Making political predictions is foolish, but I can only see two political parties that can stop a Reform government in the UK: Labour and Reform themselves. The mistake I made writing a similar post five years ago was to neglect the possibility of populist parties and leaders imploding, as Johnson’s Conservatives did. But we cannot assume that will happen to Reform.
One reason is that Reform and Farage are treated with kid gloves by the mainstream broadcast media. Corruption that might sink other politicians is often ignored for Reform politicians because too many think that is how a populist opposition would be expected to behave, so is it really news? But probably more important is that the broadcast media often takes its lead from the far right press, which is largely pro-Reform.
Could a rerival in Conservative party fortunes damage Reform? Undoubtedly yes, but that looks increasingly unlikely to happen. Their policy of trying to ape Reform on Immigration, the ECHR or climate change just loses them votes to other more socially liberal parties, in particular the LibDems. Unless Reform implodes, few Reform voters are likely to be attracted back to the Conservatives because everyone remembers what a mess the Tories made while in power.
One way the Conservatives may become increasingly irrelevant is if more Conservative MPs defect to Reform. There is a danger here, in that Reform begins to look like the old Conservative government under a new name. But Farage is such a prominent figure that risk may be small, compared to the gains to Reform in capturing yet more Conservative voters.
Could an insurgent left stop Reform? While we could get to a French situation where centre parties are squeezed and the main battle is between the left and far right, in the UK it is much more difficult seeing that as any more than one route to Reform taking power. For the left to defeat Reform the Labour vote would have to completely collapse (far more than it has at present), and the remaining parties (LibDems, Greens, Welsh and Scottish Nationalists and maybe a new left party) would have to divide up the winnable seats between them, withdrawing from the others. Both conditions seem pretty unlikely on their own, and together even more unlikely, although not completely impossible.
For those who think a period of Reform in power would not be too bad, and might lay the groundwork for something much better afterwards, I ask you to just look at what is happening in the US. While Farage himself may try to distance himself from Trump before an election, it is pretty clear listening to someone like Tice that Reform are just copying the Republican party. [1]
It is the combination of a hard right populist media and Trump in the US that makes the threat of a Reform government so real, and that makes that prospect so terrifying. As we are currently seeing in the US, the transition to a fascism in which the leader is a virtual dictator, independent media is steadily eliminated, elections are rigged, minorities and any people that resist can be terrorised by a police force that goes around wearing masks and which has almost no accountability, and in which a judicial system is routinely overruled by a captured supreme court, can be frighteningly quick. While Reform may never capture more than 30+% of the vote in the UK, they can still capture power because of our bizarre first past the post system.
This is why it is worth looking at what happened at the Labour party conference, and see where that puts us in terms of Labour either helping or stopping Reform. For political journalists there have been two ways of spinning that conference: signs of hope or evidence of deep weakness. Both are true, because Labour are starting from such a poor position in electoral terms.
The first positive sign was to attack Reform on immigration on grounds other than the nebulous charges of impracticality or seriousness. If you wanted to put a really positive spin on what happened you could argue that because Labour had moved towards Reform’s rhetoric on immigration and asylum, this helped encourage Reform to go further by scrapping Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR). The idea of ILR is popular, so Farage’s policy does allow Labour to draw a clear dividing line between the two parties on this issue without worrying that it is giving them votes. But that spin is far too generous to Labour.
While it’s good that Labour have at last found something to make their immigration and asylum policy distinct from Reform and the Conservatives, overall their stance remains much too illiberal for many. Even with ILR, Labour’s position still leaves a lot to be desired. Every time they bring in some tweak on immigration or asylum that introduces another cruelty that migrants must face, they give credibility to the illusion the populist right has created that these issues are of utmost national importance. [2] To quote Chris Grey
“Yet Labour politicians still don’t seem to grasp that by constantly accepting that there are ‘legitimate concerns’ about “uncontrolled immigration” and “open borders” (when the reality is that immigration is not, and has never been, ‘uncontrolled’ any more than borders have been ‘open’) in general, or, in this case, about existing ILR rules (which, as the polls linked to earlier show, are supported by the overwhelming majority), they cede ground to Farage and invite his inevitable denunciation of their reforms as inadequate.”
In addition the new Home Secretary seems happy to take ever more authoritarian positions on other matters like policing. It is hard to imagine that any liberal voter will take the combination of Labour’s position on ILR and their attempt to ban repeat marches and think that makes them more likely to vote Labour.
Chris Grey also welcomes that Starmer is finally linking the problem of small boats to Brexit, and Brexit to Farage, calling them Farage boats. But for that to work it needs every Labour politician to use the phrase at every opportunity, and take those opportunities to explain why Brexit is a major probable cause of the increase in small boats. I see no signs of that happening yet.
More generally, Starmer’s speech illustrates another problem Labour have, and that is a hopeless communications strategy. For example, calling Reform’s policy racist may be accurate, but is it good politics? The Daily Mail took no time to distort what Starmer had said. This distortion might not matter if Labour had a good communications team that could fight back against this kind of misinformation, but at present they don’t.
Labour should take a leaf out of the right wing playbook, which is to find the most extreme examples on the right and demand that Farage and Jenrich disassociate themselves from them. To quote from Ian Dunt in a very good discussion
“Right now, for instance, several mainstream right-wing commentators are claiming that black people cannot be English. Matthew Goodwin has said it. Isabel Oakshott has said it. This is absolute poison, obviously, but it is also contrary to public opinion. It is unpopular. I would like to see a Labour communication strategy which punches that bruise. Make it the chief issue, focus remorselessly on it. Force everyone on the right to either disassociate themselves from it or be branded a racist for holding it.”
This suggests to me that Labour still have two basic impediments to improving their electoral position that have yet to be removed. The first is to develop a far better communications strategy. It is hard to combat the power of the right wing press and right wing social media, particularly when the BBC shows every sign of being captured by that media. However the one institution that could present a counterweight to that power is a Labour government. Yet the government seems remarkably reluctant to take any steps to combat this media. It still just uses X rather than alternative social media, for example.
The second is to stop thinking Labour has to fight Reform by stealing its clothes, and instead start thinking about preserving its core vote, which is not some bygone working class but is the socially liberal middle class. Pursuing a Blue Labour strategy might work against a fatally unpopular Conservative government, but it does not work when in government. The last year proves that. The longer that party factionalism and ideology blind those running Labour to this basic truth the bigger the crash will be when electoral disaster forces change upon them, and the greater the possibility becomes of a Trump like government in the UK.
[1] Tice even talked about the link between Tylenol and autism on UK TV, even though Tylenol is called Paracetamol in the UK.
{2] Voters might think immigration is very important nationally, but few think it is important in their own area. Which means its perceived importance depends on what voters hear in the media, and we know the media is full of myths that are miles from the truth. In the UK immigration is the ultimate vibe issue.
