The British are as stupid as we are

[edhopper]

they are on their way to elect the Putin Pawns who gave them the disastrous Brexit.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/farage-s-reform-uk-wins-big-in-local-elections-splintering-two-party-system-and-piling-pressure-on-starmer/ar-AA22HUii

[mr715]

1. Scotland, Wales, and N. Ireland probably take issue.

We just assume they are smart because of their accent. Well known phenomenon. All the IQ points we subtract from southern accents we apply to British accents.

Unless they are from the North.

[B.See]

2. Farage is Britain's

version Trump ('fascists of a feather flock together') and anti immigrant sentiment was a driving force behind Britain's Brexit. And yes it was disastrous. But apparently not disastrous enough.

[yaesu]

3. The tree doesn't fall far from the apple ;o) nt

[mr715]

4. Love it. nt

[Emrys]

5. By "British", you presumably mean "English"

Scotland and Wales haven't fallen for it. Northern Ireland votes next year.

[TomSlick]

6. Exactly.

The Sassanach (damned English) are intent on forcing Scotland and Northern Ireland to leave the UK.

Scotland and Northern Ireland should form a new Celtic Union. They can join the Commonwealth and keep the King (if that's what they want to do).

[roamer65]

13. Scotland will be a quick EU admission.

They will go right in at Eurozone level.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Well, not quite, but the increase in Reform votes in Wales is worrying

Vote like that in a general election, and they'll pick up some Westminster seats. 5 out of the 16 areas put Reform first.

[Emrys]

10. That's proportional representation for you, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, nowhere near the scope of gains in England's councils.

In Scotland, Reform didn't win any constituency seats, and their leader Lord Offord was soundly beaten in his birthplace constituency. They ended up tying with Labour for distant second place with 17 regional list seats. The Scottish Greens got 15, including two constituency wins, which is a breakthrough.

I haven't looked closely at the Welsh results, but Reform's track record (like UKIP before it) is that they fall on their faces once entrusted with any degree of power.

We'll have to see how things play out in the next couple of years, but gaining seats could be the worst thing to happen to them! People also tend to vote differently in Westminster elections compared to devolved elections.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. It's not about the proportional representation - Reform were first in those five areas

which indicates they'd win at least 5 Welsh seats, probably several more, in the equivalent Westminster election (should be 2 Westminster seats to each Senedd area, and Wikipedia says that's how they were drawn). Yes, there may be enough time for them to show themselves to be useless/racist/otherwise undesirable, but the Welsh voted Leave in 2016, so I don't see the electorate as especially blessed with common sense.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2026/wales/results

Reform got 29.3% of the Welsh vote by voter. That's actually above their 26% of the GB national share that the BBC projected yesterday: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c1428pev1n0t?post=asset%3A917c45ad-601c-4c78-a2ba-e3c146efeeac#post . But in Wales, Plaid took the majority of the non-RW vote, so came out ahead.

[Orrex]

7. You've set a high bar

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. The Banksy statue is the best commentary on the English election results

[EdmondDantes_]

12. Unfortunately there's a lot of that going around.

Meloni in Italy, Bolsonaro in Brazil (his son is running for president this year) and others. Trump is a symptom not the root cause of the world and our increasing problems with racism and nationalism.

[fujiyamasan]

14. Likely going to get worse

A lot of the white collar work that the elite pushed people to gravitate toward, often taking out loans (sure student loans aren’t as big elsewhere in the world but it’s still a problem), are on the way out.

We’ve created a fragile global economy based on pushing paper and numbers around. These are more ripe to be automated than many jobs requiring physical labor.