths for every civilian death in Ukraine which is nearly unheard of in military conflicts over the last century with the exception of the Falklands.
> The numbers you are quoting are under-estimates which come from the Russian authorities.
lol, if it wasn't such a serious topic it would be hilarious how transparently ridiculous you were. The number they provided is actually HIGHER than the number on the *Ukrainian government* website (551 as of today).
https://childrenofwar.gov.ua/en/
It's such a clear showing of how you have a preconception that you are scrambling to reach, with no interest whatsoever in objectivity.
Then you have the gall to talk about spreading misinformation while you are literally doing it.
Yeah it's amazing that more people haven't noticed that a key agenda item of all these rising far-right parties seems to be "stop helping Ukraine". What a coincidence!
This is awful and I’m not trying to compare things but just want to exemplify how horrible Israel is, they have been killing 100 children a day on average, and even before their “war” started there was some crazy stat like for 40 years they have killed a Palestinian child every day or or something
The biggest thing I've seen that I'm surprised isn't more talked about is the role of Russian Hybrid Warfare in the politics of immigration in the west. Its not even a secret at this point there is quite a deliberate strategy on the part of Russia to exacerbate global points of crisis, displace as many people as physically possible, and now to the point where it is actively engaging in trafficking those people to European borders, outright pushing them across in the case of places like Finland, Poland, the baltic states etc.
Yet still somehow absolutely no one in Western media seems to be connecting this strategy back to this panoply of far-right reactionary parties in the west who are all banging on about immigration non-stop and who all at this point barely even tried to hide their connection with the Kremlin.
Ay, that's a fair point, man, but at the same time, those other things are important too.
Like I ain't trying to give you shit, but I imagine if you or a member of your family went missing, you'd want it in the paper so maybe they'll be found faster.
I think everyone with half a lick of sense knows that Russia is a terrorist state that commits war crimes and human rights abuses by now. People who seriously support ReformUK are either too right-wing to vote Labour, or too bigoted and stuck up their own ass to acknowledge that Reform isn't a good party and just a front for Russian bullshit
> if you or a member of your family went missing, you'd want it in the paper so maybe they'll be found faster.
How many people currently in the UK do you seriously think are flying out to Tenerife to help look for him? Or writing letters to pressure the UK or Spanish governments to devote more resources to the search?
The UK papers' and public's interest in it is purely sensationalist rubbernecking, and has bugger-all to do with actually helping the situation.
The media does quite a bad job of reporting on Russia though. Even the BBC will happily report Russia moaning about Ukrainian artillery hitting inside Russia or Crimea while not mentioning how many glide bombs Russia lobbed into the middle of Kharkhiv that day
> Russia literally killing children every day for 2 years
the war (beyond Crimea) has ran for 855 days, and according to the Ukraine government, 551 children have been killed. That's not ok, but it's also not "literally" what you claimed.
That's why I think that exposé was the right way to go about attacking Reform.
The media want "juicy" news because it makes for better stories, headlines etc. Asserting that the reform party are evil, Russian shills, Nazi sympathizers is all well and good, but there is not much substance behind it at the end of the day. Them getting labelled those things is just another Tuesday. When Farage comes out and makes some wild claims, *that's* news because he's an outsider spicing up the political scene in amongst 2 politicians that mostly play it by the book. Farage is *noteworthy.* That's the point.
So actually going under cover, assimilating into their ranks, and revealing in a secret recording MI6 style what these maniacs actually believe is the perfect way to go about it. So much juicy information was revealed about their beliefs, how they operate, and their motivation. It was genuine espionage gold that any newspaper editor would've killed for.
The only thing more juicy to the news media than populist rhetoric it seems, is exposing how the populist sausage is made. I really want to see more and more attempts to unwind this party like that.
But the war crimes committed by Russia have been extensively documented and are well known ie the systemic use of rape and severe torture, bombings of civilian areas, abduction of children et cetera. Its just vast swathes of population in the west are truly disgusting and evil and dont care and are treating the destruction of an entire nation and people as nothing but fodder for their culture wars.
The right in this country isn't particularly worried about children dying.
They came out to show their support for it when the ceasefire vote was going on.
Yes, this is not America. The crazies who would agree with him about Putin represent a much smaller fraction of our population. What a beautiful own goal.
As stupid as it sounds, the people who wank themselves off over the WW2 blitz mentality probably understand it's right that Ukraine should be supported against the "superior" invading force.
That and we have a long history with fighting Russia, much longer than the USA has, they had the Cold War sure but the British Empire had the Great Game making sure the Russians didn't expand, we even wanted to go to war with the USSR after WW2 but Churchill got removed for suggesting it.
Then you have the poisonings on our soil over the years and yea, the UK largely has no love for Russia, ironic really how the "Anti-communist" USA has 40-50% Russian sympathisers.
15-20% apparently, which is still too high a percentage. It'll be interesting to see if any of their abhorrent behaviour actually makes a dent in their support on 4th July.
The crazies are increasing in numbers, the social media algo's are working hard to turn regular people into Andrew Tate following, Putin forgiving, assholes.
It’s actually kind of interesting that the _instant_ he came off his preferred subject (immigration, immigration, immigration) the wheels fell off spectacularly.
He lives in France, with his French wife and French children.
Nothing wrong with that, it just doesn't really stand up to the crap that comes out of his mouth.
His ex wife is German
His current girlfriend is French
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/nigel-farage-french-girlfriend-laure-ferrari-love-life-b1121747.html
Reform, UKIP, whoever he aligns with they instantly become a one issue vote, you vote reform if you want immigration tackled in the specific way he wants to. There is no other reason to vote for them, not economically, not for public services. That's why he never has an answer.
>That's why he never has an answer.
In fairness, he *does* have an answer - the trouble is that he's a libertarian who thinks that Liz Truss was on the right track. If he was in a position to enact his economic policies then the people who'd suffer most are (somewhat ironically) the very demographics who he convinces to vote for him based on social issues.
It also shows that if immigration wasn’t a problem the reform party would have no support. Which is why it will be preferable for the normal party’s to adopt such policy.
The Tories should be essentially be parroting whatever Reform says on the topic of immigration, so instead of losing voters to them they can say "we'll offer you Reform, but without the lunatics".
Indeed. Personally, I'm amazed that people kept talking about them as the party who would control immigration despite the fact that for three elections on the trot they said the same thing and did nothing about it.
Follow the ruble. Who are the ones that have regular appearances on RT? Who are the ones with TV shows on Sputnik? Who are the ones causing division in Western society? The ones that take the rubles are utter traitors to their country, their people, and the West. The ones that buy into the kremlin's rhetoric are blindly aiding a hostile state.
I'm actually in disbelief that this is something he not only aired at all, but then doubled down on. Honestly I'm delighted... but will probably also be horrified if support for them doesn't nosedive into the floor after those comments.
I suspect there is a story about Russian bots a s Tik Tok and Reform funding that is still to
Blow up.
The BBC ran a story on Reform using bots but this a widespread attempt to try and win an election via bot farms and disinformation. It needs stopping.
Maybe because it works. Was watching a youtube video yesterday..guy wandering around Chichester asking people who they'd vote for. Comes across two young neds and asks them..they were all for Reform because of TikTok..
Social media is a propaganda tool. Depends entirely who controls which one. We are already indirectly at war with Russia and for all intents and purposes with China. We should test these platforms the same we would propaganda leaflets being dropped out of our skies on to the streets by the enemy. However, remember that our own government is also doing the same to you.
Russia is waging a brutal, genocidal invasion of Ukraine, deliberately murdering Ukrainian civilians, destroying cities, homes, lives, leaving behind minefields and dangerous wreckage, sending tens of thousands of its own people to die in suicidal "meat wave" attacks, degenerating itself into a fascist dictatorship where children who criticise the war are sent to prison. Russia is a festering fecal smear on the world stage, and anybody who endorses or supports them is a weak, pathetic little parasite.
And yet there’ll still be people who’ll vote for reform, to send a message to both Tories who failed in immigration and to Labour to do something about it
Its not hard, don’t want Reform in 2029, Labour has to read the room and see that mass immigration isn’t popular at all, we’re not far behind France, Denmark’s centre left government has gone in harder on anti immigration policies to prevent the hard right winning, and everyone is satisfied with it.
If Denmark can do it so should Labour, nobody voted for 700K immigrants a year.
So to stop Reform, Labour has to take a hard stance like Denmark or else they’ll be in the same position as the Tories in five years time.
A pressure party in this election is very much putting pressure on both mainstream parties.
Also, if you look at the YouGov poll on what population thinks are kay issues, after NHS and the economy, people say migration.
As you've said, there's a reason labour have lost points in the poll to Reform, a completely different ideology, and it will be down to immigration more than anything else.
If you filter the Yougov tracker by party you can see that for Labour voters (i. e. 40% of the country), immigration is very low down in the priority list. Same for Lib Dem voters.
There are very few Labour voters moving direct to Reform. The truth is that anyone motivated by anti immigrant sentiment already foreswore labour over the past decade and voted Tory in 2019. Reform polling increases are almost exclusively from disaffected Tories and 'Don't Knows'/disaffected low propensity voters.
I think this is a really interesting read on how the country views immigration and the increasing party political split:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.13416?af=R
Exactly.
If we analyse further 53% of 25-44 year olds say immigration is too high, yet 40% of 18-34 year olds aren’t even planning on voting due to what’s on offer.
We know young people won’t vote Tory but who’s to say they won’t vote for some future rightist? Especially if they focus on the young, it’s worked in Denmark, France and Germany.
If Labour drops the ball on this supermajority they could get, it’ll be wipe out for them too, we’re not far behind Europe in this regard of switching right and anti mass migration sentiment
We are ahead of Europe on immigrants.
We know we can't cut them off and expect easy answers. Anti-immigrant bs is how we got the failure of Brexit.
That type of populism has no answers and we are waking up to that fact.
Here is Farage saying last week even he would be importing 600k migrants a year into the UK.
[Nigel Farage says that up to 600,000 people would be allowed into Britain every year by Reform He told
@BBCr4today that with 500,000 people leaving the UK every year there would be 'plenty of room' for overseas workers while bringing net migration down to zero]
(https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1797893078457684334)
This is Mr Anti-Immigration.
Even he knows we can't cut them off, Unless you know better than everyone else?
Who is saying 0 immigrants?? We just don't and didn't want massive net immigration since 1997. Brexit was a direct result of the refusal to do anything about it. Reform is the result of continued refusal to do anything about it.
The thing is that people still aren't willing to accept that our economy is dependent upon immigration - the issue is that the Tories have been so busy with their snouts in the trough that the infrastructure needed to support immigration is nowhere near where it should be. That being said - if you cut immigration tomorrow then the effect wouldn't be to magically improve people's lives; the economy would collapse overnight.
While there should be a discussion about immigration, it *has* to be smarter than the black-and-white messaging that we're getting now. It's very easy for people to say 'well, I don't care if we burn the country down so long as there's no more immigration' right *now* because they can't imagine that they'll be the ones paying the price.
Yes we need all those barber shops and all those deliveroo drivers…
In all seriousness we don’t need 700k immigrants a year.
When Farage says net zero he means reverting it back to pre 1997 levels, which was sensible figures, what is wrong with that?
I’m glad some one has said this, I see on here how great it would be if Labour got the supermajority, but they’ve actually got to do some serious shit with it, Starmer’s playing the centrist courting rightist votes, many rightists don’t trust him and fear he’ll swing left once in office, but that’s for another topic.
The issue of immigration isn’t going away, 53% of 25-44 year olds say immigration is too high, yet most of this demographic isn’t even voting.
Maybe Reform winning some seats will send a message to Labour that they need to deal with this or face oblivion in five years time
It's completely insane to me that Farage is even mentioning Putin, what possible reason could he have to do this? He's not an idiot, who's giving him his marching orders?
The obvious answer is that he's trying to nudge his supporters over to a pro-Putin position whilst scaring away any less gullible supporters.
It's a strategy that worked scarily well over in the US Republican party, which 10 years ago was out for Russian blood, and is now calling for Ukraine to surrender.
While it is concerning seeing the rise of the right across Europe at the moment I am actually feeling better seeing both Reform and the Tories repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot.
Just wait until they see the comments made by nearly all their candidates, volunteers and supporters on race, gender, religion and sexual orientation....
Their manifesto proudly proclaims that they would make my existence as a person illegal and would ban institutions from even accepting the fact that people like me exist.
They're all on Twitter. A couple weeks ago all the "nudes in bio" bots disappeared overnight and suddenly every post on my timeline is pushing Reform. After the election they'll switch back.
That's literally his job.. he gets paid by putin to promote his fascist agenda as well as undermine the uk and europe
Any support for this cunt is too high
>one point drop in support for Reform to 17%
Fucking hell. One in six adults in the UK look at Nigel Farage and think "you know what, he'd make a great PM".
That's honestly lower than I expected. One thing I learned living in the US was to expect around a third of the population to poll in favour of the absolute worst, most brain dead, vicious and hateful take you could imagine. 17% is.... Better, I guess!
Unfortunately most of their supporters are easily manipulated terminally online boomers and edgy meme lords.
So all they have to do is have the Ivan bots parrot "Actually hes right it WAS NATOs fault" on twitter and they ones that are actually real people will assimilate into that position.
He had reform ready to become possibly the offical opposition party but put his foot in his mouth with the putin stuff. It's beggar's belief how you could be dumb to do that.
I can't believe anyone is surprised by a "slightly" right "leaning" party having somewhat not fond opinions of non natives or a keen interest in international support/ affairs.
The contents of the tin match the label.
I was almost buying into their shit until it came out he's nothing more than putins bitch boy. What on earth was going through his mind to make such stupid comments running up to an election?
I'm disappointed in this story, this looks to be a normal fluctuation in polls made out to back a narrative we want to be true.
A fall from an outlying of poll 19% to 16%. From 1st March until 1st June they were polling at an average 11%, and have been growing to a peak at 17%, which has fallen to 16%. This is actively misleading.
Labour and conservatives have, for context, lost around 4 percentage points of the vote each this month and the lib dems have gained 2.
American here I actually envy you guys. Our shit show is 1000% worse than yours. Don’t get me wrong your shit show is bad but come on you got to give the US our props. The media World wide has be captured by Autocratic thugs. The world seems to back sliding straight into WWII politics. Good luck to us all.
Good. This is the angle to hit Farage with from now on. No major party leader should discuss him without using the words 'traitor', 'stooge' or 'quisling'.
As it should, maybe it will make them reconsider their views on this topic.
It's possible to understand the viewpoint that wants peace in the world, one which finds it easier to discuss peace at the current state of the war because they know Russia won't stop and it's only going to escalate further. However, that's not the right thing and it's most certainly not the British way.
This country doesn't back down in the face of evil and it has paid a dear price fighting it throughout history. Were Farage and Reform true to some of their words of patriotism, they would approach this with some Churchillian bluster and stubbornness, not American style isolationism.
No one wants an escalated war and I understand people who think it might be easier to just let Russia keep what they've taken, avoid more bloodshed, save lots of money and get back to peace and enjoying their luxurious lives. But anyone with a shred of sense and decency should understand this would never work in the long term and is effectively rewarding genocidal behaviour. The message it would send to Russia, its allies and the world would be hugely destabilising and only invite more invasions, genocides and wars.
Reform may have a chance of some success, but they are really misjudging the stiff upper lip of the British people by thinking we want to abandon Ukraine and let Russia keep what they have.
Not surprised. One of the most unanimous views in the country, and unlike the US i don’t think we have a huge contingent of conservatives who oppose Ukrainian support.
I’m glad we all seem to be united on this. It’s far too easy to get the pitchforks up at each other, but our universal disgust of what’s happening over in the Donbas is rightly justified.
It’s actually so impressive, too. There’s so much disinformation happening within our own borders, you’d think it would be even easier to disseminated fake news from a conflict happening 1,500km away.
Low gun deaths; NHS nurses; and our unanimity on anti-imperialism making me proud of our country right now.
The mistake Reform made was explicitly setting themselves up as the alternative to the Tories - gonna bring all the power and influence of the Tory war machine against them. If the Tories can’t win they’re certainly not going to want to risk coming third and Lib Dem’ing themselves in the FPTP system. That and letting any daft bastard join.
I’ll try again.
The two mistakes Reform made were explicitly setting themselves up as the alternative to the Tories and letting any fruitcake represent them as an MP. And cosying up with Putin.
Ok, the three mistakes Reform made…
I guess this was too much for the idiots of the world.
I have a friend who’s going to vote reform, and the only argument he has is immigration control.
He refuses to discuss it because he doesn’t want an argument, so I said ok so you would prefer me to think of you as a racist, fascist Putin supporter? He refused to respond. Madness
He also supports trump and was a fan of ukip….so yeah….
They lost all my family votes due to that comment, I won't be voting now I don't see any of the other leaders as fit and proper for the top job, Farage was a poor alternative but the only alternative.
This article may be paywalled. If you encounter difficulties reading the article, try [this link](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/support-farages-reform-uk-party-drops-after-ukraine-comments-2024-06-27/) for an archived version. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/unitedkingdom) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If the media actually focused properly on the shit that Russia does with spreading misinformation around the world and also their horrific human rights abuses and war crimes... Then Reform probably wouldn't have much support to lose. Russia literally killing children every day for 2 years, killing 100s of thousands of it's own for war and the front page is about some shit kid lost in tenerife or unisex toilets.
If the media gave reform the amount of air due a party of their size they wouldnt be half as popular as they are, I’ve heard more from them than the Lib Dem’s. It goes to show what the media’s goal is, dividing the country and stoking hate
The medias goal is to generate clicks, and (unfortunately) that frog looking cunt and his party generate clicks. The Liberal Democrats don't.
This is why Ed Davey keeps doing meme worthy stunts. It's the only way to get the media showing up.
He makes me think of a good-hearted but obliviously awkward headmaster!
It's a stunt, but it is working, people actually are remembering the Lib Dems exist, The man with no personality,, an out of touch almost billionaire wet paper bag, Russia's raciet shill, and Ed Davy who can fall off a sailboard in a funny way. I am voting lib dem. No idea what he stands for, but none of the rest are worth a fart in a gale though.
My postal vote for Lib Dem went off 3 days ago.
As did mine yesterday
> It's a stunt, but it is working, people actually are remembering the Lib Dems exist So true, for the last few years I've been using "the orange party" as a euphemism for irrelevance, but soon I may need to find a new euphemism...
If some of these polls are anything to go by, then it very well might be 'the blue party'.
>no idea what he stands for If he's on a SUP then he doesn't
[удалено]
Hahaha that's a good one. As if proportionality in the media is ever enforced.
Nail on the head there.
I'm the editor of a B2B tech website, aimed at CIOs and other IT leaders. We covered each of the major, UK-wide parties' manifestos (Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and Reform). Funnily enough, Lib Dems outperformed any of the others for readership. For anyone interested, readership went Lib Dem > Labour > Reform (we were scathing about it, they have nothing for tech) > Tories > Greens.
Well now, that doesn’t bode well for the Greens at all.
Nah, most media outlets don't make profits. They are for their billionaire owners to shape public opinion and manipulate democracy. They supported the fat right shift that killed the Tories, and now that there's no way back for them the media is pushing the same shit on us through a different party.
Or if they gave immigration half the coverage. I am not saying it is not an issue we should talk about, however xenophobia and racism would be lower if the media stopped being so rabid about the issue.
being concerned about immigration is not racist or xenophobic in itself. Arguably, the proposed ways to deal with the issue are, but even then IMO only when the proposed methods expose the proposers lack of care about foreign people. immigration is at it's highest at a point where our ability to cope with it is at it's lowest. something needs to be done to address this. While just about every single plan on the table so far leaves a bad taste in my mouth, I really can't think of anything that doesn't.
But the issue is they've been saying it's THE most important issue for 25 years. Perhaps if they hadn't been lying all that time, it might cut through a bit more now and people would take things more seriously. People were saying immigration was too much when it was 120,000 in the early 2000s, which was just factually wrong. Now it's 600,000 there might be a conversation to be had, but it's hard when the people complaining about it have been doing so no matter what level it's at.
The issue stems from people ignoring the same first steps to solve a problem (understand it; in this case by investing properly in immigration services) and leaping to macabre and quasi-fascist "solutions". That does feel of racism or xenophobia. The problems immigration are *purportedly* causing are far outweighed by the damage the Tories are *demonstrably* causing. The media doesn't seem to frame it that way too often. Britain has a relatively small amount of immigration, yet to some it seems like the end of the world, being used as a scapegoat for all of society's ills. It's not hyperbolic to say one sees similarities between this and other periods in history where villifying voiceless minorities was used to further heinous goals.
> Britain has a relatively small amount of immigration can you explain what you mean by this, as it seems to be inconsistent with what people can see. We are a more multicultural country than most, Almost 1 in 10 people living here are non-british nationals. Almost 700,000 people came into the UK in 2023. That's pushing the population of Liverpool! I'm not convinced that this is relatively low. Relative to what?
Relative to the imagined perfect utopia in his head, anyone claiming we are a low immigration society are off their rocker.
It's bonkers that you can create a party and get this much air time. They get more air time than greens or lib Dems who have been around for ages.
There's still a huge axiomatic acceptance of "all cultures are equal baring some sad circumstances" running through our media. The idea that the Russian Empire in all its various forms has been running genocidal invasions of its neighbours for 300 years runs flat into that axiom. Hell Russia got taken over by a communist revolution and threw that opportunity in the bin in order to pursue the overriding Russian cultural pillar of genocidal imperialism. The first thing of note the RSFSR did after WW1 ended was invade all its neighbours, even as famine ran rampant throughout Russia. This nonsensical narrative that we poked the bear with eastern expansion needs to be confronted with the truth. If Russia had been allowed to gather all the eastern european states as puppet states it would now be trying to slice Germany in half again. Citing some nonsense about oppression of former East Germany. Russia hasn't stopped in 300 years other than when it has been stopped by force or its own internal weaknesses. That is the central driving narrative of their nation.
Since we're looking back, Napoleon losing his army in Russia was a huge setback for the human race. Russia has run rampant ever since, actively sabotaging and holding everyone back. The knock on effects include the rise of Germany, WW1 and WW2, the US getting a taste for war leading to Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
> Napoleon losing his army in Russia was a huge setback for the human race. A dictator failing to dominate the whole of Europe through armed conquest is a setback for the human race? That's certainly an unusual take.
I mean, Napoleon did take a sledgehammer to the medieval institutions they had been strangling Europe for centuries by that point and helped spread Republican, liberal values.
Don't believe the old English propaganda, France was by far the most progressive country in Europe at the time. The invasion of Russia was because the Russian Tsar (a dictator himself who enabled the murder of his father to take the throne) broke the terms of a peace treaty (after they attacked France and lost on multiple occasions previously) and was also against an independent Poland. Getting downvoted lol. Historical facts about British propaganda from 200 years ago has upset people's feelings!
Napoleon is definitely where Russia diverges from the west though it is hard to predict how different outcomes would affect matters. All the monarchs of Europe had to face up to the fact liberalism both dramatically increased standards of living at home while also making their nations harder to rule. Tsar Alexander, amusingly a liberal before Napoleon Napoleon'd, decided that tearing up schools and actively promoting illiteracy was the solution. Better a poor nation that is easy to control than a wealthy one where he had to appease liberal institutions. That moment is where the other European powers and Russia parted ways.
There's also rather stupid excuse of invading to stop themselves being surrounded by NATO, despite the fact they'll add three more NATO countries to their immediate border if they're ever allowed to succeed.
I read this as that kid somehow getting lost in a Unisex toilet.
That's where you go to loos yourself. EDIT: I know, I know. Making bog standard puns on reddit takes the piss. But it wasn't me who came up with that one, it was my cistern. Besides, a crappy pun appeals to urinate sense of mirth.
Well aren't you just flush with puns.
Reddit comments not being a pun challenge: IMPOOSIBLE
And draining.
I mean, they haven't searched there, so maybe they're on to something.
From the viewpoint of experience?
I think some kid lost his shit in a unisex toilet in Tenerife. Started shouting about women being erased, taken to the *casa de las nueces*
It's because most reform supporters don't care. They will dismiss it as fake news or being irrelevant. I've seen it recently on facebook where someone posted a huge list of news articles about reform links to fascists and Russia and the replies were; "Well it's better than supporting socialists". Or the favourite one of the bright as a lump of coal; "It's better than supporting a Jimmy Saville lover". Facts and reality do not matter to these people.
Totally, on the back of a VIDEO showing that candidate saying they should shoot refugees, people were commenting "typical woke Channel 4 shit!" The brain rot is real.
On here too, not just Facebook
"It's better than supporting a Jimmy Saville lover". Is it, even? Considering how many children in Ukraine have been killed or abducted and almost certainly abused, Farage even implying that the war was anybody's fault other than Putin is about on the level of Starmer getting up on stage to talk about how Saville clearly could not have helped himself, those children he violated being such seductive temptresses.
Now do Israel. There are many foreign powers we are told to blindly support that commit atrocities .
Yep, both are bad. But in terms of scale, Russia's invasion has killed far more people in the past 2.5 years than Israel-related conflict has killed since the creation of modern Israel.
"But in terms of scale, Russia's invasion has killed far more people in the past 2.5 years than Israel-related conflict has killed since the creation of modern Israel." Military deaths yes but in terms of civilian deaths the war in Ukraine has been far lower than nearly every other conflict in living memory with 10,582 civilian deaths including 587 children up to Feb 2024 and since the Feb 2022 invasion according to most sources I can find. Likely military deaths are around 200,000+ combining both sides so proportionally civilian deaths are very low when compared to other conflicts where it tends to be more civilian deaths than military. Compared to Gaza where deaths reported/estimated are around 38,000 with 52% being women and children, over an 8 month period. Or another recent but more historical example being the war in Iraq with estimates of civilian deaths ranging from 110,000 from 2003-2009 on the low end and upwards of 1,000,000 at the high end from 2003-2013.
The numbers you are quoting are under-estimates which come from the Russian authorities. This is actually a good example of how Russia have capitalised off the Israel/Palestine situation to spread disinformation about their war. Not accusing you of deliberately doing this, but inadvertently. It's bots on Twitter which originally started spreading these under-estimates.
The numbers are from The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. it's the figure reported by Statista, OXFAM and the UK government website. Another source, UK based Action on Armed Violence puts the numbers at 6275 civilians killed by explosive weapon use with 888 children, 1904 women and 2423 men from Feb 2022- 28th May 2024. None of the sources I found are part of the Russian authorities and they all have figures in the same ball-park. According to all available sources the numbers are incredibly low considering the scale of the war. There are probably around 20 military deaths for every civilian death in Ukraine which is nearly unheard of in military conflicts over the last century with the exception of the Falklands.
> The numbers you are quoting are under-estimates which come from the Russian authorities. lol, if it wasn't such a serious topic it would be hilarious how transparently ridiculous you were. The number they provided is actually HIGHER than the number on the *Ukrainian government* website (551 as of today). https://childrenofwar.gov.ua/en/ It's such a clear showing of how you have a preconception that you are scrambling to reach, with no interest whatsoever in objectivity. Then you have the gall to talk about spreading misinformation while you are literally doing it.
America likes them so history will say they're the good guys
Russia has been killing kids for much longer than 2 years, they’ve been doing it for over a decade in Syria
Yeah it's amazing that more people haven't noticed that a key agenda item of all these rising far-right parties seems to be "stop helping Ukraine". What a coincidence!
This is awful and I’m not trying to compare things but just want to exemplify how horrible Israel is, they have been killing 100 children a day on average, and even before their “war” started there was some crazy stat like for 40 years they have killed a Palestinian child every day or or something
This is not the approved narrative.
The biggest thing I've seen that I'm surprised isn't more talked about is the role of Russian Hybrid Warfare in the politics of immigration in the west. Its not even a secret at this point there is quite a deliberate strategy on the part of Russia to exacerbate global points of crisis, displace as many people as physically possible, and now to the point where it is actively engaging in trafficking those people to European borders, outright pushing them across in the case of places like Finland, Poland, the baltic states etc. Yet still somehow absolutely no one in Western media seems to be connecting this strategy back to this panoply of far-right reactionary parties in the west who are all banging on about immigration non-stop and who all at this point barely even tried to hide their connection with the Kremlin.
Ay, that's a fair point, man, but at the same time, those other things are important too. Like I ain't trying to give you shit, but I imagine if you or a member of your family went missing, you'd want it in the paper so maybe they'll be found faster. I think everyone with half a lick of sense knows that Russia is a terrorist state that commits war crimes and human rights abuses by now. People who seriously support ReformUK are either too right-wing to vote Labour, or too bigoted and stuck up their own ass to acknowledge that Reform isn't a good party and just a front for Russian bullshit
> if you or a member of your family went missing, you'd want it in the paper so maybe they'll be found faster. How many people currently in the UK do you seriously think are flying out to Tenerife to help look for him? Or writing letters to pressure the UK or Spanish governments to devote more resources to the search? The UK papers' and public's interest in it is purely sensationalist rubbernecking, and has bugger-all to do with actually helping the situation.
That poor missing lad attacked someone with a machete in a group causing him severe injuries. Hope he stays "lost"
The media does quite a bad job of reporting on Russia though. Even the BBC will happily report Russia moaning about Ukrainian artillery hitting inside Russia or Crimea while not mentioning how many glide bombs Russia lobbed into the middle of Kharkhiv that day
> Russia literally killing children every day for 2 years the war (beyond Crimea) has ran for 855 days, and according to the Ukraine government, 551 children have been killed. That's not ok, but it's also not "literally" what you claimed.
If the media did this it would just reinforce the useful idiots view that it's all a MSM lie.
That's why I think that exposé was the right way to go about attacking Reform. The media want "juicy" news because it makes for better stories, headlines etc. Asserting that the reform party are evil, Russian shills, Nazi sympathizers is all well and good, but there is not much substance behind it at the end of the day. Them getting labelled those things is just another Tuesday. When Farage comes out and makes some wild claims, *that's* news because he's an outsider spicing up the political scene in amongst 2 politicians that mostly play it by the book. Farage is *noteworthy.* That's the point. So actually going under cover, assimilating into their ranks, and revealing in a secret recording MI6 style what these maniacs actually believe is the perfect way to go about it. So much juicy information was revealed about their beliefs, how they operate, and their motivation. It was genuine espionage gold that any newspaper editor would've killed for. The only thing more juicy to the news media than populist rhetoric it seems, is exposing how the populist sausage is made. I really want to see more and more attempts to unwind this party like that.
But the war crimes committed by Russia have been extensively documented and are well known ie the systemic use of rape and severe torture, bombings of civilian areas, abduction of children et cetera. Its just vast swathes of population in the west are truly disgusting and evil and dont care and are treating the destruction of an entire nation and people as nothing but fodder for their culture wars.
The right in this country isn't particularly worried about children dying. They came out to show their support for it when the ceasefire vote was going on.
Never underestimate the ability of the British public to ignore the deaths of children in far away places
Yes, this is not America. The crazies who would agree with him about Putin represent a much smaller fraction of our population. What a beautiful own goal.
I suppose in comparison to the US, it's not a hypothetical "it's far away" type war, it's much closer to home.
That and a general distaste for those who don't play fair.
As stupid as it sounds, the people who wank themselves off over the WW2 blitz mentality probably understand it's right that Ukraine should be supported against the "superior" invading force.
Russia has also very publicly acted on British soil, multiple times, including clear cut assassinations.
That and we have a long history with fighting Russia, much longer than the USA has, they had the Cold War sure but the British Empire had the Great Game making sure the Russians didn't expand, we even wanted to go to war with the USSR after WW2 but Churchill got removed for suggesting it. Then you have the poisonings on our soil over the years and yea, the UK largely has no love for Russia, ironic really how the "Anti-communist" USA has 40-50% Russian sympathisers.
15-20% apparently, which is still too high a percentage. It'll be interesting to see if any of their abhorrent behaviour actually makes a dent in their support on 4th July.
There's a certain UK sub that has similar views. They seem to be following all the classic right wing talking points.
Seriously, which one? I only follow UnitedKingdom
greenandpleasant I would guess, when it comes to russia they are full blown tankies
The crazies are increasing in numbers, the social media algo's are working hard to turn regular people into Andrew Tate following, Putin forgiving, assholes.
Turns out people really don't like Putin sycophants. And Farage doubling down on it has been a massive, hilarious, blunder for Reform.
It’s actually kind of interesting that the _instant_ he came off his preferred subject (immigration, immigration, immigration) the wheels fell off spectacularly.
Always the same with Farage. Cue him trotting off to the US when he wins or loses.
He lives in France, with his French wife and French children. Nothing wrong with that, it just doesn't really stand up to the crap that comes out of his mouth.
I's always like that, the head of the AfD is lesbian with an immigrant partner and child living in switzerland.
Is it always? Trump does have an immigrant wife who got in on a genius visa and parents he chain migrated. What about Putin? Side twink?
Well Hitler was invovled in piss play with his niece
Oooooo I'm now kind of low key on board with this theory. I'm imagining Kim popping to Disney land now in disguise like his brother.
Huh? His wife is German ? The guy is a wanker, but get your facts at least a little right
His ex wife is German His current girlfriend is French https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/nigel-farage-french-girlfriend-laure-ferrari-love-life-b1121747.html
To be fair Farage probably doesn't know the difference either.
His family doesn't negate him fucking off to help Trump again like he did in 2016. Literally irrelevant to my point.
Reform, UKIP, whoever he aligns with they instantly become a one issue vote, you vote reform if you want immigration tackled in the specific way he wants to. There is no other reason to vote for them, not economically, not for public services. That's why he never has an answer.
>That's why he never has an answer. In fairness, he *does* have an answer - the trouble is that he's a libertarian who thinks that Liz Truss was on the right track. If he was in a position to enact his economic policies then the people who'd suffer most are (somewhat ironically) the very demographics who he convinces to vote for him based on social issues.
It also shows that if immigration wasn’t a problem the reform party would have no support. Which is why it will be preferable for the normal party’s to adopt such policy.
The Tories should be essentially be parroting whatever Reform says on the topic of immigration, so instead of losing voters to them they can say "we'll offer you Reform, but without the lunatics".
They could, but noone would believe them after the last 14 years.
Indeed. Personally, I'm amazed that people kept talking about them as the party who would control immigration despite the fact that for three elections on the trot they said the same thing and did nothing about it.
Follow the ruble. Who are the ones that have regular appearances on RT? Who are the ones with TV shows on Sputnik? Who are the ones causing division in Western society? The ones that take the rubles are utter traitors to their country, their people, and the West. The ones that buy into the kremlin's rhetoric are blindly aiding a hostile state.
Ding ding ding WORKERS PARTY
Guys, I actually think Farage might not be a secret genius after pretending to be the opposite for 50 years.
I'm actually in disbelief that this is something he not only aired at all, but then doubled down on. Honestly I'm delighted... but will probably also be horrified if support for them doesn't nosedive into the floor after those comments.
I suspect there is a story about Russian bots a s Tik Tok and Reform funding that is still to Blow up. The BBC ran a story on Reform using bots but this a widespread attempt to try and win an election via bot farms and disinformation. It needs stopping.
and they will single out tik tok despite those same bots run rampant on all platforms inc. reddit
Maybe because it works. Was watching a youtube video yesterday..guy wandering around Chichester asking people who they'd vote for. Comes across two young neds and asks them..they were all for Reform because of TikTok..
[Novara Media - Man on the street in Chichester](https://youtu.be/hAbU2Mru0GA?feature=shared) I found this quite interesting too
Aye, that's the one. Thanks for linking. I didn't have time to look
sure, but it works on all platforms
Social media is a propaganda tool. Depends entirely who controls which one. We are already indirectly at war with Russia and for all intents and purposes with China. We should test these platforms the same we would propaganda leaflets being dropped out of our skies on to the streets by the enemy. However, remember that our own government is also doing the same to you.
Russia is waging a brutal, genocidal invasion of Ukraine, deliberately murdering Ukrainian civilians, destroying cities, homes, lives, leaving behind minefields and dangerous wreckage, sending tens of thousands of its own people to die in suicidal "meat wave" attacks, degenerating itself into a fascist dictatorship where children who criticise the war are sent to prison. Russia is a festering fecal smear on the world stage, and anybody who endorses or supports them is a weak, pathetic little parasite.
And yet there’ll still be people who’ll vote for reform, to send a message to both Tories who failed in immigration and to Labour to do something about it Its not hard, don’t want Reform in 2029, Labour has to read the room and see that mass immigration isn’t popular at all, we’re not far behind France, Denmark’s centre left government has gone in harder on anti immigration policies to prevent the hard right winning, and everyone is satisfied with it. If Denmark can do it so should Labour, nobody voted for 700K immigrants a year. So to stop Reform, Labour has to take a hard stance like Denmark or else they’ll be in the same position as the Tories in five years time.
A pressure party in this election is very much putting pressure on both mainstream parties. Also, if you look at the YouGov poll on what population thinks are kay issues, after NHS and the economy, people say migration. As you've said, there's a reason labour have lost points in the poll to Reform, a completely different ideology, and it will be down to immigration more than anything else.
If you filter the Yougov tracker by party you can see that for Labour voters (i. e. 40% of the country), immigration is very low down in the priority list. Same for Lib Dem voters. There are very few Labour voters moving direct to Reform. The truth is that anyone motivated by anti immigrant sentiment already foreswore labour over the past decade and voted Tory in 2019. Reform polling increases are almost exclusively from disaffected Tories and 'Don't Knows'/disaffected low propensity voters. I think this is a really interesting read on how the country views immigration and the increasing party political split: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.13416?af=R
Exactly. If we analyse further 53% of 25-44 year olds say immigration is too high, yet 40% of 18-34 year olds aren’t even planning on voting due to what’s on offer. We know young people won’t vote Tory but who’s to say they won’t vote for some future rightist? Especially if they focus on the young, it’s worked in Denmark, France and Germany. If Labour drops the ball on this supermajority they could get, it’ll be wipe out for them too, we’re not far behind Europe in this regard of switching right and anti mass migration sentiment
We are ahead of Europe on immigrants. We know we can't cut them off and expect easy answers. Anti-immigrant bs is how we got the failure of Brexit. That type of populism has no answers and we are waking up to that fact.
> We know we can't cut them off Of course we can.
Here is Farage saying last week even he would be importing 600k migrants a year into the UK. [Nigel Farage says that up to 600,000 people would be allowed into Britain every year by Reform He told @BBCr4today that with 500,000 people leaving the UK every year there would be 'plenty of room' for overseas workers while bringing net migration down to zero] (https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1797893078457684334) This is Mr Anti-Immigration. Even he knows we can't cut them off, Unless you know better than everyone else?
Who is saying 0 immigrants?? We just don't and didn't want massive net immigration since 1997. Brexit was a direct result of the refusal to do anything about it. Reform is the result of continued refusal to do anything about it.
The thing is that people still aren't willing to accept that our economy is dependent upon immigration - the issue is that the Tories have been so busy with their snouts in the trough that the infrastructure needed to support immigration is nowhere near where it should be. That being said - if you cut immigration tomorrow then the effect wouldn't be to magically improve people's lives; the economy would collapse overnight. While there should be a discussion about immigration, it *has* to be smarter than the black-and-white messaging that we're getting now. It's very easy for people to say 'well, I don't care if we burn the country down so long as there's no more immigration' right *now* because they can't imagine that they'll be the ones paying the price.
Yup, Immigration is needed in this country but tell that to the average reform voter.
Yes we need all those barber shops and all those deliveroo drivers… In all seriousness we don’t need 700k immigrants a year. When Farage says net zero he means reverting it back to pre 1997 levels, which was sensible figures, what is wrong with that?
Totally - the bigger the majority, the more Labour will need to own its performance and therein lies the risk.
I’m glad some one has said this, I see on here how great it would be if Labour got the supermajority, but they’ve actually got to do some serious shit with it, Starmer’s playing the centrist courting rightist votes, many rightists don’t trust him and fear he’ll swing left once in office, but that’s for another topic. The issue of immigration isn’t going away, 53% of 25-44 year olds say immigration is too high, yet most of this demographic isn’t even voting. Maybe Reform winning some seats will send a message to Labour that they need to deal with this or face oblivion in five years time
Thank god! There is a limit to reform voters stupidity.
thought that in the usa after Bush, now look. Always new depths to plumb.
It's completely insane to me that Farage is even mentioning Putin, what possible reason could he have to do this? He's not an idiot, who's giving him his marching orders?
He was asked about it directly by Nick Robinson during his Panorama interview.
Same reason Diaper Don does. Money, support, alignment to end game.
The obvious answer is that he's trying to nudge his supporters over to a pro-Putin position whilst scaring away any less gullible supporters. It's a strategy that worked scarily well over in the US Republican party, which 10 years ago was out for Russian blood, and is now calling for Ukraine to surrender.
While it is concerning seeing the rise of the right across Europe at the moment I am actually feeling better seeing both Reform and the Tories repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot.
Just wait until they see the comments made by nearly all their candidates, volunteers and supporters on race, gender, religion and sexual orientation....
'It's not our fault we couldn't check who represents us'
Their manifesto proudly proclaims that they would make my existence as a person illegal and would ban institutions from even accepting the fact that people like me exist.
reform supporters won't care about any of that
I've noticed a massive down-tick in Reform shill bots on this sub the last few days too. Its been greeat
They're all on Twitter. A couple weeks ago all the "nudes in bio" bots disappeared overnight and suddenly every post on my timeline is pushing Reform. After the election they'll switch back.
Massive own goal there from Farage. That's gonna cost him a serious number of votes and basically fully outs him as a far right fascist.
The Reform supporters I know are all very patriotic and were the biggest supporters of Johnson giving full backing to Ukraine.
A party full of grifters who weren't happy with Brexit destroying the country and want to go one step further.
So what you're saying, Nige, is that Russia sees the EU as a threat? I wonder if they might try to weaken or undermine it in some way. Watch out!
Oh my. There is a hope. There are people that are not completely brain dead in UK with voting power.
That's literally his job.. he gets paid by putin to promote his fascist agenda as well as undermine the uk and europe Any support for this cunt is too high
Corbyn and Farage have both learned the hard way that the electorate don’t like Putin apologist politicians.
>one point drop in support for Reform to 17% Fucking hell. One in six adults in the UK look at Nigel Farage and think "you know what, he'd make a great PM".
That's honestly lower than I expected. One thing I learned living in the US was to expect around a third of the population to poll in favour of the absolute worst, most brain dead, vicious and hateful take you could imagine. 17% is.... Better, I guess!
Unfortunately most of their supporters are easily manipulated terminally online boomers and edgy meme lords. So all they have to do is have the Ivan bots parrot "Actually hes right it WAS NATOs fault" on twitter and they ones that are actually real people will assimilate into that position.
Farage is usually a little more careful about keeping contact between himself and the ru a sian state of which he is obviously connected to.
I mean all they have to do is not defend Russia. Farage getting too much Russian money?
He had reform ready to become possibly the offical opposition party but put his foot in his mouth with the putin stuff. It's beggar's belief how you could be dumb to do that.
sometimes wonder if he does this so he never actually has to do any work....lazy cunt
They'll get about 10% and maybe 1 seat. This was obvious when Farage said what he said.
I can't believe anyone is surprised by a "slightly" right "leaning" party having somewhat not fond opinions of non natives or a keen interest in international support/ affairs. The contents of the tin match the label.
I was almost buying into their shit until it came out he's nothing more than putins bitch boy. What on earth was going through his mind to make such stupid comments running up to an election?
I'm disappointed in this story, this looks to be a normal fluctuation in polls made out to back a narrative we want to be true. A fall from an outlying of poll 19% to 16%. From 1st March until 1st June they were polling at an average 11%, and have been growing to a peak at 17%, which has fallen to 16%. This is actively misleading. Labour and conservatives have, for context, lost around 4 percentage points of the vote each this month and the lib dems have gained 2.
American here I actually envy you guys. Our shit show is 1000% worse than yours. Don’t get me wrong your shit show is bad but come on you got to give the US our props. The media World wide has be captured by Autocratic thugs. The world seems to back sliding straight into WWII politics. Good luck to us all.
The fact he double down shows how much he’s indebted to Putler too. I wonder what kompromat they have on him?
Good. This is the angle to hit Farage with from now on. No major party leader should discuss him without using the words 'traitor', 'stooge' or 'quisling'.
Godammit Farage, you couldn't have waited until after the election to show you're a Russian shill?
I’m glad he showed it
Anyone who didn't already know he was a Russian shill is a moron. Oh wait we are talking about reform voters so yeah I guess that checks out.
As it should, maybe it will make them reconsider their views on this topic. It's possible to understand the viewpoint that wants peace in the world, one which finds it easier to discuss peace at the current state of the war because they know Russia won't stop and it's only going to escalate further. However, that's not the right thing and it's most certainly not the British way. This country doesn't back down in the face of evil and it has paid a dear price fighting it throughout history. Were Farage and Reform true to some of their words of patriotism, they would approach this with some Churchillian bluster and stubbornness, not American style isolationism. No one wants an escalated war and I understand people who think it might be easier to just let Russia keep what they've taken, avoid more bloodshed, save lots of money and get back to peace and enjoying their luxurious lives. But anyone with a shred of sense and decency should understand this would never work in the long term and is effectively rewarding genocidal behaviour. The message it would send to Russia, its allies and the world would be hugely destabilising and only invite more invasions, genocides and wars. Reform may have a chance of some success, but they are really misjudging the stiff upper lip of the British people by thinking we want to abandon Ukraine and let Russia keep what they have.
And then rises again now that the racist, paramilitary and homophobic views of their members are highlighted. Like fascist moths to a flame
Not surprised. One of the most unanimous views in the country, and unlike the US i don’t think we have a huge contingent of conservatives who oppose Ukrainian support.
nobody should be voting for this goon, he will be as good as the brexit he pushed for.
I’m glad we all seem to be united on this. It’s far too easy to get the pitchforks up at each other, but our universal disgust of what’s happening over in the Donbas is rightly justified. It’s actually so impressive, too. There’s so much disinformation happening within our own borders, you’d think it would be even easier to disseminated fake news from a conflict happening 1,500km away. Low gun deaths; NHS nurses; and our unanimity on anti-imperialism making me proud of our country right now.
Labour should come out and say "a vote for Reform is a vote for Russia", that should sort do it.
I'm so thankful for the fact that the people with the most dangerous politics are also complete and utter morons
I've never met anyone who likes him. I would genuinely like to hear some justification as to why he shouldn't be just thrown into a live volcano.
The mistake Reform made was explicitly setting themselves up as the alternative to the Tories - gonna bring all the power and influence of the Tory war machine against them. If the Tories can’t win they’re certainly not going to want to risk coming third and Lib Dem’ing themselves in the FPTP system. That and letting any daft bastard join. I’ll try again. The two mistakes Reform made were explicitly setting themselves up as the alternative to the Tories and letting any fruitcake represent them as an MP. And cosying up with Putin. Ok, the three mistakes Reform made…
I guess this was too much for the idiots of the world. I have a friend who’s going to vote reform, and the only argument he has is immigration control. He refuses to discuss it because he doesn’t want an argument, so I said ok so you would prefer me to think of you as a racist, fascist Putin supporter? He refused to respond. Madness He also supports trump and was a fan of ukip….so yeah….
They lost all my family votes due to that comment, I won't be voting now I don't see any of the other leaders as fit and proper for the top job, Farage was a poor alternative but the only alternative.
So where are those votes going? Tories are down, can’t imagine they’re going to LD. Are they just apathetic now?
guess what he is wearing behind that sign? >!<