It's important to assume that Reform in Government would indeed try to do this. The right thing is not to tell the public that this won't happen - so they can therefore vote for Reform without guilt - but rather that a vote for Reform is a vote for the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people.
The people who want to vote for Reform don't give a shit about that. They don't view migrants as people.
Farage wants genuine asylum seekers to be deported back to the oppressive regimes they fled from. The result is that these people will be imprisoned, tortured and killed. He knows that. He just doesn't give a f***
Also, Fartage wants to do a deal with the Taliban, who we fought against in a war and who killed lots of our troops... gonna be a lot of cognitive dissonance on that one!
I fear that would just be another reason to vote for them. For some, or more than we like to admit, the cruelty is the point.
I didn't say they wouldn't *try*, I said it is impossible to deport 600k people in a Parliament.
It's exactly analogous to the Brexit debacle. Can the UK really escape the gravity well of the EU? Of course not (see: alignment even under a v hard Brexit). The electorate should have been told that.
Oh indeed, but it is perfectly possible to put hundreds of thousands of people in camps in a Parliament if you're willing to leave all the treaties Reform say they would leave.
I don't believe for a moment that RefUK could leave the Brexit deal and the NI Protocol. They might try, but I don't even think it's possible without causing chaos.
I wish l had your optimism. Looking at the level of governance in Reform led councils a RefUK govt would only seek to maximise the interests of its admin. Funded by vulture hedge fund managers diaster is opportunity to the sovereign individual. Tanking the £ & creating market havoc is on the cards.
I agree it’s not possible without causing chaos but why do you think that would stop them as what you and I think won’t matter. they don’t believe that/dont care.
If you think populists are averse to causing chaos, I would suggest you to take a look across the Atlantic.
Sure, but the UK electorate is a lot less open to that. Also, the UK doesn't have a reserve currency or the protection that grants in the bond market. But you may be right. 🤷♂️
Not convinced they would care much about the wider electorate certainly after election and as discussed here once in power economic failure doesn't seem to be enough to drive them out again www.ft.com/content/727d...
The UK electorate don’t have to be open to it: 33% of them could deliver a huge majority to Reform because we don’t live in a functioning democracy.
could be less if they were propped up by a rump Tory party desperate for relevance
This would be a good moment for Labour to get rid of FPTP.
Also going to leave this here as it’s as relevant to Labour as it is to the Greens. Banging on about inequality (with a side salad of “wealth tax utopianism”) is not going to cut through. bsky.app/profile/keep...
This assumes that Labour are an intelligent, reforming, progressive and liberal political party. I’d be interested in any evidence of this in the last 50 years.
I mean I can see *some* (devolution, civil partnerships, half hearted Lords reform). Blair regretted the FOI Act. But none of it was an actual programme to reinvigorate our democracy - just some tinkering.
Reform want to cause chaos. They'll follow the Trump playbook.
Even just the chaos would make all of us a lot poorer, some people won’t be able to pay their bills/rent/mortgage/ end up homeless. Then there is the instability w the economy and investment that means job losses. People are being too naive to hv forgotten Liz Truss already!!!
You do realise how close we came to not getting a Brexit deal because the government of the time didn't care about the boring details that sustain our freedom and prosperity?
Yes, I'm reading about it right now. And neither May nor Johnson would have done it. I concede ofc that they are both far more admirable and honourable figures than Farage.
Of course they could leave. What you're assuming is they want to government the country when they just want to slash and burn it selling it off to the cheapest buyer.
I think: bond market and sterling say no. Also matters if they have an overall majority or not.
I think the bond market and the dollar aren't saying no in america.
Pretty much exactly how Cameron and Osborne fought the referendum - assuming Leave couldn’t possibly win because it would cause chaos. You need to check your complacency mate and grasp how serious and how dangerous Farage is
I didn't say he couldn't win an election, I've got that at say 30%+. I'm saying these policies won't hold or stick.
Tbf that's what they said about a lot of the P25 stuff that's happening rn across the Pond. OK so we're not Americans and don't have quite so many fundies or such bad racism, but there are literally ppl behind the scenes working on it.
It's fair to say that it's a danger, no doubt about that.
On that, we are agreed. It feels 1930s-ish
I've been pretty much one of the first people to say they can win because, well, I know and listen to a lot of voters.
Yes, it would cause chaos. Don’t make the mistake the US is making. These people absolutely intend to do what they say they will.
Brexit caused chaos. It was always going to, of course, but that we ended up with a referendum on it was down to the same people that you're now saying would care about agreements & deals, and not causing chaos?
"I don't believe for a moment that Trump could..." *a few moments later* Come along now. These people are not afraid of chaos.
It's a made up number. The backlog is less than 100k at the moment. The policy assumes that the rate of small-boat based arrivals stay the same. So Farage actually fails to stop the boats?
They’re using Pew Research figures…approx 1M ‘illegals’ are here. They include people with indefinite leave to remain.
Well obviously, those people are not illegal - exactly as anyone who came with a valid work permit or student visa and makde an application for indefinite leave to remain. Did they indicate how they intended to separate the indian IT workers, the Thai carehome workers and the Somali refugees?
That’s detail…they’re not interested in detail. Maybe they’ll have a Wansee style conference to map out who gets to stay.
Farage will need the boats to continue to reach his target. He needs big numbers to satisfy the idiots who support him.
And just like that a party with 4 MPs is considered to be the next winner in 3 years time. Unbelievable
4 years.
Well... Might not be if they continue governing like this.
How does that work?
It doesn’t. It will be 4 years, unless the PM thinks it would be beneficial to go earlier.
I think some people, possibly those that only remember the last Tory government, have become so accustomed to constant switches in power that they believe it's somehow part of our constitution and triggered automatically by a bit of discontent in the Tory party or Tory constituencies.
He has 4 MPs -the media must stop promoting him
The issue is that the government is dead set on promoting him as part of a galaxybrain scheme to ensure they win in 2029 (I think in turn to kill the Tory party but that's... actually not a very smart aim? Like, if you want an unpalatable opposition...)
It's happening right now, a giant American shaped petri dish we can watch the experiment unfold in real time and the same thing will happen here, many people, living out their worst selves online, when confronted with the most overt of cruelties will suddenly declare this is not what they meant.
Yeah - I think letting Farage continuing to bleat on about he he’ll set up his concentration camps, the logistic supply chain to deport 600k people, will allow the country to judge him. Farage will re-write the Gulag Archipelago for the UK.
We are all human beings and we all need our human rights to be respected. Lost for one , lost for all.
And an end to YOUR human rights, not just other people’s.
Most people seem to think that human rights are needed by other people. History shows that they will continue to believe this until it is too late - and even then, some will still support it even whilst they are being victimised.
Human rights are being applied at all times to all people here in the UK. Hoe the police and other institutions deal with you are dictated by human rights.
A non-insignificant number of Trump voters voted for him because they managed to convince themselves that he would only try to implement the policies they liked and not the ones they didn't. Even though they all wanted different things and he was always going to do whatever he could get away with.
That was also the case with Brexit. It wasn't a well-defined policy, it was a feeling, that Leave voters could project whatever they wanted on to
What reform government? I don’t want to be told anything. I’ve already been told that we are on the brink of the breakdown of civilisation if you listen to both the left and right wing commentariat. These plans will never be supported by any other political party so how can he be PM?
But they won't care until it happens to them.
Unfortunately, the suffering of others argument doesn’t work with that portion of the electorate who have embraced Farage’s fear and hatred of immigrants. To their mind, it’s them or us.
The worst thing is that a section of the UK public would likely view 'a vote for Reform is a vote for the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people' as a bonus.
That is my fear as well, from reading the social media comments about setting the Royal Navy on small boats and withdrawing donations from the RNLI, and from watching the coverage of ICE raids in the US.
Start posting material like this theconversation.com/famine-in-et...
More simply, tell people that Reform voters are bad people.
So, if countries get paid for accepting their people back, what’s to stop them pushing more people this way in order to get more money?
That it won't happen doesn't mean they wouldn't try to make it happen and cause enormous damage in the process.
Yet Starmer says NOTHING .. Pathetic 🤡
A lot of people would be quite happy to see the suffering. That's the trouble.
Trump playbook
They have learned lessons from Trumps America. Lessons like you can simply ignore the courts. So they will DO this, because they can ride out the consequences with a supine press, voter base, bad opposition and a public not willing to protest in a disobedient manner.
Agree. O Hara is making a fool of himself as usual
We thought Trump's threats were a load of baloney, too.
I want to know when the other parties in Westminster get their time on BBC? You know, impartiality and all that.