As Reform grows, we urgently need a left electoral alternative

Thursday’s elections were a big success for Reform UK, and a disaster for the Tories and Labour. Most of all they highlight the need for a left alternative.

The elections in local government, and the by-election in Runcorn, had clear implications for the different parties.

For the Tories – disaster

Kemi Badenoch has described the results as a ‘bloodbath’, with the Tories winning their lowest vote share ever on 15 per cent. It’s hard to believe that one of the most successful political parties in the world may collapse, but they have two fundamental problems. The first is that they have moved away from their political mission for the last hundred years, to be the voice of the British ruling class, or at least a substantial part of it. They are now a strongly pro-Brexit party, while most British bosses supported Remain. And that causes the second problem – Starmer has moved onto their previous turf as the one-nation party of business and the state, while Reform occupies the more right-wing territory of racist attacks on migrants. In between the two, the Tories have nowhere to go.

Labour heading for disaster

The centrist commentariat wildly overhyped Labour’s General Election success last year, as the graph highlights. They won because the Tory government had descended into a shambles and the right vote was split between the Tories and Reform. Labour’s huge tally of MPs was achieved with only 34 per cent of the vote. Those were votes for change, but Labour have continued with Tory austerity, attacking pensioners and disabled people, and with Tory bigotry in their attacks on trans people. Some Labour MPs are calling for a move to the left, reversing cuts in the Winter Fuel Allowance and PIP. Instead Starmer – who has turned out to have no skills at all as a politician – is upping the attacks on migrants with plans to remove the right of student visa holders to claim asylum. Initiatives like this only enhance Reform’s credibility while driving Labour voters away from the party – Starmer might as well carry Farage into Downing Street personally.

Decline for both major parties

The Tories’ membership last autumn was half of what it was in 2002. Labour, which doubled its number of members under Corbyn, is currently losing one every ten minutes. An electoral system dominated by two big parties for around 200 years is starting to fragment – a process ongoing for decades, interrupted briefly while Corbyn was Labour leader. We can expect to see increasing volatility as voters unhappy with the status quo try out parties offering alternatives. Britain’s antiquated first-past-the-post electoral system is likely to destabilise politics even further – a right vote divided between Tories and Reform meant big wins for Labour in 2024, but if Reform can dominate the right against divided opposition by 2029, the same system could deliver a big Commons majority for them.

Reform are the winners

On Thursday Reform won a by-election, 10 councils and two mayors – an unprecedented result for a party to the right of the Tories. Reform believes in scapegoating migrants, scrapping net zero targets and making the kind of cuts in public spending Musk has attempted in the US. It stands for banning what it calls ‘transgender ideology’ in schools, while only last week Farage was raising funds from wealthy donors in Monaco, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland. A Reform government would be a nightmare for working class people, people of colour, queer people and the climate.

A hard core of Reform voters is committed to their right-wing politics – many have switched to them from the right of the Tory party. Runcorn shows that some Labour voters are disillusioned enough by Starmer to do the same thing. But the stereotype of the “left-behind white working class” turning from Labour to Reform in large numbers doesn’t fit the facts. Former Labour voters are a small part of Reform’s support – only 11 per cent of 2024 Labour voters say they would consider voting for Reform now, while 29 per cent would consider the Greens and 41 per cent the LibDems. 

And, while the Reform leadership is far to the right, the politics of Reform supporters are more ambiguous. A survey for Oxfam in March found that 61 per cent supported more taxes on the richest and 64 per cent supported a 2 per cent wealth tax on assets over £10 million. So, while racism around migration certainly is on the increase, and while the far right are growing around the world, Reform’s electoral success on Thursday doesn’t reflect a sudden lurch to the far right in British public opinion. It’s part of a real but gradual shift which can be stopped.

We need a left electoral alternative

If you look at electoral politics – which is what most people mean by “politics” – little exists in Britain to the left of Starmer. The Greens are perhaps a partial exception to that, with a current total of 859 councillors as opposed to Reform’s 677, but with politics that are more or less left-wing in different locations. It’s easy to forget that in 2017, Labour under Corbyn won the votes of almost 13 million people, 40 per cent of the electorate. 370,000 joined Corbyn’s Labour Party. Those people are still around – in the last year, 800,000 took part in the biggest national Palestine demo.

The way we stop Farage is by mobilising those people to build a left electoral alternative. We can’t use the same strategies that have worked against parties like the BNP, making it clear that they are beyond the pale, are fascists who don’t believe in democracy. Farage isn’t a fascist but a far-right nationalist – although Reform’s racism opens the door to genuine fascists. When it comes to Reform we can’t say, ‘vote for anyone but them’ – because that means we’re calling for a vote for the established parties who supported austerity in the first place. A left alternative can be built, in some form, starting from what already exists – the independent MPs elected last year, the leftists of Greens Organise, the Majority Movement initiated by Jamie Driscoll in North East England, people around Andrew Feinstein in central London, the three Liverpool Community Independents councillors, the three left independent councillors who won in Preston last Thursday and so on. But establishing it will take time and effort, while Farage has the wind in his sails and new expertise from an influx of former Tory activists. So the left needs to move towards launching an electoral project as quickly as possible.