I must admit that I do not share Aaron Bastani’s political views. He’s a leftist and I’m someone who has examined and abandoned leftism because it is an ideology that has clearly failed wherever it has been implemented.
However despite my disagreement with the man’s politics, I don’t dislike the man and on several occasions I’ve had to say fair play to Mr Bastani for being reasonable and open minded when it would be easier for him as a leftist to not do that and as too many on the left do just revert to name calling, cancellation and smears. For the record I say that about Mr Bastani whilst also not liking one of his employers, Novara Media.
The video below is showing Mr Bastani doing proper journalism and being reasonable in his approach to the people that he is interviewing. He’s gone out to do a vox pop on the election and like quite a few of those on the Left he has had the misconception that support for Reform is mainly coming from older people and from those who remember what Britain was like before various types of incompetence, socialism and collectivism damaged it. But on this vox pop he encountered young people who have also become tired of the incompetence and poor priorities of the current Westminster parties and who have declared themselves as supporters of Reform.
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What I like about this video and how Mr Bastani has dealt with this is that he is asking questions and letting his subjects give full answers. He’s probing when he has to be in order to get explanations and has asked reasonable questions and given his subjects space to answer those questions. He doesn’t seem to have been looking for ‘gotchas’ that could be deceptively edited later to back up his ideology and has put the whole of the exchange up.
I wonder how a BBC journalist would have approached these young Reform party supporters? I reckon that the BBC news people would have come over much more activist than someone like Mr Bastani who really is a leftist activist has done. Mr Bastani has reached beyond the usual propaganda about the Reform Party and done what all journalists should do and ask why people are starting to support it.
He’s a regular on GB news and, like you, l’ve always found him to be intelligent, balanced and honest in his contributions. Always interesting and thought provoking.
What l am surprised about though is how often l find myself agreeing with him – at a loss to explain that.
I received a Reform leaflet through my letterbox and was a little disappointed that immigration was the only issue that was presented. I don’t think that the government should be planning on forcing me to buy a useless electric car or a heat pump. It isn’t just that I don’t want these things, it is also that what personal transport or household heating that I choose to spend my own money on should be non of the government’s business. Abolishing the climate change act and ditching Net Zero is important to me, why not mention that?
With regards to Reform candidates having, shall we say, controversial opinions. To me that is a good thing, I want a party that has diverse views, if some of those views are a bit crazy then so what? The current lot think that doubting man made climate change is crazy, I’m pretty sure that plenty of them have doubts but they wouldn’t dare express them. This isn’t a healthy way to decide policies, only one opinion allowed and dissent forbidden.
Cancelling net zero policies is one of Reform’s key aims. Remember Farage is not aiming to win this election but to replace the Tories as the opposition to Labour afterwards and to force a realignment of the centre right. Keeping his message simple and highlighting the Tory’s key vulnerabilities is why the focus is on immigration at the moment. Effectively, the message is vote Labour/Tory if you want more of the same (high immigration, high taxes, big government etc). If you want change and to ‘stop the crazy’ vote Reform. Too many issues would simply confuse the message.
Expect issues like net zero and woke capture of public institutions (etc etc) to be raised in the near future as Labour will almost certainly put these on steroids.
While I think that the Labour victory in the election is a disaster, Reform’s share of the total vote is I think a cause for some celebration. The system that we have make it extremely difficult for a new party to emerge. This is demonstrated by how rarely it has happened in the past. The established parties have to have screwed up incredibly badly for it to be happening now, not that they will acknowledge that fact.