Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

I don't think any of that matters any more, the issue is so firmly in the public eye that Labour need to show that they've solved it whether it's a 'real' problem or not.

> unlikely to gain them many Farage supporters

Farage is polling ahead of both major parties at the moment. That support came from somewhere. To characterise all of those supporters as only interested in populist bastardry seems a bit of a surface take on the issue. Why have they turned to someone like that? Most likely they feel their own lives and prospects getting worse and in their dissatisfaction have turned to an easy answer, someone who promises to change everything and blame the outsider. To put it starkly, reductively even, you don't get nazis when everyone feels like their life is on the up and up. Well not many anyway.

The mainstream of UK politics needs to get to grips with (perceived?) worsening standards of living and failing services, and actually take action that makes people's lives better. Instead for decades now it has just tinkered at the edges, seemingly run by ambitionless accountants. Shuffling half a percent here, half a percent there, not really achieving very much but spewing vast volumes of hot air. It's not really a wonder to me that a sizeable minority are looking outside of that, or are getting frustrated that they can't get a doctor's appointment or the roads are falling apart. It's all too easy for Fartrage to say - look over there!

> Instead for decades now it has just tinkered at the edges, seemingly run by ambitionless accountants. Shuffling half a percent here, half a percent there, not really achieving very much but spewing vast volumes of hot air

Speaking from the other side of the pond, we can say quite confidently that the solution is not electing someone who will make reckless, bold moves. The brain trust here voted against “ambitionless, measured improvements” and for that, we got a chaotic circus.

Agreed, but unfortunately at times when things seem not to be going so well in general, people are prone to electing the person that promises them large positive changes by throwing out the stale old rulebook. Even if it’s not credible. Even when large parts of what’s apparently going wrong have been invented by that same bad actor…

I think this is part of why Brexit got through as well, some people felt it was a way to shake up a crusty, unresponsive establishment. That didn’t go so great!

we spent decades dying to "measured improvements". I don't like what my peers did about the fact that they're angry or what in particular they demanded but I don't begrudge them being angry or demanding something. You can only bullshit people about their basic living conditions for so long and long ago our political class gave up on the idea of working for people as their raison d'etre and decided instead that their job was to give us as little as it takes in order to get our votes and then use the power we give them to funnel money back to their donors. The mistake wasn't in realzing that the "left" wasn't on their side, it was in thinking that the right was just because they were the ones who pointed out how feckless, entitled and self-absorbed the center-right elitists that pass themselves off as the left had become.

Any ideas how leaving the european convention on human rights, deporting some barbers, takeaway owners and illegal construction workers, and stopping small boats in the English channel will reinvigorate Sunderland, fix South Wales after coal mining stopped, restart British Steel, bring life back to coastal holiday towns in the aftermath of cheap flights to warmer places, fire up the tired overworked Londoner on the crowded tube, bring European finance investment back into The City, tempt foreign industries to open factories in the UK, cause more doctors and nurses to be trained and paid better, and give little Sally and Timmy something to look forward to in life?

"Freeze Non-Essential Immigration. Essential skills, mainly around healthcare, must be the only exception" - Reform manifesto page 5.

The main thing Farage supporters are voting for is to see fewer Muslims and brown people and Pakistanis and Africans, and the main thing Farage is doing is stirring up is racist hate and division; Reform's own manifesto tells their supporters that they will still be seeing an awful lot of foreigners under a Reform government.

Of course it won’t help. Never claimed otherwise. That’s my whole point - while everyone’s lives and the state of the country seem to get worse, people blame the other and look for the person offering them easy answers.

If their lives were looking good, if government services weren’t a mess, and if they perceived the government was actually changing things for the better, reform would have a hard time finding suckers to vote for them.

The small boats issue is enough in the public eye it’s going to have to be tackled. But beyond that, reform need to be beaten by the UK government fixing things and making the UK optimistic about the future, rather than just same-old same-old and the whole place feeling like it’s in managed decline.

> "The small boats issue is enough in the public eye it’s going to have to be tackled"

It has to be tackled even though it won't fix the things the supporters want fixed, because they're doing a surface level reaction. Your earlier comment opened with "To characterise all of those supporters as only interested in populist bastardry seems a bit of a surface take on the issue"; "blame the other and look for the person offering them easy answers" is the populist bastardry, it's not a surface take to say what people are actually doing.

If you'd tried to argue that people are liking Reform's plans to scrap thousands of EU laws, cancel HS2, roll back labour protection laws, cancel ULEZ zones and give more kids asthsma, scrap 20mph zones except "where safety is critical" (because some pedestrian deaths are less important than car drivers driving everywhere they like as fast as they like), encourage smaller landlords (because housing will be better when the wealthy own more houses), etc. then you could say voting for Reform wasn't a surface take. How many Reform supporters are switching because of their pledge to bring in "online delivery tax at 4% for large, multinational enterprises"? Who thinks "Cut A&E waiting times with a campaign of ‘Pharmacy First, GP Second, A&E Last’" will put the Hope back into Land of Hope and Glory? And how many are acting along the lines of "Nigel hates the people we hate! he will hurt the right people!"?

> "reform need to be beaten by the UK government fixing things and making the UK optimistic about the future, rather than just same-old same-old and the whole place feeling like it’s in managed decline."

So far in this government, that's feeling very a very remote and unlikely future.

> It has to be tackled even though it won't fix things

Yep, because it has become a public embarassment, it's very present in all the news coverage, and the government have promised to get a handle on the situation but haven't. If they don't get it in hand the press and opposition will continue to use it as a club to beat them with. Like as not this is now a large political issue in the UK. Yougov polls suggest that around 70% of the UK public now have negative views of people crossing in small boats -

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/WTZfT/3/

But look beyond that (and the generic "people coming to work illegally" category). The support for 'populist bastardry' against the wider category of immigrants drops off substantially. So yes, a government wanting to stay in power in the UK is probably going to have to do something to reduce at least the perception that people are entering the UK this way, but they won't need to follow through and go 'full Farage' to placate a lot of the public.

> because they're doing a surface level reaction

Yes? Have I claimed anywhere that the reactions of the general public in this matter are rational, sensible, moral, or really anything other than misplaced and misdirected anger about the decline of their own circumstances? I think you'll find I even called them "suckers".

Don't mistake me for someone that thinks anything about Reform is reasonable or a good plan. It's fucking shocking.

> it's not a surface take to say what people are actually doing.

That's pretty much the definition of 'surface take' I'd go for. To be other than surface you need to look at motivations and beyond that the actual causes of the behaviour.

The poster I replied to and accused of having a surface take was saying Labour won't win many Farage supporters by tackling the small boats because the supporters are only interested in populist bastardry. Firstly, the figures above show us it's far from only Farage supporters who have views on this specific issue. Secondly, that's not all that Farage supporters are interested in.

For example look at this info on what reform supporters believe - https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49887-what-do-reform-...

Yes, there is a lot of populist bastardy of the "bring back hanging!" variety in there, including literally that. But there are also signs of wider disaffection and some quite left-wing views -

  "Rich people in the UK are able to get around the law or get off more easily than poorer people"
  "Big businesses in the UK take advantage of ordinary people"
  "Ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation's wealth"
  "Utilities like energy, water and railways should be run in the public sector"
  "Rich people in the UK should be taxed more than average earners"

There are likely quite a lot of these people who could be won over to Labour by the government taking a fairly hard line on irregular migration but otherwise pursuing a pretty socialist agenda. Writing them off as only interested in populist bastardry overlooks that there are positive ways they could be brought around.

> If you'd tried to argue that people are liking Reform's plans...

I would be very surprised if most Reform supporters had the first clue what the party's actual plans are, beyond the headline of deporting immigrants.

> So far in this government, that's feeling very a very remote and unlikely future.

I very much agree, which is why I'm coming to the sad conclusion that Farage is quite likely to be the next PM.

tl;dr - Reform support is a symptom of mass disaffection and perceived decline in living standards. But Labour are backed into a corner and have to stop the boats regardless.