Labour cannot ‘out-Farage’ Reform UK — and shouldn’t even try

A loveless landslide. That was the verdict as the dust settled on last year’s general election results. Labour secured two-thirds of Westminster’s 650 seats, despite garnering less than 34% of the vote.

It was the lowest vote share for any post-war majority government in British history. And with voter turnout at just 59.4% — the second-lowest since World War II — the level of disillusionment amongst voters was abundantly clear.

The party faced off against one of the most unpopular governments in recent history. The Conservative government had presided over a crippling cost-of-living crisis and a string of scandals, from Partygate to crony contracts.

And yet, just seven months later, Labour finds itself in the same predicament as its predecessor.

Its net approval rating now languishes at a bleak -47. From the freebies scandal to cuts to the Winter Fuel Payment, Labour has racked up its fair share of own goals.

Tory-lite Labour won’t fool the far-right

All of this has been pounced upon by Farage’s insurgent Reform Party. Reform UK has now topped an opinion poll and is eating into Labour’s vote share.

It has no baggage and plenty of momentum. The right-wing party has nearly 200,000 members and has held rallies up and down the country.

Reform UK also enjoys the support of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who frequently boosts their posts to his 200 million followers on his X website. And it makes plenty of noise, earning it significant coverage across the British media.

A new study commissioned by Hope Not Hate suggests the party is picking up between 10% and 15% of those who voted Labour at the last election in seats with large white working-class populations.

In response to this growing threat, a group of Labour MPs whose seats are under threat from Reform have formed the “Red Wall Caucus.” Their solution? Shouting more loudly about immigration and boasting about home office deportations. Keir Starmer has done just that, parroting Farage-esque rhetoric and decrying the Conservative Party’s “one-nation experiment in open borders” during a recent Prime Minister’s Questions.

But here’s the reality: Labour will never out-Farage Nigel Farage. No matter how hard they try, their immigration policy will never satisfy the far-right. And Europe has shown us the danger: when centre-left parties adopt far-right talking points, they don’t win over voters — they embolden their opponents. Voters prefer the original to the copy.

A few years ago, a group of researchers investigated this very question. They looked at 12 western European countries, drawing on data going back to the 1970s. Their verdict? That fighting far-right parties by adopting their migration policies is at best fruitless and at worst counterproductive.

Last week, France’s Centrist Prime Minister Francois Bayrou sparked outrage, claiming French people were feeling submerged by immigration. The concept of “migrant flooding” was popularised by the French far-right and this was clearly an attempt to pander towards them. His comments were hailed by the far-right National Rally who claimed they had won the ideological battle.

Across Europe, centrists have allowed the far-right to set the agenda and win the argument.

As I’ve highlighted in a previous column, there is a fundamental lack of honesty about migration from our political class and an unwillingness to champion its benefits. This race to the bottom will only benefit the far-right.

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But there is an alternative populism. One that focuses on bread-and-butter issues, not culture wars. And one that recognises the working class in all its diversity. Its enemy is not the migrant or the Muslim but those in positions of power and influence who are profiteering at our expense.

On this question, Reform does have a chink in its armour. It is a party that claims to stand up to the establishment and yet its leading lights are very much part of the establishment.

Its leader Nigel Farage is a privately educated former City banker with a net worth of £3 million. He once boasted that he was the only politician in Britain keeping the legacy of Thatcherism alive. This is, ironically, the same Thatcherism that devastated former pit communities and post-industrial towns that the party is now attempting to directly appeal to. Its deputy leader Richard Tice is a privately-educated multimillionaire property developer. In 2019, an Open Democracy investigation revealed that two offshore firms owned large shareholdings in his family’s business.

The party is also committed to wooing big business. Just last month, it held a £25,000-a-head fundraiser with ex-Conservative donors who are flooding their money into the party. Across the pond, Farage and the party’s billionaire treasurer Nick Candy were snapped up alongside Elon Musk at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

There was talk of a £80 million donation from Musk for Reform’s coffers. Though the bromance with Farage was short-lived, owing to disagreement on Islamophobe Tommy Robinson, it’s clear which way the money is headed. And billionaires don’t hand over wades of cash to political parties for nothing.

Reform’s 2024 manifesto pushed for tax cuts for corporations, landlords and wealthy individuals. These unfunded cuts would obliterate our public services, deepening inequality and leaving ordinary people to foot the bill. It gets worse. Its MP Rupert Lowe recently took to the airwaves to argue that the public should pay for their own healthcare.

Reform’s voter base is broader than just disgruntled Tories. A significant chunk of its supporters favours greater state intervention and ownership of key industries.

Labour could appeal directly to these voters on a left-wing economic populist agenda, vowing to take on rip-off energy and water companies profiteering at our expense. It could vow to invest in communities devastated by deindustrialisation and austerity. And it could raise taxes on carbon, land, corporations and wealth to fix our crumbling infrastructure, rebuild British industry and take serious action on child poverty.

The trouble is that Labour itself maintains an establishment image. It is wedded to a fiscal conservative agenda and is unwilling to shift significantly from its predecessors on tax and spending.

Last month, Starmer promised “ruthless” spending cuts despite the sorry state of our public services. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that the party is set to preside over £9 billion real-terms cuts in day-to-day spending in several government departments.

On public sector pay, Labour has offered teachers, nurses, doctors and millions of other public sector workers a paltry 2.8% pay rise. The Royal College of Nursing said that the government’s offer was effectively telling “nursing staff they are worth as little as £2 extra a day, less than the price of a coffee.”

For teachers, it is expected to come out of existing budgets. In practice, it will mean per-pupil funding dropping to the lowest real-terms levels in England for at least 15 years. Crucially, many of these workers have already suffered historic pay erosion and are struggling with an escalating retention and recruitment crisis. The pay of an experienced nurse has fallen by 25% in real terms since 2010. Teacher pay has declined by one-fifth in real terms since 2010.

Labour would be in a much stronger position to challenge Reform’s economic agenda if it hadn’t picked the pockets of pensioners, presided over an increase in child poverty, promised “ruthless“ public spending cuts and insulted public sector workers with a shambolic pay offer.

According to YouGov polling, the top three reasons 2024 Labour voters have abandoned the party are cuts to the Winter fuel allowance, failure to reduce the cost of living and failure to improve public services. Labour has an opportunity to reverse course on its issues. And if it doesn’t, the far-right will only continue to feed on alienation and despair.

Taj Ali is a journalist and historian. His work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Metro and the Independent. He is the former editor of Tribune Magazine and is currently writing a book on the history of British South Asian political activism in the UK.

Follow him on X: @Taj_Ali1

Follow him on Instagram: taj.ali1

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.