‘I Asked Nigel Farage’s Supporters What They Really Want and the Answers Were Alarming’

With polls showing Reform UK mounting a genuine electoral threat, both Labour and the Conservatives are falling over themselves to counter their offensive and let’s face it, not much would be more offensive than the sight of Nigel Farage grinning from your TV screen on election night.

But you can’t persuade their potential supporters not to vote for them if you don’t know why they are thinking about it in the first place.

The leadership of both main parties seem to think the only thing Reform supporters get worked up about is immigration. They may be right, but the conclusion that they can only win them over by out Reforming Reform is based on some alarmingly naive assumptions about the people they are trying to convert.

---

Reform Supporters Hate the Country

So, I thought I’d help Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch out by attempting to discover what your average Reform supporter actually wants.

Despite the Daily Mail and GB News insisting the whole country is desperate to vote for them, I didn’t have a lot of luck canvassing my friends and neighbours. It turned out they would rather be thought of as the kind of “Guardian reading, advacado eating,(sic) Palestinian flag waving, Eddie Izzard supporting Vegan”  that Reform’s chief-whip has nightmares about.

So, I took to the internet and joined a raft of Reform-supporting groups to see what their followers were thinking. I have to say, this was not a pleasant task.  Scrolling through hundreds of posts filled with ugly sentiments was like stumbling upon the world’s worst online dating site. 

I had expected a lot of straightforward patriotism, but in fact plenty of Reform supporters appear to actively despise their country. Many posts simply listed complaints about the perceived ills of modern Britain and the modern Britains who live here. Whether its pride flags, Turkish barbers, the National Trust or electric cars they dislike so much about the world outside their windows, it’s a wonder they ever leave the house. 

There were lighter moments, it would be easy to laugh at some of the contorted logic so I did. Particular favourites were the posts condemning “immigants” for failing to “intergreat” or learn proper “Inglish”. Then there were folks so appalled by people travelling to live in a country they weren’t born in that they were planning to up sticks and move to Spain. 

Several posters repeated familiar conspiracy theories, always advanced with the conviction of someone who’s watched too many YouTube videos about micro-chips in vaccines. So, we learn that the World Economic Forum, assisted by King Charles and George Soros, plan to enslave us all by getting rid of cash-machines. More worrying are references to the Kalergi Plan, a white supremacist delusion that a ruling elite are plotting world domination via forced race-mixing.

Laughable of course until you remember that such ideas fuel the paranoia of damaged souls and end up included in some deranged manifesto discovered on a basement computer after a mass-shooting.

---

Impotent Fury and Threats of Violence

Along with the childish name calling aimed at the Marxist, two-tier Keir Harmer there are plenty of darker comments. Suggestions that if the traitorous “Lieber” government (Lie-ber, get it?)  don’t step down then violence is inevitable are common.

Recently a contributor posted a video of Starmer’s conference speech in 2023 being interrupted by someone showering him with glitter. The comments that followed included several regretting that the protester hadn’t used a gun, knife or acid!

There’s no doubt these people want change. There are constant calls to do something, anything before it’s “too late” to save the country.  Marches, council tax boycotts even petitioning the King to dissolve parliament are proposed but never acted on. 

There’s little sign that the mass booing of the Prime Minister on Thursday evenings has taken off yet, but we should all keep our ears open. 

Among all this impotent fury there are genuine concerns about the health service, cost of living, crime, housing and all the other things the rest of us worry about. However, these people have fallen for the ancient lie that their problems aren’t caused by the people with the power to change them, but by “the others”.  

And this is where the slope gets really slippery. Lee Anderson’s sympathy for the thugs involved in the Southport riots is widely shared and despite official disapproval from the party’s leadership the jailed Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson) is often lauded as true patriot and political prisoner. 

---

Voting for a Dictator

If Robinson is the bad-man of right-wing politics, then Reform might just be the gateway drug, the first step on a path that begins with flag-waving vitriol online and ends with suspiciously straight-armed salutes on the street.

But Reform supporters surely aren’t actual fascists. Would they really welcome a British dictatorship?

I added a poll to one of the largest supporter sites; ‘Nigel Farage for Prime Minister – Britain Needs Reform’ which has over 115 thousand members. How would they like the country to be governed after the next election?

In just six hours I had more than 1000 answers and over 80% voted for a leader who could make laws without reference to MPs. That’s a chillingly large majority for abandoning parliamentary democracy.

It should be noted that we may not be dealing with the strongest of intellects here. After someone added his name as a choice, Enoch Powell received 15% of the vote meaning the group’s second pick was to be governed by a racist who’s been dead for over a quarter of a century.

---

Legitimising Racism

As opinion polls regularly confirm, the queues at food banks and A&E matter more to most voters than the ones at the border. Surely the way to dissuade people from abandoning the British traditions of tolerance and democracy is to deal with real issues rather than pandering to the fairy tale that everything would be okay if it wasn’t for “that lot”.  

But, with Reform style—ads and videos of poor souls arrested after being forced to work in nail bars, Labour risk legitimising the racism they’re trying to undermine. If you tell Farage’s supporters, “See, you can vote for us after all,” they may just hear, “See, you were right all along”.  

As the Democrats found out in November, if you don’t take the chance to improve people’s lives, they might just dump you for the nearest narcissistic crackpot and while the Conservative‘s collapse allowed Reform to creep onto the wings of the political stage, Labour’s failure to address everyday concerns risks thrusting them into the spotlight. 

The two most common complaints on the Reform supporters’ websites are that immigrants are bad and the Government doesn’t care about ordinary people. If Labour can’t demonstrate that the latter is as much a lie as the former, we might all get what Reform supporters really want… President Farage.