Research based on a poll of 11,000 Reform UK supporters, the biggest survey of its kind, tells us more about who is intending to vote for the party than has been previously known.
The in-depth polling analysis from Hope Not Hate reveals a voter coalition that stretches from struggling workers and frustrated graduates to wealthy retirees, in places from Hitchin to Runcorn.
While immigration is often viewed as the defining issue for Reform supporters, the data shows a far more complex picture. This diverse coalition is deeply divided on big issues such as the economy, the climate crisis and the role of government.
…
Who are the Reform supporters?
The research divides them into five groups, based on their attitudes towards different issues. These groups are the “working right”, “hardline conservatives”, “squeezed stewards”, “contrarian youth” and “reluctant reformers”. They differ in some key ways.
…
Anki Deo, who leads the policy and insights team at Hope Not Hate, says that in “an era of hyper-marginal politics where election results are decided by just a few percentage points”, identifying these groups and where they live is crucial.
She adds: “For those of us desperate to prevent a Farage-led government in 2029, this research shows us that not all is lost. Reform UK voters do not fit a single profile or ideology. Far from a homogenous group, it is a broad coalition, with many voters having quite different and contradictory views from each other.
Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.
Hurricane Melissa tore off roofs and stripped trees of their leaves, including in many parts of Jamaica hit by Hurricane Beryl a year earlier. Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images
Headlines have been filled with talk of the catastrophic power of Hurricane Melissa after the Category 5 storm devastated communities across Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti in October 2025. But to see this as a singular disaster misses the bigger picture: Melissa didn’t hit stable, resilient islands. It hit islands still rebuilding from the last hurricane.
St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, suffered intense damage from both Hurricane Melissa in October 2025 and Hurricane Beryl a year earlier. Ivan Shaw/AFP via Getty Images
In Cuba, the power grid collapsed during Hurricane Oscar in October 2024, leaving 10 million people in darkness. When Melissa arrived, it struck the same fragile infrastructure that Cubans had barely begun to rebuild.
This is the new reality of the climate crisis: Disasters hitting the Caribbean are compounding and can trigger infrastructure collapse, social erosion and economic debt spirals.
The compounding disaster trap
I study disasters, with a focus on how Caribbean island systems absorb, adapt to and recover from recurring shocks, like the nations hit by Melissa are now experiencing.
It’s not just that hurricanes are more frequent; it’s that the time between major storms is now shorter than the time required for a full recovery. This pulls islands into a trap that works through three self-reinforcing loops:
Infrastructure collapse: When a major hurricane hits an already weakened system, it causes simultaneous infrastructure collapses. The failure of one system – such as power – cascades, taking down water pumps, communications and hospitals all at once. We saw this in Grenada after Hurricane Beryl and in Dominica after Hurricane Maria. This kind of cascading damage is now the baseline expectation for the Caribbean.
When schools are heavily damaged by storms, like this one in Jamaica that lost its roof during Hurricane Melissa, it’s harder for families to remain. Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images
The trap is that all three of these loops reinforce each other. A country can’t rebuild infrastructure without money. It can’t generate economic activity without infrastructure. And it can’t retain the skilled workforce needed for either when people are fleeing to safer places.
Rebuilding a system of overlapping recoveries
The Caribbean is not merely recovering from disasters – it is living within a system of overlapping recoveries, meaning that its communities must begin rebuilding again before fully recovering from the last crisis.
Each new attempt at rebuilding happens on the unstable physical, social and institutional foundations left by the last disaster.
The question isn’t whether Jamaica will attempt to rebuild following Melissa. It will, somehow. The question is, what happens when the next major storm arrives before that recovery is complete? And the one after that?
Without fundamentally restructuring how we think about recovery – moving from crisis response to continuous adaptation – island nations will remain trapped in this loop.
The way forward
The compounding disaster trap persists because recovery models are broken. They apply one-size-fits-all solutions to crises unfolding across multiple layers of society.
Breaking free requires adaptive recovery at all levels, from household to global.
Residents formed a human chain among the hurricane debris to pass food supplies from a truck to a distribution center in the Whitehouse community in Westmoreland, an area of Jamaica hit hard by Hurricane Melissa in October 2025. Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images
Local networks are often the only ones capable of rebuilding trust and participation.
At the infrastructure level: Breaking the cycle
The pattern of rebuilding the same vulnerable roads or power lines only to see them wash away in the next storm fails the community and the nation. There are better, proven solutions that prepare communities to weather the next storm:
Decentralized power grids with renewable energy sources can operate independently when the main grid fails.
Natural infrastructure such as restored mangroves and wetlands provide natural storm barriers.
Hurricanes can damage infrastructure, including water and drainage systems. Hurricane Beryl left Jamaican communities rebuilding not just homes but also streets, power lines and basic infrastructure. Ricardo Makyn/AFP via Getty Images
At the global level: Fixing the debt trap
None of this is possible if recovery remains tied to high-interest loans. There are ways for internal financial institutions and global development lenders to allow for breathing room between disasters:
Hurricane clauses in bond agreements can automatically pause all debt payments when disasters strike. These clauses allow governments to automatically suspend debt service payments to bondholders for up to two years when a qualifying disaster strikes. After Beryl, Grenada became the first government to activate a hurricane clause with private creditors.
Comprehensive debt-for-climate swaps involve reducing existing debt – owed to private banks, institutional investors, countries or multilateral banks – in exchange for the debtor country committing funds to climate adaptation or resilience projects.
The Caribbean needs a system that provides support before disasters strike, with agreed-upon funding commitments and regional risk-pooling mechanisms that can avoid the delays and bureaucratic burden that slow recovery.
What’s happening in Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti today is a glimpse of what’s coming for coastal and island communities worldwide as climate change accelerates. In my view, we can either learn from the Caribbean’s experiences and redesign disaster recovery now or wait until the trap closes around everyone.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer departs 10 Downing Street, London, to attend Prime Minister’s Questions at the Houses of Parliament, November 12, 2025
IF KEIR STARMER intended to stave off a leadership challenge by advertising his readiness to fight one, he has miscalculated.
All his intervention has done is placed the question of his leadership at the top of MPs’ minds.
Perhaps identifying Wes Streeting as a possible challenger was intended to frighten the left away from triggering a contest — since Streeting is even further right than Starmer.
In practice it simply showcases the Prime Minister’s insecurity and the toxic culture Streeting accurately describes in Downing Street — where the government briefs against its own, and a leadership that has always relied on bans and expulsions to maintain authority descends into a “circular firing squad,” to use the ever eloquent Barry Gardiner’s phrase. Unlike Starmer, MPs might reflect, Streeting has never pretended to be on the left and as a Blairite true believer might at least try to govern through persuasion rather than fear.
Nobody should fear challenging Starmer: his government is as inept as it is cruel and is paving the way for a far-right Reform UK regime.
But Streeting is no solution. The Health Secretary would be a cosmetic change, no more: he’s wedded to the same policies of privatisation and cuts that have wrecked our public services and national infrastructure. Starmer loyalists point to the long death agony of the last Tory government as evidence that switching leader doesn’t help — and it won’t, without dramatic changes in Labour policy.
And that’s a problem. Starmer’s leadership exists to prevent change, not deliver it: its whole mission has been the destruction of Corbynism and the threat of a socialist-led Labour Party. That project was endorsed by the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs even before last year’s election brought in cohorts of carefully vetted conformists.
Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Palestinians who returned to Khan Yunis, a city heavily damaged during Israel’s two-year-long attacks on the Gaza Strip, struggle to survive amid the rubble of destroyed buildings and limited resources on November 6, 2025. [Abed Rahim Khatib – Anadolu Agency]
Israel’s allies worldwide are desperately scrambling to help Tel Aviv re-establish a convincing narrative, not only concerning the Gaza genocide, but the entire legacy of Israeli colonialism in Palestine and the Middle East.
The perfect little story, built on myths and outright fabrications — that of a small nation fighting for survival amid ‘hordes of Arabs and Muslims’ — is rapidly collapsing. It was a lie from the start, but the Gaza genocide has made it utterly indefensible.
The harrowing details of the Israeli genocide in Gaza were more than enough for people globally to fundamentally question the Zionist narrative, particularly the racist Western trope of the ‘villa in the Jungle’ used by Israel to describe its existence among the colonised population.
Not only have people across the globe, but even Americans have decisively turned against Israel. What began as an alarming trend — from the Israeli viewpoint, of course — is now the irrefutable new reality. National polls indicate that support for Palestinians among US adults has risen, with 33 per cent now saying they sympathise more with the Palestinians — the highest reading so far and an increase of six percentage points from last year.
Even the once unshakeable pro-Israeli majority among Republicans is softening in favour of Palestinians, with 35 per cent of Republicans favouring an independent Palestinian state, a significant increase from 27 per cent in 2024, demonstrating a clear shift in a segment of the Republican base.
The Israeli government is now fighting with every resource at its disposal to dominate the information war. It is focused on injecting calculated Israeli falsehoods into the discourse and aggressively blocking the Palestinian viewpoint.
Latest reports of an Israeli campaign to win social media by granting millions of dollars to TikTok and other social media influencers is only a fraction of a massive, coordinated campaign.
The war is multifrontal. On 4 November, news reports revealed that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales personally intervened to block editing access to the page dedicated to the Gaza Genocide. He claimed that the page fails to meet the company’s “high standards” and “needs immediate attention.” According to Wales, that specific page requires a “neutral approach” — meaning, in practice, that blatant censorship is required to prevent the genocide from being accurately described as the “ongoing intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people.”
Israel has long been obsessed with controlling the narrative on Wikipedia, a strategy predating the current Gaza genocide. Reports dating back to 2010 confirm that Israeli groups established specific training courses in ‘Zionist editing’ for Wikipedia editors, with the explicit goal of injecting state-aligned content and shaping key historical and political entries.
The censorship campaign against Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices is as old as the media itself. From the very start, mainstream media in the West has been structurally aligned with corporate agendas that are naturally allied with money and power; thus, the prominence of the Israeli view and the near-complete erasure of the Palestinian perspective.
Years ago, however, Israel began realising the existential danger of digital media, particularly the open spaces in social media that allowed ordinary individuals to become independent content creators. The censorship, however, took an ugly and pervasive turn during the genocide, where even the use of words like ‘Gaza’, ‘Palestine’, let alone ‘genocide’, would result in shadowbanning or outright closure of accounts.
In fact, very recently, YouTube, which was previously known for being less severe in censoring pro-Palestinian voices than META, shut down the accounts of three major Palestinian human rights organizations (Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights), erasing more than 700 videos of crucial footage documenting Israeli violations of international law.
Sadly, though not surprisingly, not a single mainstream social media platform is innocent of censoring any criticism of Israel. Thus, it becomes a daily practice that references to Palestine, the Gaza genocide, and the like must be written in coded language, where, for example, the Palestinian flag would be replaced by an image of a watermelon.
Many pro-Palestine activists are now highlighting the direct complicity of Western media, especially in the UK, in attempting to whitewash the rape accusations against Israeli soldiers. Instead of using the unequivocal word ‘rape’, mainstream outlets refer to the horrific Sde Teiman episodes merely as ‘abuses’. While Israeli politicians and other war criminals are openly celebrating the so-called ‘abuses’ and the rapists as national heroes, mainstream British and French media are still refusing to accept that the widespread torture, rape, and mistreatment of Palestinians is part of a centralised, systemic agenda, not mere individual ‘abuses’.
Compare this to the wall-to-wall, sensationalised coverage of alleged ‘mass rape’ by Palestinians in southern Israel on 7 October — despite the fact that no independent investigation was ever conducted, and that the claims were made by the Israeli army without credible evidence.
This is not mere bias and hypocrisy, however, but direct complicity, as stated by the Gaza Tribunal’s final statement on 26 October 2025. “The Jury finds a range of non-state actors to be complicit in genocide,” the verdict read, including “biased media reporting in the west on Palestine and under-reporting of Israeli crimes”.
The final reckoning unfolds in the information warzone. The coming months and years mark the most critical fight for truth in the conflict’s history. Israel, relying on censorship, intimidation, and manufactured consent, will use every method to secure a victory. For Palestinians and all who champion justice, this battle for history is as consequential as the genocide itself. Israel must not be allowed to sanitize its image, because polishing genocide guarantees its repetition.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The Israeli and German flags are shown in front of the German parliament building in Berlin. [Photo via Getty Images]
A Berlin court on Wednesday rejected lawsuits filed by Gaza residents seeking to halt German arms exports to Israel, dismissing the cases on procedural grounds rather than examining whether the weapons deliveries violated international law, Anadolu reports.
The Berlin Administrative Court ruled that the requests of the Palestinian plaintiffs were inadmissible because the German government had already changed its policy and stopped approving new weapons exports that could be used in Gaza.
In one case, a Palestinian living in Gaza requested that the German government stop approving weapons export licenses to Israel until the Israeli military withdraws from Gaza. The court ruled the request for preventive legal protection was inadmissible, reasoning that the protection can only be granted if it is foreseeable that Germany would make similar decisions in the near future.
The court noted that Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared in August that the government would no longer approve new export licenses for weapons that could be used in Gaza, making immediate court intervention unnecessary.
In a second case, four Palestinians from Gaza challenged a license granted to a German arms manufacturer in late October 2023 to export 3,000 portable anti-tank weapons to Israel. After their previous urgent application to repeal the delivery license was rejected in 2024, the plaintiffs filed another lawsuit seeking a court declaration that the approval was “unlawful”.
The court dismissed the case as well, stating there was no concrete risk that the government would issue similar licenses under identical circumstances in the future.
“Future decisions on the supply of weapons of war fall within the core area of executive responsibility and cannot therefore be predicted with certainty. In addition, the situation in the Gaza conflict has changed significantly since autumn 2023,” said the count. “Therefore, it cannot be expected with the necessary probability that the German government will continue to decide on deliveries of weapons of war in the manner feared by the plaintiffs.”
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), which supported the plaintiffs in the legal action, said Germany’s authorization of weapons exports to Israel violated international agreements that Berlin signed, including the Arms Trade Treaty and the Geneva Conventions.
“In view of numerous documented war crimes, it was already highly probable at the start of the Israeli military operations that Israel would use the delivered weapons in violation of international law. The German government knew this – and nevertheless approved the exports,” said ECCHR experts.
From Oct. 7, 2023, to June 5, 2025, Germany authorized arms sales to Israel totaling more than €492 million ($570 million). It positioned Germany as Israel’s second-biggest arms supplier, trailing only the US.
Under mounting domestic and international pressure, Merz announced in August that Germany would no longer approve new weapons exports to Israel that could be used in Gaza. But the move stopped short of halting previously approved shipments, prompting criticism.
After the declaration, Germany approved additional arms exports worth €2.4 million ($2.8 million), including bombs, torpedoes, rockets and missiles.
Merz, a staunch ally of Israel, has repeatedly emphasized Germany’s historical responsibility for Israel’s security, rooted in its Nazi past and the Holocaust.
He has insisted that the commitment constitutes part of Germany’s “staatsraeson,” or reason of state. Merz has rejected demands for a total arms embargo on Israel and blocked proposed EU measures, including sanctions on far-right Israeli ministers and the suspension of the EU-Israel trade agreement.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer departs 10 Downing Street, London, to attend Prime Minister’s Questions at the Houses of Parliament, November 12, 2025
