Doncaster is the target for Nigel Farage’s Reform in the mayoral and council elections this May. John Westmoreland looks at some of the key arguments against supporting the party

Reform will stop immigration and give us control of our borders

Reform has no intention of stopping immigration because they know that if they did, towns like Doncaster would cease to function. Doncaster has higher levels of child poverty, fuel poverty and food insecurity than most other British cities of equivalent size.

This means there is an extra burden on the NHS and care sector. Despite the need for more investment, these services have been hit by cuts that Reform has never opposed. Immigrant workers are propping up the services we increasingly rely on.

British businesses demand a steady flow of immigrant labour, and especially skilled workers. They don’t want to pay for training and education, preferring low taxation to social responsibility. Reform’s anti-immigrant rhetoric hides their complete support for low taxes and to hell with the consequences. If there were no immigrants, Farage would have to find some other group to use as a diversion to stop us putting the blame on the billionaires he loves.

But what about our borders and the small boats?

If you are working class, Reform will not give you control of anything, and certainly not the borders that might affect trade. They are terrified that we will resolve our feelings of despair by uniting against the real cause of it, that’s why they bang on about small boats.

Since Thatcher waged all-out war on the trade unions, wealth has been drawn from low-paid workers to the people at the top. Farage is on record saying that he completely supported Thatcher. When Thatcher came to power, Doncaster was a centre of mining and manufacturing, now those are gone.

None of the reasons for Doncaster’s decay can be put down to immigrants. And the patriotism that people like Farage spout is never aimed against the corporations that have outsourced jobs to benefit from cheap labour. Nearly every pit village had a sewing factory – all gone now.

Workers in Doncaster, at Amazon, the call centres or, as is often the case, holding down two or three jobs to get by, have a lot in common with those fleeing poverty and war to get here. They too have been made desperate by a rigged system that only benefits the rich. If we united against the ravages of the free market and the wars and climate disaster that follow in its wake, we could strike a blow at a rigged system that would make us all better off.

Voting Labour or Tory makes no difference. Doncaster needs Reform

The differences between the Tories and Labour are insignificant. Farage is nothing more than a right-wing Tory posing as a man of the people. He has admitted that his main reason for standing in Doncaster is that a good result in this former Labour stronghold will help to get Reform MPs elected.

At the national level, the banks and corporate bosses have made it clear to anyone paying attention that politicians have to obey their main policy directives. Liz Truss and Rachel Reeves have both been put in their place. Truss attempted to confront the City and was gone faster than the shelf-life of a lettuce. Reeves and Starmer promised an end to austerity and have now done a sharp about-face.

Farage has a background in the financial markets, is completely on the side of the billionaires, and has never advocated redistributing wealth from rich to poor, something that would make a difference.

Power lies in the boardrooms, not Westminster, and certainly not in Doncaster’s council chamber. All councils have, since the Local Government Act of 1999, been forced to give ‘best value’, which has meant implementing cuts to reduce government expenditure. For the people of Doncaster, it has been disastrous.

If Reform wins the local government elections, they will still be tied hand and foot to the demand to make even more budget cuts. Farage is all in favour of making those cuts. He has shown his support for Elon Musk’s attacks on the USA’s humanitarian and welfare agencies. He will bang on about efficiency with total disregard for the service users and the workers who deliver those services.

We don’t like Starmer and Badenoch; Nigel Farage is one of us

The British public is well to the left of Starmer, Badenoch and Farage on most issues. We want to save the NHS and stop privatisation. We want to nationalise the railways, water and power, and stop the price gouging of gas and electricity that is driving us deeper into poverty and chaos. We disapprove of Donald Trump. We want to tax the rich more and close tax loopholes. We support the rights of trade unions and we want to defend workers’ rights to sick pay and job security. We want more money for schools and nurseries and to support struggling families. All these things are off the agenda of Starmer, Badenoch and Farage.

Farage poses as a man of the people, but he is completely opposed to what we, the people, want. This has been exposed admirably in a film commissioned by the TUC. The TUC recently talked to Reform voters in Farage’s Clacton constituency. Voters there were horrified to learn of Farage’s voting record on workers’ rights. He sees our rights as a symptom of national weakness.

Farage is an enemy of the NHS too. And his links to Trump make this even more alarming. He favours an insurance-based system of health care that few in Britain could afford. Insurance cover for one person in the US costs $8,951, but even that may not be enough to cover an operation. Bills of tens of thousands of dollars are routinely handed to recovering patients. In a low-wage, high-needs city like Doncaster, Farage and Reform would be a total disaster.

Nigel Farage is an extreme right-wing politician from a wealthy background. He attended Dulwich College and worked for the French bank Crédit Lyonnais. He knows that if he stood for election on what he really thinks, he would be rejected. That’s what his carefully manufactured man-of-the-people image is about. He wants to sneak anti-working class politics into Doncaster under a false flag of being anti-establishment.

Farage supports low taxation as if working-class people benefit from it. Low taxation for the rich means poor people don’t get benefits or help. Low taxers are fighting for the rich to hang onto their ill-gotten gains. He then pretends to be democratic, but he happily goes along with Elon Musk weaponising his wealth against democracy. Musk helped to buy the presidency for Trump and refers to the NHS as a ‘Ponzi scheme’. Talk about the pot calling the kettle!

Farage opposes trade unionism and any notion of working-class democracy but bangs on about being anti-establishment. If he was faced by a movement calling for real democratic reform like abolishing the monarchy and House of Lords, creating a second chamber elected from the trade unions or giving workers a say over what they produce, he would run a mile. A vote for Farage is a vote to endorse inequality and the dictatorship of the few over the many.

War, poverty and climate chaos

Farage’s leaflets in Doncaster carry the question ‘Who asked you about Net Zero?’. This is typical snake oil from a spiv selling a quack remedy. Millions of mainly young people around the world have protested over climate disaster. That net zero is on the agenda at all is testimony to the self-sacrifice of millions of young activists.

Around the globe, the main features of capitalist chaos are war, poverty and climate chaos, and Farage wants to pretend that the reality is nothing more than a left fantasy. When Doncaster and other communities are flooded as never before, we don’t need anyone to tell us something is wrong.

But what’s wrong will cost money to put right, and Farage would rather place defences around the wealth of billionaires than commit to defending our towns and homes.

A main driver of climate catastrophe is the arms race. Farage is in favour of increasing weapons spending. He favours an increase on weapons spending to 3% of GDP ‘as quickly as possible’, and creating an army of 100,000. This is utter madness. Britain does not face invasion and is under more threat from cybercrime. Farage has nothing different to offer. He is echoing the jingoism of Starmer and Badenoch.

The working class in Doncaster is better off, on every front, if we pursue exactly the opposite of the Reform’s policies. Welfare, not warfare, is a working-class demand in the age of austerity. Welfare will create jobs and start to rebuild the social infrastructure that we need to carry on.

So what if Doncaster votes for Reform?

There is a deep political crisis in Britain. Whatever influence Farage and Reform manage to exert over the country, it will not make things any better, and the crisis may well see them off rather than the other way round.

Reform exists to turn the anger that workers feel away from the ruling class and their failed system onto harmless and innocent scapegoats. Millions of people see this and will not let Reform do a Trump and dismantle what’s left of our welfare state or gaslight us by ramping up racism. The answer is to organise those millions into a force that will be active in our workplaces and communities, fighting for real working-class demands no matter who is in office.