Editorial – What to do about Reform UK?

Reform UK is a reincarnation of the Brexit Party and given the recent furore over Rupert Lowe MP, seems to be beset by the same type of periodic infighting among its representatives. In fact, it is effectively the same party with a change of name and led and financed by the same people — typically dissident members of the capitalist class who want less regulation of their financial activities. They realise that they can’t get this unless they control political power — the power to make laws and regulations — and that the route to such control lies through the ballot box. They are hoping to repeat their success in the Brexit referendum, by again appealing to anti-foreigner prejudice and distrust of a ‘liberal elite’ that they say is running the country. But they are no friends of the workers whose votes they need.

Reform may have been in the process of trying to develop detailed policies and promises like the other parties, but this is not the basis of its appeal nor why people vote for it. It’s the discontent felt by many about the economic problems they face and the failure of the Labour and Conservative parties to deliver on their promises to mitigate these.

Reform’s position can be described as ‘nativist’ in the sense of supporting a policy of prioritising the interests of native-born inhabitants against those of immigrants. In Britain this would include not just ‘white’ people but native-born and established ‘non-whites’. As Reform members and candidates fall into the latter group, to campaign against the party for being racist won’t wash as it can be seen not to be the case.

Even so, the way Reform expresses its nativism is crude, nasty and divisive. Obviously, socialists counter those spreading hatred against our fellow workers who are refugees or undocumented immigrants. That’s part of our general position that the workers of the world should unite to replace capitalism with socialism.

The pressure group ‘Stand Up To Racism’ proposes to ‘go door to door where Reform candidates are standing to mobilise the vote against them’. But voting for the other parties won’t stem the growth of Reform as the basis for its growth has been precisely the failure of these parties to deliver on their promises.

Reform feeds off the widespread view that the MPs and councillors of the other parties are out for themselves. But that’s not the reason these parties don’t deliver. It’s because they support and operate within capitalism. They fail because under capitalism, a system driven by profit-making, profits have to come before meeting people’s needs; a priority which those making political decisions have to apply. The established parties fail because it is impossible for them to succeed. They would fail even if all their MPs and councillors were saints.

Capitalism simply cannot be made to work for the benefit of the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependants. Reform will fail too if ever it gets into positions where it is in charge of implementing policies. They too will have to run the system according to its priorities and economic laws.

The way to react to the growth of Reform is not to support the other parties against it. It is to campaign against capitalism and all the parties that support that system and for a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources so that they can be used to directly meet people’s needs.

Next article: Pathfinders – Dark capitalism ⮞