Le Pen’s RN party in France could show us Britain’s future if the rise of the Reform Party isn’t countered, but the left can and must respond, argues Chris Bambery

‘We’re coming for Labour – be in no doubt about that.’ That was the boast of Nigel Farage on the day after the UK general election. Reform UK may have won five seats, but it came second in 103 seats, of which 93 were claimed by Labour. These were overwhelmingly in the north of England. 

Second-place seats included the earliest result of the night in Sunderland Central where Reform took 10,779 votes finishing just over 6000 votes behind Labour; in Louth and Horncastle they took 11,935 votes, getting close to the first-place Conservative candidate; and in Amber Valley in the Midlands Reform took 12,192 votes. Despite not winning any seats, Reform won 220,895 votes in the North East, compared to the Conservatives’ 224,574, and came second in eighteen constituencies. 

Reform UK was second with 29.8% of the vote in Easington (the former mining town where Billy Elliot was set), 29.2% in Houghton and Sunderland South, 29.1% in Washington and Gateshead South, and 26.9% of the vote in Blyth and Ashington. These are former mining, shipbuilding and engineering towns with high rates of poverty, low-paid jobs and low numbers of migrants. 

Reporting on the election, Richard Moss, BBC Political editor, North East & Cumbria, pointed out that in those two regions: ‘… the night was also notable for a surge in the Reform UK vote that put them in second place in a string of constituencies. Results they will look to build on in the next two sets of local elections, with the hope of pushing for wins whenever the seats are contested again. This though was largely a mirror image of 2019. Then it was the Conservatives pushing into previously unconquered territory, this time Labour was making new ground. But there is a warning there. Tory wins then were founded, at least in part, on promises to “level up” the region. Voters have clearly decided that wasn’t delivered. Labour have promised change and hope. If they don’t deliver then the party cannot be sure the same fate may await, and Reform UK in particular could be waiting to capitalise.’ 

It was watching those results that led the Financial Times’s chief foreign-affairs commentator, Gideon Rachman, to post on X at 11.37pm on election night that: ‘Big story is obviously Labour. But looking at the Reform surge, I wonder if we are one or two elections away from where France is now.’ 

He is right on the trend at work in Britain, if not on the exact time, and it’s clear Farage will be watching the results of the French elections and how successful the Rassemblement National (National Rally, RN) of Marine Le Pen will be and how they have become France’s biggest party. Centrist politicians (in which I include Starmer, Reeves et al) have claimed Britain is an exception in Europe because the far right has not achieved electoral success here. Now it has. Therefore, it is imperative we understand how the RN has built its support, how Reform UK could emulate it and how it can be stopped. 

Who supports the far right? 

Writing in New Left Review’s Sidecar, Martin Barnay, provides an interesting analysis of who supports the RN. In particular today how it now garners support across French society: ‘In the [2024] EU elections, the RN list came out on top in all the socio-demographic categories analysed by the pollsters, including households in the top income quartile. Among intermediate occupations, such as clerical and sales jobs, the RN vote jumped from 19% to 29%. The leap was even bigger among those with two years or more of higher education: from 16% to 29%. The party is also making headway among managers and retirees. It is now on 20% among the former, on par with the Socialist Party (and up from 13% in 2019); among the latter, the RN holds a considerable lead: 29% of retirees compared with 23% for the Macron list. Symptomatic of the normalization of the RN vote, in the European elections, the far-right lists came out on top in the affluent 16th arrondissement of Paris, a historic bastion of the liberal right.’ 

That’s where the RN is today. But its bridgehead in achieving success lay in two areas of French society: Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (home to a large concentration of Pied-Noir, and their descendants, the colonial settlers who fled Algeria when it achieved independence. There is no such constituency in Britain (it is unlikely Northern Ireland loyalists will choose to do similarly). 

But the other area was in the former coal mining and steel areas of the north and north east. Marine Le Pen was elected to the national assembly in 2017 in Hénin-Beaumont, the heart of the former mining area of Hauts-de-France. 

But Barnay points out it is lazy journalism to say that the RN’s success there lay among former Communist and Socialist supporters, they are more likely simply not to vote (as increasingly the case here). Instead, he points elsewhere: ‘Think of the “petits métiers” of nineteenth-century naturalist novels, whose ambivalence towards both the bosses and revolutionary ideas is evoked in Zola’s L’Assommoir. Today, these occupations – butchers, gardeners, lorry drivers, garage mechanics and builders – are statistically the most numerous among the working class. These are jobs that cannot easily be offshored. Unlike factory work, which has been shrinking since the 1980s, they have been relatively spared by globalisation.’ 

Add to this the traditional middle class: the lawyers, accountants, estate agents and so on. They, like the industrial working class, are affected badly by de-industrialisation. Most are traditional Tory supporters who retain old fashioned English (I use English, not British, carefully) nationalist identities and resent those like Rishi Sunuk and David Cameron who represent today’s globalised ruling class. In contrast they rather liked Boris Johnson. 

Imagine yourself as a professional living in the North East today. Approaching retirement, your dream was to retire to the coastal town of Alnwick. Now you cannot because property prices have soared, as the better off buy holiday homes or run their tech businesses from there. You’d imagined your 25-year-old son would be installed in his own house, married and starting a family. Instead, after university, he is back living with you, unable to afford to buy a house, and in a poor-paying, insecure job. 

But it would be wrong to think dad would vote Reform UK while the son voted Labour or Green on 4 July. The Financial Times revealed that 33% of 18 to 24-year-olds voted RN, while 48% voted for the New Popular Front (NPF). Among 25 to 34 year olds the figures were 32% and 38%. On 4 July, polls suggested 49% of 18- to 24-year-olds were planning to vote Labour, just 5% to vote Conservative, but around 12% back Reform, meaning Nigel Farage’s right-wing party is more popular than the Tories among the young. You would be more likely to find those in seats in the North East rather than Hackney or Lambeth in London. 

Economically left 

Barnay also finds that among NR voters: ‘… the polls show a broad consensus in favour of progressive measures at national level: an increase in the minimum wage, which the RN parliamentary group opposed in 2022, and tougher legislation on workplace safety standards, an important issue to strata often employed in high-risk jobs. People living in the suburbs are attached to public services and facilities, as illustrated by the protests in villages and towns against school closures. Setting limits on real estate speculation – the real fuel for the RN vote in areas where the party is growing fast.’ 

Of course, this sits alongside hatred of immigrants and Muslims, but the picture among Reform UK supporters is not very different. A YouGov poll taken just before election day found, unsurprisingly, that 89% of Reform UK voters believe that ‘young people today do not have enough respect for traditional British values.’ 

Eighty six percent think that ‘migrants coming to the United Kingdom across the English Channel should all be immediately removed from the United Kingdom and prevented from ever returning’ and 78% believe that ‘multiculturalism has made the UK worse’. When it comes to crime, 85% believe that court sentences are not harsh enough, and 77% think the death penalty should be allowed. 

What is of greater interest is that 73% of Reform UK voters feel that ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation’s wealth. Sixty-nine percent think that the rich should be taxed more than average earners, but at the same time 60% think that welfare benefits are currently too generous. Asked whether rich people in the UK are able to get around the law or get off more easily than poorer people, 78% agreed, while 74% think big businesses take advantage of ordinary people. 

The response by Reform UK voters to these questions matches or is near the average figure across the UK. It does not match the views of Tory supporters. On Gaza, just 8% support Israel. 

The conclusion YouGov comes to is: ‘Reform UK voters are more obviously culturally right wing than they are economically right wing, occupying a fairly traditionalist conservative ideological position but one which is also characterised by elements of economic left populism.’ 

Now, in the coming months we need to combat racism and defend migrants. That’s a given. However, it means that on issues like housing, the NHS, the cost-of-living crisis and resisting austerity, mass campaigns can be built among Reform UK supporters. If the trade unions fight back the same would be true. 

The danger is that if that does not happen, we face a Starmer government continually saying that there is no money to spend, the new Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, saying immediately on taking office, she will be returning migrants across the channel and parading their adherence to a bankrupt neoliberal agenda. 

We have seen in the past that Labour governments pursuing similar agendas have sown the ground for the far right. The same story applies in France. Starmer and the new Tory leader are guaranteed to react to Reform UK’s success by pandering to Farage and co. over issues like immigration. 

So, we have a choice in how we react to the rise of Reform UK. To me, sitting back believing Starmer will deal with it is a no no. Building an alternative to the obvious woes affecting British society caused by four decades of neo-liberalism is the only answer.