The Reform Coalition

[Puja]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... rage-party

Found this a very interesting piece of polling and analysis that digs into the different social groups that make up Reform's polling majority and why they have turned towards them.

Reading that, you'd say there's only two ways to stop them. The first is if Labour somehow manage to do what the Conservatives spent 14 years proving was impossible and make an economic boom out of austerity, specifically one that benefits the poorest and makes everybody feel better off. Do that, and the 48% of Reform's vote that comes from "Squeezed Stewards" and "Reluctant Reformers" will have their major concern taken care of and be switched off by Reform's nuttier behaviour/policies.

The second is by Polanski keeping the Greens' momentum and not either fucking up or having a major closet-skeleton reveal. If they establish themselves as second place in more than just outlier polls, then the "Reluctant Reformers" who "back Reform out of frustration with mainstream politics rather than conviction" are definitely in play, and they are equivalent to 6.4% of Reform's recent polling of 32%. While a 100% transfer is unlikely, there's also a decent possibility of pinching some of the Squeezed Stewards and Contrarian Youth as well, given Polanski's outsider-to-mainstream-politics status and promises of rebalancing the economy so that it would work for the many, not the few for more ordinary people. Get Reform down to 24-26% and Greens up to 20-23% and suddenly Labour are on the wrong side of the FPtP tactical voting bollocks for once, and I suspect the red rosette partisans will be much more likely to hold their nose and vote tactically than the blue-rosette true-Tories.

Weirdly, that means that the two possibilities for hope are diametrically opposed. Option 1 involves praying that Labour are actually competent and do manage to save the country, whereas Option 2's best chance of happening comes if Labour continue to shit the bed and drive away their base without any gains to show for it (probably including a series of damaging leadership elections where another identikit bland establishment austerity bastard in a suit is shuffled into the place of the last one).

In short, it's horribly distressing living on the verge of a fascist electoral win, and I am "coping" by doing analysis of polls and political research like it will a) make any difference to the result or b) not make my mental health much much worse. How's everyone else doing?

Puja

[Stom]

Honestly, the analysis…didn’t do much for me.

We can see that a portion of the vote are simply anti immigrant, and we can ignore them.

We can see a portion of the vote are rabid right wingers, and we can ignore them.

And we can also see that the majority of the vote are people fed up with what they see as collective failure on the part of successive governments, a system that does not give them a voice, and a standard of living that is slipping.

I don’t think Labour are saveable, much the same as I think about the left of center parties here in Hungary. But the greens are surging and there’s no reason they cannot continue.

Plus, you forgot one possibility: the Tories get rid of Badenoch and bring in a competent leader who breaks from the failure of recent Tories. Either someone completely new or someone from when they were electable.

And if that happens, they will gobble up a large portion of the right wing vote.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Interesting.

Hardline conservatives are obviously beyond help and we need to wait for them to die of old age.

Reluctant Reformers are positive on immigration, climate change and workers rights so why are they voting Reform for gods sake?? Anyway, any competent government would win them back - should be easy for Labour . . . not so easy for the Greens to demonstrate competence to this group, but they are on the right side of their main concerns.

Contrarian youth are a bit tricky to target (because they will rebel from your targeting) so Polanski - and Sultana - with tiktokery and yoof have the best chance (but they're only 9% so not a big deal).

The working right should have been catered for if Labour actually stood for what it's supposed to stand for. However, it depends on how ideological this group is. If they refuse to vote 'left' then Labour and the Greens could never get them.

Squeezed Stewards should be easy for the Greens to appeal to. Labour would have to be a lot more competent and a bit more obviously green.

So....

Redistribute wealth, tax the more wealthy, reduce tax on the poor, increase public spending.
Repeat again and again and again, immigration is not causing the problems in people's lives.
Rent control, hammer landlordism, end right to buy, build social homes.
Actually have a green new deal type of thing.
Limited price controls in supermarkets

This should bring the reluctant reformers and squeezed stewards in. Might be able to peel off some of the contrarian youth and working right who haven't got a phobia about 'the left'. Hard-line Conservatives are a lost cause.

[Puja]

Plus, you forgot one possibility: the Tories get rid of Badenoch and bring in a competent leader who breaks from the failure of recent Tories. Either someone completely new or someone from when they were electable.

And if that happens, they will gobble up a large portion of the right wing vote.

I don't think the Tories are savable either. Quite apart from the fact that they are highly unlikely to be capable of bringing in a competent leader, partly because of Boris's purge of the moderates leaving few candidates, and partly the rules of their leadership elections which leave them beholden to a small population of swivel-eyed loons, they are inextricably linked with failure in the eyes of the British populace. In a the old two-and-a-half party system, they would have the time to recover because they are the default not-Labour choice, but now FPtP is working against them because the momentum and the polls are with Reform (as is the bulk of the media coverage) and people in several constituencies who might be keener on a sane Tory party are faced with the campaign of, "Conservatives can't win here - a vote for the Tories is a vote for Socialism Starmer!"

I do still wonder if this might not be the best ever chance of electoral reform (small r) that we'll ever get. Surely Starmer/Streeting won't be looking at these polls in 2 years time and thinking that FPtP is still the best thing for the Labour party?

Puja

[Sandydragon]

Interesting.

Hardline conservatives are obviously beyond help and we need to wait for them to die of old age.

Reluctant Reformers are positive on immigration, climate change and workers rights so why are they voting Reform for gods sake?? Anyway, any competent government would win them back - should be easy for Labour . . . not so easy for the Greens to demonstrate competence to this group, but they are on the right side of their main concerns.

Contrarian youth are a bit tricky to target (because they will rebel from your targeting) so Polanski - and Sultana - with tiktokery and yoof have the best chance (but they're only 9% so not a big deal).

The working right should have been catered for if Labour actually stood for what it's supposed to stand for. However, it depends on how ideological this group is. If they refuse to vote 'left' then Labour and the Greens could never get them.

Squeezed Stewards should be easy for the Greens to appeal to. Labour would have to be a lot more competent and a bit more obviously green.

So....

Redistribute wealth, tax the more wealthy, reduce tax on the poor, increase public spending.
Repeat again and again and again, immigration is not causing the problems in people's lives.
Rent control, hammer landlordism, end right to buy, build social homes.
Actually have a green new deal type of thing.
Limited price controls in supermarkets

This should bring the reluctant reformers and squeezed stewards in. Might be able to peel off some of the contrarian youth and working right who haven't got a phobia about 'the left'. Hard-line Conservatives are a lost cause.

Those proposals might go down well in a left wing echo chamber like this. I don’t fancy your chances of convincing enough if the electorate.

Tax is already blamed for our failing economy. And you want to increase the burden on those who already pay the most? Presumably without reforming welfare which is a huge expense item.
The Greens are talking about leaving NATO. Stand by for a wave of ‘useful idiot’ charges from the media and rightly so.
We’re well beyond trying to convince people that immigration isn’t a problem. That opportunity was there two decades ago but it was easier to call anyone who raised the issue a racist. Better to follow the Denmark example.

Beware the unintended consequences of rent control. Without social housing in place those tenants need somewhere to go.
Price control are asking for trouble. Experience from
Other countries is rarely positive.

A green new deal is agreed with you on

[Sandydragon]

Honestly, the analysis…didn’t do much for me.

We can see that a portion of the vote are simply anti immigrant, and we can ignore them.

We can see a portion of the vote are rabid right wingers, and we can ignore them.

And we can also see that the majority of the vote are people fed up with what they see as collective failure on the part of successive governments, a system that does not give them a voice, and a standard of living that is slipping.

I don’t think Labour are saveable, much the same as I think about the left of center parties here in Hungary. But the greens are surging and there’s no reason they cannot continue.

Plus, you forgot one possibility: the Tories get rid of Badenoch and bring in a competent leader who breaks from the failure of recent Tories. Either someone completely new or someone from when they were electable.

And if that happens, they will gobble up a large portion of the right wing vote.

Have you considered that the reason why immigration is such a hot topic is because historically any discussion of it was deemed racist?. It is not racist to want to discuss how many people can enter this country and stay.

[Sandydragon]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... rage-party

Found this a very interesting piece of polling and analysis that digs into the different social groups that make up Reform's polling majority and why they have turned towards them.

Reading that, you'd say there's only two ways to stop them. The first is if Labour somehow manage to do what the Conservatives spent 14 years proving was impossible and make an economic boom out of austerity, specifically one that benefits the poorest and makes everybody feel better off. Do that, and the 48% of Reform's vote that comes from "Squeezed Stewards" and "Reluctant Reformers" will have their major concern taken care of and be switched off by Reform's nuttier behaviour/policies.

The second is by Polanski keeping the Greens' momentum and not either fucking up or having a major closet-skeleton reveal. If they establish themselves as second place in more than just outlier polls, then the "Reluctant Reformers" who "back Reform out of frustration with mainstream politics rather than conviction" are definitely in play, and they are equivalent to 6.4% of Reform's recent polling of 32%. While a 100% transfer is unlikely, there's also a decent possibility of pinching some of the Squeezed Stewards and Contrarian Youth as well, given Polanski's outsider-to-mainstream-politics status and promises of rebalancing the economy so that it would work for the many, not the few for more ordinary people. Get Reform down to 24-26% and Greens up to 20-23% and suddenly Labour are on the wrong side of the FPtP tactical voting bollocks for once, and I suspect the red rosette partisans will be much more likely to hold their nose and vote tactically than the blue-rosette true-Tories.

Weirdly, that means that the two possibilities for hope are diametrically opposed. Option 1 involves praying that Labour are actually competent and do manage to save the country, whereas Option 2's best chance of happening comes if Labour continue to shit the bed and drive away their base without any gains to show for it (probably including a series of damaging leadership elections where another identikit bland establishment austerity bastard in a suit is shuffled into the place of the last one).

In short, it's horribly distressing living on the verge of a fascist electoral win, and I am "coping" by doing analysis of polls and political research like it will a) make any difference to the result or b) not make my mental health much much worse. How's everyone else doing?

Puja

I think we should all be hoping that Labour can be successful in the next three and a half years. After all, it affects all of us.

I suspect there will be a lot of tactical Voting next time out.

Of Banenoch is removed then Jenrick is h to unlikely replacement. I do t know of the conservatives and reform
Would formally merge at any point, but it might be hard to put a rizzla paper between them.

Many centralists will feel that they have a choice between left and right wing parties, both of whom make them uncomfortable. There’s no telling how they would potentially break.

[Stom]

Honestly, the analysis…didn’t do much for me.

We can see that a portion of the vote are simply anti immigrant, and we can ignore them.

We can see a portion of the vote are rabid right wingers, and we can ignore them.

And we can also see that the majority of the vote are people fed up with what they see as collective failure on the part of successive governments, a system that does not give them a voice, and a standard of living that is slipping.

I don’t think Labour are saveable, much the same as I think about the left of center parties here in Hungary. But the greens are surging and there’s no reason they cannot continue.

Plus, you forgot one possibility: the Tories get rid of Badenoch and bring in a competent leader who breaks from the failure of recent Tories. Either someone completely new or someone from when they were electable.

And if that happens, they will gobble up a large portion of the right wing vote.

Have you considered that the reason why immigration is such a hot topic is because historically any discussion of it was deemed racist?. It is not racist to want to discuss how many people can enter this country and stay.

There’s a good reason I said to ignore it. It’s not possible to have a debate due to bad faith arguments and school yard politics. So you just accept there’s no way to win over those voters on the topic of immigration, and just fix the rest of the country and suddenly it won’t be an issue any more.

[Puja]

Tax is already blamed for our failing economy. And you want to increase the burden on those who already pay the most? Presumably without reforming welfare which is a huge expense item.

42% of the welfare budget is the state pension. When you add in other pension benefits like pension credits, that rises to 55%. People blithely talk about "reforming welfare" without thinking about the fact that the vast, vast majority of it is things that we generally all agree that people need. Quite apart from anything else, we've had 14 years of Conservative austerity hacking and slashing wherever they could - what fat do you imagine still exists to be trimmed that Rishi Sunak thought he'd leave for a future government to benefit from? If anything, the best way of cutting the welfare bill is probably by undoing some of the penny-wise-pound-foolish cuts that make people more ill and thus need more from the NHS, or that remove support they need to work.

Also, you see a poor beleaguered rich who "already pay the most", I see an indictment of our society that such a small percentage of the population has such a big percentage of the wealth and income that they provide a majority of the tax revenue while also getting taxed less as a percentage than an average earner.

The Greens are talking about leaving NATO. Stand by for a wave of ‘useful idiot’ charges from the media and rightly so.

Why do you keep referencing this in that fashion? You are very much aware that Polanski et al have expressed a desire to build additional alliances with our neighbours, on the basis that they do not want our entire defence to be entirely reliant on the whims of an American president who is likely to be someone who is as mad as a box of frogs. I know you know this, because we have had this conversation at least twice before, so it seems disingenuous to once again bring out "They're talking about leaving NATO " with the implication that the official policy is to just airily NATexit, day 1, without a care in the world.

Puja

[Son of Mathonwy]

Interesting.

Hardline conservatives are obviously beyond help and we need to wait for them to die of old age.

Reluctant Reformers are positive on immigration, climate change and workers rights so why are they voting Reform for gods sake?? Anyway, any competent government would win them back - should be easy for Labour . . . not so easy for the Greens to demonstrate competence to this group, but they are on the right side of their main concerns.

Contrarian youth are a bit tricky to target (because they will rebel from your targeting) so Polanski - and Sultana - with tiktokery and yoof have the best chance (but they're only 9% so not a big deal).

The working right should have been catered for if Labour actually stood for what it's supposed to stand for. However, it depends on how ideological this group is. If they refuse to vote 'left' then Labour and the Greens could never get them.

Squeezed Stewards should be easy for the Greens to appeal to. Labour would have to be a lot more competent and a bit more obviously green.

So....

Redistribute wealth, tax the more wealthy, reduce tax on the poor, increase public spending.
Repeat again and again and again, immigration is not causing the problems in people's lives.
Rent control, hammer landlordism, end right to buy, build social homes.
Actually have a green new deal type of thing.
Limited price controls in supermarkets

This should bring the reluctant reformers and squeezed stewards in. Might be able to peel off some of the contrarian youth and working right who haven't got a phobia about 'the left'. Hard-line Conservatives are a lost cause.

Those proposals might go down well in a left wing echo chamber like this. I don’t fancy your chances of convincing enough if the electorate.

Tax is already blamed for our failing economy. And you want to increase the burden on those who already pay the most? Presumably without reforming welfare which is a huge expense item.
The Greens are talking about leaving NATO. Stand by for a wave of ‘useful idiot’ charges from the media and rightly so.
We’re well beyond trying to convince people that immigration isn’t a problem. That opportunity was there two decades ago but it was easier to call anyone who raised the issue a racist. Better to follow the Denmark example.

Beware the unintended consequences of rent control. Without social housing in place those tenants need somewhere to go.
Price control are asking for trouble. Experience from
Other countries is rarely positive.

A green new deal is agreed with you on

Ah, but the left wing echoes are sweet music to me.

The only tax being blamed for (a fraction of) the failing economy is Reeves's idiotic raising of the bottom end of employers' NI, which is something I would reverse. Indeed I recommend raising tax on those who are most able to pay, and who have done the best through these tough last 15 years. It's the most equitable source of revenue and is also aimed at increasing equality - an important goal in itself.

The Greens' (floated, unofficial) idea of leaving NATO isn't one I agree with.

So we give in to Farage and agree with his message on immigration (his main message) thus continuing to empower him just as the Tories idiotically did and as has been done with equally disastrous disastrous results across Europe? No, this has to stop and thank goodness Polanski has spoken out clearly on it. Starmer missed a great chance to reset this on day one of his government but whoever replaces him can still do it.

I would set up a ministry (or department of a ministry) of Human Resources (or some such name) which would attempt to manage the number of people (with various skills, demographics etc) we need in the country and the resources we need (housing, education, health etc) to cater for them, and where in the country they should be encouraged to be. This would give us a better idea of what level and what sort of immigration we might actually need. This is clearly a difficult task, and a moving target, but far better someone tries to do it than the total guesswork and tabloid-following we currently operate on.

Rent control doesn't destroy property. If landlords can't make easy money anymore they'll sell up and reduce house prices (which would be a blessing). Councils can step in and buy suitable property to rent out.

Price control needs to be limited (eg for a range of goods there must be an economy version at a set price (to give a reasonable margin), if this runs out, the other brands must be sold at the economy price )

[Puja]

The Greens are talking about leaving NATO. Stand by for a wave of ‘useful idiot’ charges from the media and rightly so.

Why do you keep referencing this in that fashion? You are very much aware that Polanski et al have expressed a desire to build additional alliances with our neighbours, on the basis that they do not want our entire defence to be entirely reliant on the whims of an American president who is likely to be someone who is as mad as a box of frogs. I know you know this, because we have had this conversation at least twice before, so it seems disingenuous to once again bring out "They're talking about leaving NATO " with the implication that the official policy is to just airily NATexit, day 1, without a care in the world.

And, because the algorithm is always spying on you, today I was presented with a video of Polanski himself answering that exact question in an interview, which I am sharing for any visual learners among us.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16eAdcgSv2/

Puja