This article was originally published in May 2025, in issue #1 of International Marxism, international political journal of International Socialist Alternative. Click here to buy/subscribe.
A superficial reading would suggest that Britain is bucking the global political trend with the victory of Labour in last year’s General Election. In reality, Britain’s home-grown Trumpism is finding fertile ground to grow.
Reform Rises to the Top
Labour came to power last year on the back of a landslide in the House of Commons – taking a massive 411 of the total 650 seats.
This represented, above all, a complete rejection of the Conservative Party’s almost 15 years in power in Britain. It was a rejection of the reviled party of austerity, which had torn itself apart, faced a string of scandals under Boris Johnson, provoked a near instant economic crash during Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership, and much more.
But this did not translate into a mass outpouring of support for Labour. Indeed, the election was marked by a historic low turnout, and while Labour’s vote share increased mildly (from 32.1% to 33.7% of the vote), independents and smaller parties in Parliament saw the biggest swings. This included record votes for the Green Party, as well as the vibrant campaign and victory of left-wing ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, along with anti-war “Gaza independents.” These events highlighted that there was a profound lack of enthusiasm for Keir Starmer’s neo-Blairite platform even before coming into Downing Street (the UK prime minister’s residence).
But the real winner of the elections, in many ways, was Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. In the party’s first General Election outing, they won 14.3% of the vote – only 4% behind the Tories themselves. While they only have four seats in Parliament (down from five after the departure of Rupert Lowe from the party), this is only due to the electoral system, which delivered what The Economist described as Britain’s “least representative ever” general election. The four seats do not reveal the enormous rise in support for Reform that has taken place – and that is continuing. Elections, after all, are only a snapshot of a mood at a given time. Reform is quickly becoming Britain’s main opposition party and is now the most popular in the polls.
Since the elections, Labour has been beset by problems almost from day one. Support for Starmer’s government has been in freefall as it tries to steer the crisis-ridden ship of British capitalism that it took over from the Tories. This crisis runs right to the core of British capitalism. Along with the global problems of the system, it is also rooted in Britain’s long-running economic decline, with anaemic growth propped up largely by a parasitic financial sector. Meanwhile, productivity growth has failed to materialise, infrastructure has atrophied, and living standards have fallen – and Labour has no answers.
Within weeks of entering 10 Downing Street, talk had begun about a “financial black hole” left behind by the outgoing Tory government. To plug this, Labour claimed, it would be necessary to make “tough decisions” (a euphemism for attacks on workers’ living standards in order to keep the capitalist machine running). Such decisions have included cuts to winter fuel payments (a previously universal welfare benefit for retirees), and the maintenance of the two-child benefit cap that has kept 250,000 children trapped in poverty – both of which have proven deeply unpopular. Now, the party is planning to cut a further £5 billion off the welfare bill, which will mainly be achieved via exceptionally cruel attacks on disabled people. Labour’s planned rises in military spending, at the behest of U.S. imperialism, will no doubt mean further anti-worker attacks down the line.
In any other circumstance, this would be an ideal situation for the official opposition. But the Tory party – the longest standing bourgeois party in the world – is itself in its deepest, most existential crisis in living memory, having been thoroughly discredited over the last decade. Unable to profit off the deep unpopularity of the Labour government, the ailing Tories have opened up a vacuum of opposition, which Reform has stepped into. Recent opinion polls show Nigel Farage to be the most popular (or at least, the least unpopular) politician in Britain, and speculation has even begun around the question of whether he could be the next Prime Minister.
Capitalism Lurching to the Right
Beneath this growing competition between the UK’s biggest political parties, there is a convergence among many of the key political points. For all the capitalist parties, the main scapegoat for the crisis of their system is immigration, especially the ongoing refugee crisis.
While the Tories made this a central plank of their own program in their latter years of government (as well as other “culture wars” issues such as attacks on trans rights), this wasn’t enough to save them from electoral ruin. However, the idea that “immigration is the problem” has gained a certain amount of traction as it has been relentlessly pushed by all the establishment parties and the media for years, and is a key driver of Reform’s meteoric rise.
In response, Labour has moved further right, trying to cash in on appearing “tough” on refugees, in an attempt to stave off their right-wing challengers. They have convinced themselves that by being “Reform-lite,” people won’t want to vote for the real thing. In practice, across Europe, this tactic only further fuels the right, who stand more clearly for those policies, now only further legitimized and entrenched in political discussion.
Given this, it is unsurprising that the constant rhetoric from all the major parties has had an impact on consciousness, with attitudes toward migration as well as trans rights growing less positive in recent years, according to polls. The establishment has used the “small boats crisis” of refugees crossing the English Channel as a cover for problems such as declining services, homelessness (of which the UK has among the highest rates in Europe), and the general social breakdown of society.
But does this mean there is a broad shift across all of society toward right-wing ideas? Far from it. It is barely two years since an enormous strike wave rocked Britain, sparked by the Tories’ grinding down of public sector pay, inflation, and a rapidly rising cost of living, and the poor state of public services more generally. The “Enough Is Enough” campaign, which was launched by some prominent union leaders, put forward basic pro-worker policies such as above-inflation pay rises, a cut in energy bills, nationalizing utilities, and taxing the rich. It saw over 700,000 sign up almost overnight. But the campaign was quickly wound up by the trade union leaders, determined to keep the movement from going “too far,” including towards political struggle. The strike wave resulted in some improved pay offers for different groups of workers, but as a whole, it came short of a decisive victory. Nonetheless, it demonstrated the huge potential that existed, and still exists, for a fighting left alternative to put forward pro-worker policies.
At the same time, the far-right riots that took place across Britain last summer, as well as sizable demonstrations supporting (the former leader of the extreme-right English Defence League) Tommy Robinson, highlight the growing strength and confidence of more extreme right-wing and fascistic forces. While less consolidated than more developed movements in some countries, a hardening core of the far right poses an immediate threat to migrants, queer people and working class activists.
Farage’s Balancing Act
Over the years, Nigel Farage has carefully curated an image as a pint-drinking, straight-talking “man of the people.” His populist campaigning has seen him join the farmers’ protests in front of Parliament against Labour’s taxes on inheritance, speaking out over energy prices and the strains on healthcare, and calling for the reindustrialization of Britain. Of course, a closer look reveals his true colors. He is a longtime advocate of privatization in the NHS, and recently voted against even the limited measures in Labour’s new Workers’ Rights Bill, which would ban “exploitative zero hours” contracts, and remove some (though far from all) of the Tories’ draconian restrictions on the right to strike. This belies his real allegiance to the capitalist class – as does the rise in big business donors to Reform.
Farage’s right populism is part of his long-running effort to take over from the Conservatives as the main right-wing force in British politics. His starting point is basically the same political stance as that of the “Trumpified” Tory right-wing, but unconstrained by the tainted image of the Tory party itself, which has become synonymous with corruption, incompetence and which is seen as as the “nasty party” responsible for vicious attacks on workers’ living conditions. For Farage, this means a careful balancing act. The demagogic rhetoric is a key ingredient of his support, but just as crucial is an appeal to the establishment, the media, and the corporate backers necessary for a party to be seen as a “credible” manager of British capitalism.
In addition, the extreme right is generally still unpopular among workers and the middle class in Britain. Farage knows this well, and has made efforts to avoid a far-right image for his own party – particularly distancing Reform UK from figures like Tommy Robinson. This was despite Elon Musk making a rather extraordinary intervention on X, arguing that Tommy Robinson should be allowed to join and possibly lead Reform. Of course, in practice, Robinson and Farage work in tandem. The rise of Reform serves to boost the more extreme far-right and fascist forces on the ground.
This balancing act has already proven difficult for Reform, with one of their five MPs, Rupert Lowe, now suspended from the party – officially on the grounds of workplace bullying, but coming in the context of a growing political row between the right and the further right wings of Reform. Lowe had previously been hinted at by Elon Musk as a potential replacement for Farage. Farage has also been forced to hit back against his U.S. counterparts, defending the UK’s military capabilities after comments from JD Vance about being “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.” The U.S. regime is far from popular in Britain, and Reform’s association with the chaos of Trumpism may prove to be a stumbling block – but it is unlikely to stop Reform’s rise to prominence overall.
The Race to Replace Labour
With the future of the Labour government looking grim and the Tory Party going through a historic, potentially terminal decline, the question is posed: “Who is the opposition to this government?”
While the Tories are still His Majesty’s Official Opposition – the largest opposition party in Parliament – Reform is polling consistently higher than them, and even higher than Labour themselves. But enormous space exists for a left alternative to cut across the rise of Reform.
The election victories of left-wing and anti-war independents in last year’s elections were built on the back of a huge revulsion with Starmer’s agenda. Of these left-wing gains, the campaign to re-elect Jeremy Corbyn was the most significant. As the former leader of the Labour Party, whose left-wing reformist program attracted hundreds of thousands of young and working class people, his stand against Labour (however reluctant on his own part) after being expelled from the party mobilised hundreds of activists who were prepared to go up against the Starmerite machine. The lessons of the 2024 elections are clear: the two-party system is breaking down in Britain, just as it is around the world; and it is more possible than ever to stand against Labour and win.
A left party rooted in working-class struggle is urgently needed to cut across the rise of the right. While the short-lived Enough Is Enough campaign showed the popularity of a pro-worker platform, the experience of it being prematurely wound down also shows that any new formation needs to be democratically controlled and accountable to rank and file members. It also shows the importance of fighting for a new approach in our trade unions – breaking from the approach of cozying up to Keir Starmer and the Labour right – and instead building a real fighting opposition. A new left party, built out of struggle and with a socialist program to take the wealth out of the hands of the super rich, to fund a pay rise for all workers, fully-funded public services and take a clear stand against militarism, would be the only force capable of cutting across the ascendant British right.
