Nigel Farage says cutting “red tape” boosts growth. Let's be honest about what that means: weaker paid leave, weaker sick and maternity pay, weaker anti-discrimination law, and more power to bad employers. I outline the real economic costs—turnover, lost expertise, and declining productivity—and explain why ordinary workers will suffer the consequences.
This is the transcript:
Why would anyone want to vote for Reform?
Why would anyone vote for Reform?
After all, Nigel Farage wants to strip workers of their rights, and I'm not talking about something like trade union rights here. I'm talking about the basic rights that you have when you are at work, if that's what you do.
Your entitlement to paid holidays would come under scrutiny if Reform was in power.
The employment protections that ensure that your employer cannot discriminate against you would be subject to review.
There would be a reduction in your rights to sick pay and maternity pay if Reform were in charge.
And who does benefit?
Certainly not you.
All of this is about making you more vulnerable to your employer and passing on the benefit to them.
Farage calls all these rights red tape. He says that they hinder business and growth, but they don't. They protect ordinary people. Ordinary people who take the risk of going to work for one employer and put all their eggs in the basket of working for that one person, and who are therefore reliant upon that employer treating them well.
Without that employer doing so, good relationships break down.
Productivity is lost.
Employee turnover increases.
The benefit of the knowledge within a system is dissipated, and although bosses gain total power, they lose the benefit of having a workforce who are rich in the knowledge that they possess of the business that they're trying to undertake together.
Fair wages and safety standards are part of the glue that holds the whole of a business in place so that everybody can prosper together. Without them, most businesses will fail.
The vulnerable, the young, women and older workers are particularly at risk, but let's be clear about it. Everyone could be prejudiced by what Nigel Farage wants to do.
It's likely that Reform will deliver longer working hours with lower pay, unsafe working conditions, no security for families. Discrimination at work and exploitation might become the norm.
Why would you want to vote for that?
Why would you want to vote for less powerful workers?
Why would you want to have more exploitative employers?
These are the things that Nigel Farage wants, but why would you want them when you have a choice?
Please think hard about everything that Reform stands for, because almost everything it does stand for is opposed to everything that you might want.
Why would you vote to lose your own rights? Please think hard about thinking of voting for Reform.
Previous posts in this series
- Farage vs the vulnerable
- Farage and the NHS
- Farage is for the rich
- Farage vs migrants
- Farage vs climate change
- Farage vs Democracy
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Let’s face it, Reform are an extension of the Tory Party. Yes, that’s the party who were in power for 14 years and brought living standards down to such an extent, the voters kicked them out in their worst ever election defeat in history. So, they have repackaged themselves as Reform and they are pretending that people will not recognise them. If you look at Tory attitudes to worker’s rights and add a bit of deliberate nastiness, you will see Reform’s policy. And so with every other area of government.
Reform = Tory + further austerity.
They(Reform) are ideologically to the extreme right of UK politics and want to go the far extreme, which I would call fascism. Call it what it is.
The joined-up thinking that isn’t taking place amongst many voters in the UK, and not just Reform Party supporters, is that market capitalism is adversarial and can lead to promoting fascism. Few have studied comparative government the central conclusion of which is that democracy requires checks and balances, regretably this has not extended to realising that a major cause of undermining democracy is adversarial market capitalism.
Picking up on one of fart-rage’s/Deform’s “policies”: “weaker sick and maternity pay”
Unpacking: maternity pay has a link to how attractive (& costly) it is to have children. The whole of Europe & UK has a problem with reproduction (by the native population of a given country). Italy is the stand-out +/- 1 million less native Italians per year. Reducing “incentives” to have children means – fewer children/declining population.
At the same time, the fart-rage rabble want to stop immigration (apart from the rich & ultra-skilled) AND send back a large number.
This will lead to a shrinking population. Some might say that this is good – but the impacts are likely to be felt first in the care sector (population ageing – growing demand for bottom-wipers).
Thus does reality collide with Fart-rage’s desire to gain power via the use of lies & fanatsy to do so. The problem is that the above is cold logic, Fart-rage deals in emotion. Let’s try this:
FART-RAGE DOES NOT WANT YOUR GRANS BOTTOM WIPED.
FART-RAGE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO HAVE KIDS
FART-RAGE WANTS 19TH CENTURY WORKING CONDITIONS & PAY
Sadly, those in control of newspaper content are happy to see fart-rage progress & would never consider such headlines.
Rhubarb!
Creating red tape creates jobs – jobs that prevent disaster and people being hurt.
Since the aim of newspapers is to make profit using money, or at least aim to, then anything that gets in the way of profit maximisation such as understanding using money involves the loop of currency creation followed later by its elimination later through taxation needs to be excluded from public critical thinking and taxation portrayed as a bogeyman. In this sense market capitalism sets itself up from the get-go as adversarial.