Popularity
Just how popular is populism? Taking the media, social and broadcast, at face value it appears to be the surging political trend nationally and internationally. In Britain, Reform UK are feted as the almost certain next government in waiting. Every small rubber dinghy that braves the Channel crossing to disgorge its cargo of migrants on the Anglo-Saxon shore counts as a clutch of increased votes for the party. Their accommodation frequently features, on the evening news, as the epicentre of patriotic outrage.
For a while that stalwart British icon, the Turkish Saint George, had his banner raised to flutter from many a lamppost. Or it was draped around the shoulders of angry demonstrators traipsing through the streets of the capital to gather and be harangued by demagogues. Certainly those marchers, like most people, have a great deal to be angry about. Lives blighted by inadequate incomes, rising prices, serious failings in health and social services and a growing housing crisis.
Governments come and go, and nothing substantially alters, except often for the worse. Even a desperate grab for a major change, with its promise of significant transformation such as Brexit, quickly proves an illusion, its glister merely fool’s gold.
Despite being leading purveyors of this political vacuity in its previous incarnation as UKIP, Reform UK is presently gaining popularity as the prospective saviour of the nation. They have, of course, the advantage of novelty, not yet marked by failure of governance. Reform UK’s impressive showing in May’s council elections has been tarnished somewhat through a number of resignations by, expulsions and suspensions of, some of their new councillors. There is evidence from a previous seeming breakthrough in local government of similar serious failings.
The British National Party in 2003 made what appeared to be a breakthrough in council elections. This was seen at the time as a harbinger of further success come elections for metropolitan districts, the European parliament and the mayor of London. This expectation was largely frustrated in 2004. Although the BNP did gain 3 council seats in Epping Forest, scene of recent unpleasantness at the Bell Hotel, it lost 7 of its 8 seats in Burnley, but gained one in Bradford. This proved the peak of its success.
Reform UK have certainly exceeded this precedent and might represent the triumph of populism come the next general election. This then invites the question of how popular populism has to be to succeed.
In the 2024 general election Labour took 33.7 percent of the UK vote (34.6 per cent in GB) to acquire an overall majority of 172. In other words the democratic process as it now is elected a government with a large majority even though around 66 percent of those who actually voted didn’t vote for it.
The last electoral showing by a party boasting a popular surge was in 2019. The Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn had witnessed a large influx of new members to become by far the largest party, at a time when party memberships were declining and had been for a number of years. Despite this Labour accrued just 32.2 percent of the UK vote, noticeably down from Corbyn’s previous effort in 2017. Labour was popular enough to attract those new members, but not to become elected, falling 11 percent short of the Conservative vote on 43.6 percent.
Becoming a government does not require a party to be popular enough to win an outright majority of the vote. Indeed, in the multi-party system we now seem to have, somewhere around a third of votes might actually be enough as Labour showed last time. This then is presumably Reform UK’s target. Should it achieve that target it is a moot point as to how long that populism lasts when it is confronted with administering all the problems and contradictions capitalism continually generates. No party to date deliberately sets out to generally make people’s lives worse. Yet they inevitably are forced into enacting policies that are detrimental to workers when the economic imperatives of capitalism demand it. As Britain’s shortest serving Prime Minister, Liz Truss, quickly found out, economic mismanagement does not even require democratic process to be removed from office.
Populism is commonly associated with right-wing politicians and parties, but the left also make attempts at popular appeal. Following on from boosting Labour Party membership, Jeremy Corbyn has become the focus around which Your Party is being promoted. A loose conglomeration of disaffected Labourites and left-wing reformists, Your Party intends to become to the Labour Party what Reform UK is to the Tories. However, there are signs it is already failing before it has had the chance to present itself to the electorate.
Adnan Hussain, MP for Blackburn, has parted company with Your Party citing a toxic culture of infighting, jostling for position and factional competition. Also, there have been questions raised concerning access to, and deployment of, £800,000 raised in donations. Those who have had any experience of left-wing politics will recognise these as common features figuring in previous incarnations of popular front alliances of left Labour and Trotskyist ‘Socialist’ groups. Even if, however unlikely it presently seems, Your Party was to succeed in replacing Labour as the left alternative elected to govern the country, it would still face the fundamental constraints capitalism imposes on administrations.
A simple example: the Brexit referendum had two possible results, but only one outcome. A vote to stay in the EU meant capitalism, while a vote to leave meant capitalism. So it is with parliamentary elections; whichever party is popularly voted for – left, right or centre – capitalism remains the determining feature of society.
In a sense, all contending political parties are populist. They vie with each other for the popular vote, that 35 to 40 percent that unlocks the door to 10 Downing Street. All parties that is, bar one, the Socialist Party of Great Britain. There is no aspiration, not even a far-fetched one, to be invited by the monarch to form a government. This is not lack of ambition. Indeed the Socialist Party’s ambition goes way beyond the severely circumscribed aspirations of all the others.
Only the working people of the world acting in concert to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism can see the realisation of the aims of the Socialist Party. The common democratic ownership of the means of wealth creation to establish a moneyless society dedicated to meeting everyone’s needs without the imperative to make profits. The election of a popular parliament dedicated to serving the emergence of such a society would be an important element in that process. But it wouldn’t be the Socialist Party sitting on the front benches as there would be no front benches.
The socialist cause certainly needs much, much greater popularity than it presently has. That may involve socialist candidates standing in elections, with a view to raising awareness, provoking voters to think beyond the present political offerings.
Socialists do court popularity, yet not for themselves or even their party, but for socialism itself. No matter how unpopular that idea presently is it still remains, and will remain, the only alternative for people who want to take control and refashion society to meet their needs.
D. A.
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