This is personified by Trump. Well within a year his popularity cratered as many of his voters realised he had fooled them. That his promises were worthless. That instead of draining the Washington swamp, he introduced the Florida swamp. Currently 76% of those recently polled disapprove of his handling of the economy, a record high – career ending in fact. His MAGA base is disorientated and in disarray. And in collapsing, Trump is dragging down all the other right-wing leaders who supported him as their saviour – including Farage.
This is the thing about right-wing populists. They keep their real policies hidden before being elected (unlike left populists who promise what can’t be delivered). Instead, populists like Farage shout against migrants, foreigners and ‘woke’, hoping to drown out their silence about wages, the NHS, schooling, housing, social services and all the other government support workers depend on.
Right wing voters tend not to read manifestoes before elections. They survive on a diet of manipulated sound bites and headlines. But as soon as the right are in power, all the ugly and hidden is revealed, they show their true colours and they implode and go out, as Trump did.
History is accelerating. What took years now takes months and what took months will now take weeks. It took the Tories a couple of years to implode. Labour took only months. If Farage and Reform are elected, it will only take weeks before they too are wrecked.
The despondency of the left is misplaced. Reform ascended only because Labour and the Tories collapsed. The door to the right is always opened by the so-called left and here we think Labour in Britain and the Democrats in the USA. Reform is seen as something fresh, different to the traditional parties. This is a fragile basis on which to govern, voted in not so much by who we are voting for but who we are voting against. Under these circumstances fresh turns into rotten very quickly.
The US is one government cycle ahead of Britain. What is happening in the USA will be replicated in the UK in time. First, Trump’s authoritarian antics coupled to the cost-of-living crisis has unleashed a storm of protests. The recent “No Kings” protest pulled eight million onto the streets or about one in 30 US adults. In the UK the anti-racist London march, supported by many unions, saw half a million on the streets.
Farage’s policies will force people onto the streets to oppose him
The very conditions that propel support for the right, simultaneously propels the left onto the streets. That is the dialectic. Trump has not disappointed. Like most right-wing buffoons pumped up with hubris he has become the archetypal recruiting sergeant-major for revolution. And no doubt so will Farage.
This does not mean that these populists can’t do damage, they can. Just look at the USA with DOGE, ICE, muting the media, packing the judiciary, weaponising the universities, gerrymandering electoral districts and appointing their goons into positions of power. But this is not unique to the US. The same has been happening in Britain. Protests are being curtailed, the threshold for being arrested has been reduced, sentences have been stiffened – all of which is consistent with an imperialism at war and losing. In many ways, Britain advantages the right with its first past the post system, empowering Farage even if he wins only 25% of the votes.
The question is, how do we take on Reform? Firstly, through expose. Expose is one of the most powerful forms of propaganda. This means revealing their policies or absence of policies. Their intentions to privatise the NHS and education. To further cut public services. To reorganise housing queues but not commit to building more homes. Their intention to discipline workers or in their words, “Britain will support you if you work hard and play by the rules”. Who will set the rules? Farage and his toffs of course. And it means revealing how Reform is being funded by the rich tax dodgers because Reform has promised to make them richer through lower taxes and fewer regulations.
Secondly, we need to organise in the unions and the community to redirect anger away from migrants and foreigners and upwards against the bosses and financiers – the billionaires. This means a programme of action and purpose which shows workers clearly what we stand for – and what they don’t.
Only by revealing and establishing our common interest can we properly explain why racism, sexism, ageism and xenophobia is divisive and how it weakens us and strengthens the ruling class. That class not nation is fundamental to our liberation.
Click here to read all the articles in our Taking on Reform series.
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