The threat of the far right in Britain has turned into a reality. All the marches, speeches, and left column inches have failed to halt the electoral advance of the far right.
This is one of the major takeaways from the recent British local government elections.
Reform UK, the business owned by its leader Nigel Farage, in contrast to the traditional funding arrangements by British political parties, won the largest number of local government seats by far.
They swept aside the right-wing Conservative Party in its heartlands and vanquished the Labour Party in places it had dominated since World War I.
The rise of the “leftish” Green Party is both filling the vacuum created by the failures of Labour and the phoenix-like rebirth of the Conservative Party into the even more far-right Reform Party.
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The fact that Reform isn’t actually a party in the traditional sense but a company wholly designed to make profits for its leader Nigel Farage does not appear to bother too many people from casting their votes for it.
Reform’s constant racist rhetoric seems to chime in with what many have argued for years – that there is in fact a thick seam of racism running through the underbelly of British society.
It was always there to see, but many felt unable or unwilling to listen to the truths they were being told by people who have been on the receiving end in what is largely and falsely portrayed as a fair and equal British society.
It is not to suggest that everyone voting for Reform is a racist, and one could dare say they are not. But neither was the rampant racism of Reform a deal-breaker for those that supported them.
There were also major wins for the Green Party across the country. This included the election of their first London mayor in Hackney. This shows that Zack Polanski’s Greens are a growing force.
Many prominent supporters were previously supporters of the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party who gave up the ghost that change was possible within Labour, or were expelled.
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The prediction by the polls that the two main parties of British politics, Labour and the Tories, were in freefall came to pass.
An honest look at British politics reveals that this demise is primarily due to a major crisis in working-class representation – the empty space in politics where a party of the working class should be.
The creation of the left-wing Your Party has yet to take hold as an electoral force. If it can shed the debilitating internal focus that has beset its birth then it may still, perhaps working with the Greens, become a force for left electoral politics.
It is clear that Keir Starmer must be ousted if Labour is to have any chance of a revival. Identifying Labour as having anything remotely to do with left, working class politics is a stretch of the imagination that many are unable to make and have not been able to do for some time.
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The question many are asking is whether it is a situation that is worth retrieving and whether trying to revive a dead beast is really the best way forward.
The challenge, it would seem, is not just to create the means by which a party can win an election to, in the end, let down the working class. But whether a new approach is necessary to the work.
Unions must play a central role in organizing the working class in Britain. To do this means building militant trade unionism that speaks to the challenges faced by the working class, such as the soaring cost of living and the fact that many people simply can’t get a decent place to live.
Trade union membership is on a huge decline and this will not be solved by more of the same business unionism that has dominated the last few decades.
Workers will increasingly grow to understand the importance of solidarity when it is rooted in collective struggle. This is what will defeat the racism and xenophobia fueled rise of the far right that has not been seen since the 1930s.
To get remotely near this, trade unions will need to adopt organizing strategies based on some of the militancy of the Global South rather than the tried and failed strategies put forward by the organizing gurus of the Global North.
Some 80% of workers are not in unions despite the crisis facing working class communities across Britain. This means looking at new ways of revitalizing the trade union movement, including rebuilding trades councils as a way of reestablishing a presence in working class communities.
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But there is another major takeaway that it is important to recognize – the rise of parties committed to end Britain as an entity.
The Scots want out. The Welsh want out. The six counties of the north of Ireland are already governed by a party that explicitly wants to see the end of British colonial rule on that section of the island of Ireland.
At least it may be the beginning of the end of the British entity.
If one wanted to take a narrow view, one could simply say this is entirely about the unprecedented unpopularity of the Labour Party across Britain. Their demise has been long coming and is but a symptom of a wider problem.
But the reality is the idea of Britain as an entity has long been dwindling in its popularity – particularly from those colonized and ruled by the English but also, from many of the colonizers themselves.
The results which have anti-colonial parties in three of the four parts of the entity called the United Kingdom are stark.
It is a great disservice to the movements against colonial rule or to recognize that people in the ruled areas have simply had enough of English rule and, when given a chance, would all likely vote to leave English control.
Labour has collapsed in Wales – where it has ruled for 100 years – leaving Plaid Cymru in control of the Welsh Senedd.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) has deepened its hold on power in Scotland – another former Labour stronghold. They have already made it clear that they will be calling for another independence referendum.
The First Minister in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neil, is from republican Sinn Féin, committed to a united Ireland and planning for a referendum of their own.
The fact that nationalists might win does not necessarily usher in progressive politics. Far from it. The SNP in Scotland can only loosely be described as being within sniffing distance of the left.
Nevertheless, this is a significant moment and could finally see an end to centuries of English colonial rule on the British Isles and the island of Ireland.
Roger McKenzie of Red Star Media is author of “The Rebirth of the Phoenix: A View from Babylon” (Manifesto Press). He is also the International editor of the Morning Star newspaper.
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