As some folk laugh at the lunacy that is Donald Trump’s second term as US president, a commonly heard view is that “it could never happen here – we’re better than that.” I hear it quite a lot, that somehow that however bad our own politics is, Trump’s ludicrous MAGA movement is just for ‘red neck‘ Americans. How complacent have we all become?
The latest YouGov poll shows Nigel Farage’s private company, the far right Reform UK Ltd, would win a general election if it was held today. The Fagash Furher would have 271 MPs. Not enough for a majority Reform government but as the largest party it could potentially form a coalition with the Conservatives and the more unhinged parts of Ulster Unionism. Luckily, a general election is at least four years away, so Keir Starmer’s Labour has the chance to learn how to do politics properly, instead of making massive blunders like removing the Winter Fuel Payments to pensioners and trying to cut benefits for the sick and disabled.
The idea that “it could never happen here” is absurd because it already has. In 2016, the UK committed the greatest act of self-harm imaginable by voting to leave the European Union, making us permanently worse off and losing much of the soft power EU membership had given us. We fell for the lies of Farage and the ambitious, populist comedy clown car show Boris Johnson, three years later putting him in Downing Street. How Russian fascist President Putin laughed, openly backing a Brexit that he believed would weaken western Europe, allowing him to continue with his power grab.
Now Farage, the ultimate privately educated super rich establishment figure, leads his own business, which masquerades as a political party, and, if you believe the polls, is poised to form the next government, by a combination of anti-foreigner bluster and simplistic, populist answers to immensely complicated questions.
Yet, apparently we love a man who exists on the far right of British politics, a heartbeat away from Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson. It would be wrong to call the litigious Farage a fascist, so I won’t do that, but I would describe him and his – and it is his, and his alone – political party as a version of Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists, but without the brown shirts which have been replaced by suits.
And let us be very clear what he stands for. A low tax small state which could not include a state-funded NHS. He opposes measures to fight the fact of climate change. He supports the further erosion of workers’ rights. He is against all migration. A man who tells it like it is, a man you would have a pint with, is nothing more than a snake oil salesman. MAGA is about enriching the already rich. Trump admirer and sometime Trump groupie Farage is from the same political playground. He is also the most effective politician in a country that apparently hates politicians. Farage is hugely popular for making us all poorer. Who says he couldn’t pull it off again?
I am concerned about the rise of far right populism in the form of Farage, but there is a solution for Keir Starmer’s Labour government: stop trying to imitate Reform UK Ltd’s slogans. Don’t bang on about migration, don’t cut the benefits of the sick and disabled and restore the winter fuel payments. Then, improve the NHS to the levels enjoyed under the Labour government of 1997 to 2010. And, crucially, take major steps to ensure that those at the bottom and those in the middle are, and as importantly feel, they are better off.
Don’t worry what it costs, either. Borrow whatever it takes to repair the country’s infrastructures and make our public services great. Make public transport efficient and affordable. Make the correct argument that the change to sustainable energy will be of benefit to the people and to businesses. Labour has a massive majority. Don’t give a toss what the Daily Mail, Sun, Express, Telegraph, Times, Observer and the increasingly unhinged BBC has to say. Do not pander to them. Stop trying to out-Farage Farage because you never will.
I happen to think that a Farage government would make Liz Truss’s look competent by comparison. Massive unfunded tax cuts for the very rich, the destruction of public services to pay for them.
The former prime minister David Cameron once described Reform UK Ltd’s predecessor before last Ukip as “ a party of nutcases, fruitcakes and closet racists”. That’s mostly true today, except that much of Reform UK Ltd’s membership and all its MPS, are openly racist these days. And here we are, smugly sitting around saying things like: “let’s give Farage a chance, he can’t do any worse” which of course we shouldn’t because he would, and America’s Trump shit show “could never happen here.”
Labour has four years to take back the initiative and control the agenda by concentrating on things that matter to most of us. Perhaps, Starmer has been rubbish at politics because he is not a ‘career politician’, like Farage, and we know he will never be an inspiring orator, but he is an immensely clever bloke who, having coming from a poor, unprivileged background, should better understand the struggle life is for so many people.
My feeling is that in the next year or so, Reform UK Ltd will have peaked, particularly when and if Labour gets its shit together and concentrates on the things that really matter, as we say and if the Conservative returns to the centre right of British politics, insteading of trying to be a Pound Shop version of Reform UK Ltd.
I’d just like to make politics boring again, with our elected representatives dumping their egos at the door of parliament and working for us. We currently have the most working class government in our history. If they can’t get to grips with what working people want, then Farage certainly won’t, that’s for sure.
