The stupidity of Reform

With less than a week to go now, more and more articles expressing a fear of the expected super Socialist majority have been appearing. All repeat what I have been saying since the start of the campaign; Reform will totally wreck the Conservative Party's representation and, coupled with local effort in some constituencies by the Liberals, will allow Labour to take victory in constituencies they might only have dreamed of a few months ago.

I predict that they will achieve this with just a small percentage of the overall vote too.

Party	Seats	% vote
LAB	380	31
CON	100	28
LIB	130	16
NI Parties	18	3
SNP	15	2
REFORM	2	16
IND / PC	5	1
GREEN	0	3

I really do not believe that the public at large will vote for Labour in the numbers that everyone seems to predict, however. They are not performing well in debates nor seem to have policies anyone particularly wants. There is also genuine resistance to the concept of them having a huge amount of power for the foreseeable future with no restraint in sight.

So I am pulling their vote right down towards the lower 30% mark which makes the Conservative vote quite an intriguing calculation. If we say that Reform and the Liberals fare evenly then the best either can hope for is around 15%. So, with 30% Labour, 30% Reform+Liberals and about 10% pretty much static for the others there remains, yes, 30% for the Conservatives.

I've adjusted this slightly in the table above which is my current prediction but the sad, crazy thing is how those votes translate to seats. Labour still finish with a massive majority. Reform and the Liberals have more support across the country but Reform will be lucky to get a couple of seats now. The Liberals do manage to break through, mainly because no-one feels like voting for anyone else in far more places than normal. This helps the Liberals a lot.

Reform may get votes in some numbers but whereas I might have thought they could break through in some places and increase further, Nigel Farage's recent remarks about Putin have damaged their chances quite significantly. I had been considering voting for them but not now and, whilst many of their policies I do like the sound of, I will be advising others not to vote for them other than in seats where Conservatives would not have a chance anyway and they could pick up some useful Labour votes.

For my own part, I see that my constituency is one of the very few that stand a reasonable chance of remaining Conservative so I shall vote to support that remaining the case. A vote for Reform would merely help hand the seat to either the liberals or Labour with zero chance of Reform being popular enough here to take it themselves. We are going to find that, across the country, Reform will be coming a good third, sometimes even second in many seats but, as I said, they will be very fortunate to win any and those that they do win will be down to tactical voting by the Liberals and Labour where the Labour voters don't see a chance for their candidate and want to keep the Conservative out.

Just look at the schism between percentage support nationally and representation in parliament. This is very bad news indeed.

Once in power with a good majority, Labour will quickly introduce legislation to add more youngsters to the voting roll on the basis that they're regarded as natural Labour voters (if they can be bothered to vote, that is!) I have some doubts as to whether that will remain the case once Labour becomes the ugly Big Brother and life doesn't seem as free and pleasant in years to come. I remember the late 60s when I was young and too young to vote but had a dim view of government and very quickly grew to be a strong supporter of the party which promised me more 'freedom'. Socialists and the Trade Unions were a joke in those days for everyone I knew and the events of the later 1970s demonstrated to all of us just how much they were not how we wanted to see Britain develop. I suspect that the same thing may happen but, next time, I am not sure who will reap the benefits of Labour's demise. It may need to be a brand new party.

In the meantime, however, I fear the changes to the Lords' composition, courts and rules and regulations left right and centre as well as deals to restore links with Europe and the inevitable huge cost of settling pay deals with doctors, train drivers and virtually every other large institution workforce who sees that this is the time to ask for more. The new intake of inexperienced and either ill-educated or highly indoctrinated people getting elected by voters who have no clue who they're actually putting into power, other than the colour of the rosette, will have a very, very different view of what Britain should be like to mine. Human rights, minority issues, diversity, green matters, saving the planet will all be at the top of the menu for this band with little care for anyone starting a business, buying a house or seeking a good education or health care privately. 

If the numbers work out as I suggest then there should be a reasonable opposition which can make enough noise to alert the public to what they've unwittingly unleashed upon us all. However, if there really is no last minute chance given to the Conservatives, the Liberals just fail in most of their attempts to oust a Labour candidate but succeed with a Conservative and Reform steal more Conservative votes and hand more seats to Labour then we'll be looking at an extra few % for Labour but translating to 450 seats with Conservative and Liberal battling for second place on around 80 each.

The thing is, Reform will still have only a handful at best and, whilst this not fair, given their percentage vote, what will be really objectionable is the fact that the vote for Reform has handed massive victory to a group of people no-one really wants to see running Britain re-forming, indeed, our country.

General Election 2024: Voting for the best opposition

 Nigel Farage taking over the leadership of the Reform Party will make some differences I had not expected so the table needs a bit of revision.

Party	Seats	% of vote
LAB	455	41
CON	100	24
LIB	55	11
NI Parties	18	3
SNP	13	2
REFORM	4	15
IND / PC	5	1
GREEN	0	3

I see quite a dramatic effect on Conservative seats now with more people voting for Reform and that also allowing the Liberals in to one or other extra seats. I still don't see much of an overall total vote for either Reform or Liberal but I can now see Reform's enhanced promotional reach pushing a few of their candidates over the finishing line whereas before I had expected none.

So we have an even larger majority for Labour now predicted as the joint Liberal and Reform group really hits the Conservative's chances in seats all over the place. They may even struggle to get 100. There is just a chance that Reform really do look more appealing than the Conservatives to all the new people voting Conservative last time, as well as a number of disillusioned supporters who see Nigel Farage as a better opposition than Rishi Sunak. In that instance, where people, reluctantly accepting that Labour will win, are going to be voting for the best opposition, there is that possibility of Reform taking quite a few seats and crossing that barrier which has always prevented the Liberals from making any serious headway.

It is not likely but it is possible and events over the campaign will be what makes voters switch if they're going to. In many ways they will feel they have nothing to lose. The Conservatives appear almost certain not to have a chance of any majority and look likely to lose a lot of good voices for opposition. They have also not exactly endeared themselves to even their core supporters with the extraordinary rise in all things woke, equality, diversity and inclusivity training et al in recent years, making Britain unrecognisable in many ways. So this is an opportunity for those people to vote for someone who will strongly oppose any more advances along those lines and who will be vocal about immigration controls.

These Reform people, assuming they do win some seats, will still be too small in number to make much difference but they're likely to make more noise than the group of chaste and embarrassed  Conservatives who do manage to survive. They'll be spending a lot of their time answering reporters' questions about why their party did so poorly, looking for a new leader and not making any positive impression at all for some considerable time. None of the predicted new leaders inspire much enthusiasm either, with talk that even Liz Truss could return, God help them. That's because many of the better candidates will lose their seats and simply not be available any more. Liz Truss is one of the few with a very large majority and maybe sufficient energy to encourage the local constituents to help her retain her seat.

A handful of Reform people and a much reduced Conservative group will still not make much of an opposition, I'm afraid. So people who are making these calculations will need to influence a lot of their friends and somehow make a significant boost to Reform's predicted vote so that people can see a chance that they may, after all, make a decent number of seats - say 30+ - and perhaps that will encourage others who are wobbling to make the move to back Reform. 

If the Reform vote appears stuck at low numbers, around the expected 10-14% then they'll be lucky to get more than 1 or 2 seats as not many people will see the point of voting for them. If it does happen to get a lift, however, and there is a prospect of some really useful, albeit mostly still just vocal, opposition to the Labour's tirade of awful government for a decade, then I hope a lot of voters do go for it.

I shall be watching developments closely as that successful opposition is the key from July onwards for Britain.