Vocal Voices

16 percent of voters say May is handling Brexit well
34 percent say that Johnson would do a better job
Only one in ten voters would pick the government’s proposed Brexit plans
Half think it would be bad for Britain
38 percent of people would vote for a new right-wing party
Almost a quarter would support an explicitly far-right anti-immigrant, anti-Islam party
Half of voters would support remaining in the EU if there was a second referendum
Growing numbers feel alienated from the two main political parties.

In other news Nigel Farage, Arron Banks, Steve Bannon (Trump advisor) and others are in talks to set up a new right wing party.

I fear for my country, I really do.

"Growing numbers feel alienated from the two main parties".
And no wonder!
If the last two years have shown anything it is the extent to which ordinary people are disregarded by their "representatives".
If people turn to extremist parties it is because they are ignored by the mainstream ones.

Scary

Isn't Bannon a Yank? WTF has it got to do with him? We need to keep these right wing American loonies OUT of our business

And here was me believing the press that we need to keep Russia OUT of our politics. So very confusing...

And yet we were happy to allow Obama to meddle in our business?

Yes, we have all these obnoxious people poking their noses into our affairs, but that has been par for the course down the years. It is also not a Brexit thing either, that has been done to death, and then some.

The real shocker is that we have become so disregarded, disenfranchised and ignored by the main parties, all of them, that many are more than willing to look at the extremes. 38% would vote for a party well to the right of the Tories, and a quarter are looking to go further out to the right.

These are not the BNP or EDL types. These are the people next to you on the bus, in the doctor's surgery, the library, in the supermarket and petrol station. They are ordinary people who, understandably, have had enough, but it is their chosen direction that must worry us.

Workingman wrote:These are not the BNP or EDL types. These are the people next to you on the bus, in the doctor's surgery, the library, in the supermarket and petrol station. They are ordinary people who, understandably, have had enough, but it is their chosen direction that must worry us.

Yes, well, I'm afraid that includes me . I made my mind up a long time ago that I wouldn't vote mainstream, and I'm sure I can count Independant, SDP, Monster Raving Looney, Liberal Democrat and UKIP amongst my voting credentials at various points in my life. Natural rebel, you see ….

My chosen direction in the current climate? Undoubtedly UKIP or similar if it is reformed under Nigel Farage. Extreme right, no - but like the 25% you mention, don't push me.

However, I'm easily bribed, so for the price of a pint, I'll let you talk me out of it, Frank

If no UKIP alternative, I'd probably vote Labour. I no longer consider them mainstream, I think they are a totally obnoxious bunch of Lefties but with, nevertheless, some fairly attractive policies which blend in with my thinking. Yes, they will totally ruin and bankrupt the country, but then that's probably what we deserve, and sometimes you have to break something down in order to rebuild it.

I certainly wouldn't vote for any wishy-washy Centrist party led by Vince Cable.

It has happened in Sweden, Italy and Greece. It is happening in France and Germany. Austria is living it and Poland is suffering for it.

In fact the one thing which is common across the political landscape of the EU is a huge lurch to the more extremes of the right.

There is one and only one, common denominator here. All mainstream parties have been working towards closer EU integration. This means countries giving up their individuality and accepting things they have grown up not to believe in. The older, more stable, or more compliant, the democracy, the easier it has been.

What happened, in the UK, though, was a lurch back to the mainstream parties as soon as we voted to leave the EU. Brexit rebalanced our political landscape; at least for a while.

When you trumpet yourself as a political democracy, but then ignore the will of the people, you put the voters in the hands of the more extreme views. Hard Left does not want more choice, they are closer to Communism and Communism, in every form that made government, is the hardest form of totalitarianism going. So people are left voting for the harder right. Because they believe in what the hard right believe in? No! It is because the hard right is willing to offer them the choices which are denied them by the mainstream parties on a daily basis.

You are correct, WM, this is not to do with Brexit. This is to do with the issues and actions, around the world, that drove the Leave vote for Brexit. It is much more fundamental than Brexit, it is about how people respond to change.

So now we are talking about needing someone else to vote for rather than Labour or Tory or, in many cases, even Lib Dem. What is on offer? UKIP or another Farage led party. No room for the middle ground, it's crowded enough as it is and nobody believes a word they say anymore. There is no such thing as a free lunch and if all the parties stand on the dividing line and all offer different things, from the same grounding principles of the middle line; then they are ALL lying to you.

Why this lurch to the right now? Ever since the success of Maastricht and the Euro, faceless, unelected, politicians have been getting cocksure and also impatient to see the end result in their life time. With the inevitable result. Another 30 years and nobody would have challenged. But then the visionaries would have been dead and they wanted to see it.

Sadly for those tired political failures with a new hobby horse, social media and pervasive media for small interest groups made it right into the hands of the people; just in time to explain to everyone exactly what was going on.

So, for now, we lurch to the right. But voters are fickle and they won't keep voting for change forever. It is hard enough to get younger people to vote. To expect them to stay engaged for 30 or 40 years? Unlikely.

Gentlemen, my take is slightly different; forget Brexit, the EU, Venezuela, Brazil, the US et al. In order to avoid an exodus to the extreme left and right the centrist parties have to realign themselves and start listening to, and engaging with, core voters who, by definition, make up the centre ground.

Voters feel that a whole raft of issues that affect them personally, locally and nationally are not important in the Westminster (Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast) bubble(s). When they look inside they see liars, cheats, chancers, back stabbers, expense fiddlers, sex pests and so on. All of these people seem to be able to get away with things the ordinary man and woman would be punished for.

The mainstream parties have to have a long and hard look at themselves, and act. If they do not we will see the breakdown and collapse of the way we have been traditionally governed. The digital age has opened these people up to scrutiny as never before and it is not going away. Change or die.