By Dave Stockton
Nigel Farage declared that the May Day elections signalled ‘the end of two-party politics’ and the ‘beginning of the end of the Conservative Party.’ Certainly, Reform UK’s results in county councils, in the mayoral contests and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election were dramatic—though not as yet historic. Of course, this is not the first time that new parties claim to have ‘broken the mould,’ not even Farage’s, whose Ukip won seats in European Parliamentary elections from 1999 to 2019. But the 2024 general election, in which Reform UK won five seats, was already a breakthrough for Farage. May’s poll takes him a big step forward in his declared aim to destroy the oldest party in Britain.
Indeed, the Tories have lost more than 600 council seats, which puts their new leader Kemi Badenoch on thin ice. Reform has taken control of eight county councils, winning 677 seats, while the Conservatives lost 635, Labour 198, the Liberal Democrats gained 146, and the Greens 41.
After hammering the Tories in 2024, Nigel Farage said ‘we’re coming for Labour’. With the victory in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election he is keeping his word. Reform’s Sarah Pochin’s victory by six votes overturned a Labour majority of almost 15,000.
Anti-migrant racism
Farage’s party, as usual, made immigration its key issue in what is an overwhelmingly white part of Cheshire. A Reform leaflet stated, ‘Labour’s candidate welcomes the boats’, with a picture of young men packed into an inflatable dinghy, adding ‘Welcome to Runcorn & Helsby’, and claimed, falsely, ‘750 illegal boat migrants housed here’. In fact, according to Home Office figures, 345 asylum seekers representing 0.37% of the area’s population were being housed in the decommissioned Daresbury Park hotel on the edge of Runcorn as temporary accommodation.
Yet Labour candidate Karen Shore played straight into Reform’s hands by mimicking their anti-migrant stance. After the Telegraph highlighted her previous comments on the council ‘warmly welcoming’ asylum seekers, and saying ‘she boasted about the council providing decorated, furnished accommodation and English language lessons’, she posted on Facebook, ‘the last government left behind a broken asylum system, with millions being spent on hotels, whilst evil people smuggling gangs rake in huge profits. That is simply not fair. Labour is fixing the mess and has already removed over 19,000 people who shouldn’t be here. I’ll campaign to close the local asylum hotel. Sign my petition here.’
Ironically, Sarah Pochin MP had herself previously posted on Facebook: ‘a pleasure to attend the Refugees Welcome event in Macclesfield this afternoon with Syrian and Afghan families that have settled in Cheshire East.’ Testimony in both cases to the rampant opportunism that elections foster in bourgeois society, combined with the daily media campaigns that the right wing tabloids and Tories have waged, and that Starmer has done nothing to combat.
Blame game
Labour commentators are now divided as to the cause of the Runcorn defeat and slumps in Labour votes in many of the councils. Some say (correctly in part) that it’s Labour’s continuation of Tory policies like the two child benefit cap, the planned cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) and the means-testing of the winter fuel allowance that account for voters saying they ‘feel betrayed’. Momentum co-chair Sasha Das Gupta is pleading with those who left Labour to return and press for left-wing policies. But the failure of the Corbyn movement to stand up to Starmer as he expelled or suspended its leaders means the left is hardly likely to respond to this call.
Others are arguing the opposite—that Labour must take even more drastic measures to ‘stop the boats’. Jo White, MP for the Nottinghamshire constituency of Bassetlaw and founder of the Red Wall caucus of Labour MPs, said the government should stop ‘pussyfooting around’ and ‘take a leaf out of President Trump’s book’. She warns that 2029 could see Labour lose even more of the ‘Red Wall’ than 2019.
For now, the vast majority of Reform’s new supporters are not defectors from Labour, but former Tories or non-voters, according to a report by the Persuasion UK think tank. Given where these elections occurred (none of the big conurbations apart from Bristol) this may be true but with Britain’s first past the post electoral system, the collapse of the Tories could give Farage power with a minority of the electorate just as it gave it to Starmer last year.
Loose change
There is no room for complacency. Reform is poisoning the minds of working and middle class people with the argument that decaying public services, lack of housing, and competition for low paid work are the fault of high levels of immigration. In fact, the real complaints of people in many towns and cities are a result of Britain’s decaying capitalism; stagnant wages, the ongoing cost of living crisis, the struggling NHS, a housing crisis and glaring regional disparities. They are a result of a huge squeeze on both national and local authority spending. Yet Reform promises even deeper cuts to council spending.
Labour promised ‘change’ ten months ago but immediately returned to austerity. They attempted to curb public sector wages, failed to come to the aid of councils on the verge of bankruptcy, and talked about future growth as the only way any of these issues can be fixed. With Starmer sacking any MP who dares to vote against the government and with the trade union leaders scarcely less tongue-tied than the PLP backbenchers, a dangerous situation is materialising in which the less class conscious parts of the working class will vote Reform and other longtime Labour voters will vote for the Lib Dems or Greens, or simply stay at home. More by-election losses and next year’s metropolitan council elections could put Farage on a glide path to victory. Those on the left who seem pleased at anyone who can give Starmer a bloody nose will not be laughing then.
So long as Labour is in office, we need to fight for the trade unions and the left MPs and councillors to fight to make the Party radically change course and turn the pledge of ‘transformative change’ from words to action. By nationalising British Steel and the failing utilities, with no compensation, for example. For workers control and local, regional, and national plans of regeneration—starting with the restoration of local democratic control of education, housing, transport and social care. To use the resources acquired to tackle climate change, not for armaments and war mongering. For launching a massive programme of house building and investing in the National Health Service, paid for by taxing the super-rich and big business.
We need to launch a fight in the ‘left behind areas’ to restore jobs and services, making the youth and workers there the agents of the radical rebuilding of their own society. A fighting labour movement that does this and rejects racist scapegoating by defending migrants can turn the tables on Farage, the Tories, and the traitors in the Labour Party like Starmer who seek to imitate them. Out of this, the foundations for a real alternative, a mass revolutionary socialist party, can be laid.
