Despite the energised start Andy Burnham has made as prime minister, plenty of his party’s MPs and hardcore activists are still haunted by a familiar sense of insecurity. Underpinned by a political version of impostor syndrome, it runs deep – and, bar the odd spell of Labour optimism, it always has. So it is with the battle between Labour and Reform UK that will define an election that could arrive much sooner than some people think, and a widely held ambivalence on the left about the possibility of Nigel Farage’s party taking power. Reform is apparently in deep trouble, yet also still in with a serious chance. How come?
Investigations into the party and its leadership’s finances by both the Metropolitan police and parliament’s standards commissioner may worsen Reform’s woes. Those investigations predate the two recently announced £36m donations from the crypto tycoons Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo, which themselves risk being backdatedly ruled illegal and are reportedly already being spent on 400 “field agents”. The two mega-donations symbolise two connected stories. One is about the possible buyout of our fragile democracy. The other centres on how, from much of the public’s perspective, all the allegations about Farage and his party might have already turned into an indecipherable blizzard. So, although Reform is down, it is still far from out.
But the reasons for that extend much further than money. Reform still has a serious chance of either leading or forming the next government because of the same basic fact that Burnham says he has come to avenge: that since the crash of 2008, millions of British lives have pinballed from one crisis to the next, leaving many people resentful, insecure and plain scared.
If anyone hadn’t already noticed, ours is an age of fear: of economic insecurity, wildfires and unprecedented weather, seemingly unending wars, and massed and chaotic human movement. Reform – and the Tories – lean into all that anxiety, offering the kind of crass solutions (witness Farage’s recent promise of a state of “national emergency” as soon as he takes office) that only heighten people’s sense of crisis. Labour, meanwhile, can only offer another variation of its age-old answer: modest hope and constructive change. Such will be the choice sooner or later presented to voters. And in that sense, the next election will be more emotional than political.
Make no mistake: the campaign has effectively already begun. If, for instance, John Healey’s first budget is not peppered with vivid symbols of a different approach to the economy, it will threaten to be a very serious dud, with lasting consequences. Moreover, at some point during the autumn – presumably beginning at the Labour conference – we will start to get a sense of Burnham’s 10-year plan. He will have to talk about AI, and its dire threats and huge opportunities, and the climate emergency – a subject he has so far been strangely reluctant to address. But he will also need convincing answers to less apocalyptic problems. Right now, I can think of no better example than the million or so young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) who have mums, dads and grandparents terrified – fear, once again – on their behalf.
He is also going to have to walk some very precarious tightropes. We all know what sits behind much of the public’s feelings about immigration: as well as misapprehensions about the relevant numbers – which are actually going down – and straight-up racism, too many working lives sit on the borderline between the official and illicit economy, and are defined by “employers being able to import cheap agency labour to undercut existing pay and conditions in the name of free-market orthodoxy”. Those last words were once uttered by that sainted socialist Jeremy Corbyn: they were intended as a rational explanation for yet another example of people’s deep sense of worry.
From that vantage point, footage of so-called small boats is bound often to spark a callous and fearful response. To many people, such sights look – look – like proof of even more people who have come to disappear into the cracks that run through our labour market, and then surface offering to work longer hours than you, for a lot less money. That makes you feel even more scared than you already were. And as any student of the 20th century knows, nothing warps politics – and helps demagogues – like that kind of anxiety.
A visceral dread is now the basis of the picture of modern Britain – and England in particular – offered to the public by Reform, the Tories and their allies in the press and online. We are, in fact, living through the comprehensive reinvention of English rightwing politics as a byword for angst, fury and paranoia. Anything that could reasonably be termed conservatism is nowhere to be seen: their England is now a country where summers are spent willing on unrest, and where quasi-paramilitaries menace our ports. Last week saw that Passport to Pimlico-esque village of Piddington in Oxfordshire holda referendum on leaving the UK – with 92% of votes in favour – because of what the Telegraph calls a “migrant camp”. From Reform in particular, one often gets the sense that any degree of contentment is seen as being tantamount to complacent wokeness; as they see it, England is – or should be – a righteously stroppy little country, prone to the raging, nihilistic impulses that Farage et al seem to see as the essence of our national character.
As much as Labour needs a solid, credible approach to immigration, it is going to have to remind people of the truth. We are a country with problems, for sure, but one whose people have not abandoned hope and largely get along with one other – and where, to quote July’s bulletin from the Office for National Statistics, “The cost of living (88%), the NHS (78%) and the economy (70%) were the most commonly reported issues facing the UK today.” Whatever our fears, earlier this month, YouGov reported that 57% of us are “fairly satisfied” with life. Labour should attack Farage, Badenoch et al for their lack of faith in the essential moderation and calm of most Britons; Burnham is the first senior Labour figure in a long time who may have the authenticity, energy and principle to make such talk actually ring true.
And then there are more solid, tangible matters. A fortnight ago, the new prime minister announced £1bn of investment in a new fleet of trains that are going to be built in Derby, “supporting over 350 jobs … and almost 6,000 across [the] UK supply chain”. Self-evidently, we need a lot more of that kind of stuff. Highly visible sites should be quickly set aside for new council housing, so Labour can point at the plots and promise people transformed and secure lives. In our further education colleges, money must soon be spent on teaching the absent skills that will help revive the economy, not least in construction, and provide good, dependable jobs.
The list inevitably goes on, but it may soon mark the difference between the meaningful survival of our democracy and the arrival of a munificently funded barbarism. Labour high-ups ought to remind themselves that that great Labour godhead Aneurin Bevan titled his only book In Place of Fear: in those four words lie this new government’s basic mission, the high stakes involved, and the almost impossibly hard work it will take to even begin to achieve it.
