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How Reform can win the General Election – politicalbetting.com
How Reform can win the General Election – politicalbetting.com
So we are told. We can list multiple events which were politically impossible which then happened anyway. In today’s politics, the impossible is the future possible.
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The truth is that most voters want a plan to improve things. They want that *delivered*.
Telling them that nothing can be done, in 27 years, is simply a pitch for Reform.
2001 (votes/seats)
Lab: 9.06 million (323)
Con: 7.71 million (165)
LD: 4.25 million (40)
2005:
Lab: 8.05 million (286)
Con: 8.12 million (194)
LD: 5.20 million (47)
I'm a fan of first past the post, but Labour managing a comfortable majority on that share of the vote was far more problematic than what happened last year. 2005 really ought to have produced a Lab-LD coalition.
How will it play where there are other local populists chasing after the voters?
(Ask me on May 2nd.)
That may come under the aegis of the WHO or other NGOs but I don't think the UK government should be more widely cross-subsidising the healthcare of other countries.
We need to get value for money – so much of your money is being wasted on privatised utilities and services.
We need significant reforms of health, education, social services and tax to make them work for you again
We need to make work pay your bills, and that means cutting the cost of living
We need to restore pride in our communities, our country and in ourselves
We need to stop our town and cities falling into disrepair by fixing the pavements and roads and reopening the shops
Elect a Green government and we’ll cut the waste and the tax fraud which We All Know is there. Make Britain a land fit for Our Children’s Futures
It's just Motherhood and Apple pie.
Is this not Reform's main SP?
This is one posted yesterday by a couple building a retirement bungalow on the site of a former cowshed in the grounds of their barn conversion, in Cornwall.
It has taken 6 months to get to this - slates and solar panels - stage. Their business is restoring Jensen Interceptors, and there are piccies on some of the posts. They restored one, liked it, and then did a Jensen FF.
They were in Manchester, attended a Jensen Owners Club rally, liked Cornwall, and moved 6 years ago.
Blog: The Old Cow Shed. They have full costings in it. £180k so far.
https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/blogs/blog/73-the-old-cow-shed/
Their interceptor:
https://www.oilyragclassics.co.uk/projects-gallery/jensen-interceptor-mkiii/
Twitter and GB news will be actively 100% behind. Facebook may follow but will at least be friendly.
Would expect at least one of Express or Mail to be actively supporting.
Telegraph won't quite get there but will run the kind of stories that encourage switchers to Reform from both Labour and Tory.
No media will be passionately supporting Labour or Conservatives even if they get some traditional lukewarm best of a bad bunch type "support".
The majority of our aid budget is via international organisations like WHO, only a quarter is direct aid from the UK.
Until recently we weee on course to eradicate several diseases, as we did with smallpox.
That's gone backwards, and will now accelerate in reverse.
Many of these countries simply can’t afford these programmes - they need food and water for their citizens first.
I’m pretty right wing. But this is both a good use of money and the right thing to do
Sir Lewis Hamilton to win the F1 title this year.
But neither the Tories nor Labour can run 'time for a change' campaigns, and Reform can.
The Greens may well pick up votes at Labour's expense, but they have probably even less economic credibility than Reform, and lack the atavistic appeal. As the polling suggests.
They can use the same tactic, but they're not anywhere near vying for the lead in the polls.
In any event, I think Farage's explicit emulation of, and romance with the US right will kill his chances
We need to get value for money – so much of your money is being wasted by Westminster
We need significant reforms of health, education, social services and tax to make them work for you again
We need to make work pay your bills, and that means cutting the cost of living
We need to restore pride in our communities, in Scotland and in ourselves
We need to stop our town and cities falling into disrepair by fixing the pavements and roads and reopening the shops
Elect an SNP government and we’ll cut the waste and the fraud which We All Know is there. Make Scotland a land fit for Our Children’s Futures
That shouldn't be how government and public policy works.
One thing I'd disagree with though is the five pledges idea. I don't think it particularly worked for Blair - it was the dismal unpopularity of the Conservatives that did it for him. The five pledges were pretty anodyne and uninspiring - I don't think he won because of them or even gained many if any votes.
Also Reform aspires to engage the politically unengaged. in today's world, with its 140-character attention spans, the unengaged, even if they can read, can't be bothered with anything as complicated as five pledges.
So I think a better idea for Reform would be to have an even simpler campaign with a short, catchy slogan that can be repeated endlessly. Just one point, over and over again, which really catches the public mood. Mainly short, memorable Anglo-Saxon words. 5 words maximum. We all know the type of slogan. Get Brexit done. Peace, bread, land. Get Starmer out. Keep England white. Make America great again. Save the NHS. No nukes on UK soil. Guinness is good for you. Etc. etc.
Sadly, in today's world, one such slogan is worth a dozen pledge cards or a thousand well-thought-through and convincing policies.
Though a focus on things no one really disagrees with would be interesting for any parties trying to complain the others are all the same but they are unique.
You're trying to feel morally better by convincing yourself all aid spending is useless.
A quarter is on housing asylum seekers in the UK.
A quarter is on Direct aid from the UK, half of it to Africa.
We could withdraw from WHO and similar, and have a blanket amnesty for all asylum seekers, including prospectively.
That is the way to make the sums add up if we want to cut £13 billion from the aid budget and spend it on defence.
I've seen that done for the WFA and disability welfare as well, and even the Triple Lock on the grounds it will push some into poverty.
I said a while back I'd be prepared to pay more tax, as we can't leave ourselves undefended in a world where the US has effectively cut Europe adrift.
I am critical of those who seem to want us to give no, or virtually no, aid to others. At best, it is incredibly short-sighted. At worst... much worse.
But with such a reduction there will surely be worthy things lost, so even if there is fat to trim there's going to be negative consequences too, it shouldn't be pretended to be an easy or consequence free option.
From reporting it felt to be Keir played the tone right.
However, the Conservative government twice ignored the triple lock anyway, so abolition is unlikely to lead to rioting in the streets but on recent evidence, nor a land flowing with milk and honey.
NI is tricky while it retains its status as qualification for the state pension. You could break that link but where does that leave HMG vis-a-vis Waspi women and the like?
But even if we accept that, and I don't because I think our donations displace others, vaccination programmes are a small proportion of aid spending in any event; ours on GAVI is about £400m per year.
It's not where most of the money is going.
But that day is not this day.
In 2022 (I can't see more recent figures) we spent over £3 billion on refugees support in or near conflict zones.
Should we cut that and encourage those refugees to flee further afield, like to the UK?
Includes belly dancers, golden statues of Chump, and much more.
https://news.sky.com/story/trump-posts-ai-video-of-gaza-vision-featuring-golden-statues-bearded-belly-dancers-and-netanyahu-on-a-sunbed-13317241
A song written for the video also plays in the background.
The lyrics go: "Donald's coming to set you free, bringing the light for all to see, no more tunnels, no more fear: Trump Gaza's finally here.
"Trump Gaza's shining bright, golden future, a brand new life.
"Feast and dance the deal is done, Trump Gaza number one."
How did they say the USA's reputation is doing?
Ignoring more fundamental tax reforms which need time (but imo would be best solution).
Increase council tax on higher value band homes -> £3.5bn
Cap or reduce 40% pension relief to 20% -> £15bn
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/options-increasing-taxes
Another idea might be issuing war bonds for a one-off cash injection.
Spending cuts -> stop triple lock in favour of just linking to prices -> would take time to raise money, but if we'd done it before, would save us £11bn/year now.
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/new-triple-locked-personal-allowance-pensioners
This is what you said earlier, which I think proves my point.
..My suspicion is that aid, hosed liberally across a spectrum of failed and failing states, achieves very little and is possibly even malign. "Aid" should be specific, targetted, emergency-only and time-limited.
Like with Kids Company, another original Cameron-era trophy that fell apart, I expect this to all come out in reports and scandals in the years to come..
To spend the money immediately, a pay rise for all soldiers, sailors and airmen (including lady airmen) would meet the target but not do much to deter Uncle Vlad. It might help end the recruitment and retention crisis, of course.
Or as the new target is a percentage of GDP, the government could attack the problem from the other end by causing a recession.
Or it could follow the Tories' example and just fiddle the figures.
It's those that can afford £5k to £8k to pay people smugglers, which is why it actually increases migration when countries move out of poverty to developing status.
I think it's letting others off the hook and giving the better off living here a nice feelgood feeling, a bit like their £10 a month direct debit to Christian Aid writ-large.
There's a hefty component of self-interest in foreign aid as well.
Lefty lawyers say we shouldn’t favour Brits over non Brits (indeed they seem to take pleasure in the opposite)
Well then why are we favouring our one species of bipedal ape over the rest of the natural world? Don’t mosquitoes have rights, is it correct to wipe them out? Chimps? Birds? Trees? Perhaps our aid should go to limiting humans and letting them die so that millions of other species finally get room to breathe?
1. Have sleeper agents slash overseas aid from Britain, Europe and the United States.
2. Poor nations become even more unpleasant.
3. Which means more refugees, immigrants and small boats.
Nigel Farage should pwn the libs by calling for more foreign aid, but better targeted on projects that create jobs for recipient countries. Think China!
Reversing the aid budget cut would be a smaller amount, I think around £6-7bn.
Mind you Yoon favourite Wings Over Scotland now thinks Reform would allow a second Indy referendum. I think he’s high on his own supply.
And probably getting more unlikely, as with various recent events at home and abroad, it's possible we have already passed peak Reform.
To suddenly switch to an entirely new set of priorities far removed from their previous agenda seems to far-fetched to be believable.
This year is GAVI replenishment and thanks to brilliant UK science we finally have a vaccine for malaria.
Absolute tragedy that millions of babies who need it won't get it.
Certainly a 'common sense' agenda on less woke, less immigration, less net zero and more practical solutions like Trump could pay them
dividends as it did for him and the GOP when he won the presidency in the US last year and the GOP took Congress
1) The visible continuing failure of trad parties
2) How the USA goes in the next four years, and how Farage/Reform is seen to relate to it
3) How much Europe's military situation means that we vote for trad parties rather than the new kids out of fear
4) How well and in what proportion Reform's dog whistle stuff attracts and repels
5) Whether in the next GE the invisible slogan for millions of voters is 'Anyone but Reform'; replacing the 'Anyone but the Tories' in 2024
6) Whether the trad parties can get a handful of top quality campaigners for older voters and master social media for younger ones
7) What most voters want our relations with Europe to be by 2029
8) Farage's continuing health and strength.
Not impossible is an invisible understanding between Lab and Con that they want everyone to vote for either of them in preference to Reform, and sort of gang up against them.
More Typhoon looks like a low effort choice, if only to keep Warton on life support until Tempest makes it past the speculative rendering stage. There will be no new ships any time soon unless the government can bear to get them built South Korea or Vietnam which they can't.
They should pour the cash in to wage increases, improved conditions and better housing for non-commissioned ranks but I would bet my lavish RN pension that they won't.
Sure, the alternative would have been further defence cuts, but it isn't a real growth in capability.
Like you say a pay rise to improve recruitment would help, and we could scrap the poorly performing outsourced recruiting too. Dealing with the misogyny and harassment that recently drove a 19 year old gunner to suicide might help recruitment too.
And there is definitely money wasted - like the £1bn+ we used to give to the EU to hand out.
But the biggest single impact the uk had on the growth of terrorism in east Africa was on funding secondary school education for women.
Turns out that educated women was a man who has a stable job not someone who rides around in a batter jalopy shooting people. Turns out that young men will rather their lifestyle and politics to appeal to attractive and educated young men. Who’d have thought?
Add together GAVI, WHO, UNAIDS, WPC, Malaria funding, etc etc. and you get to a sizeable sum. But in the main well spent.
We need to reduce the number of asylum seekers and immigrants. Correctly deployed, overseas aid reduces the “push” factor and should be in tandem to action to reduce the “pull”. Perhaps we should rebrand it as the Immigration Department and give it the border patrol, DfID, asylum processing etc. joined up government and all that
No one seriously thinks that the USA and the world in general will be in a better place in 4 years time as a result of Trump's utter lunacy both at home and abroad. Indeed the US is going to look utterly devestated because of Trump's economic and social policies. So unless they can generate a complete decoupling between Reform and Trump in people's minds then Farage and his party are going to be tarred with that same brush.
That will swamp any claimed policies they might come up with.
Xp on income tax (or on certain bands) would be fine with me and that would be the most direct tax on myself. Needs must and all that.
As it happens I suspect we'll see tax rises and spending cuts down the line to get us to 3%. But it was politically astute to delay them given we've just had a big tax increase on employment and credible spending cuts can take time to implement.
For example ending privatisation and outsourcing in health and education is reforming them.
Similarly restoring our living environment is restoring pride in our country, local ownership and public transport is about restoring towns and cities etc.
You may not like that vision, but it is at least as valid a view of restoring pride in Britain as any amount of Blimpish rhetoric from Farage.
Musk closing down the US 's domestic programmes for disease prevention is probably the most dangerous thing they've done so far, let alone USAID.
There are some really interesting theories about aid causing a lot of issues in the first place. But it would be extremely naive to think removing it would stimulate democracy and free markets, simply because the Chinese are destroying any hope of either anyway.
Mr F's been on manoeuvres to set up a Slab-Reform coalition in Holyrood - and Mr Sarwar has been responding to the courtship so far as I can see.
If that happens it will redound on the GOP but also Trumpy parties elsewhere. Probably
Two points however
1. AEPritchard is often very prescient but sometimes gets things spectacularly wrong
2. The migration crisis in Europe is possibly gonna get so bad in people will think “fuck the economics” and vote hard right anyway
Indeed there is a slight chance reform could be outflanked ON THE RIGHT by a kind of British AfD
I doubt Jenners will turn his cloak as he has a realistic expectation of ruling over the smouldering tory rubble left by The Kemster's rapid unscheduled disassembly of the party.
Though most voters think Reform will increase their seats but not win
"Lord Ashcroft: My latest polling. Starmer as a statesman, who'd be best prime minister, and national interest over international law | Conservative Home" https://conservativehome.com/2025/02/25/lord-ashcroft-my-latest-polling-starmer-as-a-statesman-whod-be-best-prime-minister-and-national-interest-over-international-law/
Along with the other more problematic kit.
President Trump shares a video of an AI vision for the Gaza Strip, ends with Trump having drinks at a pool with Benjamin Netanyahu.
For the already wealthier world, there is a simple formula as to why this is also in our self interest as well as good in itself: Prosperous neighbours make good customers.
Compared to your Oracle of Delphi shtick, he's more like a negative super forecaster.
Unfortunately for the Greens it seems that the racist Britain First message has far more traction with the public than the hair shirt, save the planet message.
* I accept both of these are broad caricatures but that is how most people view parties; as broad brush stroke pictures rather than targeted messages.
I know a fair number of people who say they're committed Reform Party members but their interactions with it make it seem more like the National Trust than a political party. They pay some money and buy some merch but they've never met a local party organiser, been invited to a meeting or had much communication from the central party at all. Reform massively underperformed it's vote share at the last election and I see no evidence to think that's going to wildly change.
"We create a pretend world. We are a global production company. We write the screenplay, we're the directors, we're the producers, we're the main actors, and the world is our stage."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy3l02wxqdo
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1894616074861130182
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/disappointing-blow-for-scottish-tories-as-another-councillor-defects-to-reform-4998091
He was - AFAICS - the first commentator to really note the huge impact of America’s (then) coming energy independence. And how it would change the world (you could argue that it has led to Trump; America no longer needs the world)
Also - and this is a true story - I used to share an editor with AEP back when I did a few knapping stories for the Tory graph. Editor now at the Times
This editor used to say “I have just two genius writers who sometimes say stupid shit but occasionally say stuff that’s sharper than anyone else - one of them is AEP”
Modesty precludes.
If you’d done this at the same point in the 2020 cycle you’d have been laughed out of the room for saying SKS would go onto win and Johnson wouldn’t have a decade in power. In fact, I was.
If the Trump agenda is successful Reform will do well, if it isn’t then they won’t. I still think hitching themselves to it was a bad idea. They don’t need do to that.
Immigration is going to drop a lot this year (thanks mostly to Rishi Sunak), waiting lists are coming down.
If the government can show progress on either the NHS (where people feel it has got better), immigration (where people feel it’s gone down) or the economy (least likely at this point), then they get re-elected IMHO.
But these days I seem to be the only person in the world that doesn’t think this is the worst government in history. Chagos is stupid though.