Fight Reform UK with class struggle not lesser evil politics

Anti-racist and Palestine activists took to the streets on 16 May to oppose the far right (Photo: Guy Smallman)

Should the Green Party stand aside if Andy Burnham is the Labour candidate in the Makerfield by election?

Surely it would be wiser to throw everything behind Labour to stop Reform UK, many on the left argue.

Some of these arguments have come from within the Green Party, the dominant force to the left of Labour in England. Its former leader Caroline Lucas has called on the party to stand aside and support Burnham instead.

But there are several problems with this approach.

First, it assumes that Burnham is the best placed candidate to win—and this is not a foregone conclusion.

Support for Labour collapsed in the local elections in England and the Welsh parliamentary election. It failed to make gains in Scotland.

But there’s a more fundamental reason why the left standing down to whichever party is “best placed” to beat Reform UK is wrong.

Nigel Farage’s far right party taps into the sense that “Britain is broken” and claims to be an “anti-establishment” force. But racism binds together the story the far right sells—with immigration and multiculturalism to blame for “national decline.”

Anti-racist campaigning is key to exposing the lies about immigration.

The approach favoured by many union leaders—focusing on Farage’s free market policies and ducking the argument about immigration—will not work.

Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) has pushed up the progressive vote in some key battlegrounds. Our task is to strengthen the anti-racist networks in local areas, workplaces and unions which can mobilise against Reform UK and the fascists on the streets.

However, our class going on the offensive over the cost of living crisis would shift the balance of forces in Britain. A whiff of class struggle could transform the political atmosphere and terrain.

Fighting back together against a common class enemy doesn’t deal with the far right by itself—far from it. But the sense of unity can make it harder for the far right’s politics of despair and racist scapegoating to get a hearing.

That’s why popularising the slogan, “We won’t pay for Trump’s war,” and pushing for strikes this year is vital.

The left lining up behind Burnham wouldn’t strengthen this strategy. In fact, it would be a step away from that sort of strategy.

Unity in action is key to beating the likes of Farage and Reform UK or Nazi Tommy Robinson.

But the “popular front” approach that underpins calls for the left to stand down for whoever is “best placed” goes beyond that.

Crucially, it sees the left subordinate its politics to the centre that has failed.

Burnham has made clear that he won’t step outside the fiscal rules set by Labour—meaning more austerity mark 2.

He has not signalled a break with the racism and authoritarianism of Labour and the dangerous concessions it makes to Reform UK over immigration. That politics will continue to feed the far right.

Instead, let’s focus on winning people to a strategy based on mobilisation from below.