[Abernathy]

It's uncomplicated : Farage was a lousy racist back then at Dulwich College, and he is still a vile, stinking racist now. He's more covert about it now, because it both enthuses fellow racists, but also repels decent humans who might be thinking of voting for him because they're fed up with the other lot.

What the 28 odd former school contemporaries of Farage have done in coming forward to expose Farage's teenage bigotry and the racist abuse they suffered at his hands is important. Because Nigel Farage wants to be Prime Minister of the UK, and if opinion polling is to be believed, actually stands a plausible chance of doing so, absurdly risible though the very notion of that may be. It forces those decent human voters to consider the question of whether they really want such a man as Prime Minister - a question to which the answer can only be no.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Alan Sked, one of the very early UKIP people, called Farage out as a very crude racist many years ago. Hopefully this gets some coverage.

[Boiler]

It forces those decent human voters to consider the question of whether they really want such a man as Prime Minister - a question to which the answer can only be no.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that the decent are outnumbered by the indecent.

[Oboogie]

It forces those decent human voters to consider the question of whether they really want such a man as Prime Minister - a question to which the answer can only be no.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that the decent are outnumbered by the indecent.

They're not outnumbered, but under first past the post, they don't need to be. Farage needs about a third of the electorate to win. Are a third of the population Hitler licking antisemites who get a hard on at tales of Farage making gas noises to Jewish schoolkids? No evidence of that at all. I'd guess it's less than 5% and they'll be shared with YourParty and Galloway. The question is can Farage attract another 25%.
Maybe.
Who are these people? Mostly he attracts the don't knows, the non-voters from 2024, people who think Labour are going to steal their money and give it to other people and, with the collapse of the Tories, the way to stop Labour is to vote Reform. Will these non-voters be so inspired by Farage to bother to vote next time, we shall see. I'm certain the neo- Nazi stuff puts off more than it attracts.

[Andy McDandy]

From the Daily Mash:

Fuck’s sake, you don’t just have a racist past, you have a racist present, that’s the fucking problem, you unflushed turd in this toilet of a fucking nation! Second, you of all people attacking the BBC? That’s like fucking David Attenborough attacking the BBC! Like the Wombles attacking the BBC! The BBC fucking made you, like the fascist Build-A-Bear cunt that you are, for reasons known only to themselves! Without the BBC you’d be some fucking weirdo standing on a wooden box in a market town on a rainy Saturday blaring bollocks into a megaphone to an audience of fucking zero!

[Tubby Isaacs]

They're not outnumbered, but under first past the post, they don't need to be. Farage needs about a third of the electorate to win. Are a third of the population Hitler licking antisemites who get a hard on at tales of Farage making gas noises to Jewish schoolkids? No evidence of that at all. I'd guess it's less than 5% and they'll be shared with YourParty and Galloway. The question is can Farage attract another 25%.
Maybe.
Who are these people? Mostly he attracts the don't knows, the non-voters from 2024, people who think Labour are going to steal their money and give it to other people and, with the collapse of the Tories, the way to stop Labour is to vote Reform. Will these non-voters be so inspired by Farage to bother to vote next time, we shall see. I'm certain the neo- Nazi stuff puts off more than it attracts.

I think that's a fair summary of lots of Reform voters. But I wouldn't say FPTP is a big problem here. Tactical voting is very easy, even in England. He only wins if parties are too stupid to concentrate on winnable seats, and if voters are too stupid to follow the obvious clue locally of who to vote for. I initially thought the Greens were too far back here and wanted to vote Labour, but 5 seconds walking around the constituency told me who was going for it, and who wasn't.

Under PR, there's a big chance of the Tories and Reform forming a government, like they would have done in 2015.

[Boiler]

It forces those decent human voters to consider the question of whether they really want such a man as Prime Minister - a question to which the answer can only be no.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that the decent are outnumbered by the indecent.

They're not outnumbered, but under first past the post, they don't need to be. Farage needs about a third of the electorate to win. Are a third of the population Hitler licking antisemites who get a hard on at tales of Farage making gas noises to Jewish schoolkids? No evidence of that at all.

Yebbut immigrunts. Look how close Reform came to the Tories in many seats in the last GE. It doesn't need much of a swing. Unfortunately, I can't help but feel the Labour landslide was more of a "we're sick of the bloody Tories" vote rather than being the result of considered consideration of the Labour manifesto.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

From the Daily Mash:

Fuck’s sake, you don’t just have a racist past, you have a racist present, that’s the fucking problem, you unflushed turd in this toilet of a fucking nation! Second, you of all people attacking the BBC? That’s like fucking David Attenborough attacking the BBC! Like the Wombles attacking the BBC! The BBC fucking made you, like the fascist Build-A-Bear cunt that you are, for reasons known only to themselves! Without the BBC you’d be some fucking weirdo standing on a wooden box in a market town on a rainy Saturday blaring bollocks into a megaphone to an audience of fucking zero!

Beautiful.

[Oboogie]

They're not outnumbered, but under first past the post, they don't need to be. Farage needs about a third of the electorate to win. Are a third of the population Hitler licking antisemites who get a hard on at tales of Farage making gas noises to Jewish schoolkids? No evidence of that at all. I'd guess it's less than 5% and they'll be shared with YourParty and Galloway. The question is can Farage attract another 25%.
Maybe.
Who are these people? Mostly he attracts the don't knows, the non-voters from 2024, people who think Labour are going to steal their money and give it to other people and, with the collapse of the Tories, the way to stop Labour is to vote Reform. Will these non-voters be so inspired by Farage to bother to vote next time, we shall see. I'm certain the neo- Nazi stuff puts off more than it attracts.

I think that's a fair summary of lots of Reform voters. But I wouldn't say FPTP is a big problem here. Tactical voting is very easy, even in England. He only wins if parties are too stupid to concentrate on winnable seats, and if voters are too stupid to follow the obvious clue locally of who to vote for. I initially thought the Greens were too far back here and wanted to vote Labour, but 5 seconds walking around the constituency told me who was going for it, and who wasn't.

Under PR, there's a big chance of the Tories and Reform forming a government, like they would have done in 2015.

I'm not saying FPTP is a problem, I'm merely pointing out that it's possible to win on a third of the vote outnumbered two to one. We've seen that the electorate can cope with tactical voting, it's worked in the past and can work again.
I remain undecided about PR.

[Youngian]

Whose permission does Labour need to win; socially liberal fiscally conservatives in southern marginals or socially conservative economically left Red wall voters?
Reform are so bad on the economics front they aren't appealing to either famed demographic.

[Bones McCoy]

Our worst nightmare comes with another Con - Ref election pact.

That may be a de-facto merger (Reform is already packed with former binned-off Tories) or a no-contest agreement.

[kreuzberger]

Our worst nightmare comes with another Con - Ref election pact.

That is as good as nailed on, once they can all proclaim that Jenreich has "transformed" the party and the present tory leader is slated for fast-track Kemigration.

[kreuzberger]

It forces those decent human voters to consider the question of whether they really want such a man as Prime Minister - a question to which the answer can only be no.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that the decent are outnumbered by the indecent.

I think that it was post-Merk but pre-Strasbourg that I went through some convoluted mathematical gymnastics to arrive at 32% of the British electorate being bigoted shite-hawks whose racist fury would always drive their voting intention.

I am buggered if I can remember how I got there but, anyway, here we are.

[kreuzberger]

I remember taking my burned-in racism to school. There were mercifully (for them) few Black kids there. That racism was quite normal, but I don't recall any overt or violently adverse reaction to those kids, even when they tipped up from Uganda. The general view, as far as I was concerned, was that they were simply inferior. That was around '74 to 76.

Then I toddled off to sixth form in Luton. I still had some of that racist poison in me but remember, to this day, being absolutely horrified by our German literature teacher. We were studying a titan of the canon which involved a monkey. There was one Black lad in the class. Guess who was selected to read that part, time and again.

I would have been 17 at the time and was outraged, making a scene in class and being threatened with expulsion for calling him a racist cunt in a very public forum. I had to back down and apologise.

Nonetheless, I still struggle under that earlier shroud of teenage shame.

Thing is, we were poisoned in our childhood, and, even now, my instincts are to be wary of ostensibly stronger Black males in an overwhelmingly white setting. Yeah, it is just fucking poison and I hope that it follows me to my grave.

[satnav]

I still wouldn't be surprised if Farage found some excuse to step back from party leader for a couple of years before returning to the helm in the run up to the election just like he did at the last general election. This helps him dodge too much scrutiny and it would allow him to look like a breath of fresh air compared to the other leaders who will have spent two years fighting amongst themselves.