Oaklandsocialist recently interviewed Scottish socialist Sean Cudden on the outcome of the recent British elections. Here is the video of full interview. Full transcript below.

John Reimann
We’re talking with Sean Cudden in Scotland, and I wanted to talk to him again, just to get your your thoughts Sean on the recent elections there in UK. Let’s first start by going over the election results in general.

Sean Cudden
There were essentially three sets of elections. So there was the English council elections, so that’s the local authorities in England that deal with basic local services. There was the election to the Scottish Parliament, and there was the election to the Welsh Senate, which is the Welsh Parliament. Going into this election, Labour Party, which was the UK Government, also were the dominant party in the Welsh Parliament, and they were also the dominant party in English areas. So if we start with English council areas.

In Wales, the Welsh Independence party is called Plaid Cymru, and they their position has changed recently. They used to be quite comfortable with the idea of Wales, part of the UK, but also with a degree of autonomy.

In the English council elections, Labour were the dominant party in England at that level of government. But it was very obvious for the last few months that they were going to have a very, very tough time in those elections. And it was the for a long time, looked like Reform UK for the right wing, a new right wing party was going to be the main challenger. Recently, the Green Party has been surging in the polls, and it was a bad night for Labour, because they lost both from Reform and the Greens, depending on which part of the country you were in. Reform did very well in some parts. Greens did well in other parts, but Reform, really, it was their night. Really. I know a lot of people on the left in UK have been trying to kind of downplay it and maybe pretend it to themselves a little bit that it wasn’t that bad. But Reform did very, very well. They picked up well over 1400 council seats.

This was the most on the night. The next biggest was the Greens. They won 441 new seats, which brought them up to a total of 587. So Reform won more than three times as many seats as the Greens. Those really were the only two parties that did well. The Liberal Democrats picked up a few, but not many. So there’s a split there between this insurgent right wing party and an insurgent left wing party. And Labour have got caught middle with they’re the only party really that’s losing votes to both the right and the left. The Conservatives lost a lot to Reform. They didn’t really lose much to the Greens, whereas the Labour Party are being pulled in both directions. That was England and Scotland. The Scottish Parliament election happened, and as all the polls predicted, the Scottish National Party won very, very comfortably. Labour and Reform were tied in second place, a very, very distant second former New Party. They’ve only existed for four years, and. For a long time, it looked like Scotland was immune to Reform. They weren’t getting anywhere in Scotland at all. No one was interested. And suddenly, over the last maybe three or four months, they just surged in the polls. And in Scotland, it looked like they might even finish second at one point. Well, they have finished second, but they’ve finished tied second with Labour.

And then there’s Wales, which is the real story of the election, because Labour has won every election in Wales since 1922. They’ve won every Welsh Parliament election since it was established 27 years ago, and reform and the Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru destroyed Labour in Wales, and Labour ended up with eight seats in the 29 seats in the Welsh parliament. They went from being Welsh Government to having just nine seats, and that was in an expanded parliament. I can’t remember how many seats there are in the Welsh parliament, but it went from roughly 50 to about 70 seats. And even though there were more seats, Labour ended up with just nine. The Welsh nationalists won, and reform came fairly close second to them with about 29% of the vote, which, if Labour has a heartland, it’s Wales, and their vote just was destroyed in Wales. And it’s a seismic event, really, in British politics for Labour to lose Wales.

John Reimann
Why did these elections developed the way they did? 

Immigration

Sean Cudden
Immigration has been a huge issue in Britain over the last 10 to 15 years, and none of the mainstream parties have really been able to handle it. So what’s what’s happened is these two emergent parties have come along. The Greens are very pro migration and very pro immigrant. Reform is very anti migration. And on that issue you have these two polar opposites. There’s also just a sort of general distrust of the mainstream parties. It’s been growing for a long time. It’s especially true of the Labour Party, because I think a lot of people put their faith in Labour in 2024 hoping that Labour would undo some of the damage that the Conservatives had done for the previous 14 years,. But Labour have just sort of carried on this as usual, pretty much the same kind of policies that Conservatives had, not quite as mean-spirited as the Conservatives, but on some things anyway. But they haven’t really tried to change anything.

And the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer is a very poor politician. He doesn’t really seem to understand how to connect with his own base, never mind a wider electorate. So he had a landslide victory in the general election in 2024 and since then, they’ve just been hemorrhaging support. And Starmer hasn’t been able to turn it around. He doesn’t seem to have any idea how to turn it around. And there’s a fairly good chance he won’t be Prime Minister for much longer.

Economic Issue

John Reimann
In the United States, the issue of immigration was a huge issue, even in the last election. but the issue that really pushed Trump over the top was economics and inflation and what they’re how calling “affordability”. As I understand it, Starmer has followed the same policy of cutbacks and so on. So my question is to what extent did the issue of ecoomics in general affect the outcome. How did that balance out with the issue of immigration?

Sean Cudden
The survey data in the run up to the election showed that the main three issues were education, health and education was third, immigration. The reason I mentioned immigration is that that’s reforms, big thing, and that’s where they seem to be getting their support more broadly,

I also think there’s a feeling that Labour were given an opportunity to change things and didn’t. And that’s probably why the Greens are doing well, because people have become so disillusioned with Labour that they’re looking for an alternative. In Scotland and Wales there are the nationalist parties there that can do that, and the Greens didn’t do all that well. They did quite well in Scotland, but they didn’t do particularly well in Wales because people had that alternative. In England, alternative seems to be Greens. The economy hasn’t been doing particularly well. Hasn’t been disastrously badly, either, but it isn’t doing very well. And I think the that issue probably is in the background. It’s maybe not as I say, it isn’t one of the three main things that people were talking about as issues. The UK has had what we’ve been calling austerity since 2010 so welfare and education and health, all of those budgets have always been under the microscope. Since the financial crash, they’re still under the microscope. It was a brief moment, bizarrely under Boris Johnson, when he kind of listened to purse strings, a little around about 2019.

When Boris Johnson was prime minister with the Conservatives, he was taking a kind of a populist approach and I guess that was kind of messed up when covid hit. He had to tighten things up again. But since then, we’ve had two Conservative Prime Ministers and a Labour Prime Minister, and they’ve very much played by the old playbook of Cameron and Theresa May – cutting budgets, tighten up spending, and, of course, give rich people tax cuts. So, yeah, I think there’s a desperation on the left for a party that will do something different, and start spending money on people who need it to be spent, rather than just continuing to cut budgets and give billionaires tax cuts. And I guess that’s where the Green Party come in, and that’s where a lot of their support is coming from. Also, there is a feeling that healthcare and education have been badly managed by Labour, but also by Conservatives before them.

“Labour pulled in two directions”

John Reimann
So would it be fair to say that those who in the past might have been inclined to vote for Labour who are concerned mainly about the social programs, healthcare and so on. If that was their main concern, they would have been now inclined to move to the Greens, and those whose main concern was immigration would have moved to Reform. Is that, would you agree with that?

Sean Cudden
It’s more complicated than that, because what you’ve seen, really in these elections, is a shift from Labour to Reform, from a left leaning party to what is pretty much a far right party, whereas the Green vote, some of that has come from Labor, or this is what we’re saying earlier, that Labour has been pulled in both directions, so that a lot of their white working class vote seems to be going to Reform, and a lot of the sort of graduate middle class vote seems to be leaving them to go to the Greens. So Labour are losing in both directions, whereas the conservatives, who also had a bad night, they’re losing support pretty much just to reform. So that’s why labor on such a bad position, because they they have two fights. They’re trying to fight on two fronts now, greens to the left and reform to the right. It’s a very tricky situation for labor.

Green Party

John Reimann
So are you saying then that The Greens don’t have very much working class support at this point?

Sean Cudden
No, they don’t seem to, not among white working class people. Anyway, some of the places that picked up support are constituencies where there’s a large. Immigrant population, who are, for the most part, working class. So you do have some support among the working class, but among the organized working class, two trade unionists, some of them, are switching to labor to the greens. The bulk of the switch from labor to other parties was working class white voters voting for reform. I don’t think that’s necessarily a permanent thing. In the 2019, general election, a large part of the north of England switched from labor to the conservatives, and many of those constituencies had been labor for generations, then they switched back in 2024 what I think there’s it’s more about a desperation that nothing’s changing, nothing’s being done to help these communities. And labor doesn’t seem to understand these communities anymore, so they’re casting around for an alternative. Unfortunately, the alternative they’ve chosen this time reform are very much against the sort of things that the working class people need. So for example, several senior people in reform, including Nigel Farage, made statements about the possibility of privatizing healthcare and Farage is even, I think, on one occasion, mentioned the American system as a possible alternative, which would be devastating for most working class people.

As far as privatizing health care, that would be a national level decision. I think a lot of this is a protest vote, and it will see how Reform managed to hold on to those votes or not. For now, the NHS is safe, but social care is something that’s managed by local authorities, so retirement homes and things like that, a lot of that is managed by local authorities, which is worrying, because I don’t think Reform are particularly interested in that either.

Reform UK Party

John Reimann
You seem to be saying that the main vote for Reform came out of, the whole immigration issue. How does that match with the economic issue?

Sean Cudden
It’s a bit of both… It’s tied into things like housing, for example, and also healthcare. Reform have been very good whenever there’s, for example, a housing shortage or waiting lists for services on the National Health Service, they’re very good at pointing out that in their in their view, there’s a connection with immigration. The reason you can’t get a house, according to them, or the reason rent is going up is immigration. The reason that you’re having to wait a long time for an operation, is there’s lots of immigrants in your area, and that’s why you’re on a long waiting list instead of just getting the health care that you need. So they’ve tied everything into immigration and the other parties, mainstream parties, and the parties are left unfortunately, haven’t been very good at countering those kind of arguments.

The other parties haven’t been good at countering those arguments, of coming up with a different position that people accept. So at the moment, reforms argument is the one that people are hearing. They’re not hearing other people make make a tentative case.

John Reimann
I always thought during the whole Brexit campaign that Corbyn. Really had a very weak argument, because the only real answer on that issue was, “we have to build an EU wide movement for higher wages and so on, and we can’t, it’s far more difficult to do that if we’re out of the EU.” He never raised that. So on the issue of immigration, again, it seems to me that the only way to counter that from a working class perspective is to say, “we need a workers movement so that people aren’t being driven out of the countries in which they live, whether it’s Syria or Poland.

Identity politics

Sean Cudden
I think part of the problem that I’ve noticed is that the left in the UK isn’t very focused on class at all. It’s very much focused on identity.

I actually saw an interview just recently as a guy called Peter Mertens, who’s one of the leaders of the Belgian Workers Party, and he was saying that his party is overtly Marxist, and they’re very focused on class politics. I compare that to… I used to be in a party called the Socialist Workers Party. The Socialist Workers Party has a bookshop called Bookmarks, and there’s a sign outside the shop which has a list on the sign of all the interesting topics you can get books on in their independent bookshop. And it’s feminism, environmentalism, LGBTQ, plus. So the whole list things. The very last line says “Marxism”, as if they’re trying to hide it. And to me, that says something about the British left. It’s like, here’s these Belgian Marxists saying we’re Marxist. We believe in class politics. They’re engaging with people, and they’re actually doing very well. They’re the fourth largest party in the Belgian government. They have strongholds among white working class people as well as immigrants, then you’ve got party of the British left hiding the fact that they’re Marxist at the bottom of a long list of identity issues. I think it’s sad. It’s just one picture, but I know a lot of people in the party who are not happy with the way it’s going either. So it’s a sad reflection on the British left. And it’s it’s become obsessed with identity, to the point where even a Marxist party is not willing to talk about Marxism.

John Reimann
Yes. And what’s your perspectives for the Greens? Do you think that they might break out of the kind of the petty bourgeois layer that you seem to be saying they’re mainly involved in?

Sean Cudden
I don’t see it, to be honest. I don’t know much of the details of their program, but they have put forward some ideas about things like raising the minimum wage and improving union rates. So they do seem to be interested in trying to tap in to the working class vote, at least the organized working class vote, you know, trying to attract trade unionists but the these are sort of side issues for them. It appears to me, anyway, they’re very focused on identity. I just I don’t see them becoming the kind of party that the working class needs. I think they’re more interested in taking that the graduate vote away from Labour. I think that’s where the focus is, and also they’re doing very well in tapping into the immigrant working class vote, but the broader working class vote, they don’t seem to be, at this point, anyway, particularly interested in but then, to be fair, this is a small party that’s trying to build itself up, so perhaps they’re thinking, “well, we’ll go after this constituency, and then we’ll maybe target that constituency.” They’ve been around a long time the greens, but they’ve only recently started to build up into a serious a serious force. So their breakthrough hasn’t been like reforms. It’s been a very slow, gradual thing that’s suddenly seemed to build momentum under its new leader, Zack Polanski, whereas reform is literally four years old reform, and it’s outdone everyone in these most recent elections.

John Reimann
The other part is working class politics and a working class party: Yes, it has to run people in elections. But our politics are not just confined to elections, and it’s also involved in organizing and building campaigns out in the streets and workers struggles on the workplace and so on.

Sean Cudden
I think, to be fair to the Greens, I think they are good at local campaigns, I don’t think they’re, at this point, interested all that much and getting involved in Union politics, but terms of local campaigning, they are good, and I think they’ve always been good. I don’t think that’s a recent development for them. I think they’ve always been good at especially campaigning around local environmental issues, but under Polanski, started to broaden out into more social justice areas.

The European Union

John Reimann
Another question: I know Britain is no longer in the EU. But how much do events Western Europe also in Eastern Europe? How much does that impact into British politics and into consciousness, including the whole issue of the role of Russia and the war in Ukraine and so on?

Sean Cudden
Do it does have an impact, because Britain does a lot of trade with the European Union, and also because we were in the European Union for a long time, we are very much aligned with the European Union in terms of things like workers rights, safety, at work, food standards, all those kind of things because, because we’re trading with them so much, I don’t see that changing too much in the near future, especially things like food standards. Because, if we are selling them food, and they’re selling us food, the standards have to be the same and wider it comes to wider issues, immigration, again, is something where and Britain’s position in Europe and the continent of Europe is important, because very few immigrants come directly to Britain. They tend to go to France or Belgium first and then come to Britain. So that’s caused arguments between Britain and those countries, because under, well, this is the strange thing.

Under European rules, when people arrive in Europe, they’re supposed to make an asylum claim in the first country they arrive in, but because Britain isn’t in the EU anymore, Britain isn’t covered by that rule. So Britain has had to try to make specific treaties or specific deals with other countries, but there’s no incentive for France to say to people who have arrived in France, “no, you can’t go to Britain. You’ve got to stay here.” So it’s a weird situation Britain has voted itself into with Brexit.

There’s also a thicker distrust in Europe with Britain when it comes to dealing with issues like that, because think a lot of Europeans feel that, “well, you chose to leave us. So why should we be making deals with you over these things?”

Russia

The one area, I think, where there’s there’s growing cooperation, is on Russia. Britain, from the start, has been very pro Ukraine, even more so than France or Germany. They’ve gradually become more and more pro Ukraine than Macron was in the early days of the war. Trying to get him to see sense and all that sort of stuff. And he eventually realized, “no, this man’s just me and Germany.” Well, Germany has only recently started to understand the danger that Russia poses in terms of creating a wider European war. But Britain’s been very, very pro Ukraine from the start. There’s certainly a lot of people in Britain who are pro Russia, and they tend to cluster around Reform, because Nigel Farage is pro Russia. All of the British political parties other than that, are pro Ukraine, and the bulk of their supporters seem to be pro Ukraine as well. Some parties are very pro Ukraine. The Scottish National Party, for example, is very pro Ukraine, and the Labour Party very pro Ukraine. I think the Conservatives are a little bit split. Maybe there’s some on the right who are maybe pro Russia, but most, I think conservatives, also pro Ukraine. So it’s been kind of at the forefront in terms of Western Europe. There are Eastern European countries that are much more steadfast and supportive of Ukraine, Poland, for example, Sweden as well. So,

John Reimann
So when it came out that the head of the Welsh Reform Party is actually getting paid by Putin, from what you were saying, it didn’t really hurt reform very much in Wales.

Sean Cudden
There doesn’t seem to be anything at the moment that can hurt Reform, and I think that’s because they’re in the early phase of this rise, and they’re not coming under a lot of scrutiny from the media. Supporters are very forgiving of things that maybe they wouldn’t forgive other people for. In fact, I’ll give you an example that the labor, former labor Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, made a mistake, or she said she made a mistake with her taxes. I don’t know if it was a mistake or if it was intentional, but she underpaid a property tax, I think was 40,000 pounds she was forced to stand down as Deputy Prime Minister. A lot of damage has been done to her reputation. It might take years for her to recover from that. Whereas Nigel Farage was gifted 5 million pounds from a crypto currency billionaire, and as soon as he got that money, he suddenly became the biggest leader for cryptocurrency. It didn’t damage him at all. He’s not being asked hard questions about it. The supporters don’t seem to mind about it, even though they would bring up the Angela Rayner’s 40,000 pound tax bill. At the moment, nothing seems to stick to Reform. It’s irritating, but it can’t last forever. I mean, the media are beginning to ask them tougher questions and be a little more forensic when dealing with them, but they’re still getting an easy ride. I think,

John Reimann
Completely aside from the media, you know Trump famously said in 2016 that he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and he wouldn’t lose any support. So what you’re saying, it sounds like there’s a similar mentality. I mean, every day some news comes out about some corruption or something that Trump was involved in, and he doesn’t lose support, even with the Iran war amongst his base, he’s lost support amongst the independent voters, but within his base, he hasn’t lost support.

Sean Cudden
It’s very similar. There was a dip in Reform’s support. So a few months ago, they were at around 20 or 29% but coming into the election, that had dropped to around maybe 21% depending. I know people on the left who got quite excited about that, because the Greens were rising in the polls as well, and they seemed to think there was a switch, and the Greens over from Reform over to the Greens. But that wasn’t really happening. What was happening was was a split in reform. A guy called Rupert Lowe created a party called Restore, who are even further to the right. I don’t think Restore stood candidates in these council elections, because they’re a very new party, but if they did, they only stood a few people, but they were at one point, getting 10%.

Perspectives for Reform and racism in UK

So it seemed that what was happening was that this dip in Reform support was actually going to Rupert Lowe, and Reform I think got about 25% of the vote. So it seems that they’ve pulled back some of that support from from Restore. As I said, I’m not sure that Restore even stood any candidates in this election. So maybe if the Restore supporters just voted for Reform because it was the closest thing to their team, but yeah, restore worrying because they are, it’s difficult to believe that they’re much worse than reform.

John Reimann
So would you say that Restore is an outright fascist party?

Sean Cudden
I wouldn’t go that far. I think there are certainly fascists in it. I wouldn’t be surprised to find lots of fascists, and there are unknown fascists in Reform as well. But whenever any of these people in

Reform says outrageous things, they tend to get disciplined in some way. There were several council election candidates who were forced to withdraw their candidacy. A few people have been kicked out of the party. I think those people would probably be much more comfortable ain Restore. I don’t think they would be kicked out of Restore.

John Reimann
Where would Tommy Robinson fall?

Sean Cudden
He would be further to the right even than restore.

Scottish National Party

John Reimann
How does the Scottish National Party – the SNP – stand on the issue of immigration?

Sean Cudden
The SNP are quite positive about immigration, but they don’t have any say over the SNP Council in Glasgow. Glasgowis the equivalent of a British sanctuary city as far as immigration. About 1/3 of all asylum seekers in the UK now live in Glasgow. This is now this is where maybe there’s an issue with the SNP, because I think the plan there was when Glasgow City Council did that, they thought other SNP councils will do the same as we are doing, and maybe some labor ones down in England will do it, but no one else did So. That’s why Glasgow, which is not a particularly huge city, about 800,000 people in Glasgow, it has 1/3 of the asylum seekers and from the whole of the UK. So the SNP leadership in Glasgow have hinted that maybe they will have to end that policy. But that’s really the only they’re not an anti migrant party, the very pro invitation, but they get no real say on, on the national policy.

Anti-Catholicism in Scotland

John Reimann
To what extent, if at all, is politics in Ireland connected with or played out with politics in Scotland?

Sean Cudden
Well, there’s a big Irish migrant community in Scotland, although most of them are a bit like me. They’ve got grandparents or great grandparents who are Irish. There are Irish people in in Scotland, but there’s not a huge number. The politics of the West of Scotland, especially is tied to Ireland. Scotland likes to present itself as a very progressive, modern country, but in one respect that’s not true, and that is that Scotland is has anti Catholic bigotry practically woven into the fabric of the country. The Orange Order marches through the streets of Glasgow every year. And various other parts of the West of Scotland, they are rabidly and openly anti Catholic, and especially anti Irish Catholic. So what happens in Ireland does have an impact here, but it’s a kind of It’s a strange, strange to try to understand. I’ve met people who are very welcoming of immigrants from everywhere in the world, but they don’t like Catholics and they don’t like Irish Catholics especially. I’m not saying that that’s common, but it’s a thing, and it’s almost like a kind of a second tier of Scottish politics. It’s just below the surface, this feeling of people judging me because I have an Irish name, or people judging me because I have a Catholic background. I hae conversations with Protestants who I’m sure are thinking “I wonder if this person hates me because I’m a Protestant”.

You don’t even see it to any great extent in the rest of mainland Britain. You see it in Northern Ireland, obviously, but in the rest of mainland Britain I don’t think many people could care less if you’re Catholic or Protestant, I don’t think it matters to them even even when people are bigoted in other ways. In England, I don’t think they really care about the Catholic and Protestant thing to any great extent. Whereas in Scotland, seems to be the one form of bigotry that people can be quite open about. As I said, there are hundreds of marches against Catholics in Scotland every year they try to dress up as a cultural thing, you know, commemorating the Battle of the Boyne the 17th century, that sort of thing. But it’s very clearly and obviously directed against Catholics and they insist on marching past Catholic churches every time they march, even if there are services on worshippers coming out of churches have been abused and spat on. Just within the last couple of years, that’s happened. So that kind of bigotry is still very much alive in Scotland. It strikes me a very strange thing, because Scotland is very welcoming of people from all over the world, and yet this one form of bigotry just seems to cling on and have a life of its own. It’s very it’s very strange.

Israel and Palestine

John Reimann
And how about the issue of Israel and Palestine and so on? How much has that impacted British politics.

Sean Cudden
That’s another reason why I think that Labour are losing support to the Greens, because Labour has kind of sat on the fence to some extent, in terms of helping U.S. and Israel and its recent campaign in Palestine. Labour has stopped the sale of some weapons or components, but they’ve allowed the sale of others to Israel. They’ve been heavily criticized by the left for that. They’ve been criticized from the right for not just allowing Israel to have whatever they want.

There’s also a campaign group called Palestine Action, and not only have they found themselves in a lot of trouble, but they’ve actually found themselves designated as a terrorist organization. So they they believe in direct action, but it’s peaceful direct action. Haven’t bombed anyone or shot anyone, but they did break into a plant opened by owned by a weapons company that was selling weapons to Israel, and they did a lot of damage. Instead of just being charged with criminal damage. They were charged with offenses under the under terrorism laws. So resulted in the whole organization being designated a terrorist organization, and truly, hundreds of people have been arrested not for being part of that organization, for protesting support of that organization, and protesting to have from that organization released from jail. So they’ve lost some Remember earlier, and I was talking about the kind of middle class graduate leftists who have been moving to the Green Party, that is one of the reasons they’ve been moving to the Green Party, because the greens are much more pro Palestine.

John Reimann
How about in broader society?

Sean Cudden
I think there’s actually a lot of support for Palestine broadly in the UK, and I guess it probably cuts across party lines to some extent as well. A lot of Labour people are pro Palestine. It’s their leadership that isn’t. The Scottish National Party is broadly and firmly pro Palestine. I guess it’s probably the same with the Welsh nationalists and the left in general, and the UK is pro Palestine. But even people in the center and maybe even some people on the right have at least got some sympathy with Palestine. I might not describe themselves as Pro Palestine, but might have some sympathy with them, although there obviously there are plenty of Zionists, or people supportive of Israel. but I think the pro Palestine side, if, if it was done to a head count, the pro Palestine side would would win. It’s just that it’s successive governments that are quite close to us, in fact, very close to Israel. And some, some of the funding seems to come from Israel for both the Labour Party and the conservative party.

Anti-Semitism

John Reimann
It is similar here just amongst a wide layer of the working class. They’ve just not been able to keep it secret from workers and people in general – the crimes that Israel is committing.I think also that as we know anybody that’s anti Zionist is labeled anti Semite, but there is genuine anti semitism, and it’s a lot more widespread here than a lot of people think it is or are aware of, and it has reinforced that anti semitism, because the message here has always been that Israel and Jewish people are one in the same. So therefore whatever Israel does, that’s what Jewish people are is the perception.

Sean Cudden
Yeah. There’s been a spate of anti semitic attacks in the UK, especially in London. And I’ve encountered a lot of people who are, may not be Revolutionary Socialists, but they are definitely progressive and all of their political positions. And then it comes to anti semitic attacks in London, and suddenly they are conspiracy theorists, convinced that every one of these attacks is is a Mossad false flag operation. It saddens me really, because on virtually every other issue, these are decent people who are progressive, and then it comes to this one thing, and it’s like they’re open to any weird anti semitic conspiracy theory. They’ll jump on it. It’s sad. I think it shows all the lack of leadership from left wing organizations, though, because I don’t think they’ve been strong enough in condemning attacks and pointing out that Jewish and Israeli are two different things, and if you’re angry with Israel, it doesn’t justify into a Jewish neighborhood in London and attacking someone.

John Reimann
I do think that, like the left of the Labour Party has been kind of failing in that also

Global reaction?

I guess my last question is this: in my view, the general trend in world politics is towards reaction and counter revolution, although there’s been a few steps in the other direction, for instance, Viktor Orban being voted out of office. That’s almost like the exception to the general trend. So to what extent would you see the results of this election in Britain as being part of a general trend, rather than a particular event.

Sean Cudden
Definitely think it’s part of that trend. As I said, there are people in the UK who will call Farage and Reform fascists, but they’re not fascists. They are hard right, but it’s part of that same trend of right wing populism, and mentioned the other party Restore which is even further to the right. One in 10 people in England, maybe not in Scotland or Wales, but one in 10 people in England tend to be supportive of Restore so think the UK is on that trajectory. It could be even worse. We could end up with with Nigel Farage struggling to try to keep up with people even further to his right. I think what the Green surge shows though, is that there’s at least some attempt. These Greens are far from perfect, as I said. They’re basically just identity politics, but there’s at least some encouraging life on the left to try and oppose this, but yeah, I do agree that Reform is part of that global trend.

John Reimann
So my last question is for yourself, what steps do you advocate? What path forward do you see?

“Embrace working class politics”

Sean Cudden
I think the left has to re embrace class politics. Obviously Identity is important to people, and I’m not suggesting that people hould drop identity related issues. But if we focus on class, then we bridge divides. First of all, the working class is huge, so we create a much bigger force to counter the right. I mentioned the Belgian Workers Party before, and the leader talking about this, and he said that the phrase he used was when asked about working class people who are racist or maybe voting for a racist party or a fascist party, he said the working class is ours. Every part of it. That’s a verbatim quote that’s literally that’s how they see it. So the left that I encounter on a daily basis in the UK, they’re so ready to write off working class people who have voted for reform. If we had the Belgian attitude, we’d be saying, Why are these people voting for reform, and how can we win them back? And I think the way to win the back is class politics.

John Reimann
All right, that’s an appropriate note to end on. So thanks very much Sean, and I hope we’ll stay in touch.