When Daniel Trilling sat down with The Left Lane on 9 July 2026, the conversation didn’t waste time on comfortable myths. During the course of an hour-long live interview, Trilling said that the failure of the current Labour government to address social and economic problems had created fertile ground for the far right to gain support and – aided and abetted by a pliant and supine media – that’s exactly what they were doing.
Trilling’s book, If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable, argues that decades of establishment failure – not some sudden grassroots eruption – cleared the ground for the far right’s advance. Speaking to our audience live, he said that Labour’s programme for government under Keir Starmer was incredibly meagre. “Nothing about this was inevitable, but after they were elected by a landslide, Labour completely failed to meet the very low expectations that people had of it. The party’s catastrophic absence from the field in the wake of the 2024 race riots across the country and its complete lack of a political response led directly to Reform’s rise,” Trilling told our audience.
Trilling’s message was well received by his audience and an interesting Q and A session kept the discussion flowing. Asked what he’d want people watching to actually do differently, Trilling said: “Take action and speak out at every opportunity. The rise of the far right is not inevitable if decent people stand up to be counted and challenge the racists at every opportunity.”
The full recording of the interview with Daniel Trilling is available below.
Trilling’s book, If We Tolerate This, is out now from Picador. Order it here from Bookshop.org.
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