Lindsey German on recent local elections and what they mean for our tactics

Strong votes for Reform UK were always expected in last Thursday’s elections, but the scale and proportion of the vote took most people by surprise. Support for the far-right party in both traditionally Labour and Tory areas gave it control of councils from Durham to Kent and a narrow win in one of the supposedly safest Labour seats in the country.

Farage’s victory has upended British politics and sent both main parties into crisis. The defeat for the Tories was disastrous following a terrible general election result last year. Hundreds of normally safe council seats were lost to Reform and in some places to the Liberal Democrats.

There are obviously many Tories who would like an alliance with Reform, including at Shadow Cabinet level, but why should Farage go for that at the moment when he is doing well and the first past the post electoral system is working in his favour. And when there is a chance that Reform can replace the Tories as the opposition to Labour?

This means more knives out for Kemi Badenoch, yet another Tory leader who achieved her position through punching down on the oppressed and echoing ever more rightward talking points but is being recognised as completely incapable of mounting any serious opposition to a man who has brought his party to a historic low.

Because the position of Labour following these elections is in some ways worse than that of the Tories. No government before has lost support so early on in its term, only ten months in. Councils in working-class areas were in meltdown over Starmer, with Lancashire, Durham, Nottinghamshire among those going to Reform. A Green campaigner in the Runcorn by-election described the visceral hatred for Starmer time and again among erstwhile Labour supporters.

How and why did it happen that the far right share of the vote was so high, exceeding advance polling? It is likely that Reform’s success would have been even more dramatic had the elections been more widespread – for example most of East Anglia had its elections postponed. 

Obviously one of the main appeals from Farage was over immigration. The call to ‘stop the boats’, the repeated blaming of refugees and asylum seekers for the housing crisis, the calls to ‘make Britain great again’, all were high on the party’s agenda. Given that there is a sizeable minority of overt racists in Britain, it will appeal to them in a way that right-wing Toryism always has, and at times so have parties like UKIP or even open fascists such as the National Front or BNP.

But that clearly wasn’t the only or sometimes the main thing that got the vote out for Reform in such numbers. There were clearly issues about working-class living standards and public provision coming up time and again. Labour canvassers in the Runcorn by-election said the axing of Personal Independence Payments and the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance came up repeatedly as to why Labour voters were abandoning the party.

As the former Blair adviser John McTernan posted on X (formerly Twitter), these are the main reasons for last year’s Labour voters changing:

These people will of course have gone to a range of parties or to not voting – but the reasons indicate why it is totally dishonest for Starmer now to claim that he will need to move even further rightward to appease Reform.

Yet that is exactly what he will do. The Labour leadership will respond to left discontent by doubling down on its right-wing policies and hoping they will win votes back at the next election by using the threat of Farage. Already those closest to Starmer are planning to triangulate by saying that left voters have to support them to stop a Reform government.

So we can expect more sucking up to Trump, more attacks on migrants and more of Starmer insisting he is carrying on with the same policy even though this is exactly what makes people unhappy. This will lead to conflict in Labour as the left and some in the centre clearly think there needs to be a shift to the left. MPs notice that there has been a loss of votes to the left to independents and Greens.

How does the left respond? Just saying ‘don’t vote Reform’ is not enough, important though it is. Nor is it sufficient just calling Reform voters racist as a mass, both because some clearly voted for them as a protest against the two main parties and, as importantly, we’re not going to defeat them that way.

Instead we have to undercut the reasons for their success – that means debunking their lies and also providing an alternative to the misery people are finding in their lives. 

There are some uncomfortable facts here. One is that the left tends to be situated in cities and large towns not in a lot of the areas where Reform gained, such as the former mining areas of the North and the Midlands. It is also located among what the pollsters describe as areas with higher educational attainment. Often this is interpreted as Reform voters being stupid which would be a big mistake, but it points to I think a growing gap culturally and economically between higher-level white-collar workers such as teachers and lecturers, and manual workers, especially those in insecure low-paid routine and elementary work who have been ignored and seen their living standards and status fall as a result of globalisation. 

It is this which at least partly explains working-class support for the far right and the lack of a left alternative. The key question is how do we break people from the right and the answer is by providing alternatives to the attacks on workers which will come from Farage as well as from Tories and Labour. Reform wants to ape Trump but it’s a very different situation here – it’s much harder to do DOGE here as there is not the same relationship to federal government as in the US. Job cuts in English councils will be unpopular and there are also stronger trade unions here.

Culture wars surely exist here and played a part in the election but they are not at the same intensity, there are not huge anti-abortion movements, nor a mass organised religious right, for example.

The worst thing the left could do at present is to ape Labour or in some way suggest Labour is the lesser evil. We need our own independent path and our key target must be the Starmer government and how it is paving the way for Reform.

That means defending migrants and refugees and opposing any new crackdown as looks like coming from Labour. It means defending EDI posts in councils but not confusing them with the real fight for equality, especially at a time when those same councils which support EDI policies on paper are attacking women over nurseries and pay. It means defending climate jobs but demanding real green improvements that don’t penalise working-class people – for example free or cheap public transport.

We saw from the fantastic vote in Preston that building an alternative on the left which can give hope to socialists and win working-class support is the best way to beat Reform. 

We should also recognise that this is part of international developments. It is a reaction to the bankruptcy of the neoliberal project which is leading to much greater attacks on workers, with war, recession and cuts in welfare central to the agenda, and with it the scapegoating of migrants and growth of racism.

The international ruling classes are divided over a range of issues including tariffs and free trade. We have seen the backlash against Trump in the Canadian and Australian elections, where right-wing populist challengers were defeated. But the centre-party neoliberals have no answers to the global crisis and are also intent on attacking their own working classes.

The task of building a socialist alternative is very urgent. At its heart must be a commitment to unite over the key issues facing working-class people, building a mass movement which can take on the government and the far right. The demonstration on 7 June against austerity and cuts, the Palestine rally and trade union day of action, and the megapicket for Birmingham bin workers are concrete ways we can begin to do so.

This week: I will be speaking at the annual Wakefield left festival With Banners Held High about war, Palestine and protest on Friday and Saturday, at the anniversary of the SOAS student encampment later today, and helping mobilise for all the events above. Meanwhile, if you can get hold of it, watch Raoul Peck’s film The Young Karl Marx which I watched with a packed audience of socialists at the weekend’s Revolution! event. It is extremely good.