In a rejoinder to Mark Seddon’s article Trevor Fisher further outlines the big weakness in Labour’s current approach
Mark Seddon’s analysis of the political situation after 10 months of a Labour government was accurate, but the alternative is not clear. He is right to see that the politics of a dash for growth, which is unlikely to happen, is countered by appeasing a right populism which is making gains. It is true, as Mark says, that “the Overton window just keeps moving rightwards”, and Labour is losing support hand over fist, so hoping things will get better with four years to go is a game of Russian roulette. The Starmer response of “triangulating with Reform and promising to be tougher” – mainly on migrants – is a dead end. Starmer’s speech of May 12th echoed many of the claims of the far right, prioritising an approach against forces he claimed “are slowly pulling our country apart”. This led Farage to state that Reform UK enjoyed the speech, congratulating Starmer for “learning from us” and urging him to go further.
Reform are now gaining support across the UK, and in Scotland, the hostility to Farage stemming from his anti-Europeanism is fading. Many Scots now approve of the politics which led to Brexit. This makes the advice of Neil Findlay, suggesting Labour MPs “get rid of the current leadership” and start again, understandable, but not a way forward. A leadership contest is not desirable, and the decision of Angela Rayner to rule herself out of any such contest is possibly driven by the sense that it is hard to trigger and harder to win. One of the factors to assess is the clear sign that Labour’s membership is falling, and those members that remain may be loyalists who would vote for the current leadership.
More fundamentally, Mark’s suggestion that we “take the Labour Party out of the equation” and rely on a grassroots revolt offers no pressure points to use. Labour with clear signs of a potential parliamentary revolt certainly does. The state of play demands Labour remain a prime focus, but with a parallel focus on what Reform is, and how it is to be countered without appeasing Farage. This needs a deliberative process with moves to track Reform – possibly in conjunction with Hope Not Hate’s Reform Watch – plus developing a network of informants. In this process, it is vital to understand how Farage-type politics works, with the objective of setting out a left populism. Much of the old two-party politics is disintegrating, but the hope of groups like Compass that there is a progressive politics which can be mobilised easily is unlikely to survive the growth of Reform UK, which casts doubt on the idea of a progressive majority in the country.
Understanding the appeal of Reform
It is vital to stop thinking that Reform is simply a rehashed far right of the old type. As Searchlight magazine has argued, it is NOT a fascist party, commenting that this ‘is a mistake that can weaken campaigns against the party. Searchlight has highlighted individual fascists who have tried to infiltrate Reform, but this does not make it a fascist party. This is correct and their analysis, which highlights two major differences with classic fascism, is perceptive. Searchlight sees Reform as a “dangerous break with mainstream conservatism”, and its reasons should be taken on board.
The need to develop a project to understand and counter Reform will need to resemble an updated Anti Nazi League despite Reform not being a Nazi organisation. It has shown an appeal to a much wider cohort of voters, which makes the old style of street demos unviable, and as a right-wing populist vehicle, it needs to be combated by a left-wing populism which currently is nowhere to be seen. The Labour Party’s old-style reformist parliamentarianism, based on winning paper majorities in parliament and carrying out a manifesto, has come unstuck with Starmerism. While it did secure over 400 MPs, this was a fluke; the turnout for Labour was little more than a third of the total, and the manifesto code word “Change” was largely meaningless. Labour’s performance after the election was riddled with mistakes, and Mark is right to warn against optimism that this can be overcome easily.
It is correct that while there are four years till the next General Election, the British economy is unlikely to deliver growth and even if it does, as Mark says, “economic growth is meaningless if it manifests itself in gradual trickle down”. Triangulation with the promise to be tougher than the Tories, whom Starmer blamed on May 12th for losing control of immigration, rightly raises the Question, “Why buy Pepsi when you can buy Coke?”. While the speech of May 12th won applause from Farage, it was unwelcome to progressives. And with the collapse of the two-party system, Labour now has challenges from Lib Dems, Greens and in the Celtic nations, the nationalists. No Labour government has ever lost support as rapidly as Starmer’s has. The writing is on the wall, as it was for the German Social Democrats under Scholz. While the growth of right-wing populism is a worldwide phenomenon, in the UK it has become obvious since the May 1st breakthrough when Reform outpolled the mainstream parties and could have done even better had many elections not been cancelled. It is an unavoidable challenge.
The immediate challenges
Mark puts the hope for a change on protests against genocide in Gaza, but foreign policy issues rarely have a big impact in electoral politics. The biggest immediate challenge is the threat to cut care workers, to keep the immigration figures down. Important issues have been ignored by Yvette Cooper in announcing that the care worker visa will be removed from immigration legislation. The Home Secretary told Sky News on Sunday, 11th, that lower-skilled migration would be banned as the aim would be to concentrate on “the higher skilled migration and we should be concentrating on training here in the UK”. Taking higher-skilled workers and not lower-skilled ones is unprincipled.
Moreover, training long term poses massive problems, with schools now riddled with damaged youngsters. It is no accident that there are nearly a million NEETs – Not in Education, Employment or Training – and persistent shortages of teachers in key subjects. Education is not a success story.
It is undeniable that 14 years of Tory mismanagement have left enormous problems for the government. The main issue is however, is whether the current policy agenda can tackle these problems, or leave a political vacuum that Farage and Reform are able to exploit.
As usual, the Leninist left is always more interested in building its own support by “fighting fascists” rather governing visibly well.
So Reform UK must be bigged-up – even when their actual gains among councillors and MPs is trifling. You would think a General Election was imminent judging by the nervous anxiety.
There is, of course the usual “disenchantment” that Labour suffers when every shade of liberal opinion discovers it is not the Leadership’s top-of-the-pops.
Never mind the Greens’ inability to keep a Leader for five minutes.
We know what the LibDems can and will do, but they will generally hoover-up One Nation Tory votes.
Setting aside the ragbag of “leftists” whose support was only ever for Corbyn, why is there so much jitters less than a year in?
And yes, “growth” is vital – as Bill Clinton rightly reminded his party “It’s the economy, stupid”.