Editorial: Democracy? Insert cash . . . (2026)

Editorial from the October 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

What many considered laughable in all the recent outrage at Reform UK getting twin donations of £36m from crypto-billionaires (one of them convicted for money laundering offences), was Farage’s claim that the money would ‘help to level the playing field’. As opposed to ‘buy it outright’, presumably.

Actually, Farage wasn’t far wrong on that score. Electioneering doesn’t come cheap. Labour’s pre-election fundraising in 2024 has been estimated at £64m, while Conservatives raised £54m (2026 Autonomy Institute report PDF). So Reform’s £72 mill doesn’t look wildly out of place. The problem, as pundits have pointed out, is that it all comes from just two dodgy geezers. Reform UK may not be buying the next election, but Messrs Harborne and Delo are pretty much buying Reform UK, and will doubtless expect a Reform government to be super-cuddly when it comes to crypto regulations.

Also slightly peculiar was the high moral tone struck by some newspapers, in congratulating themselves on how Britain has a robust and venerable democracy that can’t be bought. Well, maybe not bought exactly. But when you think about the expenses scams, the grifts, the grace and favour junkets, the lobby groups, the revolving doors and the side hustles, rented by the hour would be more like it.

Still, that’s nothing compared to US politics, where ‘mega-donors’ are pouring hundreds of millions into the Republican mid-term electoral war chest even as they trail the Democrats in the polls. ‘Other mega-donors have funnelled cash to candidates pushing deregulation of cryptocurrency and gambling or to promote AI’ (Financial Times, 16 September).

Why, if capitalism is genuinely democratic, do the rich feel the need to pile so much money into political campaigns? If you can’t already guess, a clue is offered by a well-known 2014 US study that looked at 1,779 policy issues between 1981 and 2002, and compared what people wanted versus what decisions were actually taken. It concluded that the preferences of the poor and middle-income majority had a ‘miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact on public policy’, while the views of the top 10 percent virtually dominated (Princeton PDF).

That this feels intuitively true is probably why so many people don’t bother to vote in elections. They may also consider that any system where your total say consists of writing one ‘X’ every five years is not really a democracy in the first place. But a flawed electoral system is better than no system at all – just ask people in China or North Korea. We continue to contest elections because they are a legitimate way for workers to express their opinions, and because no amount of mega-donor moolah is going to stop the landslide that will swallow capitalism once the world’s majority finally decide they’ve had enough of the 1 percent and their bullshit.

Loose change (2026)

From the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Change! The single word summary of the Labour Party manifesto presented to voters at the last general election. There was certainly a change to the Party’s fortunes, increasing its number of seats in the Commons from 202 in 2019 to 411. This seeming landslide victory would appear to be an overwhelming endorsement on behalf of the electorate. However not quite so overwhelming in terms of the percentage share of votes cast. This change, of over more than 100 percent in the number of MPs, was achieved through an increase of just 1.6 percent in votes received.

After fourteen years of various Conservative administrations, the official opposition had barely stirred the electorate’s enthusiasm. Rather the falling away of the Tory vote opened the way to the government front benches. A significant element in Tory decline was the increasing popularity of Reform UK. Not a political party, but a limited company. Ironically appropriate as an aspiring administrator of a capitalist society.

The new Labour government found that not only had the Conservatives left the treasury chest empty of money, but had filled it with IOUs. Not that this was a novel situation. The new Tory government in 2010 inherited the same predicament after 13 years of Labour. Government expenditure almost constantly increases. Demands and expectations of the electorate are many and varied, encouraged by the competing political parties seeking votes. Oppositions can afford to sound generous, governments become austere.

The role of governments

It is for government to manage and administer capitalist society. Its fundamental function is to optimise profit making. The contradiction lies in the division between the small minority of wealth holders, the capitalists, and the vast majority, the wealth creators, the workers. While wealth holders recognise the need to maintain workers, otherwise there is no wealth creation, this maintenance is drawn from the wealth accumulated. Therefore, the more that goes to that maintenance, as wages/salaries, pensions, benefits, healthcare, etc, the less the wealth held.

Governments have to try and balance maximising profit while sustaining a stable, productive society. Any government action or crisis upsetting that balance impacts on the financial markets, threatening national bankruptcy. No matter how popular a government is in terms of electoral support, its options for action are constrained by the market. The market trumps the ballot box.

A common complaint amongst the electorate is that governments do not listen to them. Voters subject to the machinations of capitalist economies more often than not find their aspirations are not going to be met. Reasonable, even modest wishes for economic security and stability, decent housing, efficient healthcare, good education and a generally comfortable lifestyle, are frustrated. Instead, there is widespread discontent and frustration, often coalescing into cynicism.

Politicians are seen as remote and unsympathetic, concerned only with their own advancement. Daily experience does little or nothing to dispel such notions. Rather there is only a sense of powerlessness, which periodic voting does nothing to assuage. Indeed, the main political parties seem so similar that replacing one with another makes little significant difference. ‘They’re all the same’ is a commonplace. And the fact is they have to be because, despite minor differences, overall they must deal with an economic system that remains dominant, capitalism.

This does not mean the appearance of the political situation cannot change. The grip of the two main post-Second World War parties, Conservative and Labour, has been significantly loosened. An inkling of this change occurred in 2010 when the outgoing Labour government was replaced by the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition.

Giving Reform a go

The 2016 Brexit referendum saw cross-party alliances on either side of the argument. And also the sowing of the seeds of a rising populist movement that scored a remarkable success in the 2026 local government elections. Media vox pops in places where Reform UK have displaced en masse whole swathes of councillors, replacing long-established Labour fiefdoms, often appeared to feature change by weariness rather than enthusiasm. The prevailing response seemed to be giving Reform a go, largely on the grounds that they couldn’t be any worse than the ‘present lot’. This is not to say there aren’t those who are enthusiastic, though not of course racist, as they will insist. Having effectively, in 2024, seriously weakened the Conservative Party at national level, at local level they have now humbled the presiding government.

The prime minister came under threat – still in office at time of writing – with his supporters in parliament and the cabinet demanding loyalty. This is a little rich considering the pernicious use of accusations of anti-semitism to bring down Labour’s previous leader and purge his supporters. It is the very nature of capitalism to be competitive and combative. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that it spawns politics which reflect this. Because none of the parties can challenge capitalism, they must fight each other.

Cost of living crisis, illegal immigration, benefits culture etcetera become raw material from which to manufacture political advantage. That they are issues in the first place shows how capitalism simply does not, cannot, meet people’s needs. That Reform UK is a limited company seems fitting as their scope for giving people what they require is limited. Their councillors will quickly find that 80 percent of their council’s funds is already legally spoken for; social care and special educational needs. Are they really going to start turning old people out of care homes to fend for themselves? Will parents enjoy seeing their special-needs children flounder unsupported in already overworked and underfunded schools?

Yes, change is needed

The desire for change is perfectly reasonable. The problem for the electorate is that the many present difficulties people encounter daily cannot be voted away. Neither is there a party or leader to be elected who can do it for them.

The Prime Minister may well be dismissed, but then there will just be another one, equally unable to make any significant difference. Whether a populist ultra-conservative demagogue or a reasonable, left-of-centre sympathiser, the problems won’t go away.

If people really want change they will have to accept responsibility for playing their individual parts in the collective action to bring it about. Capitalism cannot be reformed into being benign; better trying to train a tiger to become vegan. Society can be organised so that everyone’s needs are met. We have the technology to make this practical. The rub is that the technology must be wrested from the grasp of capitalism, along with all means and methods of production.

The democratic process is fundamental to bringing this radical change about. But it will require so much more than just putting an X against a name every four or five years. The first big change must be in how people think about constructing a better future for all.

D. A.

Socialist Sonnet No. 235: Reformation (2026)

 From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Reformation

Maintaining ‘Socialism’ as watchword

Can seem unlikely, when realpolitik

Is succumbing to the three card trick

Of the slight of hand dealer in absurd

Demagogy, when the popular vote

Is placed on populist blandishments,

Falsified promises; reason relents

Its influence. Without considered thought

Reform, however tempting it appears,

Remains a mistaken gamble to make,

Especially with the future as the stake:

Gamblers regret can last for years and years.

There’s none as asleep as the mistaken,

Being so, so difficult to awaken.

D. A.

Cooking the Books: All workers’ parties now? (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘We’re now the workers’ party’ proclaimed the headline of an article by Nigel Farage in the Times (10 May) following his party’s gains in the local council elections. A week or so earlier on May Day, Zack Polanski had declared that ‘the Greens are the new workers’ party’.

So, who are ‘the workers’? Capitalist society is divided into two basic classes: a class that owns the resources needed to produce what the members of society need to survive, and a class, without such ownership, whose members are obliged to try to sell their working skills to obtain money to buy what they need to survive. The vast majority of the population are members of this working class, irrespective of what job they do or whether they work in an office or an industrial unit.

Farage wrote about ‘guys wearing orange jackets working for local councils, paid-up trade union members, or the self-employed’, which suggests he is thinking more of manual and industrial workers. That is certainly a common usage of the term ‘working class’, defined by occupation rather than exclusion from ownership of productive resources. There is evidence that many such workers who traditionally supported Labour have switched to Reform.

But if a party is to be judged a workers’ party because of the number of workers who vote for it, any party which has substantial support would be a ‘workers party’ as the vast majority of voters are workers. The Tories, the Liberals and the Scots and Welsh Nats would be workers’ parties too.

Polanski’s claim that the Greens are now the workers’ party is based on promising measures to benefit workers in the workplace. He sounds like a Labour politician of yesteryear:

‘The reforms introduced by Margaret Thatcher nearly half a century ago began the long march downwards in the balance of power and wealth in our country — from those who produce and do the work to those who profit from it …. We will address the massive imbalance in our workplaces and give control back to workers’.

His claim that the Greens are the new workers’ party is in effect a claim that Greens are the new ‘Labour’ party. But why does he think that the Green Party would be any more successful in shifting the balance of power and wealth in favour of those who produce the wealth? Why does he think that the Labour Party failed to do this? And, incidentally, when did workers ever control their places of work?

The Labour Party started off as a trade union pressure group to get legislation passed that would benefit workers. At best it could be seen as a party that aimed to improve the position of workers within capitalism but, although some reforms can do and have done this, capitalism can never be made to run in the interest of the working class, because it is a profit-making system and profits come from the unpaid labour of those ‘who produce and do the work’. It is an anti-worker system and no government can change that.

Farage’s claim that his party is a workers’ party is laughable in view of its openly pro-capitalist policies. Polanski’s claim can be dismissed as vote-catching rhetoric by an opposition party that has no chance of being called to honour its promise — and, if ever it was in that position, it would fail just as the Labour Party has done and for the same reason. Capitalism simply cannot be made to work for the workers.

A real workers’ party is one that advocates political action to bring about the immediate common ownership and democratic control of productive resources.

Another New Year party (2026)

From the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following the turn of the year I am pleased to announce the emergence of a new political force, Barnsley Social Action. As I was an enthusiastic biker back in the ‘60s BSA seems appropriate. The focus for this exciting political initiative will be to fight for Barnsley’s independence from the overpowering political behemoth that is Westminster and the regional dominance of Yorkshire. ‘Let the Tykes Take Power!’

I am, of course, appreciative of the Socialist Standard for so willingly providing an initial platform for this, my ambitious project. The first task will be to ensure that no small boats will be redirected from the south coast to sail up the Dearne.

At this point I consider it most important to state without equivocation that all of the above is utter nonsense. Actually such a statement surely can’t have been necessary. Who would set up a political party on such a narrow (minded) basis?

Ex-Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe, now sitting as an independent, has – at time of writing – launched Great Yarmouth First (GYF) with the stated aim of promoting the specific interests of his constituency. This is surely a basic requirement of any MP, whatever the party affiliation, within the considerable limitations imposed by the requirements of capitalism.

Lowe claims 500 residents have already signed up and he has personally funded the fees for all these new members for a year. Quite how committed this cohort of supporters are may well become apparent in twelve months when renewal time comes around.

The specific political purpose of GYF is according to Lowe, ‘completely focused on doing what is right for Great Yarmouth, not what is right for Norwich or London’. This new party is needed because not only have national governments let people down, ‘the rot extends to local government as well’.

How fortunate for the citizens of Great Yarmouth such an immaculate political messiah was chosen by the electorate at the last election. However, his vision does extend beyond the locally myopic to the rest of the country. Not only does he head GYF, Lowe also leads Restore Britain. The headline aims of this organisation are low taxes, small state, slash immigration, restore Christian principles, fight wokery and so it goes on…and on.

The multi-millionaire Lowe is quoted in the Great Yarmouth Mercury saying ‘We are building a powerful local movement that will fight for local priorities. No petty national politics, just local politics for local people’. This statement seems to stand in contradiction to the obviously national and nationalist Restore Britain. The basic premise of both of Lowe’s groups is to play up, and on, prejudices unfortunately held by too many people looking for simple solutions to their many political, economic and social problems.

While it might seem an organisation such as Great Yarmouth First must be of limited political significance, it does reflect an underlying feature of more widespread popular discourse. A competitor for Barnsley Social Action would be The Yorkshire Party. The website of the would-be governors of Britain’s largest county refers to things socialists recognise, such as: ‘This isn’t about left or right’, ‘Our rivers shouldn’t be profit streams for offshore companies’, ‘Subsidiarity – decisions made as close to the people as possible’, ‘Dignity – respect for every person and community’, ‘Community – working together’, ‘Cooperation – shared goals…’

There is also mention of values such as fairer, stronger and more democratic, though specifically in Yorkshire. Most of what is offered is fairly standard social democratic fare that Labour, Liberal Democrat and even reasonable Conservative (if that’s not too much of an oxymoron) supporters could subscribe to.

It certainly doesn’t read as being rabidly explicitly nationalistic, except, of course, its focus is narrowly on Yorkshire. As often with local political groupings The Yorkshire Party seems fuelled by resentment of a perceived national, for which read Westminster, bias against the county, especially in economic terms.

There is certainly good reason for people to feel economically aggrieved, to rail against the failings of the NHS, to be very much aware of the democratic deficit whereby voting, locally and nationally, changes very little for the better. However justified these feelings, however worthy the aspirations, none of this applies specifically to Yorkshire alone. The social democratic style solutions, along with a Yorkshire parliament to enact them, are aspirations that can never be realised even if the entire White Rose vote went to this party.

The fundamental problem that every party, local, regional or national, cannot overcome is capitalism. No matter how sincere or well intentioned, the scope for positive political action is severely curtailed by market economics, the undeniable drive to realise profits. Even such an explicit adherent to capitalism as former Prime Minister Liz Truss could be evicted from Number 10 Downing Street within about a month and a half of taking up residence. She wasn’t even proposing some wildly radical social reforms. Just showing her Conservative intentions as ill thought-out and economically inimical to market interests was enough.

A perfect example of the democratic deficit in that Truss was toppled from power not by the ballot box, but, in effect, the workings of the market. She wasn’t even in power long enough for a conspiracy to be formulated against her. Capitalism doesn’t really need conspiracies or coups d’état. If bond prices fall or share prices tumble so do the politicians or policies that are perceived as being the cause. Certainly no requirement for an election.

So for Great Yarmouth First, The Yorkshire Party – you can also read the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru or similar, Reform UK, the seemingly shambolic Your Party, The Green Party or the three main Westminster parties. Because whatever their political differences they are all the same in one essential feature. They can only act as far as capitalism and its imperatives allow.

The achievement of real change would mean an economic arrangement in which the means of production are held in common so ensure people’s needs are met uninhibited by the profit motive, in a truly democratic society in which people freely contribute without any requirement for money. In a word, socialism. Such is only achievable on a worldwide basis. Of course, people will always relate to their localities, but they have no need of being located within national boundaries. A time when communities were fairly static are long passed.

There is a deal of archaeological evidence showing that even in prehistory Neolithic trading links between widely separated communities existed, when the concept of national boundaries didn’t exist and wouldn’t for thousands of years. Indeed, from the earliest days of the emergence of humankind migration has been a feature. The idea of being defined by location in nation states is but a brief moment in our collective history. So the prospect of a worldwide cooperative community cannot be dismissed as fanciful or a contradiction of human nature.

But people have to want this, have to be actively involved in working through the details, accepting there can be no leader or party that can do it for them.

Until then there is always Barnsley Social Action – no one from Doncaster need apply.

Dave Alton

Popularity (2025)

From the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

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.

Editorial: The fruits of reformism’s failures (2025)

Editorial from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Saturday 13 September an estimated 110-150,000 people demonstrated on the streets of central London waving Union and St. George flags to ‘Unite the Kingdom’. This followed a campaign of painting the cross of St. George on roundabouts and bridges and attaching the flag to lampposts which no car driver or bus traveller could have failed to notice. Meanwhile the Reform UK party tops polls of voting intentions and is winning local council by-elections up and down the country.

Some, like the organisers of the much smaller — only some 5,000 — counter-demonstration ‘against fascist Tommy Robinson and his Far Right supporters’, see it as the beginning of the rise of a fascist movement that needs to ‘smashed’. Certainly, the organisers were demagogic rabble-rousers peddling prejudice and hate, starting with Robinson himself. Some are indeed fascists. Others seem to have been Christian Nationalists as evidenced by some demonstrators waving crosses. But that’s the organisers.

Most of those taking part in the demonstration can’t reliably be called fascists, but are people who had been misled into believing that immigrants and asylum-seekers are somehow being given priority over people born here. They aren’t, but the rabble-rousers encourage the mistaken belief that they are. The socialist response is not to smash such demonstrations but to argue all the more forcefully why all workers, native or immigrant, should unite to end the capitalist system that treats them both as second class.

What we are witnessing is not fascism, which arguably belongs to a different era and different political conditions, but what political philosophers have called ‘nativism’ — the view that the established population of a state should be given priority over incomers. ‘Nativism’ is one end of the spectrum of nationalism, distinguished by insisting that measures should be taken against immigrants, from making it difficult for them to become citizens to stopping more coming to deporting those who have come.

Part of the socialist case against trying to reform capitalism to make it work for all is that the rise of reactionary parties — including in its day fascism — is a result of the inevitable failure of reformist politics and parties to do this. Those excluded from the ownership and control of society feel (correctly) that their problems are not being solved and (mistakenly) expect politicians to solve them. Traditionally either the Conservative Party or the Labour Party have been elected to do this. At the moment, the Tories are still discredited by the failure and antics of the previous government while the Labour Party, given a chance after last year’s election, has very quickly — more quickly than would normally be expected —become discredited too. This has left an opening for a different set of politicians to bid to have a go.

Reform UK, too, will fail as the problems are not caused by what governments do or don’t do but by the workings of the capitalist economic system, which both causes the problems and prevents their solution. The excluded majority are treated as second class because under capitalism making profits for those who own the resources on which society depends comes first. As long as capitalism persists, and as long as people put up with it, the needs of the excluded majority will come second — and some of that majority will be duped by far-right demagogues.

Editorial: None of the above (2025)

Editorial from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the next general election most voters in England are likely to have a choice between candidates representing six different parties: Labour, Tory, LibDem, Green, Reform UK, and the new Corbyn party. In Scotland and Wales, with the nationalists, it will be seven. This appears to extend democracy by offering voters a wider choice. But does it?

What, on paper, is on offer? Labour is in office nationally and has pledged to bring about economic growth and to improve education, housing and social amenities funded by the increased tax income that will be a by-product. The Tories are also promising growth but by being even more in favour than Labour of giving private capitalist enterprises free rein. The LibDems advocate something. The Greens promise to pursue reforms to benefit the environment. Reform UK says that cutting back on immigration will improve things for the rest of us. The new Corbyn party wants to return to what Labour promised in the 1970s by redistributing wealth and income more evenly.

Labour and the Tories — the Ins and Outs of British politics — have had many chances to implement their policies and have both consistently failed. It is tempting to conclude that it’s because their leading members are bungling incompetents, corrupt or nasty people, or, in the case of Labour, sell-outs. Some of them undoubtedly will be but that’s not why they fail. Even if they were all competent, well-meaning and honest it wouldn’t have made any difference. Replacing them in office by the members of some third party such as the LibDems or some new protest party such as Farage’s wouldn’t make any difference either.

The reason Labour and the Tories fail, and why the others would too, is because they all accept capitalism and believe that the government can make its economy work for everyone. But it can’t. Capitalism is based on the resources needed to produce wealth being in the hands of a minority and used to produce goods and services for sale with a view to making a profit. This is what drives the economy and is what all governments have to respect and implement. Governments don’t control the way the capitalist economy works. It’s the other way round. The coercive economic laws of capitalism impose on governments what they can — and can’t — do. Governments can’t conjure up growth, can’t give priority to the environment, and can’t redistribute wealth and power.

In this way conventional politics is based on an illusion. Governments are assumed to be able to do what those elected to office say they will. And so elections are seen as being about voters choosing what policies they would like to see pursued or what reforms they would like to see enacted by voting for the candidates of one or other political party that they consider would best do this.

There is a choice at elections but it is a choice of which grouping of politicians is to carry out what the workings of the capitalist economy demand. It’s a choice as to which of them is to preside over capitalism’s operation and implement its priorities.

Faced with this limited choice, socialists, opposed as we are to capitalism and all of its works, say ‘we are not voting for any of you’. What is needed is a change of system not a change of politicians in office.

Life and Times: Running scared (2025)

The Life and Times column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

I’m one of those people who has sympathy for those human beings who have left one country with a view to settling in another – migrants. It doesn’t matter to me whether they’re fleeing from war or persecution or just looking for a better life for themselves. My view is that that human society everywhere would be much enhanced by people being able to move around the world freely. It would give increased satisfaction with life to those doing the moving and also confer advantages on the cultures receiving them, opening these up to different ideas and different ways of doing things.

Keeping out the foreigner

I could only be dismayed therefore – even if not surprised – at the action of the newly elected Labour government in ramping up the previous administration’s policy of hostility to migrants, in particular by introducing new rules for linguistic competence. This will mean that foreigners, whether asylum seekers, ‘legal’ migrants, students or anything else will not be able to live or work in the UK unless they are able (in the words of the government) ‘to express themselves fluently and spontaneously’ in English, and speak it ‘flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes’. How it might be possible to assess such skills is one matter and is anyone’s guess (and many native English speakers would find them problematic), but the idea that that kind of knowledge of English is essential for participating in work or social life is plainly absurd.

So why is the Labour government taking this action as well as laying down other strictures to make it more difficult for people from other countries, whether refugees or otherwise, to live in the UK? The plain and simple answer is that they are running scared. They have only been in office a short time, yet they have tumbled in the polls, performed spectacularly badly in local council elections and already feel beleaguered by the challenge they are facing from that new group of political opportunists, Reform UK, who are banging the racist, anti-foreigner drum as loud as possible with, so it seems, significant success. They seem to be managing to convince large numbers of workers that the real problems they face – for example insecure employment, making ends meet, fear of crime – are primarily attributable to the relatively small proportion of the population that happens not to have been born in this country. Nothing of course could be further from the truth, but the xenophobic scapegoating of small groups with small differences seems to work well on people who feel under particular economic and emotional pressure.

Uncontrollable system

Add to this the inevitable problems faced by any government trying to control the uncontrollable system that is capitalism – the task the Labour Party has been landed with – and you have the perfect storm. Having placed restrictions on winter fuel payments and made other welfare cuts in the name of ‘making ends meet’, it is now having to row back on some of that so as not to fall uncontrollably behind in the polls, and is hoping that its anti-migrant stance – craven sop to Reform UK that it is – will somehow help it make up the ground. But there too it is facing opposition – not just from anti-racists but from other perhaps unexpected sources too. We are talking here, for example, about the CBI and other employer bodies who are worried that their members might not be able to recruit workers for ‘lower level’ employment of various kinds (eg catering, care work, delivery jobs), about the NHS, and about universities who fear the dire financial straits they are already in will be made worse by further difficulties in enrolling foreign students. ‘They can’t do right for doing wrong’ seems the appropriate adage. But this applies to all governments who undertake the task of running a show that, by its inbuilt chaotic nature, pulls them in multiple different directions. Any principles they may profess before entering office, any ‘good intentions’ they may have go right out the window once they win power and are faced with the need to keep that show – the anarchic system of capitalism – afloat.

Profit or free access?

As for the plight of migrants, finally I have to declare a personal stake in this. My own forebears were foreigners. My grandparents arrived in this country over 100 years ago, probably speaking no English. But they became part of British society, as my parents were too, with English as their first (and only) language. And the picture has been the same with very many migrant minorities and, regardless of government regulations, will continue to be. But what will also continue, both in this country and across the world, is that migrants and ‘native’ inhabitants alike will be subject to the contradictions and uncertainties of a system whose prime purpose isn’t the wellbeing of the majority of its inhabitants – those who have to work for a wage or salary to survive. Its purpose rather is the production and distribution of goods and services for the profit of the tiny minority who own the means of production and distribution, which process governments have the job of overseeing. The system in question, based as it is on buying and selling, wages and salaries and the market, is by its nature full of unpredictability and is bound to leave flailing any government charged with trying to run it. It needs to be replaced by a different system – a moneyless, wageless, frontierless society of free access based on the principle of from each according to ability to each according to need. That’s what we call socialism, but neither the Labour Party, nor any other party claiming to be aiming for social justice within the framework of the current system, can ever be an instrument for achieving it.

Howard Moss

Farage — opportunist supreme (2025)

From the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘That means less money to cover rent, the weekly shop or a pint down the pub’ (Nigel Farage on the Labour government).

Last month’s Socialist Standard carried an article on May’s local election results which saw Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party win hundreds of seats and perhaps present a serious future threat to the traditional two-party Labour-Tory dominance of UK politics. At the same time the article pointed out that this might just be a flash in the pan, and that come the next parliamentary election Reform’s star may have waned, as has happened in the past with other seeming new pretenders to power.

Nevertheless, it also drew attention to the particularly distasteful nature of Reform’s political agenda, with its open and unashamed promotion of xenophobia, calculated to embolden those with racist outlooks and other particularly obnoxious agendas. And though the Socialist Party is not in the business of focusing its criticism on specific capitalist politicians, preferring to see individuals in that role as instruments of the system they are committed to, it would be at the very least disingenuous of us not to put some focus on the politician who is the embodiment of Reform UK and its policies. We are of course talking about Nigel Farage who is the face, we can say the inventor, of that party, without whom it is hard to imagine it could continue being any kind of force in British politics.

In this perspective it is probably useful to point to some aspects of Farage’s previous political attitudes and activities, which led up to and form at least part of the policies now being embraced by his party. We can find the following:

• In the early 1980s, when a student at Dulwich College, he is on record as voicing admiration for Hitler and was reportedly a vocal supporter of the National Front.
• When this was put to him later by a journalist, he admitted to having said ‘some ridiculous things’, but, when asked if these were racist, replied, ‘it depends how you define it’.
• Standing for UKIP at a 1994 by-election, he sought to enlist the support of the figure he called his political hero, Enoch Powell, who had become infamous for his racist ‘rivers of blood’ speech.
• In the years that followed he was associated with figures from the BNP.
• As leader of UKIP from 2006, he advocated dismantling the NHS, declared opposition to gay marriage and made numerous appearances on the Kremlin-run RT television channel, expressing admiration for Vladimir Putin and his take-over of Crimea in 2014.
• He has consistently voiced support for Donald Trump, referring to him as his ‘pal’, defending his use of misogynistic language (‘grab ‘em by the pussy’) and, in the run-up to the 2020 American elections, making a speech at a rally in Arizona in which he described Trump as ‘the single most resilient and bravest person I have ever met in my life’.
• He presented himself, in a column in The Sun newspaper in April this year, as a modern-day Keir Hardie, stating that ‘when Keir Hardie founded the Labour Party in 1893, he declared it existed to give the working man and woman a voice’, but that now ‘Keir Hardie would be turning in his grave and ‘Labour no longer represents hardworking Brits’.

So now, with characteristic opportunism, Farage, sniffing political power, is seeking to present himself as the leader of a kind of neo-Labour Party who will fix everything Labour has always promised to fix for workers but never has. Statements he has made in the past about privatising the NHS and cutting welfare benefits have ceased, and his focus is on how his party would run things, as he put it in his Sun column, ‘in the interests of the working man and woman’.

In reality, he would be no more able to do this than Labour, which, when in power, has always simply carried out the task of administering capitalism in the interests of those who monopolise society’s wealth – as any government must. So the idea that, if elected, Reform would do anything different is manifest tosh. But tosh that, currently at least, seems to be having significant purchase on workers, judging by that party’s recent local election successes.

And another button that Farage is pressing harder than ever in his courtship of voters is the crude nationalism that, as we have seen, has been present in him since an early stage. In ramping up his longstanding scapegoating of foreigners and minority groups of various kinds, he is blaming them for multiple problems suffered by ‘British’ workers which he says the current government is not taking drastic enough steps to remedy. ‘Labour’s biggest betrayal of the Red Wall is immigration’, is how he expressed this in his column in The Sun.

From what we have seen, the description of Farage as ‘xenophobic and pandering to racism’ and ‘a disingenuous grifter’ contained in a leaked memo from the Coutts’ bank he was recently and publicly in dispute with really does seem to fit the bill. But we know of course that in the end Farage is only an extreme example of the opportunism inherent in all capitalist political leaders as they seek to control a system that breeds economic chaos, poses the constant threat of war and environmental degradation and can only ever offer workers at best a few crumbs from the table of the rich.

If workers continue to follow the likes of Farage (or any other leader), it will be a long wait before we get the new system we need where the sole motive of production will be to meet the reasonable needs of all in a world society without borders or states or classes. And, of course, before that can happen, workers will also need to throw off their own sense of powerlessness and the illusion that change can only be brought about by certain exceptional individuals.

Howard Moss

Reform – Breaking the mould or flash in the pan? (2025)

From the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

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.

Howard Moss

Cooking the Books: A fool’s errand (2025)

The Cooking The Books column from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Farage woos red wall with vow to reindustrialise UK’, read a headline in the Times (16 April). According to the journalist:

‘At a working men’s club in Newton Aycliffe, Co Durham, the Reform leader made his most audacious attempt yet to outflank Labour to its left on the economy, praising trade unions and calling for the return of nationalised heavy industry, coal mining and oil and gas extraction.’

This could be read as saying that Farage called for the return of nationalised coal and oil and gas. Actually, he has only called for the nationalisation of one steelworks called ‘British Steel’ and not even for the nationalisation of all steelworks in Britain. It is true, though, that he has called for more manufacturing and heavy industry in Britain and for allowing privately-owned coal mining and more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.

It is a long time since the Labour Party has committed itself to trying to revive heavy industry in Britain. They have accepted the evolution of British capitalism towards capturing a share of world surplus value through financial services. Only its rather reduced left wing still dream of this. Here is Eddie Dempsey, Mick Lynch’s successor as General Secretary of the RMT union, writing in the Morning Star (3/4 May):

‘Thatcherism ripped up the industrial foundations of this country… We were left with a service and big-finance-dominated economy with communities stripped of stable work, identity and any real power to determine the course of their lives… The antidote is an organised economy and a wider society with a strategic role for the state driving investment with credible industrial planning to bring back high-quality jobs and good housing’.

It can be seriously doubted that Farage wants to see such a state-capitalist system introduced. If he did, he would indeed ‘outflank the Labour Party to its left’. His is just populist demagoguery. What he is plainly trying to do is to exploit for vote-catching purposes the loss of ‘stable work, identity and real power to determine the course of their lives’ felt by people living in areas formerly dominated by heavy manual work.

Farage has given no details of how he would bring about a reindustrialisation of Britain. Understandably, since private enterprise, which he favours, will only invest if there is a prospect of making a profit that is more than minimal. The domination of heavy industry in parts of Britain ended precisely because the industries concerned (coal mining, steel making, shipbuilding) were no longer profitable in the face of competition from cheaper producers in other parts of the world.

He could say he would follow Trump and seek to make heavy industry profitable by erecting a tariff wall around it but dares not because this would make no sense in a country so heavily dependent on international trade as Britain. Besides, it is not what those who fund Reform UK want. They are financiers whose priority is to be able to carry on their financial wheelings and dealings, internationally as much as nationally, without state regulation.

Dempsey will be sincere. But if tariffs are ruled out (to which he might not be opposed), then the only other way to try to make heavy industry, whether nationalised or private, profitable again would be through government subsidies but this would be at the expense of other sectors of the economy.

The economic law of capitalism of ‘no profit, no production’ cannot be bucked. The government could try to go against it by protective tariffs or large subsidies but the result would be to undermine the competitiveness of British industry generally, leading to loss of jobs elsewhere in the economy. Anybody seeking to reindustrialise Britain is on a fool’s errand.

Editorial: Starmer goes nativist (2025)

Editorial from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

ReformUK fought last year’s general election on a single issue. The same leaflet, distributed everywhere they were standing, declared that this was ‘the immigration election’ and that ‘only Reform UK will freeze immigration’. They won five seats, all from the Conservatives. Labour election strategists were pleased as the swing from Conservative to Reform helped them win in other seats Then, last month, Reform won a parliamentary by-election in a seat previously held by a large majority by Labour. Then, Labour realised that Farage’s party was as much a threat to them as to the Conservatives.

What to do? The decision was made to steal Reform’s clothes and on 12 May Starmer delivered his already notorious ‘island of strangers’ speech in which he claimed that if immigration wasn’t further curtailed native-born Britishers would become, as Enoch Powell had put it decades earlier, ‘strangers in their own country’. Neither Powell nor Starmer defined what they meant by ‘stranger’, leaving native-born people whose parents or grandparents came from the British colonial empire open to being victims of anti-immigration prejudice and attacks.

Starmer’s words was hard-core xenophobia, the language of nativist parties everywhere, as political theorists define parties that declare their aim to be ‘promoting or protecting the interests of native-born people over those of immigrants’. Many might see this as reasonable — why should people already there not get priority over newcomers? — but it is based on the premise that native-born workers and immigrant workers have different interests.

The nativist demagogues claim that the two groups compete not only for jobs but also for housing, hospital treatment and school places. This does appear to be the case but the limited supply of these is not caused by too many immigrants. It’s limited by the nature of the capitalist system under which workers are never going to be supplied, whether from their pay or from services provided by the state, with much more than enough to keep themselves in efficient working order. Keeping immigrants out won’t change this. It wouldn’t mean more or better for the ‘native-born’.

It is not clear why immigration should have become a big issue; probably a result of the media’s over-concentration on the desperate people crossing the channel in small boats. Immigration proper is a normal economic feature of capitalism and waxes and wanes as the economy expands or contracts. Capitalism needs workers because their work is the source of capitalist profits. When capitalism is expanding in some place due to the prospects of profit being good, more workers are needed there. Workers move to where the jobs are, sometimes recruited directly by employers. From a capitalist point of view, employing these migrating workers and providing housing and basic services for them to keep themselves fit to work is well worth it as the amount of profits they produce outweighs the cost.

Socialists say that workers, wherever they were born or whatever their language or state-imposed nationality or what religion they were brought up in, have a common interest in joining together, in the first instance, to face their employer. More widely, they have an interest in uniting to end the capitalist system and replace it with a world without borders based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources.

Reforming UK politics? (2025)

From the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party has consistently questioned the efficacy of reform. Capitalise the word and it takes on a specific significance. Reform UK emerged as a political force of note by securing five parliamentary seats at the last general election.

The Green Party increased its representation in Parliament to four, which was impressive considering the difficulties posed by the first-past-the-post-system. Even more remarkable, though, was Reform’s performance. Considered along with its former incarnation as the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), its electoral progress is of interest. In the 2015 general election, one seat was won with an overall UK vote share of 12.6 percent. By the 2019 election, standing as the Brexit Party, its vote share had declined to around 2 percent, with no seats gained. This was the time of Boris Johnson’s Tory Party undertaking to ‘get Brexit done!’ The moment and purpose for UKIP/Brexit Party appeared to have passed.

Five years later though, emerging as Reform UK with a political platform expanded beyond just Brexit, came an apparent breakthrough. However, at 14.3 percent of the vote, the improvement on the 2015 performance was less than spectacular. The major factor was not so much the increased Reform vote, but the near collapse of Conservative Party support. In 2015 they took 36.8 percent of the vote, which increased to 43.6 percent in 2019. Five years on they were down to 23.7 percent. This seems to indicate many Conservative voters relocating with Reform, enabling the taking of seats previously denied them. The Tory right split and its largely extra-parliamentary pressure group was able to become in-house (of Commons).

A determining factor in Reform’s rise must be its leader, Nigel Farage. He had founded Reform UK, originally the Brexit Party, two years after he left UKIP following the Brexit referendum. He then effectively left Reform UK and concentrated his political activities around the Trump camp in America. Up to just a few weeks prior to the 2024 general election Reform UK was being led by Richard Tice. Initially Farage declined to advance himself as a candidate, undertaking to proselytise for the Tice campaign around the country.

Who owns Reform UK?

A sudden volte-face occurred when Farage claimed he had a sense of guilt about not stepping forwards and letting his supporters down. In short order, Tice was replaced as Reform UK leader by the apparently selfless Farage. Previously, Tice had been a member, and co-founder with Arron Banks, of the Brexit campaigning group Leave EU. This organisation distinguished itself in 2018 by being fined £70,000 for breaching electoral law during the referendum campaign.

Tice’s tenure as leader of Reform had been marred by fractious personal relations in the party. He had secured, in March 2024, the defection of a former Conservative Party deputy chair and MP for Ashfield, Lee Anderson. This was achieved despite Anderson, just a few months earlier, having referred to Tice as a ‘pound shop Nigel Farage’ who should ‘pipe down a little bit’ so as not to exacerbate tensions between Tories and Reform to the benefit of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

Tice’s response was to tell Sky News, ‘…we’re going to replace the Tories as the main alternative to Labour in those red wall seats.’ As the election turned out, the red wall seats the Johnson Tories took in 2019 largely returned to Labour. It was the Conservative Party that suffered loss of support in 2024.

The relative success of Reform under the renewed Farage leadership has also led to a reorganisation of the Party. Unusually, Reform UK was founded and owned by its leader, Farage, who initially established it as a private limited company in which he was the majority shareholder. Rarely, if ever, has a political party so blatantly reflected the capitalist system it is dedicated to serving. It was this that enabled Farage to simply take over the leadership again. As owner he didn’t require the democratic inconvenience of being voted into position by the membership.

Two months after the 2024 general election, at its Birmingham conference, Reform was informed by its leader that he intended giving up his shares, and thereby his personal ownership. For the first time since its inception, members would be able to vote on party matters. The party leader was, in future, to be elected and could subsequently be removed by a vote of no confidence. However, such a vote would only happen if 50 percent of the membership wrote to the chairman requesting one.

Alternatively, Reform MPs can trigger such a vote if 50 of them, or 50 percent, demand one. This only applies when there is a minimum of 100 MPs. The purpose behind this change is to attract a larger membership, although it does leave the leader in a strong, dominant position.

Companies House records show that Reform 2025 is now the shareholder, and that neither Farage nor Tice continue to hold shares. Reform UK has become a non-profit organisation limited by guarantee. Again, a reflection of capitalist structure is maintained.

Demagogic populism

Unsurprisingly, the policies of Reform, styled as a ‘contract with the people’ are, in many ways, largely indistinguishable from those of the other parliamentary parties, excepting differences of emphasis and nuance.

Policies include immigration and its control, increasing police numbers with more ‘bobbies on the beat’, cutting NHS waiting lists, reducing the tax burden and tweaking various taxes, freeing businesses from red tape, fast tracking brownfield development sites for housing, speeding up development of nuclear energy, increasing defence spending etc.

Education policies do give an insight into the political shading of Reform. They propose to scrap student loan interest (going for the youth vote?), ban teaching critical race theory and gender ideology, fine universities guilty of political bias or cancel culture, offer private school tax relief, re-introduce home economics, double pupil referral units, and make the school curriculum more ‘patriotic’.

There is a pervasive demagogic populism running through Reform UK. This is personified in Nigel Farage who does not typically appear as a fanatical ranter. Rather, his style is that of the plain speaker of common sense, appealing to the interests of various groups of voters.

There are business tax cuts for one section of the Tory-minded, VAT adjustments to deal with the cost of living, anti-woke messaging for the ‘you can’t say anything these days’ brigade and, of course immigration control. It’s pick-and-mix politics, a selection of flavours so nearly everyone’s taste is accommodated.

Underlying it all, as with the other parliamentary parties, is the broad if unacknowledged agreement not to challenge capitalism at all. That leaves the cause of the various concerns afflicting people free to operate as it does, as it must, driven by the absolute unquenchable thirst for profit. Production for profit and not for need would continue unhindered under a Reform administration.

The myriad problems people face in the UK, as around the world, cannot be solved by Reform or any other party committed to capitalism, the very system that is the source of the problems. Voting is important, but voting for another status-quo party, no matter how populist, will solve nothing.

Because the vote is valuable don’t give it away to a party making promises it can’t keep. Like any scam call ask the question, am I going to take what is offered on trust? Or should I take a considered, conscious decision to act in concert with others like me to achieve what will benefit us all?

Regressive mouthpiece

Reform UK has recently begun to show itself, for all its democratic claims, as a party where personal ambition and in-fighting are the order of the day. Rupert Lowe, just 8 months on from the general election, has had the Reform whip withdrawn. Also, the party has referred their MP to the police for threatening Zia Yusuf, the chair. There is also an internal investigation into possible staff bullying. Lowe has responded by appointing his own legal team. Perhaps of greater concern for Reform is that Lowe dominates Reform’s digital-first community with more than 300,000 followers on X. It may well be that Reform UK has had its moment in the political sun.

It is not possible to predict the future for Reform UK. It seems unlikely to garner enough support to amass a parliamentary majority. It may well have significant influence as the repository and mouthpiece of regressive, even xenophobic sectors of the electorate. Unfortunately, those sectors may, at present, constitute a rather greater number of voters than was once the case.

This indicates the importance of socialists continuing to challenge capitalism directly, and not to get drawn into specific concerns about Reform UK or any similar political group that might emerge in the future. Only when the majority of people come to embrace socialism and actively seek to abolish capitalism, will all the present parties, including Reform UK, become wholly irrelevant and disappear from the political sphere. This would be truly ‘reforming’ UK politics.

D. A.

Editorial: What to do about Reform UK? (2025)

Editorial from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reform UK is a reincarnation of the Brexit Party and given the recent furore over Rupert Lowe MP, seems to be beset by the same type of periodic infighting among its representatives. In fact, it is effectively the same party with a change of name and led and financed by the same people — typically dissident members of the capitalist class who want less regulation of their financial activities. They realise that they can’t get this unless they control political power — the power to make laws and regulations — and that the route to such control lies through the ballot box. They are hoping to repeat their success in the Brexit referendum, by again appealing to anti-foreigner prejudice and distrust of a ‘liberal elite’ that they say is running the country. But they are no friends of the workers whose votes they need.

Reform may have been in the process of trying to develop detailed policies and promises like the other parties, but this is not the basis of its appeal nor why people vote for it. It’s the discontent felt by many about the economic problems they face and the failure of the Labour and Conservative parties to deliver on their promises to mitigate these.

Reform’s position can be described as ‘nativist’ in the sense of supporting a policy of prioritising the interests of native-born inhabitants against those of immigrants. In Britain this would include not just ‘white’ people but native-born and established ‘non-whites’. As Reform members and candidates fall into the latter group, to campaign against the party for being racist won’t wash as it can be seen not to be the case.

Even so, the way Reform expresses its nativism is crude, nasty and divisive. Obviously, socialists counter those spreading hatred against our fellow workers who are refugees or undocumented immigrants. That’s part of our general position that the workers of the world should unite to replace capitalism with socialism.

The pressure group ‘Stand Up To Racism’ proposes to ‘go door to door where Reform candidates are standing to mobilise the vote against them’. But voting for the other parties won’t stem the growth of Reform as the basis for its growth has been precisely the failure of these parties to deliver on their promises.

Reform feeds off the widespread view that the MPs and councillors of the other parties are out for themselves. But that’s not the reason these parties don’t deliver. It’s because they support and operate within capitalism. They fail because under capitalism, a system driven by profit-making, profits have to come before meeting people’s needs; a priority which those making political decisions have to apply. The established parties fail because it is impossible for them to succeed. They would fail even if all their MPs and councillors were saints.

Capitalism simply cannot be made to work for the benefit of the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependants. Reform will fail too if ever it gets into positions where it is in charge of implementing policies. They too will have to run the system according to its priorities and economic laws.

The way to react to the growth of Reform is not to support the other parties against it. It is to campaign against capitalism and all the parties that support that system and for a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources so that they can be used to directly meet people’s needs.

Letter: The polarisation of politics (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The polarisation of politics

The dialectic taking place among political opponents at the present time is that there is a polarisation and a narrowing of political thought taking place in the UK. Put simply, we are seeing a decrease in compromise and increased partisanship. Will this lead to a more tribalised political system as some political commentators have suggested?

In the UK since Brexit there has no doubt taken place a fragmentation of politics and right wing populist views taking charge of the narrative.

Mr Farage has been the main proponent of a populist free market economy encouraging the idea that we should engage in a society of competitive individuals vying for a higher proportion of the goods available in the land. Some kind of anarchic free for all society that ignores the welfare of the people and encourages fierce competition with no moral arbiters.

With the rise of marginal parties that, in my view only offer a very short lifespan, it is a grim foreboding for the future. Socialism seems to have taken a back seat at the present time. With the arrival of revisionist Keir Starmer, the Labour party lacks the bravery to attack free enterprise head on. Public ownership is still very fragmented and piecemeal.

Farage and his cohorts continue to feed the electorate with misinformation, racial prejudice and bigotry. They continue to foster the political agenda with an attack on the use of rules in a free market economy as it, in their opinion limits among other things the freedom of speech. Ignoring the facts that rules act as a protective cocoon for the collective and limit greedy individuals from appropriating all that is available.

There is also a view from liberal commentators that there is an oligarchy taking shape. And this oligarchy with all its wealth, power and influence will eventually threaten democracy.

Is this however just another example of pop up populist fear mongering? I think so. In the UK Nigel Farage, the so called ‘Man of the People,’ the messiah in waiting is without doubt a dangerous opponent of socialism. Although a racist and fear monger, he is no political slouch. An educated raconteur with plenty of political muscle. He is very persuasive in that ‘boyish’ tone of innocence he portrays to the gallery.

But his reform party in my view is an enigma. It will not last the distance. It has no real substance. It can be viewed as some kind of short fix that will only satisfy the electorate for a short while.

The impulse will stutter and die out. It just does not have the bedrock of support to be a lasting political party. It is no tour de force.

But having said that, they are perversely a real and present danger. The narrative in the political cauldron at the moment is change and not for the better. The right wing is attempting to batter doors

down.

The rich and powerful would have us believe that ruthless competition is the way forward. Jim Ratcliffe, a part shareholder in Manchester United in is search for that ultra-competitive spirit is tearing the club apart by ignoring the needs of the workforce. Socialism needs to be more aggressive in its defence of equality and fairness.

I would take Thomas Moore’s pragmatic view of socialism which would be based on the practical considerations of socialism and as Marx stated, with the rise of technological development’s the modes of production change over time creating new and revolutionary structures.

In the UK we have a truly diverse culture and I would hope that this will produce a profound cultural shift and a more progressive society which will see the disappearance of class divisions. As a last thought could AI have a dramatic effect on the conditions of our social relations.

Barry Watts, 

Dover

Reply:

You make a lot of separate points so we can’t really address all of them. It’s undoubtedly true that in the US and Europe the political pendulum has swung towards the right in recent years, as rocketing prices and unaffordable housing have put a squeeze on workers, which together with wars and climate change don’t offer young people much hope for the future.

In such dire times, it’s common to think less about progressive ideas and more about loss aversion, and never mind other problems. Ably assisted by social media, the right has amplified the general unease into a clickbait hysteria of xenophobia, anti-wokism and conspiracy yarns which drowns out adult debate and promotes gleeful mediocrities like Farage who know how to exploit it. They don’t need arguments as long as they get attention. And having no coherent political or ideological theory is not a weakness but an advantage for such ‘pop-up populists’, because it means they can rebrand any time they like.

The left is in a state of despair and disrepair. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn were unable to turn back the capitalist clock with their supposedly radical state-ownership programmes. Anti or post-capitalists, overlooked since Occupy, fail to be heard above the noise.

But the right is also fragmented and confused. Some hanker for a ruthless, stateless Adam Smith parody that never could feasibly exist. Many want a return to 19th century protectionism. Trump meanwhile is going in contradictory directions with new isolationist tariffs combined with expansionist rhetoric, prompting dark forebodings of a future global war.

Is the new oligarchy threatening democracy, you ask, as if ‘democracy’ is what we’ve got? The rich do seem to be enjoying a new Gilded Age, but just look how they bend the knee to Trump, to Putin, to Xi. That’s not the act of invincible plutocrats. They fear the state’s power to break them if it chooses. And they need the state’s power to maintain order, without which they can’t continue to profit.

Is all this bad for socialism’s prospects? The barrage of soundbite and counter-soundbite is certainly a source of general confusion, but workers’ collective interest remains crystal clear for anyone to see. You hint that future technology might create new structures through which to challenge the system. Possibly so, but it doesn’t take technology to make a revolution. Only we workers can do that. – Editors.