Confronting the Far Right – Contesting the Reform Party!

In recent local elections on 1 May, the Reform Party of Nigel Farage made huge electoral gains winning hundreds of council seats and overall control of 10 councils. It also won the mayoralty in Greater Lincolnshire as well as an additional MP in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election (BBC, 2 May 2025). In response, the Labour Party government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer published an immigration white paper, toughening conditions on migration. In his ‘island of strangers’ speech (Gov.uk, 12 May 2025), Starmer near-echoed the Rivers of Blood speech by Enoch Powell of 1968 (Guardian, 13 May 2025). The travel of direction is clear. To regain voters, the Labour Party tries to outdo Reform on their anti-migration territory. The country as a whole is shifted to the right as a result.

Nevertheless, how should we confront the rise of the Reform Party from a progressive position?

 

In my own area of Nottinghamshire, the Reform Party also secured a clear majority in the 1 May County Council elections (BBC East Midlands, 2 May 2025). It was well known that the East Midlands had been one of Reform’s priority targets. And yet, strangely, in their electoral leaflets rival parties rarely, if at all, confronted Reform directly. It was all about ‘fixing potholes and paving’, preventing the merger of local councils with the highly indebted Nottingham City Council and other local issues such as controversial development plans. Where was the party boldly proclaiming on their leaflets ‘Migrants welcome in Nottinghamshire’?

Equally, there was no reflection on the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people committed by Israel with the support of Britain. And yet, we cannot understand the ever-harsher turn against migration without considering the genocide in Palestine unfolding daily in front of our eyes. Andrea Jenkyns’, the new Reform mayor of Lincolnshire, suggestion to house immigrants in tents sounds charitable against the background of endless horrors inflicted on Palestinians by the Israeli war machine (Lincolnshire Live, 2 May 2025). Contesting the Reform Party requires both, outspoken support for migrants here in Britain as well as opposition to genocide in Palestine and the UK’s active role in it.

 

Now, people will say, but hold on a second, local councils and county councils can take no decisions about migration and foreign policy issues such as Gaza. Correct, but then people did not vote for the Reform Party, because they were convinced that this party was the best at fixing potholes. They voted Reform because of the party’s anti-migrant position and it is this, what needs to be confronted openly and directly.

Andreas Bieler

Professor of Political Economy

University of Nottingham/UK

Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk

21 May 2025