“Look, I believe in what I believe in. I don’t get pushed about by anybody. We disagreed on something. If you believe in free speech, you should believe that people have the right to disagree.”
He also rejected calls for Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, to be put in solitary confinement, saying: “It’s pretty awful actually. Solitary can be very damaging to people’s mental state. A civilised society actually treats its prisoners with a certain level of respect.”
This though:
He went on to estimate that there was a “35 to 45 per cent chance” of him, or a “younger” Reform candidate, becoming prime minister at the next election.
Yes, I know the polls but I do, significantly, doubt the chances are that high.
I’m not sure it’s that far out. The tories have imploded for one thing. Maybe they’ll get their act together but it’s not a given.
Lots of people are pissed off about the state of the country. If that anger coalesces around Reform then they might do much better than people expect. I’ll vote for anybody who can beat TTK, preferably physically, but I’ll settle for the lying bastard being thrown out on his ear.
Might not happen, there’s plenty of time to screw things up and he does have a bit of a track record.
It’s certainly an interestingly volatile situation, but my sense is that they wouldn’t be ready for it. A lot depends on who joins them in the interim. Too many sleek Tories looking for a better fox-hole would mean we get more of the same. But conversely, a lot of the candidates in the last election were dire. I went to the local hustings last year, and my head was in my hands.
Simon
I went to a hustings too and the R chap was a bit clueless. The Lab guy was pretty slick. The incumbent Con MP came across as a buffoon. To my horror, the Green lady spoke some sense.
There’s going to be a more “anyone else but…” feeling than we have ever encountered before and it will give us a 6 way split in the vote, I reckon ( I am including Islamists in that six ).
It’s a small and self-selected sample, but a couple of acquaintances who’ve gone Reform (one a local organiser, the other stood as a candidate MP) have been making the point that Reform needs to get a good team in place and have some care who it chooses; and they’re trying to do so, with better selection and putting training in place.
A particular point is avoiding giving opponents the “vote Reform, get the same old Tories” target. For one example, there were rumblings that Suella Braverman was going to defect to Reform – but why would they want her, since she was Home Secretary when we were opening the floodgates to the world’s diverse fighting-age males? “Vote Reform and… I’ll continue to do nothing about the problem just like I did last time!” would not be a good slogan even in her notionally safe constituency.
One point in their favour, is there’s some momentum (small ‘m’, definitely) in terms of membership and interest; I let my Conservative membership lapse, and am considering whether to join Reform, and quite a few other people are in a similar mood: so the pool of potential candidates should hopefully be larger.
I’ve just been listening to Michael Malice talking about how bad Britain was in the ’70s and that it was just managed decline from both parties with the same policies, as he compared then and now. Thatcher came to the fore because she gave people hope that there was a better way than gradually getting poorer.
We’re in that same place now and the winner of the next election will be similarly anyone who can generate a sense of hope and that doesn’t necessarily Maggie’s policies, but it does mean her sense of drive and commitment to the country.
BiND, in the 70s we weren’t a “diverse” society: we simply had the traditional British class war. ‘Hope that there was a better way than gradually getting poorer’ was the (perhaps unconscious) realisation that socialism simply kept people poor. People, ordinary working-class people especially, wanted materially better lives. They wanted stuff. That’s why economic socialism failed and had to be replaced by intersectionalism.
Nowadays ‘hope that there is a better way than gradually getting poorer’ means rather different, and in many cases diametrically opposite, things to different demographics. We’re going to have to fundamentally outvote the darkies and greenies to get anywhere.
Elton John, whose real name is Reg Dwight, was a popular singer while James Callahan, whose real names was Leonard, was prime minister, and Tony Benn, whose real name was Viscount Stansgate, was advocating moving further left, while Morcombe and Wise, whose real names were Barthomew and Leeds…. gee, this gets difficult.
Elsewhere:
The only groups with a net positive vote for Conservatives are 55–64s and voters over the age of 65.
And Labour will kill off a chunk of those through withdrawing the fuel allowance and bringing in euthanasia on the NHS. Others will sadly die in their nursing homes before the next GE.
Reform is on a hiding to nothing if it’s seen as Tories 2.0, an Alternative fur Codgers, if they want to win they need the kind of cross-generational appeal Trump has.
That’s more about attitude than than anything else. It wasn’t red-faced shouting about culture war ishoos that elected DJT, it was optimism and fun wot won it.
Nigel Farage TikTok dance when ?
I agree Reform needs to be very careful about any candidate with a chance, but OTOH they are not going to be 27-y-o PPE graduates but people who have lived a life outside politics. Which is what seems to have been desired by the denizens of this site just a few days ago. They will be new and inexperienced in the house, but so are a large number of Labour’s new MPs now. The new people in Labour don’t seem to be quite as bloody daft as their front bench.
Oh, and Rupert Lowe for PM please. Nigel has many qualities but not IMHO those required to be PM.
@JL
You’d make a very strong candidate – serious, professional, speak sense – so you should think about standing.
Reform would benefit from some strong female candidates too. It does feel unnecessarily blokey atm. Plenty of middle-aged women would be open to a “common sense on the trans issue” platform.
Zia Yusuf for Chancellor.
Reform are currently 2.94 on the Betfair Exchange to win the most seats in the next General Election (equates to a 34% probability).
Intriguingly, Farage is 3.9 to be the next Prime Minister (26%). I’m guessing that the discrepancy is because 1) TTK might be ousted as Labour leader before the next election; 2) that new, possibly younger leader of Reform which Farage mentions may emerge before 2029; and 3) because even if Reform won the most votes, a Labour/Lib Dem/Conservative coalition might be engineered to keep Reform out of Number Ten.
I don’t think Farage really wants the job as PM.
Wasn’t Ernie Wise’s real name Ernest Wiseman ?
Norman,
BiND, in the 70s we weren’t a “diverse” society: we simply had the traditional British class war. ‘Hope that there was a better way than gradually getting poorer’ was the (perhaps unconscious) realisation that socialism simply kept people poor. People, ordinary working-class people especially, wanted materially better lives. They wanted stuff. That’s why economic socialism failed and had to be replaced by intersectionalism.
Nowadays ‘hope that there is a better way than gradually getting poorer’ means rather different, and in many cases diametrically opposite, things to different demographics. We’re going to have to fundamentally outvote the darkies and greenies to get anywhere.
That point was also made, in no uncertain terms.
Oh, and Rupert Lowe for PM please.
+1
As I’ve said before, if you’re on X he’s certainly worth a follow. He does more effective opposition than the Tories.
We’re going to have to fundamentally outvote the darkies and greenies to get anywhere.
No, no no. That’s a trap.
If Reform is the anti-brown people party it won’t go anywhere. It should be for every normal British person who’s sick of this shit. It’s wrong to assume, as Labour did, that everybody who has dark skin enjoys wokeshit, political correctness, crushing taxation and mass immigration. Young people in particular have learned to hate all that crap.
I say we do want black votes, we want Muslim votes, we want Hindu votes. We want all the allies we can find to fix our country. We don’t need to assume people are not on our side because of their background. Because when you talk to people as a friend, they surprise you.
Green parties should be proscribed and their activists jailed. I think we’ll get there much quicker than anybody assumes, because the existence of green parties represents a national security crisis. The Greens are much more dangerous than Nazi sympathisers during WW2, time we stopped normalising the idea of people being allowed to organise in favour of insanity, poverty and death.
The experts tell us that opinions can change and polls are unreliable. But history shows that the voters neither forget nor forgive major events. Labour lost after the IMF debacle in the 70s, Cons lost after the euro devaluation in the 90s. Cons lost in 2024 because they did nothing that they said they would do.
Labour are governing with a mixture of incompetence, spite, moralising, legalism, double standards and hypocrisy. If the IMF isn’t called in before the year is out I’ll be surprised; if they aren’t called in before 2029 I’ll be astonished. Couple all this with their submission to the radicals in the muslim ghettos and Labour could be utterly wiped out at the next election.
Where would ex Labour voters go? I don’t think they would stay at home. Anger is as good a motivation to vote as any other.
“Labour are governing with a mixture of incompetence, spite, moralising, legalism, double standards and hypocrisy. If the IMF isn’t called in before the year is out I’ll be surprised; if they aren’t called in before 2029 I’ll be astonished. Couple all this with their submission to the radicals in the muslim ghettos and Labour could be utterly wiped out at the next election.”
Don’t forget the lights going out. Thats a massive one. If that happens on a government’s watch the electorate won’t forgive it, whatever the arguments the usual suspects put forward as mitigation. Look what happened to Ted Heath. And he had the genuine excuse that there actually was someone else trying to turn the lights out, namely the unions. Still sank his government. Labour won’t be able to pin a renewables instigated Grid collapse on anyone but themselves. There’s 3 or 4 winters beyond this one that Labour will have to get through before the next election, they better hope they are windy ones, and none of the nukes develop problems.
– It wasn’t red-faced shouting about culture war ishoos that elected DJT, it was optimism and fun wot won it.
Perhaps the first time, but there was a lot of deep, cold anger in 2024. The Donald managing it with good humour certainly allowed a lot of niceys to come onboard but the USS Fuck This Shit was steam driven from a nukular core.
Sadly for us, the Super Great Plan to destroy the Tories; let in the diabolical left; then have Reform sweep them away has stalled, predictably, at let in the diabolical left. Reform failed to capitalise on the Southport anger because Farage is too hoity-toity to forgive Tommy Robinson and the rest of working class England for being a bit bastard-scumbag. Henry V he fucking ain’t. Having the chinless wonder twat about on TikTok will not cut it. Elon knows this. And so do you.
Looking at local by-election results, Reform’s very much an anti-Tory-and-Labour vote. Just this week… the Baxenden ward of Hyndburn Borough Council: Labour and Tories down 35.5%, Reform takes 32.3%. Labour holds the seat, but Reform’s a close second. Gillingham South, Labour and Tories down just over 21%, Reform gets nearly 27%. Again, Labour holds, but Reform is second. Rochester East, Labour and Tories down 28%, Reform takes both seats on 37%. The Bentleys & Frating (nope, me neither): Tories & Labour down 38.5%, Reform takes the seat on 45.3%.
It’s the same story all over the country. Sometimes Labour is the bigger loser, sometimes it’s the Tories, often by a large margin, but always Reform picks up about as much share as they both lose combined, often considerably more. It’s almost never a clear swing from one or the other to Reform.
Now, to be fair, it’s council seats so we’re talking hundreds of votes rather than thousands and fewer people can be arsed to vote at all, which can exaggerate the swing and flatter a highly motivated grouping (also I’m not considering turnout here; I’m quite sure that much of Reform’s support will be coming from previous non-voters) but when the pattern is this consistent…
PJF: Sad, but true. Second-term DJT would have said, “Fuck it,” and had Tommy on-stage at one of his rallies.
PJF – Perhaps the first time, but there was a lot of deep, cold anger in 2024. The Donald managing it with good humour certainly allowed a lot of niceys to come onboard but the USS Fuck This Shit was steam driven from a nukular core.
Did you watch the campaign? It was a joyful noise. Trump dancing to YMCA won him more votes than any speech or op ed.
Sadly for us, the Super Great Plan to destroy the Tories; let in the diabolical left; then have Reform sweep them away has stalled, predictably, at let in the diabolical left. Reform failed to capitalise on the Southport anger because Farage is too hoity-toity to forgive Tommy Robinson and the rest of working class England for being a bit bastard-scumbag. Henry V he fucking ain’t. Having the chinless wonder twat about on TikTok will not cut it. Elon knows this. And so do you.
It’s harder to convince right wingers they can win than it is to win.
Like the elephant who has been chained to a peg for so long he assumes the rope can’t be simply pulled out. Right wingers always want to wallow in the warm piss bath of failure because it’s what they’re used to. They need to be dragged into the light.
If you look at current events and think “yeah, this is going great for the establishment”, I don’t know what to tell you.
Nigel is playing the long game
He knows the media and leftwaffe are waiting for the opportunity to yell faaaar riiiite and fashissssseist so he has to get candidate selection right
First test is the local elections, at least those that are left after our ‘democratic’ government cancelled the rest
He made the point at the subsequent press conference that their candidates are going to be a bit older and wiser with wide life experience across the whole economy
So he seems to have thought I through and I think Zia Yusuf is a canny operator
“The Bentleys & Frating (nope, me neither):”
Hey, I used to live in Great Bentley. Never went to Frating though. Nice villages in North Essex. Nothing to do with the Essex girl towie crap which is really London suburbs.
Fair enough, rk. It’s just that usually these results give you a better idea of where they are – the Council they’re part of – or it’s just obvious. Didn’t know that one.
What happens across the pond will significantly affect the next UK election. If The Donald’s attempts to ‘move fast and break things’ look to have generally positive results, the door’s wide open for an insurgent party here. If it turns out to be the disaster the Grauniad and BBC are predicting, not so much.
PJF – to expand slightly on what I mean:
the USS Fuck This Shit was steam driven from a nukular core.
Of course, but the public doesn’t want you to reflect their anger, they want to know things can get better. Remember the Leave campaign? Joyful warriors attract camp followers and recruits.
It would be very easy to get bogged down in, say, Tory style feebly moaning about the wokies to absolutely no purpose instead. Too many righties suffer from the dooms as it be. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that conservatives have been carefully trained to lose, the historically inevitable triumph of Blairite ‘liberal’ism was implicit in the late 20th c. cultural milieu and Americans weren’t exempt (Trump offended a LOT of smelling salts bedwetter conservatives in 2016). Remember Anthony Fisher and the socialist ratchet? Same thing.
Reform should be having the time of their lives, taking the piss out of Labour MPs and making them squeal at every opportunity. And boasting about all the public sector twats they’re going to sack so you pay less tax.
Btw – for the TR fans. I think the queue of people who might have voted Reform but were put off by its insufficient Tommy Robinsonness is a short one. He’d be a liability to Reform. I think Mr Robinson ran for Parliament before and was drubbed? So we already know he’s electoral poison.
It’s often forgotten that in the private tech sector “move fast and break things” is closely followed by “fix them, better this time, then press on.” The run-break-fix loop. Whereas, as we all know, in the public-supported bit its “dawdle and break things, then take forever not to fix them because the money still comes in and anyway by then we have lock-in.”
Trump is running the country as if it’s a Big Tech software project, hardly surprising given his advisors. Musk is the poster-boy for this. Good thing, too. As I said elsewhere yesterday he’s also pressing on hell-for-leather without worrying about the courts because if and when they catch him he’ll have banked permanent changes. Any “fines” or setbacks will be pocket change in comparison with the gains.
This is another good thing, too, because proceduralist Progressives will never catch up. They don’t even realise what he’s up to. He’s just Fascist Orange Man.
@Steve – “I say we do want black votes, we want Muslim votes, we want Hindu votes. We want all the allies we can find to fix our country. We don’t need to assume people are not on our side because of their background. Because when you talk to people as a friend, they surprise you.”
If any party does not agree with this, then regardless of their policies, people should not vote for them as this is more fundamental.