Two weeks ago, I wrote about the urgent need for a progressive way forward for UK politics. With Nigel Farage’s Reform Party in a relatively strong position – even after a summer of scandals – and progressives split between several political groups, I suggested there was a need for those on the left to work with like-minded people, even if not yet in the form of one united party.
Plenty has changed in those two weeks, and that need has only become more urgent.
First is the issue of Reform’s receipt of £72m from two crypto-billionaires. That specific injection of cash may in due course be blocked or limited by Parliament in some way, but this misses the point. The donations are straight out of the Trump playbook, and serve as a sharp reminder that there is formidable wealth available to support far-right politics in the United Kingdom, just as in the United States.
Even if Reform has problems accessing these two huge donations, it can be assured of being very well-resourced in many other ways in the years up to the next general election. To a lesser extent, this also applies to Rupert Lowe’s far-right Restore Britain party.
True, the donations also confirm, even more than a couple of weeks ago, just how far Reform is from its claim to be the champion of the underdog fighting powerful woke elites. It is, after all, quintessentially an elite party. It could perhaps get away with projecting a false picture of itself if a general election were imminent, but will find it increasingly difficult to successfully mislead people for several more years to come.
That is a problem made even worse as more detail emerges about its intentions, not least through the output from the new Reform-linked think tank, the Centre for a Better Britain, which appeared on the scene last year and aims to raise £25m to support Reform’s work over the next three years.
The think tank has already published a series of policy papers, one of which was picked up by the Daily Express and headlined, “Fears ‘woke ideology’ costs OAPs £50K”. This gives a flavour of its likely line of attack, but more interesting will be the 200-page report it is due to publish next week, which will offer insight into the likely economic and financial policies for Reform’s election platform.
According to Bloomberg UK, this report will call for substantial tax cuts for the seriously wealthy, including abolishing inheritance tax, which raised £8.5bn for the government last year, and phasing out capital gains tax, which brought in £24.2bn in 2024-25. Such changes – clearly intended to help the already rich – would make it hard for Reform to argue it is supporting the underdog.
A spokesperson for the Centre for a Better Britain told The Guardian that Bloomberg appeared to have been briefed on an “early draft of the report” and said there would be “no unfunded tax cuts” proposed in its published version next week.
It is in this context that my previous call for “an informal yet coherent coalition of progressive elements in the Labour and Green parties and independent MPs, working to set the terms of the political debate” becomes yet more urgent.
Labour currently has around 30 MPs of a loosely radical left persuasion, and recent polling by a Labour-linked think tank suggests that the Greens could win up to 40 seats at the next election. Add to that a handful of left-wing independents and possibly some radically minded Liberal Democrats, and there could be 60 or more left-leaning MPs in Westminster.
As to what they might stand for, here it is essential to factor in the 2017 snap election campaign and its shock outcome. Theresa May called that election when the Tories already had a working majority, but were confident that they would wipe the floor with Labour in a landslide win, given their lead in the polls.
Instead, Labour and its ‘For the Many not the Few’ manifesto caught the mood of the country unexpectedly, aided by the requirement for the BBC and some other media outlets to provide some equivalence of coverage of the main parties. The result was that the supposedly unelectable Corbyn agenda produced one of the biggest swings during a general election campaign in history and deprived the Tories of their overall majority.
While most of what was in that Labour manifesto stands the test of time, some areas – climate breakdown, AI and runaway military budgets, in particular – now need far more focus from progressives, as does the control of so much of the media by powerful vested interests.
That will be helped by events like the forthcoming annual conference of the Peace and Justice Project, a left-wing organisation founded by Jeremy Corbyn. The event has a busy two-day programme of expert panels and discussions on issues such as the arms industry, austerity, Palantir and related AI issues, media independence, housing, Gaza and political education.
Given the current political uncertainties, it is highly likely that a much more multiparty system is evolving in the UK, not least with the increased chance of a hung parliament after the next election. An informal parliamentary coalition has substantial value here, even allowing for the usual party organisation of whips and the like.
After all, while Andy Burnham’s Labour Party falls far short of what is needed, its response on some issues such as Gaza and climate breakdown has been better than the Starmer era, even if it still has a long way to go. Such a shift would not have come about without intense campaigning by myriad groups on both issues.
Even before an election, an informal coalition of like-minded MPs can build on that to substantial effect, helping to prepare the way for a Parliament more able to respond to the current troubled times.
