By Danny Byrne
Five questions and answers from a revolutionary socialist perspective
1. Why is this happening now? A system in crisis
It is impossible to understand the threat of Reform UK if it is viewed through a narrow national lens – Farage’s rise is part and parcel of a global phenomenon.
Today, the far right occupies the Oval Office in Washington and most of the Presidential Palaces of Latin America. China’s capitalist dictatorship is doubling down on the same agenda of nationalism, racism, militarism and reactionary machismo, while the odious Narendra Modi rules the world’s most populated country. And the list goes on. It is therefore no surprise that the rising right also dominates opinion polls in the most important European countries, including Britain.
Likewise, the rise of these forces cannot be explained by the skills of Farage or any of the other puffed-up bullfrogs which lead reactionary outfits around the world. It is rooted in something much deeper – essentially, the crisis of the capitalist system. They are a political symptom of the deep underlying economic, social and ecological sicknesses of a system which must be brought to an end.
Faced with crisis on every front, the capitalist system is forced to do away with the political ‘niceties’ (which for most of the world’s population were very far from nice) of the age of neoliberal globalisation. To cope with and prepare for a new age of wars, climate breakdown and economic crises, the system has to rule in a different way. It needs to ramp up nationalism, resurrect traditional anti-woke ‘values’, and weaken the working-class movement to clamp down on threats to its rule. In doing so, it also needs to divide and distract working class and oppressed people from fighting against their common enemy. It needs to dupe millions of working-class people in order to swallow the medicine of new rounds of austerity to pay for increased arms spending.
Most people in Britain and internationally correctly hate the political establishment which brought us the current cost of living crisis, the murderous austerity of the 2010s and the disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan wars. By posturing as ‘radicals’, the billionaire-funded far right hopes to channel this anger into a ‘safe’ alternative for the capitalist class.
2. But Farage is in deep trouble now. Does that mean the threat of the far right has peaked?
Unfortunately not. It is true that, currently, the ‘Burnham bounce’ and the ongoing scandals surrounding Farage’s alleged corruption have knocked Reform into second place in several polls. However, they remain roughly twice as strong as in 2024 and the main unofficial opposition to the government. When Burnham’s honeymoon comes to an end, they will hope to be waiting in the wings.
Crucially, the problem is not just Farage, who could indeed be consigned to the dustbin of history at any time. It is not just one leader or party of the far-right which are on the rise, but their ideas and agenda. This can already be seen by the chilling rise of Rupert Lowe’s Restore, which is outflanking Farage based on openly racist positions which would make the fascists of the 1980s National Front blush.
The task which the far right sets itself is not only to win power, but to drag the whole of political life, and society itself, further to the right. And in this task they have been remarkably successful. It was, after all, not a Reform Prime Minister but a Labour one who delivered the racist ‘island of strangers’ speech from Number 10. And a Labour Home Secretary (who has been kept in place by Burnham) which pushed through the most draconian racist crackdown on migration for decades. The modern Tory party, which remains behind Reform in the polls, is now essentially a carbon copy of Farage’s outfit.
Farage is a massive threat to the entire working class, and socialists will wholeheartedly cheer his demise. But we must remain clear-eyed in our understanding that the forces and ideas he represents retain powerful momentum. Now is not the time to let our guard down.
3. Shouldn’t we just get behind Burnham (or anyone!) to ensure Farage never becomes PM?
No. Of course, socialists should understand why millions of people will choose to get behind Labour or another major party to defeat the right at election time. When politics is approached from a short-term perspective – about simply making the best available choice at each election – this is an entirely understandable decision.
However, socialists do not view politics in this way. We start from the bigger picture. For us the key question is not how to defeat the far right in one election, but how to push it back once and for all.
In France, the fascistic National Front made it through to the Presidential election run-off for the first time in 2002. For liberal and social democratic commentators, the answer was clear: this is a crazy accident of history! Vote for the capitalist establishment candidate to defeat them, and this will never happen again. In the short term, it worked very well. Le Pen won only 17% of the vote.
However, the same processes of crisis and polarisation continued and deepened, ensuring that it did happen again. Except the next time (in 2017), the far right won 33%. The time after that (2022), it won 41%. Next time will be 2027, and currently opinion polls predict that Marine Le Pen will win the presidency! In the same way, getting behind Joe Biden to beat Trump in 2020, when viewed from the vantage point of 2026, was merely a prelude to the even more dangerous Trump 2.0.
The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky – in whose tradition Socialist Alternative stands today – described the necessary revolutionary organisation as the “memory of the working class”. As we take part in and seek to help lead and organise day-to-day working-class struggle, we seek to remind the labour movement of its history, and most importantly the lessons of past victories and defeats.
Millions in Britain currently hope that Burnham will bring about change. But the tweaks he has made so far, while sometimes welcome, are a million miles from the radical shift in the balance of power which is needed to turn around decades of decline and devastation. He has pledged to stick to the ‘fiscal rules’ which dictated Starmer and Reeves’ austerity, and to double down on the arms spending boom. More hopes dashed and promises broken by another Labour Prime Minister will create even more fertile ground for the likes of Farage and Lowe.
The right cannot be beaten back by clinging to the coattails of a failed political establishment. A real political alternative is urgently needed: one that leads the way in fighting the racists, while also mobilising working-class people for real socialist solutions. This starts on the streets, in workplaces and schools and on campuses.
4. What does class struggle have to do with beating Reform at election time?
The threat of the far-right is not just about elections. It has already been expressed in violent pogroms, attacks on mosques and in the Unite the Kingdom march of up to 100,000 through the streets of London. The racists want to create a climate of fear and resignation.
This must be met with consistent and escalating mass action. The working-class, anti-racist, anti-fascist majority must make its presence felt on the streets, and dwarf Tommy Robinson’s (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) gatherings.
The massive ‘Together’ march this spring gave a glimpse of the power such a movement could bring to bear. We need to go beyond sporadic demonstrations and build a struggle with deep roots in every community. Unions should organise anti-racist activities and meetings in the workplace and play a leading active role in protecting our communities from racist thugs. Rapid response networks, inspired by those which have been formed in US cities to resist ICE terror, could be built in every town and neighborhood.
The lessons of the struggle against Trump’s regime are of crucial importance. What pushed back ICE’s invasion of cities throughout the US was not the courts or congress, but organised working-class struggle, including an historic general strike in Minnesota in February. Socialist Alternative’s sister organisation in the US played a leading role in this struggle.
It is class struggle, not elections, which is decisive in shifting the balance of forces. And its impact on elections themselves is, in turn, crucial. If mass working-class organising and struggle dominates the coming years and months in Britain, the next general election would look very different to what most analysts currently predict. The right could be pushed back, and our movement, not the racist minority, would be the main source of pressure on every party and politician.
This would also be the ideal context for the building of a mass independent political voice of the working class with a socialist programme. Rooted in a mass movement of millions, such a force could climb the polls just as quickly, if not more quickly, than Farage and his lackeys have done.
5. Isn’t socialism unrealistic in the short term? What can we do in the here and now?
Socialism is an urgent necessity. The system – capitalism – which has produced the rising right is incapable of addressing any of the burning crises which humanity currently faces. As fires rage under the impact of climate change, the billionaires are plowing full steam ahead to ramp up oil and gas production. The drums of war beat louder and louder.
Governments cry crocodile tears while arming a genocide. The world economy is teetering on the brink, held aloft only by a gigantic AI bubble.
Only by ending the rule of the billionaires can we change the direction of travel away from barbarism. This requires a socialist revolution, to bring natural resources and the commanding heights of the economy into democratic public ownership. The energies of the natural world (which includes human beings) can then be applied in a determined way to improve, rather than destroy, the conditions of people and the planet.
Of course, understanding the urgency of this revolutionary change does not mean deluding ourselves that it is waiting around the corner. Revolutionary socialists are indeed a small minority in Britain and internationally.
But without a powerful organised force which promotes a socialist programme, and connects it with the day-to-day struggles of the working class, how could it be otherwise?
The mass organisations of the working class are currently led not by revolutionaries, but by those who, to varying degrees, limit their political outlook to the confines of the capitalist system.
To resolve this fundamental problem, the building of significant organised groups of revolutionaries is needed, to build support for a socialist programme and fight to inscribe it on the banner of mass struggles. Armed with a real understanding of the root causes of the world’s problems and a clear political alternative, such groups can grow rapidly in size and influence in the context of the decaying capitalist system.
This is what Socialist Alternative, as part of ISA across the world, is fighting to do. If you agree, then become a revolutionary! Join ISA today!
