As recently as late July, Westminster was in flux. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK was still leading the polls over Labour, as it had been for 18 months, but the Conservatives were close behind, with the Liberal Democrats and Greens in the fray too. Five parties all with hopes of advancement was a rare event in UK politics.
Then came Andy Burnham. His takeover in Downing Street from the unpopular Keir Starmer has led to substantial change in the political landscape, particularly since it coincided with a summer of scandal and an embarrassing by-election for Reform.
In the polls, Labour has moved into a narrow lead, with Reform slipping to second or even third place. A poll conducted in late August by More in Common, a non-profit research agency, put Labour on 26%, the Tories on 23%, and Reform on 22%, while the Lib Dems and the Greens were squeezed down to 11% and 9% respectively.
The situation may look better for Labour, but the shift has not been huge. If the figures for Reform and its rebel offshoot, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain Party, are taken together, the far-right’s support matches that for Labour.
So, what now? Here, a closer look at Reform and Labour pays dividends. Take Reform first; the party faces multiple problems, many of them self-inflicted.
One is that while Farage has long been seen as the high-profile leader, and skilled at portraying Reform as a necessary party of protest, he is not good at suffering fools gladly – and also has a problem differentiating the fools from the wise. The result is plenty of undignified infighting. That is not a problem when Reform is riding high, but it matters when pressure mounts, especially with Restore Britain having several high-profile supporters, including tech entrepreneur Simon Galbraith, who has donated £500,000 to the party, and billionaire X owner Elon Musk, who has repeatedly voiced support for Lowe.
Moreover, Farage’s depiction of himself as an “outsider” to the establishment simply does not fit with reality. Just yesterday, undercover footage emerged of him discussing foreign political donations over champagne and oysters – hardly the image of a champion of the underdog.
The party’s leader has a personal wealth in the low millions of pounds, and last year made around £1m from multiple jobs in addition to his parliamentary salary. He is also currently under parliamentary investigation over an undeclared £5m gift from Reform’s Thai-based billionaire donor, Christopher Harborne, made months before he became an MP.
Reform itself is part of an elite constellation, rather than representing a marginalised majority. Many of the party’s top brass have huge amounts of personal wealth, with deputy leader Richard Tice and spokesperson Zia Yusuf reportedly both being multimillionaires. The party is also heavily dependent on a few very wealthy individuals for its main support; you can’t easily make much of supporting ordinary people against an elitist political system when billionaires are the basis of your funding.
Yet while big donations may be a problem, especially eight-figure donations from people based abroad, they also provide a great deal of money to run high-profile election campaigns. Reform is comfortably exceeding both Labour and the Tories in overall fundraising, month by month.
Labour’s main problem, meanwhile, is having to clear up the huge mess of 14 years of austerity under the Conservatives. Across the board, the results are stark: from long-term underfunding of prisons and the probation service, through persistent funding shortfalls in the NHS, and an inadequate and largely privatised care service. Then add to those issues a national housing crisis, museums and libraries closing across the country and town centres emptying of shops, before we even get to the issue of water monopolies.
Labour may claim that all of this is not its fault and blame the Tories. But, provided Burnham does not trigger an early election, Labour will have been in power for at least four years by the time we go to the polls – that excuse, regardless of whether or not it is true, simply won’t wash in the absence of any change for the better.
So far, the messages coming from Burnham and his allies are better presented than under Starmer. There are open admissions of many of the problems faced, mostly on domestic issues, and hints of possible solutions, such as some devolution of political power and direct if modest responses to concerns like energy costs.
The message, though, becomes more problematic on international affairs, and it is here that Burnham will face substantial problems in the necessary task of renewing the Labour Party. It is easy to forget that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn grew to be the largest political party in Western Europe, pulling in plenty of money from tens of thousands of individuals rather than from a handful of very wealthy backers. Reversing the loss of some 250,000 members during Starmer’s leadership will not be easy, and will require confronting the Israeli assault on Gaza, climate breakdown and Labour’s continuing dalliance with neoliberal economics.
On Gaza, in the past three years at least 85,000 Palestinians have been killed or are presumed dead, with most of those missing buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings. Now, we have been told by Netanyahu’s defence minister, Israel Katz, that Trump is being asked to back the new policy of simply driving the Palestinians out of Israel. Katz this week told a press conference there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration” and the government was “organised and prepared to get them out by sea, by air, by every way possible”.
Burnham must do far more than condemn this, as well as the ongoing violence in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. He has to withdraw the UK’s military, economic and political support for Israel right across the board, but there is little sign of that – and failing to do so will cause considerable domestic support to Labour.
It may seem odd to many that two consecutive Labour leaderships have had so little appreciation of the British left’s mood on Gaza, even after scores of mass demonstrations and, more recently, thousands of people willing to go to jail in support of Palestine. But right from the origins of the State of Israel nearly eight decades ago, political Zionists have been aware of the need for parliamentary support in the UK if their version of Israel is to thrive. The Israel lobby in the US may be larger, but that in the UK is also significant, and a core part of its work has long been nurturing support within the upper echelons of Labour.
Then there is the climate issue. Here, our summer of heatwaves and droughts across Europe, including most of England and Wales, means that even the vaguest talk of approving new North Sea oil and gas projects makes no sense at all – particularly in light of the recent devastating Nepal flood disaster, and with the impact of the ‘Super El Niño’ system about to hit the world. Yet the fossil carbon lobby in Parliament and elsewhere is so powerful that the Labour leadership is reluctant to take it on, despite Ed Miliband’s best efforts.
Finally, there is the current economic model and the persistence of neoliberalism, which has been the system for more than four decades. One small but significant indicator that this is unlikely to change anytime soon is Labour’s continuing willingness to seek financial support from the rich and powerful. Burnham last week U-turned on support for capping political donations at £500,000 – a move that has not gone down well in progressive circles.
Instead, just suppose that over the next three months, Burnham and his team have a heavenly Damascene conversion. Imagine the UK embarks on a rapid period of radical decarbonisation aiming to comfortably exceed all current targets, while restoring the international development budget that would speed up the green transition across the Global South. Imagine the Israeli political leadership is finally held to account for multiple war crimes, with the UK proposing and implementing a wide range of economic sanctions. Imagine a revitalised Labour Party launches serious tax reforms that at last face up to the rottenness of the current economic system.
A pipedream perhaps, but we live in strange and urgent times.
More likely, though, over the next couple of years, change will come from the efforts of 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. That is not so much a pipedream and is well worth working for.
