Nigel Farage’s Reform UK emerged as the biggest winner of the first major polls since Labour swept into government last year. The right-wing populist party won its fifth seat in Parliament in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, as well as two mayoralities and hundreds of local council seats.
The results mean the party, seen until recently as an underdog in British politics, has now arrived as a serious force. But it has many progressives asking: where is a serious left-wing populist alternative?
Keir Starmer‘s welcoming of the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman revealed that he “doesn’t fear the left”, said UnHerd. Rather, he is adopting a “defensive position out of fear of the populist right – and specifically Reform UK“. Starmer could lean so far in that direction that he alienates Labour’s “anti-populist supporters”. But his “tricky balancing act is made much easier by one of the most underrated features of British politics: the sheer weakness of the left-wing opposition to Labour”.
As Labour’s leadership “shifts rightwards”, a few alternative left-wing movements “are beginning to fill the void left behind”, said Brian McDaid for Yorkshire Bylines. The Green Party, the most significant of these alternative left movements, gained 43 seats in the local elections. Its platform, which is focused on tackling climate change, social justice and the redistribution of wealth, “aligns closely with the left-wing populism that Labour abandoned under Starmer”.
“The Greens have the potential to be a real threat,” one Labour MP, whose nearest rival at the last election was a Green candidate, told Politico.
John McTernan, a political strategist who served as a key aide to Tony Blair, warned that Labour would ignore its progressive voters “at its peril”, arguing that the party needs to “deliver change to every single part of the country that voted for it, and create a new coalition of voters to support it for the next election”.
Yet when it comes to economic policy it is Reform, surprisingly, which appears to be most in tune with left-leaning voters, said James Kirkup in The Spectator. More than two-thirds of Reform UK voters support the public ownership of the water, rail and energy sectors, Almost 70% believe foreign ownership of British firms is bad for the country, and 68% agree that big companies don’t pay enough tax. Indeed, Reform voters are “further left on those questions than the typical British voter”. “An economic cocktail of Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn might sound unlikely, but it’s notable that Farage is happy to praise both men as he sketches out Reform’s new economic agenda.”
What next?
“What should be taken from the results? That the electoral contest is now all about change – that was Labour’s slogan last year and is also the message implicit in the name of Farage’s party,” said McTernan. “But change to what? Reform is clear – being pro-worker and pro-nationalisation, a sort of Labour-lite. That’s a fight Labour can win if it remembers who the party is for.”
For the left as a whole, the “choice is obvious”, said politics lecturer David Jeffery on The Conversation. It should “resist the urge to ape the populist radical right” and instead adapt to a political landscape where its existence is “a problem to be managed”. But openly ignoring the issues Reform campaigns on “will not work”.
As the Labour Party leans towards the right, progressive voters have been left with few alternatives
