Labour is sleep-walking in the face of the challenge from Reform UK. Recent polls and Musk’s funding carrot mean Labour needs to wake up says Trevor Fisher
Seven months after the General Election, Labour has had the shortest political honeymoon on record and the Tories are treading water. The unexpected growth is in Reform UK, doing better than existing parties and ahead in the latest polls. Nigel Farage in Number 10 is not impossible. As the old liberal one nation Tory has vanished and Badenoch is not even convincing the Tory remnant the chances of a merged Tory- Reform party building on Starmer’s weaknesses are considerable.
For Labour, the headline story of government has been of struggles to maintain its vote of 2024, itself the lowest vote of any majority government since all adults had the right to vote in 1928. Unforced errors have cut its share and if there is are by-elections before the local elections in May the party will struggle to win any seat won last year. Populists focus and exploit the lack of interest in public opinion and refusal to listen to even the party membership making the gap between what the public thinks and Labour alarming.
The lack of meaningful consultation on any issue from the Grenfell Tower to school inspections is a now too clear to be accidental. After the new OFSTED report system was unveiled a poll of primary school heads (NAHT) showed 96% opposed to the new system and called for the three week consultation to be extended and the views of teachers to the replacement of the OFSTED system to be instituted. Listening to the views of ordinary people is not the Starmer way and feeds into the disillusion that Right populism has exploited in Britain and America.
The obvious failure of politicians to build on the rejection of the Tories in 2024 has opened the door to Right populism which since no one really knows what Reform UK stands for save that Farage is big friends with Trump and Musk is alarming.
With Reform UK now ahead in the polls, they have momentum but the big issue is whether as they claim they can import Donald Trump’s politics into Britain.
No progressive majority
The trends are in their favour and most alarmingly the accepted pattern that people are left wing when young then get more right as they age is no longer operating. Right wing values are widespread and the Gen Z voters are alarmingly favourable to dictatorship, even a military dictatorship. What the Channel 4 poll showed is in part a reflection of lousy national politics but also a contempt for politicians from Blair onward. It does not justify abandoning democracy. Yet the rise (and disintegration) of the English Defence League did not lead to a new left wing trend amongst youth, particularly among young men. I have long criticised the illusion that there is a Progressive Majority.
This illusion has fuelled important policy moves, notably the call for votes at 16. Not evidently a desire of the 16 year olds I taught up to 2009, and less so since then. But the revelation of the trend to support dictatorship had no effect on Polly Toynbee of the Guardian, who in the 30th January edition still wanted to give 16 year olds the vote so they can learn on the job. A dangerous gamble.
Liberalism is struggling to understand what is developing in the world of Trump and Farage. Toynbee made a couple of good points and rightly opposed Gove stopping David Blunkett’s Citizenship classes which was one of Gove’s maddest moves.
But Toynbee undermined her own argument by saying that in Scotland and other 16 age countries, there is a rise in voting – until students leave home at 18 and “once 18 year olds’ leave for colleges and universities registration plummets”. Not all 18 year-olds leave and there is merit in the 38 degrees argument for automatic registration, but the key issue is that Gen Z votes in fits and starts and for the Right. The Channel 4 poll indicates substantial numbers would, as in countries like France and Italy, do this. It is patronising to think they do not know what they are voting for. They want action not words.
Stopping foreign donations
In this context, the other Labour pledge from the 2024 manifesto on the election process – stopping foreign donations – has a greater priority than votes for people who will support the far right. With Musk offering $100 million dollars to Reform UK at a time when it has made massive strides to overtake a hard right Tory party – with Labour next – stopping the loopholes allowing Musk money in has to be the priority. Reform would oppose it, but that would be a setback for Farage.
Rumours that Labour was planning such a move in the 2024 manifesto but was stopped by Starmer on the advice of Lord Alli are disturbingly credible. The essential first step to stopping Reform advancing with foreign right wing money is to stop the flow of money into the coffers of the far right by legislation,
The wider context is the rise of the far right world wide. If we are to have a tolerant, civilised and rational society, then it will not happen without stopping some brutal and uncivilised people like the young men supporting Tommy Robinson. Labour clearly does not have a handle on how far right support is developing, and cannot be allowed to allow a well resourced hard right movement to develop. Stopping Elon Musk financing who he wishes is only the first stage in stopping the accelerating drive towards a hard right government, but it is essential. Labour must show leadership in action.