Reform – Breaking the mould or flash in the pan?
Last month’s local election results sparked a barrage of headlines forecasting a seismic change in the British electoral landscape. The tabloids in particular went full throttle with titles like ‘The Reform Revolution’, ‘Reform Shockwave’, and ‘Farage Eyes No 10’. The change being foreseen was the end of two-party politics now that a third party with significant public support was on the scene. And after over a century of political yo-yo between Tory and Labour, there does seem to be another credible contender in the waiting room.
More than a protest vote?
After all similar things have happened in other European countries with similar electoral systems to the UK. In 1990s Italy, for example, the existing post-war parties were wiped from the map to be replaced by others, some of which then didn’t survive and were supplanted by other new ones, one of which one is currently the ruling party. In France too changes in the electoral scene mean that the country currently has a president leading a party that was formed less than 10 years ago. Could similar things happen here, now that Nigel Farage’s Reform party seems to have made significant inroads into sections of the electorate that have traditionally supported one or the other of the two longstanding parties?
Many commentators seem to think so, especially as Farage seems to be ferociously tapping into issues aimed at getting the electorate – or certain sections of it anyway – worked up about the other parties’ policies. These include what he presents as over-emphasis on climate change measures, over-sympathetic treatment of asylum seekers, and insufficient focus on ‘national sovereignty’. Even electoral analyst Professor John Curtice, well-known for his even-handedness, has talked about ‘an electorate that still has little faith in the Conservatives and which is now disappointed by Labour’s performance in office’ and expressed the view that ‘Reform’s triumph was much more than a protest vote’.
Elected or dismissed?
The other thing that many who see Reform as here to stay point to is that the right-wing ‘populist’ view of the world they represent reflects a movement taking place more widely in other places with a democratic electoral system. There are examples to be found in Italy’s current Brothers of Italy party government, in Javier Milei’s presidency in Argentina, in Viktor Orban’s leadership in Hungary and, of course, the United States under Donald Trump. Parties of a similar ilk have also garnered substantial support in France and Germany. So is the UK likely to go the same way once the next general election takes place? Will Britain be ruled by Reform with Nigel Farage the country’s next prime minister?
Certainly, many things are possible in capitalist politics. That’s because, as the Socialist Party has never tired of pointing out, capitalism is a system that, unpredictable as it is in the details of its future direction, easily disorients and confuses the parties that try to run it. By its nature it can only have as its overall goal the securing of profit for those who monopolise the wealth of society. But we also know that, because of the anarchic nature of the ‘market forces’ under which it operates, no one and no government can foresee the twists and turns that it will take even in the short term and that may make the particular political team trying to administer it popular or unpopular with the electorate. Any party in power is always condemned to taking on the task of controlling the uncontrollable. Will it manage to keep control at least enough to gain voters’ favour at the next election? They do not know and neither does anyone else. As one sage commentator has, therefore, said and we have seen over and over again: ‘Governments are not elected, they are dismissed’.
So, in Britain currently, much depends on the extent to which the Labour government can win back some of the support it seems to have lost since last year’s election. Will a sufficient number of voters feel less afflicted than they do at present by the problems, mainly economic (eg, cost of living, inflation, insecure employment), that the market-controlled buying and selling system inflicts upon them? If so, the Reform vote (31 percent in last month’s elections) may subside, or at least take more voters away from the Tories than from Labour.
Will history count?
The other factor to take into account is that, while some of the countries mentioned earlier have seen the rise and fall of political parties as well as new parties and groupings coming to power, in terms of parties and governments Britain has tended to be more stable than most. Since Labour took over from the Liberals as the main party of opposition to the Tories in the early twentieth century, the two have alternated in government ever since. And this has happened despite the apparent threat from other parties and movements that have sometimes surged onto the scene but then sunk. Examples are Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement in the 1930s, the Social Democratic Party led by the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ which broke away from Labour in the early 1980s and at one point was polling one third of the electorate, and the significant breakthrough which seemed to be promised for the LibDems by the period of ‘Cleggmania’ prior to the 2010 general election.
Things may turn out differently this time of course. And if Reform’s recent election successes turn out to be more than a flash in the pan, socialists will find especially distasteful any spread of its open promotion of xenophobia and its so-called ‘anti-woke’ agenda, both likely to embolden racists and those with other retrograde outlooks. But whether Reform manages to last any longer as a serious political force than its previous incarnations (UKIP, Brexit Party) or not, what is certain is that, even in government, it would be no more capable of running smoothly and in the interests of those who have elected it a system which is by its very nature unstable, uncontrollable and has as its inalienable purpose the realisation of profit for the minority who monopolise the wealth produced by the majority.
HKM