By Dara O’Cogaidhin
Recent polls showing Reform UK ahead of both the Labour government and the Conservative opposition have sent shockwaves through the political establishment. In the general election campaign Reform took most of its votes from disillusioned Tories. But its voting base is now shifting, as it picks up support from disgruntled Labour pundits.
Unable to respond to the multiple crises facing the UK, the Labour government has continued down the path of austerity. Despite vague assurances of change in last year’s election, Labour has scrapped winter fuel payments for pensioners, kept millions of children in poverty by refusing to remove the two-child benefit cap, and has restricted public sector pay rises to below inflation. The Labour Party has garnered the same level of public hostility in six months as the Conservatives took over a decade to attain.
With their support plunging in the polls, Labour has resorted to bashing migrants in a blatant attempt to win back those tempted by Reform’s racist message. It even adopted Reform’s branding, with social media adverts boasting about the number of people the government has deported.
This approach was always doomed to failure. Studies across Europe, drawing on data going back to the 1970s, demonstrate that when centre-left parties move to the right, they end up alienating their own working-class support and embolden the far-right.
Frustration with successive Tory and Labour governments fixated on ruthless public spending cuts has led to a surge in support for Reform. As well as consistently topping the polls in February, the party has now surpassed 200,000 members and has organised rallies throughout the country. A recent study commissioned by Hope Not Hate indicated that Reform is attracting 10-15% of former Labour voters in constituencies with large white working class populations.
Who are Reform?
Founded in 2021 as a relaunch of the Brexit Party, Reform has focused almost exclusively on immigration, portraying asylum seekers and Muslims as threats to the fabric of the nation. Nigel Farage dubbed the 2024 general election ‘the immigration election‘. The alarmism over the supposed ‘invasion’ of small boat crossings was amplified by the right wing press and seized upon by a floundering Conservative Party.
Reform won 4.1 million votes (14.3%) and five MPs. The split of the right leaning vote was devastating for the Tory incumbents, with over a quarter of their voters in 2019 switching to Reform in 2024.
This strong performance has also placed the Tories in a strategic bind. Their new leader Kemi Badenoch has called for even more extreme measures on immigration, as well as stating that ‘some cultures are better than others‘, but former Conservative voters are not in a forgiving mood after 14 years that have left the country feeling poorer.
The Tories’ promotion of racist and Islamophobic policies over 14 years in government were primarily an attempt to deflect from the problems accruing from 40 years of Thatcherite neoliberalism. In the end it helped to foster a fruitful climate for Reform. Incidentally Labour’s record has been just as damning and had the same effect.
Farage has forged a long political career scapegoating migrants for the problems working-class people face. An admirer of Enoch Powell, who delivered the infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech, Farage created his own moment of infamy with the ‘Breaking Point’ poster during the EU referendum. Set over an image of Syrian refugees fleeing war and persecution, Farage sought to link migrants and Muslims to violence and societal decline. Shortly before the 2024 general election, he repeated claims that British Muslims ‘do not share British values‘ and that some towns had ‘become virtually unrecognisable’ as a result of immigration.
His shameless self-promotion as an anti-establishment figure obscures his true political identity. Behind this mask of a ‘man of the people’ hides a public-school educated former Conservative who followed his father into a lucrative career as a stockbroker. Even a casual glance of Reform’s policies, by way of their 2024 manifesto, reveals their anti-working class character: support for a private insurance-based health service; tax relief on private school fees; and reducing corporation tax from 25% to 15%.
Reform has announced it will hold the ‘largest ever rally in modern British political history‘ on 28 March in Birmingham, ahead of the local and mayoral elections in May. Ahead of this carnival of reaction, Zarah Sultana MP has been subjected to vile racist tweets for urging people to protest outside the rally. Anti-racist demonstrations are an important means of struggle – coordinated action pushed the far right off the streets in August – but the working class must go on the offensive too.
Labour’s failure to tackle deepening poverty and widening inequality is fuelling the growth of Reform. The only way to successfully cut across far right ideas is for the workers’ movement to fight for a socialist programme that is anti-racist to the core: one that unites workers against the bosses. In the coming period, we need to get organised in workplaces and communities to fight for better pay, housing, and public services. Only in this way can we build a workers movement which is capable of defeating the far right for good.
