Last week’s local elections saw Reform UK making significant inroads. For many, voting for Reform will have been a protest against a broken politics, which has failed to tangibly improve their lives. People are increasingly feeling helpless against rising living costs in all areas of their lives and the Labour Party, rather than respond to this, have maintained the status quo established by the Tories before them.
For instance, foodbanks can be found in every community, supporting the unemployed and working families to make ends meet. The fact that they are now part of the furniture of our communities and that some young adults cannot recall a time pre-foodbank, doesn’t seem to have triggered a meaningful response or policy shift from the Labour government. In fact, Labour’s lack of responsiveness implies that economic hardship has become a fact of life for them.
While Labour appears to be managing this economic hardship, rather than reversing it, voters have turned elsewhere, looking for answers to the lack of tangible change. In such a context, Reform UK did not need a sophisticated manifesto – they simply needed to be the only party offering a challenge of the status quo. The absence of a politics of hope has allowed Reform UK to fill a political vacuum.
Their main strategy has been to scapegoat the asylum seeker, the migrant and especially the Muslim migrant. They frame the scapegoats as the sole cause of economic, social and moral collapse in Britain. Every grievance is passed through this lens. You can’t access social housing? Your kids can’t get a school place? You’re on an NHS waiting list? This lens offers Reform UK the ability to take complex issues and offer simple solutions. In essence: “We get rid of migrants, then all of the above is resolved”.
Of course, we know this is not the case. Social housing isn’t available, because building social housing has not been a priority of any government since Thatcher’s ‘right to buy’ (1980) oversaw its collapse. If you can’t get a local school place, it could be because local authorities had their ability to create or expand schools to meet need, removed. An NHS waiting list occurs because much of the funding going to the NHS ends up in the pockets of the private sector as profit, rather than being reinvested.
Labour’s response to Reform’s surge in popularity? A step to the right, thereby validating Reform’s politics of hate. Well, the local elections showed us how that turned out.
Address the issues by fixing problems and improving lives
The key defence against Reform UK is to address the issues that fuel it. We need to listen to people’s genuine economic concerns and create a credible, effective alternative. People have to see and feel the positive impact of politics in their lives. This requires real investment in social infrastructure, proving government can actively fix problems and improve lives, rather than ‘manage’. As people’s lives improve, the demand for a scapegoat disappears.
This is not to say that Reform UK’s scapegoat lens can go unchallenged. Their lies must be exposed and their oversimplistic lens removed, to be replaced with facts. In addition, their ‘in the background’ corruption and dodgy dealings with billionaires and millionaires needs to be fore-fronted and amplified using the media available to us.
There also needs to be anti-fascist alternatives in policies, which reject the validation of Reform’s hate-filled rhetoric and seeks to reposition discussions regarding asylum and immigration, as legitimate norms. Humans have always migrated. We are an island of immigrants and we are all the better for it. Reform’s inward looking defensive and reactionary nationalism risks damaging the UK, economically, socially and democratically.
They may be their own undoing. Reform’s new councillors will now be obliged to operate within the constraints of local government. The gap between their oversimplistic slogans and the reality of their ability to run a council is already becoming clear in existing Reform-run councils, where many councillors have resigned their positions, or have been forced to resign. Shouting “Secure the borders!” will not help them balance budgets and deal with local legal requisites.
Click here to read all the articles in our Taking on Reform series.
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