The hysterical, hilarious meltdown over Reform

‘Some thoughts on the election results’, began Missan Harriman, the chairman of the Southbank Centre, in a video posted to X on Saturday. ‘The first thing that really comes to mind for me… is when [Kurt Vonnegut] asked Susan Sontag on her thoughts on the Holocaust’:

‘She said 10 per cent of people in any population are cruel no matter what. And 10 per cent is merciful no matter what… The other remaining 80 per cent could be moved in either direction… In the context of yesterday’s election results, it’s something that I feel is really topical.’

Topical? Sontag, a prominent Jewish American essayist, was reflecting on why a population went along with the systematic extermination of Jews. Harriman is reflecting on a population voting for Reform UK. ‘The surge of Reform is real… and it should be a warning’, the arts official said darkly.

He has since clarified that he did not intend to liken Reform voters to Nazis – though, if he had, he would not be without company. The idea that anyone who voted for a party to the right of Labour is at best incredibly thick, and at worst a rabid fascist, has been commonplace since Brexit and during every election since. And these feverish sentiments have been given a renewed airing after local-election results began emerging last week.

‘Yay, Reform have won’, says one TikTok user. ‘That’s us G-A-Ys going to prison and having everything taken away.’ Another mouths along to Taylor Swift as the text flashes up: ‘Reform winning the most in the UK shows how uneducated people are… they’ll never learn.’ ‘Hate this stupid fucking racist miserable fascist island’, another critic writes on X.

Among the most amusing – and the most telling – reactions was a post congratulating Reform voters on their success. This was accompanied by an AI-generated image of several overweight white Brits in teal wifebeaters, smoking and drinking in line at the polling station. ‘BREXIT’ one pot-bellied man has tattooed on his arm – a forever-reminder that the gammon cannot be trusted to know what’s good for them.

Accompanying the snobbish disdain for the voters has been the familiar accusation of racism. ‘Reform voters don’t even know what they’re voting for’, claims an X post viewed by two million: ‘They just don’t like brown people.’

While there will undoubtedly be some people with unpleasant or bigoted views both voting and standing for Reform (just as there are in even the most ‘anti-racist’ of parties, it seems), to insist that swathes of Brits are desperate to quell illegal immigration because they simply cannot stand to live among non-whites is palpable nonsense. Two-thirds of Brits believe the number of people currently entering the country is too high. To dismiss the concerns of the overwhelming majority as racist, to cast the desire to control a nation’s borders as fascist, is as ignorant as it is insulting.

Naturally, those deriding Reform as racist struggle with the cognitive dissonance arising from the fact that a non-negligible amount of the pro-Reform set are actually immigrants – or descendants of immigrants – themselves. ‘The fact that some of these winning Reform candidates are BROWN PEOPLE is genuinely beyond me’, reads a disgruntled TikTok post. The anti-Reform crew are similarly bewildered by the views of gay and bisexual men, among whom Reform is the leading party.

Some seem genuinely convinced that Reform’s rise heralds a dystopian future. ‘Watching the election scared for my daughter’s future’, says one young mother, sorrowful music playing as she poses with her infant. Another woman simply videos herself crying against the backdrop of a results graph. ‘What’s happening?’, she croaks tearfully. In such instances, I can only hope these people find respite from their anguish. I imagine taking a break from the algorithm, heading outside, and recognising that the majority of their compatriots do not, in fact, want them humiliated, locked up, or dead would go a long way.

Georgina Mumford is a content producer at spiked.