That Reform UK is the most popular party among gay and bisexual men will come as no surprise to those of us with ecclesiastical backgrounds. If anything, the wonder is that it is not Restore Britain, and even then only for want of anything even further to the right.
But what of the rest of the Reform electorate? Since the dawn of time, those people have at least pretended not to notice that preponderance in everything from the Conservative Party and the right-wing media, via the public schools and the grander groves of academia, to the Royal Households and the clergy. But that is no longer the etiquette. They never asked what it was about their old party that made it so attractive to men of that inclination. Will they ask about their new one?
Similarly, Reform and Labour are tied for the top spot among public sector trade unionists, who are a pretty middle-class lot and hitherto the core supporters of Tony Blair and Keir Starmer. Labour needs to reckon with their obvious disappointment, but not half as much as Reform needs to ask itself about the attractiveness of becoming their voice and vehicle. Even the broadest church needs walls.
Reform is the most popular party among social conservatives. "53% of Reform voters believe that attempts to give equal opportunities for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals have "gone too far". Some 49% say the same of equal opportunities for black and Asian people, while 71% express that view in the case of transgender people. The equivalent figures among the general public are 33%, 18% and 50% respectively."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy853rj2kzo
Those are not social conservatives. They are something else. And even without the material above the line, they would mean that Reform was a party with serious problems. With that material, well, it is still a long time until 2029.
DeleteThey are social conservatives, more sceptical of Labour’s equalities legislation and of women’s rights, gay rights and trans rights than the wider population. I didn’t post the whole article but Sir John Curtice shows their views on other issues from the death penalty to marriage are also substantially more socially conservative than the population as a whole.
ReplyDeleteIn the 21st century, there’s no problem at all with a party also having gay supporters. The real story is thar Reform also now equals Labour Party in support among members of Unite the Union, which shows the populist Right can draw on a truly broad base of support.
The half of Reform voters who think that equal opportunities for blacks and Asians have gone too far are not social conservatives. They are something else.
Delete“Those are not social conservatives.”
ReplyDeleteThey are indeed- pollster Sir John Curtice writes in that piece that the data shows: “key to Reform's fortunes and specifically its vote share will be the outcome of a battle with the Conservatives for the support of pro-Brexit, socially-conservative and climate-sceptic Britain.”
The Conservatives' electoral base is predominantly made up of people who voted Remain. Still, Reform likes its by-election candidates to have done that.
Delete“ Reform was a party with serious problems.”
ReplyDeleteI don’t know what planet you have to be on to draw that inference but the story is the very opposite-that Reform is not only capturing the Tories old socially conservative, pro-Brexit voter base (as Sir John Curtice observed) but now also taking Labour’s traditional trade union supporters, shows that the populist Right is building a genuinely broad base of support. It’s tremendous news.
Blair was right to sound the alarm that Labour’s policies on illegal migration, tax, net zero and welfare are alienating its traditional supporters (even though as Peter Hitchens weekend column notes Blair’s own government was the one that launched mass immigration, welfarism and punishing taxation) and the polls show Blair’s old party is shedding its supporters to the populist Right en masse.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/trade-union-members-labour-reform-poll-b2986931.html
Public sector trade union members are mostly not who you think they are. You are thinking of private sector trade union members in the days when there were very many of those.
Delete"The Conservatives' electoral base is predominantly made up of people who voted Remain."
ReplyDeleteNo it is not-where did you pull that out of? 60% of Conservative voters voted Leave in 2016 (compared to 38% of Labour voters) and those voters have overwhelmingly defected to Reform.
As Sir John Curtice writes "Doing so has enabled Reform to capture much of the coalition of Leave voters that gave Boris Johnson his mandate in 2019 to deliver Brexit.
The Conservatives lost one in four of their 2019 supporters to Reform at the last election - and now, on top of that, Badenoch's party has lost another three in 10 of those who were still loyal to the Conservatives last year."
in 2016
DeleteQuite.
The remaining Conservative vote is heavily Remain.
"Public sector trade union members are mostly not who you think they are. You are thinking of private sector trade union members in the days when there were very many of those."
ReplyDeleteLabour's creation of a vast public sector client state at taxpayers expense has indeed transformed many trade unions into little more than a 'rent-seeking' public sector lobby group for more state spending. But I suspect those are not the kind of trade unionists voting Reform, considering Reform's policies on state spending and the fact that turkeys rarely vote for Christmas.
I suggest that you read that again for the belly laugh that it gave me.
DeleteJust checked again and the majority of Conservative voters supported Brexit and the majority of Labour voters backed Remain in the referendum. A breakdown of 2016 Leave voters by party preference showed "A majority of voters for UKIP, the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru advised that they voted to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum of 2016. The Green Party and the Liberal Democrats had the highest share of people who voted to remain in the EU, at 75 percent and 70 percent.""respectively."https://www.statista.com/statistics/518474/eu-referendum-voting-intention-by-political-affiliation/?srsltid=AfmBOooi1VFEjrgT_rvAoxF4cWI9-vfyXNzTZXaXqCZ3z_bV-pOtM9dY
ReplyDelete10 years ago.
DeleteTake as long as you need.
Most Tory Leave voters have cleared off to Reform or Restore, the remaining Tories are mostly Remainers.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Alex Taylor, "the Conservative Party is not dying but metamorphosing into something previously inconceivable: a right-wing, queer social club."
https://unherd.com/2026/06/my-night-with-the-young-gay-tories/
At least at any old school university, whence come the Cabinet Ministers of the future, when has it ever been anything else?
Delete