The racist, far right Reform UK party won five seats in the general election
Friday 05 July 2024
Nigel Farage, Reform UK leader, wasn’t happy with anti-racists (Picture: Guy Smallman)
Campaign group Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) disrupted Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s press conference in Westminster on Friday.
Some eight SUTR activists took on Farage on the day he won a seat in Clacton, Essex. Reform UK won five seats with around 14 percent of the total vote. Richard Tice, chair of Reform UK and recently elected in the Boston and Skegness, also attended the event.
The first protestor immediately heckled Farage as soon as he began to speak. “You want to sell off the NHS. You’re racist,” he shouted. After security forcibly removed the protester, the second activist instantly continued the barrage.
As Farage quipped, “This is good preparation for the House of Commons I suppose,” the third protester stood up to slam Farage’s racist politics.
Farage asked, “Anymore for anymore?” as the crowd booed the demonstrators. The fourth protester announced, “Actually yes! Nigel, you’re a fraud!”
One Reform supporter can be heard to ask, “What is going on?” amid the consecutive interventions from the floor.
Some SUTR protesters spoke to Socialist Worker after their intervention. Raj, an anti-racist activist, said, “It’s important to show that there’s a resistance, and give people the confidence to resist as well.
“We’ve already seen how toxic the debate has become, how the focus has shifted onto migrants, asylum seekers and refugees.
“This has been a long time coming. The centre ground is offering no solutions to the problem. In fact they are the problem, and that leads people to looking for alternatives.”
Jo, an SUTR activist in London, said, “I think it’s important that people know this is a man that can be challenged and should be challenged.
“Everywhere he goes, he should face resistance for the division he is trying to sow into our communities.”
Protester Sue from Manchester agreed. “It’s important that we put a marker down and say that Farage isn’t welcome here,” she said. “He’s a rich conservative, he’s a racist, he’s here to attack the NHS and divide us.
“If we don’t do anything, there is a strong chance of racism and fascism growing in Britain. But that is not inevitable, and it does depend on what we do. And we can do something to stop it.
“We have to build a really broad based campaign. It has to go into the unions, into the colleges, into the schools, into the estates and everywhere.”
Jo agreed, saying, “What’s important now is that we are a part of anti-racist resistance. We have to galvanise those people together.”
The anti-racist movement must escalate to challenge Farage and the rise of the far right.
‘I can only imagine how much airtime they will give him now.’
A jubilent Farage boasted that “this is the beginning of the end of the Conservative Party”, and claimed his anti-immigration party was “coming for Labour” next.
As the reality of Reform’s success sinks in, the media’s coverage of Nigel Farage during the election campaign, even before it was announced he was standing as a candidate and had taken over as leader, has been called into question.
Despite having no MPs at the time, the Reform leader received significantly more airtime and column space than the leaders of other smaller parties. This was the finding of research by Loughborough University which composed a series of reports on UK-wide television and print media reporting in the 2024 general election.
The analysis found that Reform UK earned 10 percent of overall press quotations compared to 2 percent for the Lib Dems, and ‘the Greens, SNP, and Plaid Cymru collectively accounting for less than 1 percent of quotation time.’
Des Freedman, Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, described how the ‘media’s obsession with Farage,’ has ‘only served to normalise right-wing arguments on immigration and the economy and to further marginalise candidates with progressive ideas.’
The media’s disproportional devotion to Farage during the last six weeks did not go unnoticed by the public.
“Who did most to enable Reform? Probably the media, who relentlessly and disproportionately plugged Farage and his minority party and their toxic politics of misinformation and fake fear of foreigners,” Alex Morss, ecologist and children’s author wrote on X.
Conservationist Stephen Barlow agreed, saying: “Without the media, the Farage/Reform bubble would never have happened. Firstly, the BBC repeatedly, unnecessarily platformed, Farage even though he’s only just become an MP. Plus, Farage has been parasitic on the right-wing propaganda in the Tory press.”
“Nigel Farage won thanks to billionaire owned media. Jeremy Corbyn and 4 Green MPs won thanks to OUR movement – which runs on people’s passion, commitment and solidarity alone. No wonder they’re so scared of us,” said Grace Blakeley, a political journalist and commentator.
“The media pretending to be shocked about Reform winning so many seats / coming 2nd After they gave Farage wall-to-wall in-depth coverage for weeks amplifying his hateful message day after day after day,” was another comment.
But Farage’s hogging of the media limelight, and, more importantly, the media allowing him to hog the spotlight, is nothing new.
In 2018, he reportedly set the record in achieving the joint most Question Time appearances this century by making his 32nd appearance on the BBC show. The tally was matched only by former Chancellor Ken Clarke. Analysis at the time showed that since 2010, UKIP had appeared on almost one in four Question Time programmes in the last seven years, despite never having more than two MPs. The Greens, meanwhile, who unlike UKIP had consistently had a MP for years, had only appeared on 7 percent of the shows.
Question Times’ panel this week also raised eyebrows for failing to have a representative from the Green Party, despite having figures from Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, and Reform.
“Question Time has constantly showcased Nigel Farage and other far-right creeps and crooks,” wrote lecturer and writer Tom Scott in response to the July 5th show.
Following Farage’s win in Clacton, concern has also been expressed about how much airtime he will get now that he is an MP. As Christian Christensen, a Professor at Stockholm University said:
“So, Farage won. Since the BBC gave him massive coverage allowing him to promote his bigotry when he wasn’t even an MP, I can only imagine how much airtime they will now give him.”
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
What is the real threat from Reform UK? – Diane Abbott
With far-right parties making major gains recently in Europe, it’s worth paying close scrutiny to Farage’s party and taking the threat it poses seriously, writes Diane Abbott.
There are only two people who can realistically be prime minister on July 5. One of them is Rishi Sunak and the other is Keir Starmer. For innumerable reasons, I would far rather it was Keir Starmer and fervently hope that is the outcome.
But this is a very strange election. The traditional polling is highly consistent (the MRP polls are a different matter). They generally show the Labour party polling in the low 40s, while the Tories are stuck around 20 per cent. That is around half of their vote recorded in the 2019 general election.
All other parties, bar one, are showing very modest gains or losses except one. That is Reform UK. (Of course in Scotland, the picture is quite a bit different, but that is a separate story).
The Labour vote has undoubtedly recovered from 2019. We may even exceed our vote share of 2017. We shall see.
But the largest and most dramatic change has been the slump in the Tory vote and the rise of Reform UK. If we compare the current poll-tracker average of votes to the outcome of the last general election, the Tories have lost 22.8 per cent in vote share, and Reform has gained 13.8 per cent.
So, the Tories have lost votes to some combination of parties (possibly including Labour). But the vulture that is feeding on the Tory carcass is a Reform one.
We should put aside the nonsense that in its various incarnations, Ukip, the Brexit Party and Reform UK has taken votes equally from Labour and the Tories. They do not and never have. The Tory commentariat is forced to admit the truth now only because the Tories are in catastrophic crisis. They are being routed by Reform UK.
This matters for the future of British politics for a number of reasons. Across the G7 countries we are seeing the parties of the traditional centre and centre-right giving political ground and losing votes to the far right.
The far right were the big winners in the recent elections in Germany, France and Italy. In the US Joe Biden’s centrism is both capitulating and losing to Donald Trump. British politics fits into that pattern.
There is already a close political and even organisational relationship between the Tory Party and Reform UK and its predecessors.
One previous Tory minister complained that both his Conservative Association treasurer and secretary were ex-Ukip (having returned under Boris Johnson). Tory figures such as Suella Braverman have called for an alliance with Reform UK and Farage has boasted that he will take over the Tories. Politically, he may already be close to achieving that among the Tory membership base.
Given these circumstances, and if the consistent polls are to be believed, the Reform UK phenomenon is not about to fade away any time soon. This is especially true unless there is a rapid turnaround in the fortunes of the British economy, which is not at all in line with the consensus view among economic forecasters.
There will be no tears shed for the possible decimation of the Tories. At the same time, we have to understand Reform UK if we are to tackle it and defeat it.
If we want to characterise a party we must examine its programme, its personnel, its policies and its alliances. In short, who does it stand for?
Reform UK is not known for its economic programme, which is a pity. Because its manifesto (which it claims is a “contract”) alone clearly outlines the character of the party.
Let me list some of those policies. Reform UK would scrap income tax under £20,000 (which of course is a far bigger benefit to someone on £50,000 than someone on £16,000 a year). It would abolish inheritance tax altogether. It would also abolish all tax on profits under £100,000 a year and abolish IR35 for sole traders. It would also lift the VAT threshold to £150,000 a year and abolish business rates for small companies.
We should not neglect its social-economic policies, which include introducing an NHS voucher scheme along with tax relief on private healthcare. It would cut or abolish stamp duty even on homes worth over £1.5 million, cut foreign aid by 50 per cent, cut government departmental budgets by 5 per cent across the board (except the military, the police and other arms of the state) and scrap Net Zero climate targets altogether.
This is so obviously a programme for the well-to-do middle classes it is almost a stereotype. It has nothing to say about growth, about tackling climate change, the cost-of-living crisis, the failures in our public services, rising inequality, except how it will add to them.
Workers or workers’ rights? Forget it. The poor and the oppressed? They can go to hell.
This is reinforced by a look at its policies. Because, as far as ordinary voters are concerned, it only has one policy, to “stop the boats.”
This is the only policy that it is popularly associated with. In fact, as the manifesto says, their policy is to freeze all immigration, except in parts of healthcare.
This not simply a party of the middle class, but of the angry middle class. They are angry because banks were bailed out in the banking crisis, while many of them went bust. They are angry because lockdowns were completely mishandled and many more suffered or went bankrupt. They are angry because the big business profiteers then kicked them when they were down in the inflation crisis.
But they direct their anger at people who look like me, black and Asian people, and Muslims. And at anyone they think is a foreigner.
A glance at their list of candidates confirms this pattern. Many are former City traders, failed businesspeople, property developers, small business owners, grifters and charlatans. And failed politicians from other parties.
Some of them are so angry they are friends on Facebook with a fascist or say that Hitler was praiseworthy.
By far their most important sponsor and ally was Trump, who engineered Farage standing aside for Boris Johnson in 2019, after Trump had a string of public clashes with Theresa May. That was their big moment. Until now.
So, whatever the outcome of the two elections in July and November, we must clearly understand the threat of Reform UK and treat it with all seriousness.
- You can follow Diane Abbott on on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
- This article was originally published by The Morning Star on 29 June 2024.
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