Here's what will work – and what won't – if we're going to stop Reform
It resonates with millions of people because it speaks to the way they feel, that 'nothing works properly anymore', and it forces Nigel Farage's opponents on to ground they do not want to inhabit, namely agreeing with him.
Writing in the Daily Express on May 28, the former BBC politics presenter and Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil predicted Farage is 'on the cusp of power' and set to become the next prime minister.
Financial Times columnist Robert Shrimsley was a little more circumspect two days later on Farage's prospects, but nonetheless agreed Reform are 'the beneficiary of a historic Tory collapse at a time when the Labour Government has rapidly become unpopular'.
Reform, insisted Shrimsley, are now attempting to place themselves in the 'electoral sweet spot' of social conservatism and leftist economics.
Prime Minister Keir StarmerFarage attracts those who see the enemy of my enemy as my friend. Voters who hold Keir Starmer and the Tories (and the SNP) responsible for 'breaking' Britain/Scotland, opt for the person the political establishment apparently hates most.
Farage's politics are, of course, those of 'protest'. Yet as the saying goes, any fool can burn down a barn. It takes brains to construct solutions and remove persistent obstacles.
Starmer, meanwhile, continues perversely to be Farage's biggest recruiting sergeant.
The Prime Minister – who never visited Hamilton despite being in the vicinity last week – claimed Davy Russell's win for Scottish Labour was a vote for 'change'. You couldn't make it up! That's the one thing it doesn't represent.
The surprise if brief resignation of Bellshill-born Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf was interpreted by some commentators as a sign of the implosion long predicted for Farage's party.
His return just two days later somehow amplified the volatility and deep-seated divisions within the party between its hardliners and those like Yusuf who wish to move it more towards the centre.
READ MORE: 'What is our vision?': Inside the quiet anger brewing within the SNP
Reform are, of course, a mass of such contradictions. Their ranks are made up largely of former Tory members from the right of that party, while their electoral base is provided mainly by former Labour voters.
A party that faces far right on immigration and law and order, for example, and occasionally leftward – on nationalisation, sacking fat cat bosses at Thames Water, and claims to be 'the party of working people' – is not just opportunist, it is organically unstable.
Reform UK now has hundreds of inexperienced councillors running dozens of local authorities, as well as a brace of new mayors who are expected to deliver on the promises made to the electorate in May.
But they won't, of course.
Reform's record in office will come under intense scrutiny with inevitable consequences.
Let's not forget that Farage's two previous political iterations, Ukip and the Brexit Party, also imploded amid bitter acrimony.
The Reform which was seen on the streets after the Southport stabbings in July last year, for example, belongs to the far right of any spectrum.
Furthermore, parties like his that grow too fast tend to come unstuck just as quickly. The SNP are a case in point, with membership now one-third of the size it was in the aftermath of the 2014 independence referendum.
Without a clear ideological grounding, Reform are just as vulnerable to the iron law of politics that insists there must be a unique material reason for their existence.
To stop Reform, you need to combat the reasons for their rise. Tony Blair once airily promised to be 'tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime', admittedly to no avail.
Intelligent analysis of the reasons behind Farage's popularity – and indeed Starmer's unpopularity – must surely be the starting point for any successful strategy to halt their advance. So the question is do we, as Reform UK's opponents, merely coalesce around a 'Stop Farage' coalition as First Minister John Swinney advocates? No, certainly not.
First Minister John Swinney (Image: PA) That would be fatal for it would be seen by the wider electorate as aligning with those responsible for the failures inherent in that 'Broken Britain' sentiment. That kind of mindless 'popular front' achieves nothing.
Do we instead confront the concerns voters have about the fact Britain is 'broken?' Yes, we do.
Do we campaign for an alternative programme that addresses the real concerns voters have on the economy, the state of the NHS, social care, education, the climate, law and order and independence? Yes. Exactly that. In other words, we confront the causes of Reform as well as Reform itself.
Periods of acute political polarisation like this one offer opportunities for those bold enough to seize them.
The anti-poll tax campaign, the anti-war movement, and the Palestinian cause today, are classic examples of this phenomenon.
Above all, however, those of us on the left of politics need to encourage Scotland's working-class majority to get more involved in campaigns and initiatives that are aimed at securing improvements in the quality of life they want for themselves and their children.
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Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Telegraph
Mel Stride: We will never do a deal with Reform
Sir Mel Stride has vowed the Tories will never make a pact with Reform as he attacked the party's 'fantasy economics'. The shadow chancellor said Nigel Farage's party would put the economy on 'the road to ruin' and said: 'I don't want to be a populist that runs around saying we can do this, that and everything else for you without any plan behind it. I just think that's recklessness.' Sir Mel also attacked Rachel Reeves's 'huge borrowing splurge' to fund spending plans until the next election, but warned that Reform's pledges were even more 'dangerous'. While some influential Tories have called for the parties to work more closely together, Sir Mel said the Conservatives would never strike a deal under his watch. 'I don't want to get involved with a party that peddles fantasy economics,' he told The Telegraph. 'Why would I want to do that? I want to be with a party that is going to be four-square behind fiscal responsibility and manage our economy in a way that doesn't imperil the livelihoods of people up and down our country.' His comments come as the Conservatives seek to fight back against Reform, which has surged past the party in the polls to take the position of Labour's de facto main opposition. Many observers believe the Tories are still paying the price of Liz Truss's mini-Budget of unfunded tax cuts, which triggered the market chaos that led to her downfall. The Conservatives' polling numbers collapsed in the wake of the crisis and have never recovered. Sir Mel has chosen to disavow the policies of Ms Truss as the Conservatives seek to rebuild. He also warned that a Reform victory may lead to a sequel. Reform's central election pledge is to raise the amount people can earn before they start paying tax to £20,000. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has estimated this could cost up to £80bn, although Reform has insisted its plans would be fully funded by sweeping cuts to Whitehall departments and said it would not cut taxes until it had slashed spending first. However, raising the tax threshold is just one of several costly promises made by Mr Farage's party. Reform has also pledged to cut corporation tax and abolish the two-child benefit cap that restricts payments to families with three or more children. Sir Mel said: '[They're] promising everybody everything they want to hear, without any credible plan as to how they're going to pay for any of this. Certainly, if Reform were in No 10 now, I think the economy would be in a very dangerous position.' While he now spends much of his time in attack mode, Sir Mel offers up little of substance when it comes to policies of his own. He says Britain is failing the young and suggests the Government should do more to crack down on Mickey Mouse degrees that do little to increase people's job prospects. But just as he suggests universities may have a role in sharing the financial burden of dead-end degrees, he stops himself to insist the proposal is just 'blue-sky thinking in an interview'. This caution has allowed Reform to steal the limelight with its eye-catching proposals as the Tories struggle to get their mojo back. Sir Mel, who almost lost his Central Devon seat at the last election, admits his party 'lost connection entirely with the British electorate and we have to win that back – and that will take time'. For now, he believes the best way to do that is by highlighting the flaws in Reform's policy platform. 'What we've got to do is be out there making the case that people need to think long and hard about whether the numbers add up, because if they don't, that is the road to ruin,' Sir Mel says. 'Right now, Reform is ahead in the polls [and] they are out there saying they will take everybody out of tax up to £20,000 at a cost of £50bn to £80bn – about a third of what we spend on the NHS every year, with its 1.3m employees. Really? How are they going to fund that?' The Conservatives' slump in the polls had to put pressure on Kemi Badenoch but Sir Mel said she was 'absolutely' the right person to lead the party. This is Sir Mel's 11th interview of the day and he's only halfway through his commitments. Stationed in the shadow cabinet room in Westminster, he's armed with two copies of the cornflower blue spending review book, one of which is covered in scribbled notes that include a reminder to talk about GDP figures out that morning to attack lines such as 'summer of speculation, fear of what will come'. Sir Mel, a self-confessed history buff, suggests the Tories would be prepared to take the tough decisions to slash the size of the state if they got back into power. The man who led a series of sweeping reforms to the benefits system insists 'we need to get a grip on welfare' as he opened the door to a conversation about the NHS. While qualifying that the health service is an 'absolutely vital part of what we are as a civilised society', he signals there will be choices to come 'around what the health service does'. Sir Mel says: 'What is possible at different points in time changes. For example, the idea of my grandparents going to hospital, getting both hips replaced and leaping around like a mountain goat within weeks would have been entirely fancy. We have drugs today that can do things that we didn't have the drugs to do in the past. So it will be an evolving terrain. 'But my fundamental point is that if you run a health service that is not productive, that is consuming ever larger levels of resources and is not really producing in the way that it can, then you're not serving the British people properly.' While he is reluctant to talk specific policies, he suggests one of his priorities is to address tax traps that can leave people facing punishing tax rates for every extra hour worked, including the so-called 60pc trap where people who earn above £100,000 gradually have their personal allowance withdrawn. 'There are definitely aspects of the complications within the tax system that slow economic activity,' he says. 'The personal allowance gets withdrawn above a certain level of income and that leads to high marginal tax rates. 'The interaction with the benefit system can produce similar effects to the withdrawal of child benefit where you can actually reach marginal tax rates of 70pc or more. So there are all sorts of things that we need to think very deeply about within our tax system.' Young people are also firmly on his mind, with Sir Mel frequently citing the fact that the average Tory voter is 63. He wants to change that. 'We have to have a big, bold, credible offer that shows younger people that they can have the opportunities that I had as a young man. The education that will lead to higher-paying jobs so they can get on the housing ladder.' He has put forward a proposal for a 'Headstart' scheme under which a person in their first job would see their first £5,000 of National Insurance paid not to HMRC but into a personal savings pot which they could use as a down-payment for a house. Before he can be drawn on detail, he steps back again, saying the proposal is 'just one idea we're discussing'. 'We will have the answers through time,' he insists. 'I'm not the Chancellor, I'm not in the Treasury.' Judging by the polls, he will have to work hard to change that.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
A useful enemy? Why Tories and Reform are calling net zero policy into question
Just as Labour forges ahead with net zero policies, the chief energy spokespeople of the UK's two main rightwing opposition parties are openly questioning long-settled climate science, in what seems like a mission to discredit and confuse the whole issue. It is a development that would have been unthinkable just three years ago, when the four-decade-long cross-party consensus on the climate still held firm. Even up to last year's general election, every mainland party other than Reform UK campaigned on a commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But now the Conservative leadership has abandoned that target, and Reform – riding high in the opinion polls and celebrating a 30% vote share in the local elections – wants to make it the key battleground, after immigration, for the next general election. How on earth did we get here? In truth, Reform, which was founded in 2018, has long had climate-sceptic tendencies – despite Nigel Farage's short dalliance with pro-green politics in 2021, when he was paid to promote tree-growing by a carbon credit trading company. The party's doubt about climate science, however, appears to be worsening. Richard Tice, its energy spokesperson, told the Guardian: 'Scientists do not all have a consensus on this. Some view things slightly differently … Do I think that [the carbon dioxide that humans are putting into the atmosphere] will definitely change the climate? No. There is no evidence that it is.' This is not in accordance with the views of the vast majority of scientists. Tice suggested that rather than net zero, the answer to climate breakdown would be 'planting trees' and adapting. 'Temperatures were higher 3,000 years ago and humans adapted,' he said. More surprising is that the Conservatives' Andrew Bowie, the acting shadow energy secretary, who once declared he wanted Scotland to be 'one of the lead nations worldwide in achieving net zero', has taken a similar line. He told the Guardian that the world's leading authority on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was 'biased' and that the net zero by 2050 target was 'arbitrary and not based on science'. This claim was rejected by climate scientists, who confirmed that the UK's legally binding target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – put in place by Theresa May – sprang from the best global scientific advice. Emily Shuckburgh, the director of Cambridge Zero, the University of Cambridge's climate initiative, said: 'The 2050 target is not arbitrary but based on what science says is required globally and an assessment by the Climate Change Committee of what is appropriate for the UK to deliver in that context.' The breakdown of the climate consensus, which began after Boris Johnson left Downing Street in 2022, appears complete. The main difference on the issue now between Reform and the Conservatives is that the former would scrap net zero altogether and the latter may keep it, but for a later date. Why have both parties turned so decisively away from climate policy? Opinion polls show most people in the UK are concerned about the climate crisis and support policies to tackle it. Reform voters are no different, according to recent polling by More in Common commissioned by the campaign group Global Witness. It found that two-thirds of UK adults are worried about increasing damage from the climate crisis, and 71% of Reform-leaning voters support higher taxes on oil and gas companies. Luke Tryl, the UK director of More in Common, said net zero was not an important issue to most people who backed Reform. 'It's not what drives them,' he said. 'Seven out of 10 say they vote Reform because of immigration. Where there are concerns on net zero, it's generally over fairness – that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the burden.' But he is clear that despite widespread media coverage attacking net zero, and despite Reform's good showing in polls, 'any idea that Britain has turned into a nation of net zero sceptics is for the birds'. So is this positioning for the sake of business? Reform and the Conservatives frequently claim to be supporting business and jobs through their stance, but actually business voices have been clear in their support for net zero. Tania Kumar, the head of net zero policy at the Confederation of British Industry, said: 'Net zero and the new green economy are an economic growth opportunity for the UK. Businesses understand that.' A different reason was suggested by Nick Mabey, a founder director of E3G, a green thinktank, who suggested that opposing net zero was in line with the small-government, anti-statist approach of some on the right. 'They see it as state-intrusive, it doesn't fit with their deregulation instincts,' he said. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion But people tend to like regulation that keeps them and their environment safe – witness the sewage scandal, a clear demonstration of what companies do when lightly regulated. Mabey suggested pursuing deregulation was more in the interest of 'elite' backers of populists than their voters. Reform's environmental policy is extremely complex. Despite its strong stance against net zero, it does not see itself as anti-environment. It supports an amendment to the planning bill that would require swift bricks in all new houses, blocked by the government, and wants to take sewage out of British rivers, in part by banning foreign investors from owning water companies. Tice speaks enthusiastically of the need to plant more trees, recycle more and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis, even though he casts doubt on the underlying science. Net zero seems to be some kind of 'useful enemy', argues Shaun Spiers, the executive director of Green Alliance, a thinktank. 'The cost of living crisis is biting and populist politicians are casting around for something to blame it on,' he said. 'Net zero, which sounds remote and technocratic, is a convenient target. It's replaced the EU as the thing on which all our ills can be blamed, often by the same people.' And there is good money in it too, he added. 'It's also worth noting that there is serious money behind the assault on net zero: it is not disinterested.' Reform and the Conservatives have prominent donors and supporters with a climate-denying outlook. For instance, Kemi Badenoch and her family recently spent a week as guests of the donor Neil Record, who chairs Net Zero Watch, an offshoot of the UK's main climate sceptic thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Record also helped fund Badenoch's campaign for Tory leader, giving £10,000. He wrote in the Telegraph that it was 'debatable in detail' whether burning fossil fuels increased carbon dioxide and caused dangerous global heating. One of the biggest donors to Reform is the shipping magnate Terence Mordaunt, the head of First Corporate Shipping. His personal company, Corporate Consultants, has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to Reform. He was previously chair of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and is now a trustee. Despite the feelings of Reform voters, Tice is clear: the party will make net zero its second most important battleground, after immigration, and his party appears united on that. But among Tories in parliament there is still a strong green caucus – the Conservative Environment Network (CEN), which still has 50 MPs. Badenoch's review of policy, including net zero, is still ongoing, despite her public attacks on net zero. Sam Hall, the director of CEN, warned that Badenoch was putting her party on a collision course with not just Labour and the British public but the laws of physics. 'The net zero target is driven not by optimism but by scientific reality: without it, climate change impacts and costs will continue to worsen,' he said. 'Abandon the science and voters will start to doubt the Conservative party's seriousness on the clean energy transition, damaging both growth and the fight against climate change.'
BBC News
6 hours ago
- BBC News
Reform UK and Tories win Higham Ferrers council by-election
Reform UK and the Conservative Party have picked up more seats on North Northamptonshire Council after a was called in the Higham Ferrers ward after Liberal Democrat candidate John Ratcliffe died prior to last month's elections, which saw Reform UK take overall control of the went to the polls for the rearranged election on Thursday, and the results saw Reform UK's Mark Haddon newly elected, while Conservative councillor Jennie Bone retained her turnout was 31.1%, just below the 31.6% average for the wider North Northamptonshire Council vote. Haddon earned the most votes in the ward with 656, and the 76-year-old told the Local Democracy Reporting Service he was "apprehensive, excited and a little bit shell-shocked" after his who went to school and was married in Higham Ferrers, said it would be his first venture into politics."I considered initially that I'm too old to start a new career, shall we say," he said"It was something I didn't really think I was going to do, but I'd like to think that we can get council finances under control."A lot of what I got on the doorstep was 'We will vote for you so long as you're not Labour or Conservative.'" Bone was elected with 559 votes, just three more than the next Reform UK candidate - Elisa Perna - in results will not materially change the make-up of North Northamptonshire Council, with Reform UK sitting on a comfortable majority from the earlier are now 40 Reform UK, 14 Conservatives, eight Greens, four Labour and one Liberal Democrat and Independent councillor on the Tories had formerly led both North and West Northamptonshire Councils since their inception in 2021. Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
