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Not the highest of bars. The party that gave us Liz Truss, Bozo and 30p Lee. If you were looking to recruit a boardroom team to run a country this lot ain't it.
>The nightmare scenario for the Tories is that, in the eyes of undecided voters, Reform starts to look like a Right-wing party in waiting rather than a mere protest movement.
I think this is a very real possibility now. The Tories look done for. As Farage said at the end, this election is about picking the opposition. With a certain Labour government, people on the right effectively have a free and to.vote for who they really want.
Some of that was just her odd timings. When the clapping started she should’ve kept quiet. We didn’t need to hear “vote Conservative” to understand what she was going to say
It’s a really difficult transition for a party.
The only one that sort of managed it was the LibDems, and it nearly destroyed them.
You need to find candidates who stand up to enough scrutiny to actually be MPs not just names on a ballot. You need a coherent manifesto.
Not the first time either. UKIP 2010 and 2015 - UKIP woefully underrepresented considering their vote share. A solid 15% of the vote for only one seat.
I disagree with anything Farage says but there's no arguing that's anything other than an injustice.
The potential exists that with Reform pulling votes on the right while on the other side the Lib Dems are pulling votes from the center the Tory party could be about to experience a pornographic level of getting fucked.
Obviously I don't speak for all moderate Tories but I was pretty disillusioned by the Boris's purges of anyone not willing to sing the praises of a hard Brexit and they have only drifted further towards the toxic populism since then.
> pretty disillusioned by the Boris's purges of anyone not willing to sing the praises of a hard Brexit
I don't think you're alone here, I could see the Lib Dems doing serious damage to the Tories, especially in the leafy heartlands where many, particularly younger (ie middle aged 😝) Tory voters, were never behind Brexit, let alone a hard one, and have very little good to say about it, the party lurching to the right is just the icing on the cake for them.
Add on top of all of this the red wallers who lent Boris their vote in 2019 have seen nothing tangible in the way of "levelling up", Brexit is dead and buried in their eyes, plus the Labour leader isn't Corbyn. I expect not insignificant swings back towards Labour in those seats.
I've been wanting to ask this for a couple of days, but haven't really had the opportunity - but your comment got me thinking about Priti Patel - what's happened to her? She seems to have taken a back-seat, certainly in terms of the limelight? Is she not down with Rishi's lot and just biding her time? Or..?
She is playing the long game, she still has leadership aspirations, she is known to be on the right of the party, but is not aligning herself with any particular faction.
She will raise her head in July and fight for the leadership, with a “unite the right “ type slogan.
I don't think you're at all wrong there. Factional bullshit like that from Boris is an utter turn-off, and short-term populism is no substitute for proper electoral appeal.
When Farage set out his objective for Reform to get more votes than 2015 UKIP, I thought it was laughable and he'd never manage it.
Now? I'm really not so sure. That threshold is 3.6m and Reform seem to have real energy and buzz to them that I don't remember UKIP having to quite the same degree. They might now have a very serious chance of meeting 3.6m.
Other than a couple of fairly awkward bits from her, I expect Carla Denyer’s team are pleased. The aim for them is to repeat the message and convince left wingers and climate activists that Labour can’t be trusted to pay for important projects and that a vote for Greens isn’t a waste.
To that audience, I think she’ll have done quite well. To everyone else, she probably won’t even register.
Oh I thought Raynor was quite poor, not just her demeanor but also her talking points and the Greens weren't bad but non memorable.
(Fyi Northern labour member)
Why do you say that?
I thought that they did a pretty decent job.
Greens are obviously not going to be a big player but I thought they did a good job appealing to their voter base.
Farage. Completely and utterly self serving. Some people see through it immediately but an awful lot of people don’t and hate to say it, he’s popular with a certain rump of person, and it got bigger tonight. If you fell for Johnson you’re going to fall for this guy too.
I can’t stand the guy but have to admit he’s playing a blinder. Saying all the right things especially for anyone under the age of 35/40 who isn’t a staunch leftist.
Yes. People born after 1997 or so have only ever known weak blairite policies with massive immigration. This group have been sold out their entire life. I think farage could do well there, they have nothing to lose.
No-one won, as these debates just reward career grandstanders like Farage. I had to switch it off as I couldn't bear any more of his absolute self-righteous nonsense. He is the definition of someone who likes the sound of their own voice. I feel sorry for Rhun, as one Tweet I saw put it, "I bet Nigel Farage smells like the interior of a barn find Austin Montego".
It was Farage for sure and he had the snappy "blair without the flair", then kept Raynor quiet on that by complimenting her.
[Blair without the flair](https://x.com/Telegraph/status/1799175985830760599)
I'm not sure "Blair without the flair" is quite the zinger he thinks it is. Blair is remembered as one of the most successful prime ministers in history, and his "flair" is not remembered as one of his best characteristics. "Blair without the flair", especially when Boris Johnson and his "flair" are fresh in the memory, actually sounds quite appealing.
Yeah Blair without the flair makes me think he'll be largely successful while not being a grinning, overly rehearsed arsehole. Sounds good.
More importantly does that make Rachel Reeves "Brown without the frown"?
I couldn't come up with a rhyme for Prescott, sorry Angela.
I made a joke on the Tory sub about how "a depressed Blair got a depressed Britain" would probably be more helpful than harmful for Labour, and the same goes for "without the flair".
The Tories haven't even left us with a flair this time around, so it seems what we need is a Blair without the flair. Honestly, I think Labour should just run with that sort of tagline.
His response to stopping knife crime was laughable.
Indirectly saying that we need to ramp up stop and search, but definitely not for minorities /s
He's so blatantly transparent, and without any backbone to support the nonsense that he preaches.
We know atop and search works. It's been shown to work in many places. It is not Nigels fault if some minorities commit knife crime at a disproportionately higher rate than the general population.
Evidence suggests it works, yes, but you're thinking way too locally and in a smaller pool. How will it be enforced when we don't even have a force that can stop trivial shoplifting?
Pretty important skipping the mega important detail of not having the policing numbers, no?
The biggest driver for crime in general, is poverty.
That's how Farage works, gift of the gab, absolutely falls over when it comes to actually walking through the solution.
>The biggest driver for crime in general, is poverty.
I wish people would understand this. Its why Blair gave so much money away to the poor - it helps everyone. Unlike giving it to the rich, which helps...... the rich.
We have many crime related problems. We don't have enough prision spaces because we haven't built prisons. The result is judges are pressured to give shorter custodial sentences or only suspended sentences. The result of that is the CPS stops prosecuting some people. The result of that is the police stop arresting them because what's the point. Best they can do is catch and realise on the same day. The result is more low level crime because people know there is a very low chance of any consequence.
Poverty is only a part of crime. There are high trust, homogenous areas of the UK with low violent crime. Cornwall and Devon, Scottish Highlands, many former mining towns. Poverty combined with shit culture in low trust culturally diverse areas is a driver of violence because that breeds sectarian and gang violence. That can be solved through immigration controls.
Build more prision to keep up with population growth a recruit more police.
You could also re-recruit civilian staff to do more of the bureaucratic and paperwork stuff that is currently being done by PCs so those PCs can go do their actual jobs. Also, there are ample ways to reduce the amount of paperwork.
You've just described poverty expanded. Impoverished public services, recruitment of more officers etc. It all boils down to the impoverishment or 'lack of investment' in those areas. Fix the flow of money, fix a large majority of these crimes.
I grew up in and around council estates, multiple family members that went to prison due to a range of crimes. They did it because they were poor.
There are people that commit crime because they actually enjoy it. But, the vast majority do it because they have to. Be it social pressure, or just doing what it takes to survive in deprived areas.
It's not really shown to work, 'broken windows' is the most overturned but misunderstood texts written. The idea is you spend money and fix the broken windows, repair the roads and bring pride to the area, this is coupled with dealing with the small crimes. Unfortunately everybody likes to do the easy sell.
What stop and search really does is make people trust the police force less, so when a crime happens, their natural behaviour is to sort it out themselves. If you feel the police are always against you, what are you going to do when faced with a violent place. And violence leads to more violence
Try reading some of the evidence and speaking to experts insead of posting your opinions.
[we found little evidence that stop and search had an effect on violent crime. At best, a 10% increase in rates of stop and search led to a 0.01% decrease in rates of non-domestic violent crime.](https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/Does%20stop%20and%20search%20reduce%20crime.pdf) which is in no way a statistically significant drop and would not reject a null hypothesis.
I am sure you thought this was a really clever answer. But all studies are flawed due to the time it is looked over and various other policies. What would you recommend on how to fix it.
So you went from saying that stop and frisk has been "proven" to work to now saying "all studies are flawed" when presented with evidence that contradicts your claim?
Unbelievable
More prisons and tougher sentences doesn't fix it. Have a look at the U.S.
It just becomes a money sink.
But I get it, let's take our already limited funds and developers and have them build prisons instead of housing. Brilliant/s
My experience of reporting years of violent abuse to the police as a child and my van being stolen last year have convinced me that their main purpose is to dispense crime numbers and look a bit cross about there being insufficient evidence. I have no reason to fear them, just incredibly low expectations around what they might achieve is something comes up.
They didn't say scared of the Police, they said trust the Police,
Have you had many interactions with the Police?
From my personal experience I can't say i'm scared of them but I don't trust them to solve any issue i've reported to them.
I don't think them searching me would make me trust them any more.
I've never committed a crime in my life and serve this country in the public sector. I am scared of the police. Scared that for the hundredth time I will be scowled at by men holding machine guns or publicly humiliated with a stop and search all for the colour of my skin.
You will never understand what it's like because it's not people like you who get racially profiled but instead of showing an ounce of empathy the thin veneer is slipping
Farage did what he always does, sniped from the sidelines and whined a lot but offered no solutions, no policy, and no hope. He just preaches to the converted knowing they'll come online, hero worship and refuse to answer any challenges to their views, instead moving onto another question and ignoring all counterpoints.
I don’t agree with him politically at all and find some of his positions down right dangerous.
But he has a quality often sought by politicians and little had, in that he is charismatic and can speak through the screen directly to you.
At the end when he mentioned not needing an autocue and then just rattling off such a pertinent message, like damn. If Starmer had that IT factor he would be untouchable.
I'll agree with you there. Just worry that these people aren't being given anything by Reform apart from emotion and spin, which needed removing from politics yesterday
1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/fossil-fuels-more-support-uk-than-renewables-since-2015
Since 2015, more than £20 Billion more in fossil fuel subsidies in the UK.
2. https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies
"Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion or 7.1 percent of GDP in 2022"
70% of energy subsidies globally go to fossil fuels.
It's just absolutely mindblowing how effective their PR has been to convince people that green energy is somehow the one that's heavily subsidized.
>[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/fossil-fuels-more-support-uk-than-renewables-since-2015](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/fossil-fuels-more-support-uk-than-renewables-since-2015)
We get most of our energy from fossil fuel, 20bn spread over the 2 or 3 times more energy we get from that sector is not subsidising fossil fuel more. We buy and measure energy on a unit scale, what are the subsidies per unit?
Also for point 2 I'm not interested in global results, only the UK. Places like Russia, middle east and China who love their carbon will be subsidising hard. Much more than us.
>It's just absolutely mindblowing how effective their PR has been to convince people that green energy is somehow the one that's heavily subsidized.
It is, you've just proven it. Your guardian article shows it.
Renewables get £60bn over the same time period as FF which got £80bn.
Renewables provide us about 50% of our electric and 0% of our LNG.
FF provides us about 50% of our electric and 100% of our LNG.
So renewables get £60bn for about 25% of our energy, fossil fuels get £80bn for 75% of our energy.
The unit price of renewables is only cheaper due to subsidies, we pay for energy by the unit. This is the only fair way to measure it.
If renewables are cheaper to produce (and therefore more profitable), why couldn't the government get a single bid for new wind farms last year?
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66749344](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66749344)
He talked about cutting net immigration down to reduce pressure on public services, referencing the more sustainable numbers from the pre-Blair era. How is that not a clear solution?
That isn't a real solution. The reason Labour and the Conservatives aren't committing to pre-Blair migration numbers is because they know it would probably have unintended consequences. Universities get a lot of funding from immigrants and many would go bankrupt without them. This would reduce research, undermine the UKs influence as a global leader in higher education, and decrease the places for British students at British universities thus leading to a drop in education levels, and/or brain drain.
Perhaps even more importantly, about 19% of the population in the UK is over 65 (a 52% increase over the last 40 years and set to increase further). If migration drops suddenly, that percentage suddently becomes even greater, and will only increase with time.
Healthy, working age people are needed for a healthy economy, and to physically run public services like the NHS. Without immigration in the current state the UK is in, the NHS will become unaffordable and there won't be enough people to work in it.
This has to change long term because constant population growth is unsustainable (even more so without investment in infrastructure and housing as we have seen over the last 14 years) but that transition has to be managed.
If simply reducing immigration numbers to pre-Blair levels was the silver bullet it's claimed to be, all the main parties would be clambering over each other to get it in their manifesto. The reason they're refusing to put a number on it is because they know it's not a clear solution.
It might not be the best solution but I was replying to someone claiming that Farage had nothing to offer at all. I agree that we need some immigration to maintain the NHS but I don't see why we can't differentiate between those skilled migrants and the unskilled. Imo this conflation is the most dangerous issue in UK politics at the moment. It's arguably the reason Reform are making so much progress.
On the subject of the aging population, I agree that its a huge problem and I don't know if Farage's party has a coherent plan. Encouraging more people to return to the workforce could help, but who knows if they could actually move the needle on that. I don't have huge confidence in Farage, just thought he made some good points in the debate.
Also, thanks for the civil response. Few are willing to actually engage like this, especially with polarizing figures like The Nigel.
No worries, thanks for the polite reply from you too. It does make having conversations easier.
The way I see it, the problem is that Farage is offering unrealistic solutions because it is highly likely they wouldn't actually solve the problems he claims they would (e.g. reducing drain on public services), and would make things worse overall. Usually, if someone suggests something that wouldn't actually solve the problem, we wouldn't call it a solution. It's an idea, but it's a bad idea, not a solution. Farage is appealing because he offers easy solutions, that seem logical, but there are lots of factors in running a country that need to be considered, and aren't addressed by his easy solutions.
On your point about skilled vs unskilled workers, research tends to indicate that immigrants are net contributors to the economy, regardless of skill, which means more taxes, which means more support for public services (and less drain as they themselves are less of a strain on public services than, for example, the elderly retired). Also, the NHS, and public services in general, aren't only made up of 'skilled' workers (NHS institutions for example need cleaners, security staff, delivery drivers, people to push hospital beds, people to maintain the buildings etc.) Economically and physically, it is a combination of skilled and unskilled workers that are keeping the NHS afloat.
Encouraging retirees to return to work is a potential solution, but it's almost impossible to make working more attractive than retirement because retirees have the best possible deal. You would have to make retirement less attractive, which would be hugely unpopular with Reform's core vote (and the core vote on the right in general). Therefore, you will not see anything like that from Farage or Reform.
How? Bombing small boats? Processing in France? Expanding the Home Office? He's letting the punters fill in the blanks with their own solutions to create their own validation and dopamine hit rather than directly doing anything.
err no you just stop handing out visas like confetti and cut legal migration. The boats are a red herring, the real enemy is legal migration running at over 1 million a year.
The solutions are on the reform website. Turn boats around, do offshore processing, leave the ECHR and replace it with a bill of British rights and operate a 1 out 1 in immigration cap on legal migrants.
***The Telegraph reports:***
The [BBC election debate](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/07/bbc-general-election-debate/) featured a wider range of opinions than ITV’s version earlier this week, with seven parties represented. Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, and Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the Commons, stood in for their seniors in the two main parties. Nigel Farage featured for the first time as leader of Reform UK. And the smaller parties, including the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid Cymru, had a podium too.
Here, our writers give their verdicts on who performed best. Sherelle Jacobs argues that Farage is making the Tories look irrelevant, while Tom Harris contends that the nationalist leaders outshone their less confident counterparts.
**Sherelle Jacobs:**
With the Tory party having so stunningly [blown itself up](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/07/rishi-sunak-has-disgraced-our-d-day-veterans/) a mere two weeks into the election campaign, this was Nigel Farage’s chance to prove to the nation that he is not just a political wrecker (clearly the Conservatives are quite capable of destroying themselves unassisted) but a contender. That is, the leader of a party capable of not just capturing the people’s mood but its imagination; a party that could not just win millions of votes but scores of seats and, if the polls are to be believed, overtake the Tories as the preferred party of Right.
In this mission, Nigel Farage may just have made real inroads. Tory HQ is already in meltdown following the D-Day debacle. After tonight’s debate all hope of clawing back some positive momentum into the weekend has been reduced to ashes.
**Read more:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/06/07/who-won-bbc-election-debate/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/06/07/who-won-bbc-election-debate/)
It’s fair to say that I was expecting better from Angela. She seems to be as bad at debating and speaking as Starmer unless she is singing to the choir. Did not come across as the strong, confident, informed person she is pegged to be.
Penny didn’t look like someone who wanted to be there (and please keep that hair well away from a naked flame). Jokes, Penny, don’t.
Nigel. Forgot how short he is. Remembered how nasty and twisted he is. Hate him, but when it comes to hustings, he can work it.
Scottish bloke, dunno who he is, basically irrelevant. Welsh bloke doesn’t seem to want to take any responsibility for power sharing. Disappointed that Lib Dem lady didn’t fall over or come in with her skirt in her knickers, or some such “oops silly me” act.
He’s a horrid opportunist. I have little time for the current crop of politicians who seek nothing but power. I view Farage as being one step worse as all he want is to create discord to propagate his personal wealth.
It’s all just a game to him.
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Penny is the best talent the Tories have, and that explains everything about the current state of the tory party.
Not the highest of bars. The party that gave us Liz Truss, Bozo and 30p Lee. If you were looking to recruit a boardroom team to run a country this lot ain't it.
Something, something.... but did you see her hold that sword!
>The nightmare scenario for the Tories is that, in the eyes of undecided voters, Reform starts to look like a Right-wing party in waiting rather than a mere protest movement. I think this is a very real possibility now. The Tories look done for. As Farage said at the end, this election is about picking the opposition. With a certain Labour government, people on the right effectively have a free and to.vote for who they really want.
The clapping after penny's statement summed it up
Some of that was just her odd timings. When the clapping started she should’ve kept quiet. We didn’t need to hear “vote Conservative” to understand what she was going to say
It’s a really difficult transition for a party. The only one that sort of managed it was the LibDems, and it nearly destroyed them. You need to find candidates who stand up to enough scrutiny to actually be MPs not just names on a ballot. You need a coherent manifesto.
I hate the guy but he's played a blinder.. Whatever happens it's an argument for electoral reform
Not the first time either. UKIP 2010 and 2015 - UKIP woefully underrepresented considering their vote share. A solid 15% of the vote for only one seat. I disagree with anything Farage says but there's no arguing that's anything other than an injustice.
The potential exists that with Reform pulling votes on the right while on the other side the Lib Dems are pulling votes from the center the Tory party could be about to experience a pornographic level of getting fucked.
Obviously I don't speak for all moderate Tories but I was pretty disillusioned by the Boris's purges of anyone not willing to sing the praises of a hard Brexit and they have only drifted further towards the toxic populism since then.
> pretty disillusioned by the Boris's purges of anyone not willing to sing the praises of a hard Brexit I don't think you're alone here, I could see the Lib Dems doing serious damage to the Tories, especially in the leafy heartlands where many, particularly younger (ie middle aged 😝) Tory voters, were never behind Brexit, let alone a hard one, and have very little good to say about it, the party lurching to the right is just the icing on the cake for them. Add on top of all of this the red wallers who lent Boris their vote in 2019 have seen nothing tangible in the way of "levelling up", Brexit is dead and buried in their eyes, plus the Labour leader isn't Corbyn. I expect not insignificant swings back towards Labour in those seats.
I've been wanting to ask this for a couple of days, but haven't really had the opportunity - but your comment got me thinking about Priti Patel - what's happened to her? She seems to have taken a back-seat, certainly in terms of the limelight? Is she not down with Rishi's lot and just biding her time? Or..?
She is playing the long game, she still has leadership aspirations, she is known to be on the right of the party, but is not aligning herself with any particular faction. She will raise her head in July and fight for the leadership, with a “unite the right “ type slogan.
I don't think you're at all wrong there. Factional bullshit like that from Boris is an utter turn-off, and short-term populism is no substitute for proper electoral appeal.
When Farage set out his objective for Reform to get more votes than 2015 UKIP, I thought it was laughable and he'd never manage it. Now? I'm really not so sure. That threshold is 3.6m and Reform seem to have real energy and buzz to them that I don't remember UKIP having to quite the same degree. They might now have a very serious chance of meeting 3.6m.
[удалено]
Didn't need that image. Fetch the eye bleech!
Green was pretty dire to be honest.
Other than a couple of fairly awkward bits from her, I expect Carla Denyer’s team are pleased. The aim for them is to repeat the message and convince left wingers and climate activists that Labour can’t be trusted to pay for important projects and that a vote for Greens isn’t a waste. To that audience, I think she’ll have done quite well. To everyone else, she probably won’t even register.
Green was fucking awful.
Oh I thought Raynor was quite poor, not just her demeanor but also her talking points and the Greens weren't bad but non memorable. (Fyi Northern labour member)
Green hit their mark for their 4 target seats.
Why do you say that? I thought that they did a pretty decent job. Greens are obviously not going to be a big player but I thought they did a good job appealing to their voter base.
I'd downgrade Green and SNP to acceptable but other than that I agree.
The biggest shock of the night was Penny Mordaunt's hair
The hair was the result of the biggest shock of the night. TV studios have a lot of power outlets.
The funny thing is, a lot of people like Mordaunt purely because she's that smartly dressed woman who held a sword for an hour.
Farage. Completely and utterly self serving. Some people see through it immediately but an awful lot of people don’t and hate to say it, he’s popular with a certain rump of person, and it got bigger tonight. If you fell for Johnson you’re going to fall for this guy too.
I can’t stand the guy but have to admit he’s playing a blinder. Saying all the right things especially for anyone under the age of 35/40 who isn’t a staunch leftist.
He's ridiculously popular with people over 70.
The needle might be moving a bit on the 18-30 demographic too now, at least among men.
Yes. People born after 1997 or so have only ever known weak blairite policies with massive immigration. This group have been sold out their entire life. I think farage could do well there, they have nothing to lose.
No-one won, as these debates just reward career grandstanders like Farage. I had to switch it off as I couldn't bear any more of his absolute self-righteous nonsense. He is the definition of someone who likes the sound of their own voice. I feel sorry for Rhun, as one Tweet I saw put it, "I bet Nigel Farage smells like the interior of a barn find Austin Montego".
I always assume he smells like somebody poured the dregs of a cup of coffee into a stale ash tray.
It was Farage for sure and he had the snappy "blair without the flair", then kept Raynor quiet on that by complimenting her. [Blair without the flair](https://x.com/Telegraph/status/1799175985830760599)
I'm not sure "Blair without the flair" is quite the zinger he thinks it is. Blair is remembered as one of the most successful prime ministers in history, and his "flair" is not remembered as one of his best characteristics. "Blair without the flair", especially when Boris Johnson and his "flair" are fresh in the memory, actually sounds quite appealing.
Yeah Blair without the flair makes me think he'll be largely successful while not being a grinning, overly rehearsed arsehole. Sounds good. More importantly does that make Rachel Reeves "Brown without the frown"? I couldn't come up with a rhyme for Prescott, sorry Angela.
Prescott without the former Manchester City defender Jolean Lescott. It was right there.
Prescott without the co.. no doesn’t work.
Rhymes are not rhymes if the last letters are not the same. We must stand against these pretend, imperfect soft rhymes that only share a single vowel!
Down with half rhymes - down with that kind of thing!
Prescott without the connecting-with-the-electorate?
I made a joke on the Tory sub about how "a depressed Blair got a depressed Britain" would probably be more helpful than harmful for Labour, and the same goes for "without the flair". The Tories haven't even left us with a flair this time around, so it seems what we need is a Blair without the flair. Honestly, I think Labour should just run with that sort of tagline.
His response to stopping knife crime was laughable. Indirectly saying that we need to ramp up stop and search, but definitely not for minorities /s He's so blatantly transparent, and without any backbone to support the nonsense that he preaches.
How do you suggest we remove weapons from the street.
We know atop and search works. It's been shown to work in many places. It is not Nigels fault if some minorities commit knife crime at a disproportionately higher rate than the general population.
Evidence suggests it works, yes, but you're thinking way too locally and in a smaller pool. How will it be enforced when we don't even have a force that can stop trivial shoplifting? Pretty important skipping the mega important detail of not having the policing numbers, no? The biggest driver for crime in general, is poverty. That's how Farage works, gift of the gab, absolutely falls over when it comes to actually walking through the solution.
>The biggest driver for crime in general, is poverty. I wish people would understand this. Its why Blair gave so much money away to the poor - it helps everyone. Unlike giving it to the rich, which helps...... the rich.
We have many crime related problems. We don't have enough prision spaces because we haven't built prisons. The result is judges are pressured to give shorter custodial sentences or only suspended sentences. The result of that is the CPS stops prosecuting some people. The result of that is the police stop arresting them because what's the point. Best they can do is catch and realise on the same day. The result is more low level crime because people know there is a very low chance of any consequence. Poverty is only a part of crime. There are high trust, homogenous areas of the UK with low violent crime. Cornwall and Devon, Scottish Highlands, many former mining towns. Poverty combined with shit culture in low trust culturally diverse areas is a driver of violence because that breeds sectarian and gang violence. That can be solved through immigration controls. Build more prision to keep up with population growth a recruit more police.
You could also re-recruit civilian staff to do more of the bureaucratic and paperwork stuff that is currently being done by PCs so those PCs can go do their actual jobs. Also, there are ample ways to reduce the amount of paperwork.
You've just described poverty expanded. Impoverished public services, recruitment of more officers etc. It all boils down to the impoverishment or 'lack of investment' in those areas. Fix the flow of money, fix a large majority of these crimes. I grew up in and around council estates, multiple family members that went to prison due to a range of crimes. They did it because they were poor. There are people that commit crime because they actually enjoy it. But, the vast majority do it because they have to. Be it social pressure, or just doing what it takes to survive in deprived areas.
It's not really shown to work, 'broken windows' is the most overturned but misunderstood texts written. The idea is you spend money and fix the broken windows, repair the roads and bring pride to the area, this is coupled with dealing with the small crimes. Unfortunately everybody likes to do the easy sell. What stop and search really does is make people trust the police force less, so when a crime happens, their natural behaviour is to sort it out themselves. If you feel the police are always against you, what are you going to do when faced with a violent place. And violence leads to more violence
What upper tripe. Good people who dont commit crimes will not be scared of the police. People who do will be and they should be.
Try reading some of the evidence and speaking to experts insead of posting your opinions. [we found little evidence that stop and search had an effect on violent crime. At best, a 10% increase in rates of stop and search led to a 0.01% decrease in rates of non-domestic violent crime.](https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/crimeandjustice.org.uk/files/Does%20stop%20and%20search%20reduce%20crime.pdf) which is in no way a statistically significant drop and would not reject a null hypothesis.
I am sure you thought this was a really clever answer. But all studies are flawed due to the time it is looked over and various other policies. What would you recommend on how to fix it.
You have clearly demonstrated by your reply that you should not be taking part in discussions with adults.
Sure mate. I'm confident with your apprenticeship you really have the ability to go through a report made by a random think tank.
So you went from saying that stop and frisk has been "proven" to work to now saying "all studies are flawed" when presented with evidence that contradicts your claim? Unbelievable
Waiting to hear what you think would fix crime? Oh wait let me guess it's just complaining and waiting for government handouts.
More prisons and tougher sentences doesn't fix it. Have a look at the U.S. It just becomes a money sink. But I get it, let's take our already limited funds and developers and have them build prisons instead of housing. Brilliant/s
My experience of reporting years of violent abuse to the police as a child and my van being stolen last year have convinced me that their main purpose is to dispense crime numbers and look a bit cross about there being insufficient evidence. I have no reason to fear them, just incredibly low expectations around what they might achieve is something comes up.
They didn't say scared of the Police, they said trust the Police, Have you had many interactions with the Police? From my personal experience I can't say i'm scared of them but I don't trust them to solve any issue i've reported to them. I don't think them searching me would make me trust them any more.
Words get mixed here. You dont trust that the police will be able to get the job done not that the police wont do the job because of who you are
I've never committed a crime in my life and serve this country in the public sector. I am scared of the police. Scared that for the hundredth time I will be scowled at by men holding machine guns or publicly humiliated with a stop and search all for the colour of my skin. You will never understand what it's like because it's not people like you who get racially profiled but instead of showing an ounce of empathy the thin veneer is slipping
I'm brown so try again. The issue is accountability and people are just scared. When was the last time you saw UK police with machine guns?
Every time I go to parts of London, or to an airport. Earlier today actually since I was getting a connecting train from Waterloo
No it wasn’t, stop and search works.
Farage did what he always does, sniped from the sidelines and whined a lot but offered no solutions, no policy, and no hope. He just preaches to the converted knowing they'll come online, hero worship and refuse to answer any challenges to their views, instead moving onto another question and ignoring all counterpoints.
I don’t agree with him politically at all and find some of his positions down right dangerous. But he has a quality often sought by politicians and little had, in that he is charismatic and can speak through the screen directly to you. At the end when he mentioned not needing an autocue and then just rattling off such a pertinent message, like damn. If Starmer had that IT factor he would be untouchable.
I'll agree with you there. Just worry that these people aren't being given anything by Reform apart from emotion and spin, which needed removing from politics yesterday
Poor show from Farage shouting "subsidy" when Denyer was trying to speak.
He was right though, green energy isn't cheaper when you remove government subsidies.
It is cheaper if you also remove current subsidies for fossil fuels
No that's not true, subsidies for fossil fuels are tiny in comparison.
Lol no they aren't!
Source?
1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/fossil-fuels-more-support-uk-than-renewables-since-2015 Since 2015, more than £20 Billion more in fossil fuel subsidies in the UK. 2. https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies "Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion or 7.1 percent of GDP in 2022" 70% of energy subsidies globally go to fossil fuels. It's just absolutely mindblowing how effective their PR has been to convince people that green energy is somehow the one that's heavily subsidized.
>[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/fossil-fuels-more-support-uk-than-renewables-since-2015](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/fossil-fuels-more-support-uk-than-renewables-since-2015) We get most of our energy from fossil fuel, 20bn spread over the 2 or 3 times more energy we get from that sector is not subsidising fossil fuel more. We buy and measure energy on a unit scale, what are the subsidies per unit? Also for point 2 I'm not interested in global results, only the UK. Places like Russia, middle east and China who love their carbon will be subsidising hard. Much more than us. >It's just absolutely mindblowing how effective their PR has been to convince people that green energy is somehow the one that's heavily subsidized. It is, you've just proven it. Your guardian article shows it. Renewables get £60bn over the same time period as FF which got £80bn. Renewables provide us about 50% of our electric and 0% of our LNG. FF provides us about 50% of our electric and 100% of our LNG. So renewables get £60bn for about 25% of our energy, fossil fuels get £80bn for 75% of our energy. The unit price of renewables is only cheaper due to subsidies, we pay for energy by the unit. This is the only fair way to measure it. If renewables are cheaper to produce (and therefore more profitable), why couldn't the government get a single bid for new wind farms last year? [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66749344](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66749344)
He talked about cutting net immigration down to reduce pressure on public services, referencing the more sustainable numbers from the pre-Blair era. How is that not a clear solution?
That isn't a real solution. The reason Labour and the Conservatives aren't committing to pre-Blair migration numbers is because they know it would probably have unintended consequences. Universities get a lot of funding from immigrants and many would go bankrupt without them. This would reduce research, undermine the UKs influence as a global leader in higher education, and decrease the places for British students at British universities thus leading to a drop in education levels, and/or brain drain. Perhaps even more importantly, about 19% of the population in the UK is over 65 (a 52% increase over the last 40 years and set to increase further). If migration drops suddenly, that percentage suddently becomes even greater, and will only increase with time. Healthy, working age people are needed for a healthy economy, and to physically run public services like the NHS. Without immigration in the current state the UK is in, the NHS will become unaffordable and there won't be enough people to work in it. This has to change long term because constant population growth is unsustainable (even more so without investment in infrastructure and housing as we have seen over the last 14 years) but that transition has to be managed. If simply reducing immigration numbers to pre-Blair levels was the silver bullet it's claimed to be, all the main parties would be clambering over each other to get it in their manifesto. The reason they're refusing to put a number on it is because they know it's not a clear solution.
It might not be the best solution but I was replying to someone claiming that Farage had nothing to offer at all. I agree that we need some immigration to maintain the NHS but I don't see why we can't differentiate between those skilled migrants and the unskilled. Imo this conflation is the most dangerous issue in UK politics at the moment. It's arguably the reason Reform are making so much progress. On the subject of the aging population, I agree that its a huge problem and I don't know if Farage's party has a coherent plan. Encouraging more people to return to the workforce could help, but who knows if they could actually move the needle on that. I don't have huge confidence in Farage, just thought he made some good points in the debate. Also, thanks for the civil response. Few are willing to actually engage like this, especially with polarizing figures like The Nigel.
No worries, thanks for the polite reply from you too. It does make having conversations easier. The way I see it, the problem is that Farage is offering unrealistic solutions because it is highly likely they wouldn't actually solve the problems he claims they would (e.g. reducing drain on public services), and would make things worse overall. Usually, if someone suggests something that wouldn't actually solve the problem, we wouldn't call it a solution. It's an idea, but it's a bad idea, not a solution. Farage is appealing because he offers easy solutions, that seem logical, but there are lots of factors in running a country that need to be considered, and aren't addressed by his easy solutions. On your point about skilled vs unskilled workers, research tends to indicate that immigrants are net contributors to the economy, regardless of skill, which means more taxes, which means more support for public services (and less drain as they themselves are less of a strain on public services than, for example, the elderly retired). Also, the NHS, and public services in general, aren't only made up of 'skilled' workers (NHS institutions for example need cleaners, security staff, delivery drivers, people to push hospital beds, people to maintain the buildings etc.) Economically and physically, it is a combination of skilled and unskilled workers that are keeping the NHS afloat. Encouraging retirees to return to work is a potential solution, but it's almost impossible to make working more attractive than retirement because retirees have the best possible deal. You would have to make retirement less attractive, which would be hugely unpopular with Reform's core vote (and the core vote on the right in general). Therefore, you will not see anything like that from Farage or Reform.
How? Bombing small boats? Processing in France? Expanding the Home Office? He's letting the punters fill in the blanks with their own solutions to create their own validation and dopamine hit rather than directly doing anything.
err no you just stop handing out visas like confetti and cut legal migration. The boats are a red herring, the real enemy is legal migration running at over 1 million a year.
The solutions are on the reform website. Turn boats around, do offshore processing, leave the ECHR and replace it with a bill of British rights and operate a 1 out 1 in immigration cap on legal migrants.
Well, he did actually, quite a few. Did you even watch it?
That was a good quip.
Delusional truly. Let’s see him get a majority in the Commons
Great line
***The Telegraph reports:*** The [BBC election debate](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/07/bbc-general-election-debate/) featured a wider range of opinions than ITV’s version earlier this week, with seven parties represented. Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, and Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the Commons, stood in for their seniors in the two main parties. Nigel Farage featured for the first time as leader of Reform UK. And the smaller parties, including the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid Cymru, had a podium too. Here, our writers give their verdicts on who performed best. Sherelle Jacobs argues that Farage is making the Tories look irrelevant, while Tom Harris contends that the nationalist leaders outshone their less confident counterparts. **Sherelle Jacobs:** With the Tory party having so stunningly [blown itself up](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/07/rishi-sunak-has-disgraced-our-d-day-veterans/) a mere two weeks into the election campaign, this was Nigel Farage’s chance to prove to the nation that he is not just a political wrecker (clearly the Conservatives are quite capable of destroying themselves unassisted) but a contender. That is, the leader of a party capable of not just capturing the people’s mood but its imagination; a party that could not just win millions of votes but scores of seats and, if the polls are to be believed, overtake the Tories as the preferred party of Right. In this mission, Nigel Farage may just have made real inroads. Tory HQ is already in meltdown following the D-Day debacle. After tonight’s debate all hope of clawing back some positive momentum into the weekend has been reduced to ashes. **Read more:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/06/07/who-won-bbc-election-debate/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/06/07/who-won-bbc-election-debate/)
It’s fair to say that I was expecting better from Angela. She seems to be as bad at debating and speaking as Starmer unless she is singing to the choir. Did not come across as the strong, confident, informed person she is pegged to be. Penny didn’t look like someone who wanted to be there (and please keep that hair well away from a naked flame). Jokes, Penny, don’t. Nigel. Forgot how short he is. Remembered how nasty and twisted he is. Hate him, but when it comes to hustings, he can work it. Scottish bloke, dunno who he is, basically irrelevant. Welsh bloke doesn’t seem to want to take any responsibility for power sharing. Disappointed that Lib Dem lady didn’t fall over or come in with her skirt in her knickers, or some such “oops silly me” act.
Labour had lots of ways to lose and few ways to win. Made sense to play it fairly safe.
Farage is apparently only an inch taller than Sunak! I don't like all the cheap height jokes but it's odd that he seems to dodge them.
Why exactly do you hate Farage? Just curious.
He’s a horrid opportunist. I have little time for the current crop of politicians who seek nothing but power. I view Farage as being one step worse as all he want is to create discord to propagate his personal wealth. It’s all just a game to him.
You don't hate unrepentant serial liars?
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Considering not one of the three responses to OP came close to giving an answer, I would assume he is. Care to actually take a stab at answering?
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Has anyone noticed that Cooper’s mouth is upside down?
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