What the hell is going on with Reform?

What the hell is going on with Reform?

Only a month ago, Britain was gripped by the excitement around Trump winning the election. Even better, Farage has a seemingly great relationship with him, so we all started hoping and daydreaming that Reform could be our Republicans. They are doing well, no doubt about it. They announced they’ve got 100k new members and bookies are giving Farage good odds on being PM. But the fact is, unless the slease carries on piling up, Labour is never going to volunteer to hold an election before they’re forced to, and four years is a long time.

If Reform aren’t going to offer us anything more than the Tories or Labour, why would we vote for them?

Having been on the left all my life until about 7 years ago, one of the biggest things that stood out to me is that people on the right have the ability to forgive, re-evaluate, challenge things and admit they’re wrong. The left doesn’t do that. More importantly they don’t forgive. And the working class “right” are happy to forgive if someone holds their hands up. They’ll welcome everyone into the fold. We saw it during the US elections. Lifelong Democrat voters saying they’re voting Trump, and everyone just being pleased. No gloating or anything, just “welcome aboard”.

Where they differ in mentality, also, is being able to criticise their own. Unlike Labour who have been excusing in their party the same policies and horrific language and bad behaviour from their own MP’s like Dawn Butler, the “right” don’t tolerate it. If you’re a twat, own it and apologise, or piss off. It’s that simple.

It’s always something that comes up from the left whenever Muslim grooming gangs are mentioned. The retort is always “white men rape kids too” – yeah, we know! But we don’t, as a “community” harbour them. We would be the first to hand a nonce over to the authorities. We want them all – ALL – to be in prison. For life. We, the working class, do not excuse anyone, for anything.

The last few months since the election, has been just that. The British working class, who are the majority of the Reform voter base, are calling out things we think are out of order or not in line with what we wanted, hoped, or expected from Reform.

They’ve actually got away with a lot and been forgiven a lot. But the more time that goes on, the more complacent and arrogant and demanding they become, people are getting more and more pissed off with them.

What they don't seem to get is that we don't actually want to be pissed off with them. We WANT them to do well and win and save the country. Most of the anger towards them is coming from those that voted for them - including me.

The thing with the working classes is that they’re often pattern spotters. Most of them have jobs where they have to make decisions based on experience, because things change a lot. If they’re an electrician or plumber, for example, every day, they’ll have a job different to the last, and have to think on their feet, and improvise or problem solve, and they do that because they’re genetically wired to do so. If you’re in the care industry, you could come across a whole host of different scenarios every day and have to use your initiative to solve them. There’s a reason that the army is predominantly working-class people and not academics. The realities and practicalities of real life don’t require reference books, they require smarts. They’ also very knowledgeable and proud of British and world history, and, open to learning new things. They’re not arrogant like many degree holders these days, that a degree somehow magically makes you an expert on literally everything on the planet ever, they recognise there’s a lot to know and learn, and go off and find out. They seem to love it. They’re also mailable and adaptable and pretty brave. Bloody loyal too. Until they're treated like shit or lied to. Then you've lost them. 
I’ve said before, when Covid hit, it was the care staff, the road builders, factory workers, farmers, delivery drivers and shop workers and tradesmen that kept this country going – not all the posh academic wankers that sat on their arses on furlough whinging about Brexit on Twitter all day.

These people matter. We matter. They matter.

The working classes also the people MOST effected in society by really, really, shit governmental policies. It’s their poor towns and villages where tens of thousands of foreign men are dumped. It’s them that get evicted by their landlords who got a better deal off Serco to house migrants, it their little girls who have to run the gauntlet of “Turkish” barbers every day after school, being air-dropped dick picks and having their arses felt, it’s their mums and grans and grandads that face freezing to death this winter, it’s them that can’t get a doctors appointment or have to wait 10 hours at A&E, it’s their kids parks that are full of smack heads taking a shit, it’s their businesses that get hit the hardest by rises in fuel duty, VAT, national insurance and min wage… the list is endless.

As a collective, as a "community", they have the least unemployment, commit the least crime, and pay the most taxes per capita. Yet, they have absolutely no voice. The chances of a proper working-class person ever having their say on TV or in Parliament, is almost zero.

Even posting on social media now, about their frustrations, get’s them thrown in prison.
Up until @elonmusk took over X, they had no voice, except the ballot box.

Every election, two parties would stand up and offer A or B and they had to choose the least shit option. That was it. And even then, they were abused for it. The Leave/Remain fallout is what finally turned me against Labour. I voted Labour and I voted Remain, but I knew loads of people, being in Cornwall, that voted Leave – and not one was a racist, or a moron, or a gammon or a nazi or any of the other vile accusations thrown at them. Leave voters didn’t speak like that to Remainers. It was shocking. And I was appalled.

So, along that journey, over the last 7 years, I’ve watched the growth of what has now become Reform, and I’ve watched the excitement that has surrounded it. It was like someone finally had their backs. Someone finally was sticking up for the working classes. Farage had done it for Brexit, and now they had him again for Reform.

So what the hell has happened?

Rupert Lowe is an absolute warrior. He’s smart, he’s tenacious, he absolutely understands us, he is like a dog with a bone on getting down to the facts and every minute gory detail on immigration and crime, he absolutely refuses to back down or walk away, and he’s also a generous and kind gentleman – every month giving his salary to a local charity. When he’s not in parliament, he’s having streets signs cleaned and burned out cars removed, so that his constituency looks nice. He’s the absolute pinnacle of the sort of man we like. And Ben Habib was another. Ben was articulate and smart and another gentleman. He was always courteous, knew what he was talking about and was a fierce champion of the working class. Like Rupert, brave, bold and prepared to say what needed to be said, no matter who was offended. The people like Lee Anderson, too. Less frilly around the edges, but a good British bloke that has balls. Smarter than he's given credit for, he's been impressive in various enquiries.

Because the people like Reform, everyone has been prepared to ignore some things that they haven’t liked, because they can see the bigger picture, and have hope, but those things are becoming harder to ignore.

For starters, even before the election in July, a lot of people were pissed off with Mr Tice and Dr Bull, because during covid, they wanted mandatory vaccinations, and supported sacking care staff that didn’t comply. Given that Tice’s long-term girlfriend, Isobel Oakeshott was sitting on damming text messages from Matt Hancock that the entire covid charade was bollocks, and that Bull is a doctor, made the vaccine push even more shocking. Tice could have dealt with this and said, “I recognise now, that I was wrong to push vaccine mandates, and going forward, people’s personal medical choices should not be for the state” and everyone would have said, “good bloke he’s apologised, let’s move on”. They would have even moved past his loitering about needlessly in Ukraine trying to jump on that bandwagon. But when he started calling people on a “unity March”, a peaceful event, that passed without any kerfuffle, that had brits of all ethnicities and backgrounds, “them lot”, he started to all out of favour, and his attitude doesn’t look set to improve'

And, it didn’t escape our notice that we’ve been titillated by Tice with suggestions of Christian values and church and protecting these things, and then goes and voted for government sanctioned state murder of the elderly and vulnerable. Dress “assisted dying” up however you want, but that what it is. You can’t claim to have Christian values, the main caveat being “thou shalt not kill” and then vote for it. The argument he should have made is that end of life care needs to be better, and early intervention for cancer diagnosis. Not start calling End of life doctors “deluded”.

Same with Farage. When asked about Robinson, all he had to say was, “I’m not here to discuss Mr Robinson”. That’s it. Done. He did not need to castigate him publicly, or those that support him. And Farage hasn’t said a peep about Peter Lynch, the elderly grandad who tragically took his own life, after being unfairly imprisoned, for attending a protest that got out of hand. And, whilst complaining about immigration, seems to be apathetic about deporting people, and resigned to the fact we’re stuck with these millions of men. Prior to the election, people were notably aggrieved that grooming gangs weren’t mentioned either. And when their financiers were announced, it seemed, rightly or wrongly, that that was the reason. Farage might be sick of hearing about it but we're sick of it happening. And if he can’t see why it matters, he aint the guy for the job.
We wanted and hoped for a Trumpesque movement. A proper no-shits-given, love-your-country, bollocks-to-the-perpetually-offended-left kinda guy. We wanted someone not beholden to the media and what they might say, we want someone who isn’t controlled by who funds them, and we want someone who speaks about things that matter to us. Screaming about the standard of milk in a 5* hotel in Westminster, does little to get our hopes up.

We want to hear what they’re going to do about all the problems they can see. I haven’t heard one tangible solution put forward. Some of these things are simple: Ban all non stun slaughter and overhaul the farming industry so it’s much more humane, in general, ban blood marriages, all child circumcision, 10 year min custodial sentences for anyone who abuses children, online or in person, no benefits for anyone non British born, unless they’ve worked and paid in to the system for 10 years, mass deportations, proper help for veterans, including a move to employ them in the British police force, de-politicise the judiciary, streamline the NHS and the universities, I mean… there are a thousand things that could be put forward – but we’re not hearing any of this.
There are a few other things, but that’s the gist.

So, now people have X, after decades of being silenced, they’re talking. It started off by trying to politely point things out and ask perfectly valid questions, but now, it seems Reform have taken to shouting down their supporters.
They need to take a step back and have a think. Four years is a long time away. Relying on Labour and Tories to be so shit, you win be default, isn’t really a great plan for getting more seats in parliament.

That Tice put a lot of money in, isn’t our problem. None of us are obligated to him because he did that. He’s not our boss, or our dad, or our boyfriend. He doesn’t pay our bills, or our wages, and WE are not answerable to him. If he, and Aaron Banks and all the inner Reform circle want to carry on calling everyone names, and generally telling them off for wrong think, they’re not going to be as celebrated in four years’ time, as they have been.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the British working class are happy to continue to be spoken like shit to by rich people. Maybe. Maybe they’ll win the next GE, and Farage is PM and I’m totally wrong. But, to me, it just looks like more rich people, with privileged lives, telling poor people to shut the feck up and feck off.

I can’t imagine running a business, where customers unhappy with the product that is advertised, would be told that they’re the arseholes for not liking it. That feels like what happening with Reform at the moment. To me anyway.
We owe nobody nothing. If you want our vote, they need to tell us why, and what they’ll do with it.

@Kingbobiiv
https://x.com/KingBobIIV/status/1863920374364139671