A Preference Cascade in the UK?
Reform UK, yes REFORM, takes the lead in polls.
Good morning . . . which is yet another morning when there are so many topics and events on which I could write! So much is happening so fast, and most of it is good. Trump was right. He has brought about so much WINNING already that we cannot handle it all! Certainly those of us who make a point to keep up and to help others to keep with what is going on in the world, we cannot handle it all.
Mr. President, please! We can’t handle all this winning! It’s too much!
No, it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win MOAR!
In all seriousness, not all the winning is pleasant. DOGE, with the help of Elon and Big Balls, is revealing the outrageous realities of how the Deep State and USAID has been subverting . . . well just about everything. USAID had been subverting journalism and aiding censorship. USAID has even been subverting the church with the help of Regime Evangelical tools like Russell Moore and Curtis Chang. And on and on.
There’s two or more rants, I mean, posts I could write just there. But instead I want to bring to your attention something that most Americans have not yet noticed.
Across the Pond — or will Trump name it the American Ocean? — a preference cascade is occurring. The British dislike both Labour and the Tories so much, and enough find that they and their neighbors agree with Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party so much, that now Reform leads both major parties in the polls.
This turning has prompted the ever wry Farage to turn around a Tory slogan. In the last UK General Election, the Conservative Party warned, “Vote Reform, get Labour.” But now Farage reposts a poll and says, with ample justification, “Vote Tory, get Labour.”
A YouGov poll overnight confirms that Reform is ahead of Labour and way ahead of the Tories.
Third parties tend to be stronger in Britain than in the U. S. but this is still an amazing development. As far as general elections go, Grok informs me that the last time the Tories and Labour were not the two leading parties was in 1923 when the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party led with Labour in third. Yes, that was before Labour became one of the two dominant parties.
Although Trump did not upend a two-party system as Farage may be doing, 2016 has its similarities. Trump began his campaign as a laughable improbability for President. And I mean laughable. Talking heads, politicos, celebrities and their sycophants laughed him off openly.
Yet Trump got the Republican nomination rather easily, and then polls had him close enough that his election over Hillary Clinton became thinkable if unlikely. But it still was not a polite opinion to support Trump. In some places, to express such a deplorable opinion risked one’s peace and even livelihood. Yet polls and the massive Trump Rallies revealed many did support Trump so that deplorable opinion became thinkable for many, even if some were understandably reluctant to express it in public or to pollsters. So, despite polls indicating it would not happen, we woke up on November 9, 2016 with Trump as our President-Elect.
It was a classic preference cascade. And those can occur in the UK, too. The Brexit referendum that same year was certainly another election in which the laughable and impolite occurred anyway.
Are we seeing it yet again? Months ago, even I considered Nigel Farage as Prime Minister to be something of a pipe dream. It still is not a polite opinion to support him. And yet here we are already with his party leading the polls.
Reform and the UK still have a rough road ahead. Labour, though hated, has a huge majority in Parliament and doesn’t have to call an election for another four years. One wonders if there will be a UK left to govern at this rate. Both Labour and the Conservative Party can choose new party leaders in the meantime, and I expect both will. So the competition for Farage will probably improve.
At the same time, polls, though encouraging, are surely understating support for Reform as it is still a deplorable opinion and probably always will be. I suspect there is a Shy Reform effect that exceeds the old Shy Tory effect on polling.
I still think the political situation in the UK remains much more difficult than for the US even under Biden and his puppetmasters. So much harm has been done already. But that is a whole ‘nother subject. There is a heartening preference cascade going on in the UK. May it bear fruit.