The Reform Party is not only outflanking Labour on the right, but is showing signs of being able to do so on the left as well. We need a real left fightback, argues Chris Bambery  

As we approach 2025, British politics is in uncharted waters. Firstly, just five months after winning a landslide majority in parliament, Sir Keir Starmer’s party is now averaging just 26.6% in the polls, Last January, its poll rating was 44%. That’s a 17.6% fall, the biggest calendar-year collapse in support ever recorded in UK-wide polls. Past Labour governments have seen their support fall sharply, but in the middle of their term in office, not at the outset. We haven’t seen the like. 

Secondly, Britain is now in the same place as other European states, having a far-right party, Reform UK, attacking both Labour and the Tories as being ‘insiders’, part of a pro-globalist elite which is allowing the country to be over-run by immigrants. These just happen to be Muslims. 

The year 2024 saw something else none of us witnessed; the racist pogroms that took place targeting hotels where migrants stayed and mosques. These took place in areas where Reform UK had come second to Labour weeks before in the July 2024 general election. 

The success of Reform UK in that election was despite the fact that they only won five seats, because of the first-past-the-post system; they took 14.3% of the vote. Reform came second place in 98 constituencies. In 89 of these cases, it was second to Labour; sixty of these were in the north of England and thirteen were in Wales. 

Reform UK has won a string of council seats at by-elections since the July general election; from Labour in St Helens, Blackpool and Dudley and from the Tories in Swale, Kent and Essex. A parliamentary by-election will occur in Runcorn and Helsby, which Labour won handsomely in July with Reform UK a distant second. Farage and co. must fancy their chances, however, as voters get a chance to punish Starmer and Reeves. 

A Labour official in Wales has said they estimate Reform had a good chance of winning at least one member in fourteen of the regional parliament’s sixteen multi-member constituencies in the 2026 Senedd elections. 

Reports from inside the Labour Party indicate a growing concern about how well Reform UK is polling and the number of council seats it’s winning in by-elections. However, there is no clear strategy for dealing with this challenge. 

Labour’s appeasement of Reform 

The Guardian quoted ‘one influential figure’ as saying: ‘You can’t really fight against a party that has five MPs and can say whatever it wants – you have to focus on delivering for people, If we’re able to deliver, we’ll have a really good argument and platform to stand on at the next election.’ 

This ‘influential figure’ went on to say that Reform’s ‘message is that the Tories and Labour are exactly the same, the establishment has failed and you need to do something different. But if we can show the country is improving, we’re getting better; that feels like the best way to combat a third party – rather than getting embroiled in an argument directly with Nigel Farage.’ 

Imagine if you are a Waspi woman or a pensioner sitting shivering in the cold reading that. Reform UK actually backed Starmer over not paying the Waspi women, but few noticed. 

Indeed, a poll of almost 11,000 WASPI women shows support for Reform UK has shot up to 24%, while support for the Conservatives stands at 13% and a mere 7% back Labour. This reflects the ability of Reform UK to profit from attacking both Labour and the Tories as being part of the ‘establishment’. The knee-jerk response of Starmer and co is to appease Reform UK rather than face up to them. 

Politico reported on a private meeting at the European Parliament in Strasbourg  where Starmer’s Brexit Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds was quizzed by members of the European Parliament about why his government’s proposed reset with the EU appeared relatively timid: ‘According to one EU official present at the recent talks, Thomas-Symonds told the MEPs he’d love to do more — but that Nigel Farage’s upstart, Europhobic Reform outfit had come second to Labour in 89 constituencies at the election, making a closer embrace of the EU politically problematic. ‘He was apologetic — he said he wanted to go further,’ the EU official present told Politico. Seemingly unimpressed, the official added: “I don’t understand being scared of your own shadow in the first six months of your five year term”.’ 

Politicshome reports that Labour MPs belonging to the Red Wall Caucus – representing pro-Brexit seats in the north of England – want a harder line on immigration from the government: ‘A number of Labour MPs want Prime Minister Keir Starmer to make reducing immigration a cornerstone of his political strategy in 2025 as the party braces for the growing electoral threat of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. “If we don’t reduce immigration, we are knackered,” one Labour MP told PoliticsHome.’ 

The report goes on to quote Jonathan Hinder, Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, and a member of the Red Wall Caucus , who said  he believed Starmer was in the ‘right place’ on immigration and wanted the party to be ‘proud’ of its achievements: ‘The main thing that the likes of myself and other people, who are part of this Red Wall Caucus, would say is let’s talk about what we are doing on this a bit more and be proud about it. Don’t worry about the fact that some people are going to be upset about it. The Government’s done great work on deportations in the first few months.’ 

No attempt to confront the ‘send back the boats’ brigade. No recognition that Reform UK, and Tommy Robinson on its right, are always going to be harder on immigration than Labour, however many they deport. No attempt, of course, to confront the racism underlying this whole narrative, because these Labour MPs and ministers accept it. 

Exploiting space to the left of Labour 

But Reform UK are also able to position themselves to the left of Labour – not difficult – on some issues. In The Sunday Times, Patrick Maguire made an interesting point regarding Richard Tice, Reform UK MP for Boston and Skegness: ‘Pay attention to what Farage’s deputy and economics spokesman says and it isn’t difficult to imagine a near future in which Reform is outflanking Labour on the left as well as the right … In recent months Tice has said two things that Labour cabinet ministers have not. The first: under no circumstances should the struggling British Steel plant in Scunthorpe close. Its Chinese owners are at loggerheads with Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, over how much government and private cash should go towards its rescue. While open to nationalisation as a last resort, Reynolds views state ownership as “the least attractive option”. Tice, on the other hand, makes no bones of arguing that the site is of strategic importance to the British economy and ought to be in public hands if foreign capital is unwilling to foot the bill.’ 

Then there is Thames Water. During the election campaign, Labour stressed it did not intend to take that into public ownership either. On this, at least, they have been good to their word … Tice argued last week that Thames Water should be “put out of its misery”, allowed to fail, and sold to the taxpayer for £1. The alternative, he says, is a scenario in which City moneymen — this former asset manager knows whereof he speaks — “rip off consumers even more” with sky-high interest rates paid off, in the end, by hard-up households. That intervention sent a chill down the spines of what’s left of the soft left in and around the cabinet. One of their number ominously describes Reform as “gaining economic sentience”.’ 

There are clear echoes of Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great’ agenda here with its promise to bring back well-paid manufacturing jobs to the rustbelt. Reform UK’s racism is also couched in ‘homely’ ways to lay on nostalgia among ordinary folk for better times. 

Calibrated racism 

So, in September, Farage gave an interview to GB News claiming areas of the country were ‘unrecognisable as being England’, but carefully couched it away from more traditional racist language: ‘I’m very concerned that we have whole areas of our towns and cities that are unrecognisable as being English, but they’re not unrecognisable as being English because of skin colour. ‌They’re unrecognisable because of culture.’ 

Farage added: ‘You look at our cities now, people often don’t even know the names of their neighbours. It is the breakdown of communities, it’s why kind of in the election campaign I said: “Family, community, country”.’ Here he is playing on the idea that back in the day we lived in close, culturally united communities – not the reality – but these have been destroyed by mass immigration. No mention that they were destroyed by the Thatcherite assault on our jobs, communities and trade unions in the 1980s and by the decades of neoliberalism, both under the Tories and Labour, which followed. 

So, as we approach 2025, the collapse in support for Labour and the increase in support for Reform UK is a dangerous combination, because it threatens to push the whole political agenda, benefitting both Reform UK and the various fascist and far-right groups involved in the August pogroms. Simply hoping Labour can pull through, and continuing to campaign for it, is no answer whatsoever. 

Mass campaigning against racism whenever it appears and against the far right when they take to the streets is vital. But we also need to be getting out onto the doorsteps in support of left candidates. Building a united left electoral challenge is not going to be sucked from our thumbs, but it is vitally needed and must be built.