RoadTrip
petitioned for a just cause
To your last point, I think that’s right but there cause and effect here. The Tories have moved significantly right. And the reality unfortunately is that without Farage, many of those far right voters simply saw no choice as you say but to vote Tory.I'm not so sure. Reform basically replaced UKIP so I would think they got nearly all their supporters votes. I know at least 3 or 4 dozen Tory voters who voted for Reform because they knew the Tories stood no chance in our area and they flat out refused to vote for Labour or the Lib Dems. UKIP only had one decent general election in 2015 where they got 3.3 million votes that was just over 12% of the total votes tally.
Before and after that they never got more than 3.1%. Initially they were an anti-federalist party but rebranded as a referendum party that campaigned on the UK leaving Europe.. After Brexit in 2016 and Farage leaving they fell apart, fell apart so badly that at the recent GE.they managed to only get 1000 votes more than the Monster Raving Looney Party, despite fielding 4 more candidates than them.
My point being though, I think a fairly decent percentage of Reform votes were definitely Tory voters and that these racist wankers definitely do not represent 15% of the population. Or they do, but not to the extremes of EDL/NF levels..
It’s hard to discern what percentage does and doesn’t accurately reflect these hard right individuals. And no doubt that percentage has increased since the likes of UKIP were around. I think the current reform vote though is a decent enough estimation to use. I’m sure there’s some ignorant protest vote in there too, but for the most part it’s full of those hard right wingers who at the very least are sympathetic to the ideals of what they stand for.
Put another way, a party that is quite clearly racist should be enough to deter anyone voting them.
In the other hand you could say a lot of those people aren’t racist they’ve just been mislead by what they’ve seen on social media etc. and are simply ignorant.
It’s all rather circular. Anyway, my point is, there are far more racist people in this country than just the few crazies who go out and riot.