My immigrant dad nearly voted Reform until I laughed in his face

‘So, who are you voting for?’ I nonchalantly asked my dad at his birthday meal last week, confident I already knew the answer – The Green Party. 

But I was in for a surprise. ‘Reform’, he was straight-faced.

Chuckling, I asked again, ‘no really, who?’

He wasn’t laughing: ‘Reform’.

‘What? Nigel Farage’s party???’ 

I was so shocked, I didn’t realise how loudly I yelled it. The restaurant fell quiet.

That’s when my dad’s face changed – frown lines now covered his forehead and mouth. Just then I realised something too: he didn’t actually know anything about Reform UK.

Now, my dad’s not an idiot – he’s a well informed man, always searching for different stories, and travelling the world in order to find them. 

But like many older people, he stays up to date about the news through conversations with friends and word of mouth. 

I don’t blame him – would you believe newspapers, when you already have good friends’ advice?

So he explained that a trusted colleague mentioned them as the alternative to the Tories or Labour.

Not particularly enchanted with either party, my dad decided Reform was the key to change – without knowing anything about what they actually stood for. 

It worried me – why was he voting for a party he didn’t know anything about?

I had to discuss it with him and tell him to do his research – and it made me realise we need to make sure we’re having conversations with our parents to guarantee they have all the information they need. 

Dad’s a bit of a character; loved by all my family and friends, accepting of his queer daughter and my trans partner, he rides motorbikes at 73, travels to Tibet and goes on hunts for vinyls. He’s not someone you would expect to vote for a party such as Reform.

He migrated from India to England in the 70s and experienced his fair share of racism in the form of skinheads and the National Front. 

He has witnessed work-based discrimination, on public transport and even in pubs.

So Reform UK, a right-wing party, who works hard to oppose immigration, would not seem an obvious fit for him. 

‘I’m not voting Tory, Labour have become awful, and I always vote Green but they never win’, he explained, dejected. 

But as soon as I said ‘Nigel Farage’, he let out a series of expletives and announced he would never vote for them.

Yesterday, Farage – a man who once cited climate change as a ‘scam’ – announced he was standing as an MP in Clacton for Reform UK and will be leading the party.

Reform UK, formerly known as the Brexit Party, was founded by Farage in 2018, but in 2021 he stepped down – saying he ‘won’t be involved in elected politics any longer’, leaving a trail of Brexit destruction behind him.

For me, and many other left-wing people of colour, it was a great day. We would rarely see his face again. He could spout his hatred from the comfort of his home.

But, now he is back. And my dad was almost tricked into voting for him, before I stepped in. 

This is the thing – we need to have a conversation with older generations to make sure they’re fully aware of what parties like Reform stand for.

Just this morning, Nigel Farage went on Radio 4, and in a clash with presenter Mishal Husain, he said: ‘our quality of life in this country is being diminished by the population explosion’, adding that ‘net migration at zero would be the target’. 

And a couple of weeks ago, he appeared on Sky News with an uneducated and bigoted statement that there is ‘a growing number of young people in this country who do not subscribe to British values’ – later clarifying he meant Muslims.  

He then continued to blather on about a population explosion, revealing his insidious views of immigrants.

I believe Farage is not someone any person of colour should be voting for – but it happens.

Many young people of colour noticed during the Brexit referendum that our parents or grandparents were unaware of the actual consequences of leaving the EU – they were led to believe it would benefit them, and so never questioned it. 

They weren’t given other viewpoints, to be able to make an informed decision.

That’s where young people found themselves stepping in and giving them the other perspective. 

Older generations can’t just rely on word of mouth – or those dreaded WhatsApp groups that spread misinformation. 

I’ve found that the popular messaging app is used by immigrant communities to share news and forward information – but the result of this chain-letter effect is ‘fake news’.

One 2019 study in America found that older people were seven times more likely to share fake news articles on Facebook alone. 

As so much information shared on social media is false or biased, we need to have the kind of direct conversations that I had last week. 

‘Vote for Green’, I told Dad as I watched him throw his napkin on the table and hold his head, ‘since Labour will most likely win, we can at least try to get as many Green seats as possible’.

I just hope he now spreads the message to his friends who might not have heard.

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