Rise of Reform under spotlight at Manchester business summit

I was in a planning meeting where a Reform councillor remarked that “apartments are woke” as justification for refusing planning permission for a block of apartments. The investor subsequently pulled the plug. That gives you a little flavour of the intellectual level at which Reform’s councillors sit. A vote for them is a vote for economic stagnation.

If Councils in Greater Manchester had all out elections them the electoral landscape might change very quickly. On a one third of seats elections any change may be a lot slower but defections from the Conservatives and the Labour Party to Reform could accelerate change much quicker. 2026 may not be the moment when the world changes in GM but more likely 2028.

You say that Burnham is popular ? Who with?.Only some Liebour voters like him , and the general public in Manchester do not like him. Do you mean that he is popular with yourselves ? Or do you mean that he is popular with some of your customers ?

Labour and the Conservatives have sold Britain down the river and face a reckoning that they either refuse to acknowledge or simply can’t see. It will be a blood bath.

Anonymous 4.12pm, I’ve had similar conversations with reform supports who felt that any development or regeneration schemes are woke.

At least the greenbelt would be safe under Reform. They would almost certainly reverse the controversial “Greybelt” designation, along with the excessively high mandatory housing targets imposed on local authorities. Their priority is to protect our green and pleasant land, rather than cover it with sprawling housing estates or endless wind and solar farms.

Reform would be a disaster for the north. Former merchant banker, Farage, would concentrate all his efforts on his friends in the London banking and financial sector at the expense of anything outside of the M25. Reform and Farage are charlatans.

Wes – grow up. Reform’s priorities are making as much money for their shareholders as possible before bolting for the hills. It’s adorable and scary how easily conned so many people are. Nigel Farage is no friend of Britain’s

The fact anyone believes a word of what Farage and the rest of his grifters say is astounding and a testament to the short attention spans of a huge number of voters. He sold you brexit, which, whether you choose to admit it or not, has proven to be the additional significant drag on our economy and freedoms that it was always going to be. Reform have nothing to offer other than flag waving anti-immigration rhetoric. I doubt Nige even wants to be in power, he just loves sniping from the outside so he can’t be blamed for anything, hence why he basically never showed up to his job as an MEP or to his constituency; as if he cares about anyone but himself, his bank balance, and his mate in the Kremlin.

@Dee you completely nailed it there

I agree with Wes. If Labour hadn’t interfered with the NPPF and relaxed planning rules on building over green spaces, we might not be seeing such a surge towards Reform. The government needs to recognise that most people in this country don’t want to see our countryside and green spaces destroyed by unnecessary mass housing estates, which only serve to line developers’ pockets.

Labour are slowly but surely destroying the country faster than the last Tory government did. People can see it all around them, feel it in their bank balance, feel that their freedoms are being eroded.No amount of spin or clutching of pearls screaming ‘but you can’t vote for them because….’ oh yes they can. The working class of this country feel betrayed by this government who have learned absolutely nothing from the time they were in last nor remember how long they were out for. They do nothing about it because fundamentally they can’t. They will be swept out of power and whoever comes in will say..’well it’s all their mess that we have to clean up and its going to take time’ ..just as Labour are saying now. I don’t think though they have any real idea of just how desperate so many people are to see the back of them I genuinely think it will come as a surprise and then the grieving and the analysis will start. How about doing some analysis before? Oh well..surprises can be nice too, for some people.

You can see people in the comments already fermenting in their outrage at the very mention of Reform but outrage achieves so little. Labour do what Labour always do , generate lots of heat but very little light. They’ll be gone soon enough and so the Magic roundabout continues.

Neither Labour nor the Tories has any sense of the electoral wipe-out that’s coming. The polls keep warning them, but they don’t want to hear. And if they think any policy shimmies at this stage will save their bacon, I think they’ll be sorely disappointed.

Labour are still clearing up the mess created by Johnson / Truss / Sunak, the Brexit debacle and the gutting of public services, the chronic lack of investment into infrastructure and general
economic incompetence and constant chopping and changing of policy that occurred under the last Tory government.

This will take years to correct. Those with an agenda will try to pin the blame for the chaos of the last 10 years onto Labour but if they are genuine about wanting a better country, we all need to let Labour who are clearly competent just get on with it in a period of stability rather than seeing politics as a soap opera and lurching from thing to another.

Just look at the latest YouGov MRP this morning as shown on Sky and the BBC . People may say well there’s a long way to go yet but if those figures are anywhere close to correct that’s simply staggering. What it really shows is how low politics has fallen in this country, the talent is elsewhere, if it was ever in Westminster it has long since left the building. We are being governed by the B team operated by a group of non elected NGO’s and vested interests. People may not know the detail but they feel it every time they hear the same old bluster and spin only to see the truth too late when the promises prove to be a false as a politicians smile.

Always the same remarks about clearing up the last lots mess..blah blah blah. It’s much, much more fundamental than that. Labour don’t see it either.

Wes, regardless of the risks to local people and the environment, Reform will use the Greenbelt to carry out fracking. It’s one of their key policies.

Government should be boring. Why do some people try to turn it into a soap opera constantly? No wonder our infrastructure is so dire – the only way the next lot can get into government is by sowing discontent and cynicism and promising the moon on a stick and to do the opposite of the current lot.

Housing, rail, roads, airports, public space, energy – these are all multi year, some even multi-parliament projects that need a stable environment to bear fruit.

People need to get off social media and get a hobby rather than living their lives through what happens at Westminster. Let the government do their job with long term objectives in mind rather than bending to the whims of bored online keyboard warriors, politics geeks and that week’s newspaper headlines.

Why on earth would anyone vote for Reform? Lead by the moron that spearheaded Brexit and was nowhere to be seen when that went off the rails. Remember the tag line about having £200 million a week go to the EU that could be going to the NHS? The same guy that wants to privatise the NHS and sell it off to the US. Labour are currently failing but my word what a disaster Reform would be. @Wes where would you propose we build all these new houses then? I’m all for keeping our green areas green, but if we don’t adopt a European style approach to urban density, then we will have to build on green land to facilitate housing needs. Keep in mind that we already have the most unaffordable and smallest average house size in Western Europe, yet no one can see that having higher density cities is the way forward. Stop Reform.

Refrom are coming, like it or not. The British public have been taken for granted for too long and have finally been pushed to far.

Wow. The politics of this country is genuinely at a real low. Labour are bad, the Tories were worse…but that people genuinely think farage will do what’s right for the country…is disturbing

@Anonymous 3:10pm I completely agree — we need a more European-style approach to urban density. That means building much-needed social housing on brownfield land near existing public transport hubs, especially railway stations. What we don’t need are more sprawling estates of 4–5 bedroom houses on farmland in car-dependent locations. That approach won’t solve the so-called housing crisis.

Anon @ 12:07 pm you are so correct. Labour have got so much sorting out to do first. We need stability and at the moment we generally have it in comparison to the Tory chaos. Hopefully this will begin to bear fruit soon. Reform would be an unmitigated disaster for GM, and the country.

Nigel Garage is Trumplite. As all the MAGA people are finding out. 95% of Americans are worse off, only those earning 750kpa are benefiting. UK MAGA want this for the UK