by Richard Johnson

The UK’s left is changing while the far right are making gains

Reform UK won the mayor’s race in Lancashire.

The 1st May election results have landed like a bombshell on British politics confirming that the far right Reform UK could easily form a new government after the next election in four years time. They won a parliamentary bi-election in a northern working class constituency, hundreds of council seats winning control of ten county councils and they also won three mayoral contests. The most worrying aspect of this victory was that they won seats or came a strong second in every region across England picking up votes from a broad social spectrum as well as the de-industrialised left behind communities. The far right super rich are already writing huge cheques for Reform UK on the back of this success so they can fund slick political marketing campaigns and they have built a strength in depth party organisation that has local branches and holds mass rallies to whip up the faithful who are angry and filled with false grievances.

On the door steps in working class communities the lies and betrayals of Labour came up repeatedly, particularly cuts to social security benefits for the elderly and disabled. Forty years of neo-liberalism under Conservative and Labour governments  will not end with this government that is managing decline with cuts to public services rather than taxing the wealthy. The failure of the National Health Service has been a heavy blow for the older voters however due to the decline of class consciousness this discontent is benefitting a vicious far right ruling class party who will simply do much more of the same while lining their pockets. The turkeys are voting for Christmas while the left doesn’t have enough weight and presence in society to offer an alternative vision.

The Corbynite left are generally drifting away from Jeremy Corbyn in a number of different directions, the man himself is demonstrating his usual poor judgement squandering his position of respect by doubting that a new party of the left would succeed but holding out the prospect of his support should it emerge. The lack of support for a new left party from authoritative left voices like Jeremy Corbyn has held up the progress of The Collective, a working group that is doing solid work to unify the socialist left.

The Collective has missed its development deadlines fielding no candidates in the recent local elections when it was hoping to win dozens councillors while the liberal left Green Party of England and Wales has a functioning national party organisation in place and a growing membership and is often seen as a mould breaking party that can deliver change with some Reform voters switching to the Greens during election campaigns. However the Green Party of England and Wales is far too wedded to the concept of achieving change through establishment structures doing no real campaigning outside of its electioneering which has resulted in bowing down to rightwing media narratives when critical issues arise, like the institutional persecution of trans people or the financial costs of supporting Ukraine.

The horrible persecution of trans people has been an acid test for the left. The thoroughly decent rank and file of the Corbynite left have thrown their hands up in horror at the prospect of trans people being totally excluded from any kind of inclusion within society while most of the campists have celebrated their exclusion from single sex spaces and activities showing their alignment with far right thinking, George Galloway’s Putinist Workers Party has disgraced itself.

Social media dumbing down has been a problem for lefts who are not organised into parties that do political education. They are fine on the obvious socialist themes that they react to everyday on social media, bad bosses, low pay, housing, racism and Palestine but getting a comment out of them on more involved areas of policy like education or global governance is almost impossible however recent troubling and contradictory events have stirred up an interest in figuring out what is going on with long comment posts becoming much more popular, previously no one would read them or write them.  Generally speaking they must understand that their social media account is not their thriving local branch organisation.

TUSC briefing on the Collective
https://www.tusc.org.uk/wp-

Reform UK’s Nigel Farage is close to Donald Trump.

Oaklandsocialist comments: Reform UK’s Nigel Farage is close to Donald Trump. If a movement arises in the U.S. yhat seriously disrupts Trump’s authoritarianism, that will be a setback for Farage too.

Reform UK won the mayor’s race in Lancashire.