Comment by ben_w
13 hours ago
> it’s quite misleading (to readers who don’t follow UK politics) to suggest that there’s any hope of it winning an election.
I wish.
Brexit was pretty unthinkable even just a few years before the referendum. And now… well, toss-up between the top 5(!) parties, because somehow the Greens and Lib Dems are polling at similar levels to Conservative and Labour, all a bit behind Reform who didn't exist a few years back.
And when bad times come, insular nationalism (both in the sense of xenophobia and autarky) poll well.
The world-wide bad-times storm is getting super-charged right now, though I can't tell how much this is malice vs. incompetence from the White House.
You can’t seriously be suggesting that a political party that most Brits haven’t even heard of has any chance of winning the next election.
"an election" (what you wrote first time) != "the next election" (what you write now).
Next-but-one, perhaps. Although even for the next one, everyone's so weak I'd only put mild odds against them.
I don't want them to win ever*, but failing to plan is planning to fail, and there's big money getting involved here, and the UK political system still hasn't caught up with the impact of social networks and foreign influence through them at all.
And one of those social networks is run by someone who sees no problem calling for civil war in the UK, though he's currently supporting one of the other "I wish it was a joke party" parties.
* Although I can also say that about Reform, where, if I still lived in the UK, if my options were them or the actual literal Monster Raving Loony Party, I'd pick the latter. Then again, that doesn't say much as I'd pick the Monster Raving Loony Party over the Conservatives, too.
I think it goes without saying that things can change unexpectedly in the longer run, but this party simply isn’t a factor in national politics at present.