The media has portrayed the local elections in England, on Thursday, purely in terms of a great advance for the reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalists of Reform. In fact, what the results show clearly, is that, whilst there was an inevitable and notable shuffling of the deckchairs in favour of Reform, the support for the reactionary nationalists overall – Reform, Tories, Blue Labour – declined, whilst the support for the more progressive bourgeois parties – Liberals and Greens – increased, despite their own rather tepid appeal.
In fact, what has happened is precisely what I set out, not only the day before the election, but, also, at the start of the year, and over the last several years. The bourgeois centre – conservative social-democracy (neoliberalism) - has collapsed. The material conditions upon which it existed over the last 40 years, inflating asset prices, no longer exist. The collapse does not proceed in linear fashion, but via a series of diversions and eddies in the stream, but the overall flow of the stream is clear, not just in Britain, but in the US, in Europe, and across the globe. What happened, yesterday, as I had predicted, is that the Tory component of the Conservative Party has openly split to Reform. In places, that split is de facto, and elsewhere, also, de jure. The most obvious example is that of former Tory Minister, and prominent Brexiter, Andrea Jenkyns.
Obviously, if you drill down into every individual contest, there are nuances of how votes moved from one reactionary nationalist party to another, but, in aggregate, the actual result of the day is summed up in this simple statistic – the Conservative Party lost 676 seats, and Reform won 677. In other words, this is much like has been seen in the past, when, in various places, the Conservatives realising that they could not win under a Conservative banner, stood, instead, as “Independents”. It is not an advance of the reactionary nationalists, simply a relabelling from Tory to Reform.
The Andrea Jenkyns who won the Greater Lincolnshire Mayoralty, is, after all, the same Andrea Jenkyns, who lost her parliamentary seat, standing as a Conservative, in the 2024, General Election, the same Andrea Jenkyns whose pro-Brexit, reactionary agenda, led to the disaster of Brexit, the same Andrea Jenkyns who backed Boris Johnson's Brexit government, and, then, supported the idiocy of Liz Truss's attempt to make Brexit work, before it crashed the economy, and, then, crashed out of government. Yet, Jenkyns, and Reform in total, have the audacity to claim that what they are offering is “change”!! The change they offer was summarised by Jenkyns, herself, who proclaimed their intention of taking Britain back to the past!
Exactly what past that might be is not spelled out, other than, as with their political counterpart in the US, Trump, it is some supposed “golden age”. Again, golden age for whom is not spelled out. If they mean the “golden age”, or “past glory” of Britain, when it began to create its colonial Empire in America, India, and so on, in the 17th century, that was a Britain, in which the large majority of the population were self-sufficient peasants, with no political rights or freedoms. Even the nascent urban bourgeoisie, of independent, handicraft, commodity producers had no political rights or freedoms either, which is why the bourgeois revolution was based upon a fight for such political rights and freedoms. In terms of standard of living, that of the time, even for the more affluent sections, was abysmal compared to that, even of the least affluent, today. Even the richest, and most affluent had no cars to drive, no TV's to watch, no mobile phones to be entranced by. Health and medical care, even for the richest, was virtually non-existent or actually detrimental, with no protection against even the simplest of diseases and infections.
Meanwhile, although millions, today, have been turned into modern day serfs, as a result of a dependency on welfarism, and a paternalistic welfare state, at the time of Britain's “glorious past”, millions existed as actual serfs, and even slaves, not to mention the millions of colonial slaves it created. Is that the “glorious past” that Reform, seek to recreate? Is that what all of those millions of immiserated petty-bourgeois voters actually desire? If so, not only is it a pretty awful prospect for the vast majority of society, but it is totally delusional. Britain, as well as France and Spain, and other European states, such as Belgium, Italy and later Germany, did create colonial empires between the 17th and 20th centuries, but that benefited the ordinary workers in those countries very little. What is more, those colonial empires came crashing down in the second half of the 20th century, and some before, as with the American Revolution, in the 18th century, and all the King's horses are not going to put them back together again.
Indeed, India, the once jewel in Britain's colonial crown, is, now, itself, a world imperialist power, not, today, a colonial empire, but a financial empire, in which its capital is exported via giant conglomerates such as Tata, Mittal and so on, which take over and control capital in Britain such as in its steel, car, and chemical industries. Even were it possible to go back to the “glorious past” of the 17th century, or even 18th century, as the reactionary nationalists of Reform seek to do, which it isn't, why would any sensible person want to go back to the miserable standards of living of that time, let alone all of the lack of political rights and freedoms that had to be won by the mass of the population in the subsequent centuries? But, it is delusional for another reason, which is that, Britain does not exist, in some kind of state of autarky, isolated from the rest of the world, which is also the kind of delusion that Trump, and his advisors such as Navarro, aka, Ron Vara, promote.
A Britain, turned back to the kind of small-scale, petty-bourgeois, handicraft production of the 17th and 18th century, would quickly sink as other capitalist states develop on the basis of imperialism, of the expansion of large-scale, socialised capital, of state-monopoly capital, and its need to produce on an ever expanding scale, within the context of ever larger single markets. Britain would simply be swallowed up by those other states, much as Britain, in the past, swallowed up others. In fact, petty-bourgeois socialism, is the twin of petty-bourgeois nationalism, of opposition to progressive, large-scale monopoly capitalism, purveyed by the likes of the guild socialists, such as William Morris, and represented by the reactionary utopia of the “arts and crafts movement”, a sort of 19th century, precursor to hippy drop-outs of the 1960's.
Jenkyns is emblematic of what actually happened. She lost her seat in parliament as a Tory, and re-emerges as a Reform Mayor, a position that has no real political power, but provides the position holder with a high level of media profile.
But, the Tories and Reform are not the only representatives of petty-bourgeois nationalism. The other main party of petty-bourgeois nationalism is Starmer's Blue Labour. Starmer adopted the same cakeist delusion of Boris Johnson that he could deliver a Blue Labour Brexit, in which Britain outside the EU would somehow be able to negotiate a better deal for itself than it had inside the EU. The proposition does not even pass the sniff test of simple common sense. As with Trump's claims of negotiating a peace deal in Ukraine within his first 24 hours, or his claims to bing back millions of old industrial jobs to the US, it was bound to fail. After ten months, Starmer's Blue Labour government has still failed to negotiate any kind of deal with the EU, let alone a more favourable deal. Instead, Starmer's petty-bourgeois nationalist government has been led to supplicate itself in front of Trump, as it searches for relevance, and reflected glory, which all the while drives it further away from the EU.
At the time of the General Election, I noted the reality of the results, which was that Starmer's Blue Labour, despite the landslide in parliamentary seats, it obtained, due to the fraudulent nature of the voting system, had actually had the worst result in terms of votes, since the Labour Party was created. In terms of vote share, it was no better than that of Corbyn's Labour in 2019, and far worse than Corbyn's Labour in 2017. But, of course, Blue Labour, as well as some of the Blair-Rights, and soft Lefts could only focus on the number of seats won. Sections of the social-imperialists, also keen to bask in the glory of Starmer's victory, as they hoped that he and Biden would continue their imperialist war in Ukraine against Russia, even as they were forced to, also, defend, thereby, the war crimes, and genocide committed by US and UK imperialism, in support of its Zionist allies, also sought to ignore the fact that the support for Blue Labour had cratered, and that it won only because Reform split the Tory vote.
Well, those chickens have now come home to roost. In the 2024 General Election, abysmal as Blue Labour's performance was, it would have been even worse had it not been for the fact that many Labour voters, hoping against hope, and desperate to ensure the Tories were kicked out, held their noses and voted for Starmer's reactionary nationalists instead. That delusion was bound to be exposed in short order, just as the delusion that the EU would grant Starmer some kind of deal just because its Starmer rather than Johnson, or Truss was also bound to be exposed, and just as the delusion that Blue Labour could implement the same kinds of austerity measures as the Tories, and yet somehow generate growth out of the blue were also bound to be exposed.
I saw some vox pops, yesterday, in which people explained that they had voted Reform, because both the Tories and Blue Labour had not delivered what they promised. But, in terms of Brexit, those promises could never be delivered, and will not be by Reform either, which is why, what happened on Thursday, simply represents a sharpening of the contradictions, as they reach their crisis point. Already, in the US, the same reactionary nationalist promises made by Trump, have led to the same failures, the same economic chaos and catastrophe, along with the same spike in interest rates, and falls in the Dollar, and asset prices. Yet, the US is far, far bigger than the UK. Trump's support has cratered, even within his first 100 days, to being the worst for any President in 80 years, even including his own first Presidency.
As commentators in the US pointed out, like Reform, the Trumpist reactionary nationalists also want to take the US back to the past, when it was a nation of small holding peasants, and independent small producers and traders, in the 18th and 19th century, and, already, in terms of the falls in financial asset markets, Trump has taken the US back to 1932.
As he cuts the US off from the real world, Trump has had to tell US kids that they won't get the toys they expected this Christmas, as his tariffs have increased the price of them so high that they would be unsaleable.
That is the same economic agenda that the reactionary nationalists propose for Britain, cut off from the EU, but Britain is tiny compared to the US, and so the effects will be far, far greater. Not getting toys at Christmas will no doubt quickly be shown up in a further collapse in support for Trump, but long before then, his reactionary nationalist agenda, and imposition of tariffs is leading to a sharp reduction in the supply of vital raw materials, and components for US industries themselves. That has been disguised as a sharp increase in imports tried to avoid the tariffs, but as those inventories, now, dwindle, US supply chains are collapsing, and the US Longshoremen's Union is warning that deliveries to US Pacific Ports are falling by more than 30%, leading to lack of work not only for those dockers, but also, for truckers and so on, taking freight from the ports. The port bosses are setting out the same message.
In terms of those voters who voted for Blue Labour, in 2024, expecting some kind of traditional Labour agenda, who now claim that they were lied to, or that Blue Labour did not deliver, what were they thinking? Were they not listening to what Starmer and Reeves were actually saying, ahead of the election. Blue Labour offered bugger all in its programme, as I set out at the time, and its manifesto was, also, based on an open lie, and deliberate delusion, about the state of the government finances. Everyone knew that there was a £20 billion “black hole” in the budget. Everyone it seems, other than the supposed economic genius Rachel Reeves, who only discovered it after the event, and whose response to it was not to take the “hard” decision of taxing the paper wealth of the super rich, or to take the obvious decision of re-joining the EU, and so gaining an additional £40 billion of taxes, but was, instead, to attack workers by cutting pensioners Winter Fuel Allowances, continuing with the limits on Child Benefits, and, then, attacking the benefits of the sick and disabled. But, all of those attacks on workers, and most vulnerable were not only predictable, but I and others predicted them, before the election. No one should have been surprised by them. Blue Labour promised workers bugger all, and delivered even less than that.
So, it is no wonder that Blue Labour, as the third strand of reactionary nationalism in Britain got hammered in the elections alongside the Tories. In aggregate, it did not get hammered to the benefit of its fellow petty-bourgeois nationalists in Reform – because most of that element of the supposed Labour vote, never existed to begin with, or has already moved to the Tories and Reform, and its predecessors – but to the benefit of the more progressive bourgeois parties, i.e. Liberals and Greens, despite their own lacklustre opposition to reactionary nationalism, and the fact that, in the end, they offer no solution to workers. As with the relabelling of Tory seats, on a more or less one to one basis, as Reform seats, Blue Labour saw a transfer of its seats directly to Liberals and Greens. Blue Labour lost 186 seats, whilst, combined, Liberals (163) and Greens (45) gained 208 seats. In terms of the seats contested, Liberals (370) now have more seats than Labour (99) or Conservatives (317). Indeed, even the Greens, now, stand close to Labour's tally, with 80 seats, having more than doubled their number of seats.
In short the total number of seats of the reactionary nationalist parties – Reform, Conservative and Blue Labour, fell by a net 185, whilst the number of seats held by the more progressive bourgeois parties -Liberals and Greens – rose by a net 205. Overall, therefore, the reactionary nationalist parties suffered a setback, and the more progressive bourgeois parties advanced, at the expense of the Conservatives and Blue Labour.
What is clear is that, the first past the post electoral system that works against small parties, has now, at least in relation to these local elections, which, it must be remembered, represent only a small poll (around a 30% turnout, where elections were taking place) has swung in favour of Reform, and against the Tories. Until now, the Tories were able to say that a vote for Reform translated into a vote for Labour, because it split the Tory vote. That is certainly what happened in 2024. But, now, the boot is on the other foot, as the Conservative Party has basically split into Tories/Reform, and its traditional Conservative (neoliberal) wing, reflected in the growing conflict between Jenrick and Badenoch, to force an open split and merger with Reform, whilst the Conservative wing, which is haemorrhaging votes and members to the Liberals, will be left as a rump, which needs to realign with the Liberals and Blair-Rights, to form a credible electoral force.
Now Reform can say to Tory voters, a vote for the Conservative Party is a vote for Labour, or increasingly for the Liberals or Greens. That is why the Tory vote collapsed, and simply became reassigned as Reform. The same process has not yet been so pronounced on the other side, despite the collapse of support for Blue Labour, and rise in support for Liberals and Greens. One factor holding that back is that workers understand the basically bourgeois nature of both the Greens and Liberals. They remember that the Liberals were in coalition with the Tories in 2010-2015, and they see the reality of the Greens across the country in local councils. Yet, that still represents a more progressive bourgeois alternative to that provided by Blue Labour, and its commitment to Brexit, petty-bourgeois nationalism, jingoism, Zionism and imperialist war. Increasingly, if the Liberals and Greens line up in elections against Blue Labour they will be able to make the same claim that a vote for Blue Labour equates to a vote for Tories or Reform, because it splits the progressive bourgeois vote.
A look, for example, at the Mayoral elections shows that, in a number of cases, had the Liberals and Greens stood on a combined ticket, they would have won. In Cambridgeshire, where the Tories took the seat from Labour, the combined vote of Liberals (41,611) and Greens (18,255) – 59,866, would have put them in second place, just behind the Tories on 60,243, and way ahead of Labour on 42,671. But, its not hard to see that in such a case, it would be quite likely that a large chunk of the Labour vote would, also, have swung behind the Liberal/Green candidate, ensuring a defeat of the reactionary nationalists.
The same was true in the West of England. Here, Labour retained the seat with just 25% of the vote (51,197). But, the Greens (41,094), who have been advancing in great strides in Bristol, at the expense of Blue Labour, and the Liberals (28,711) had a combined vote of 69,805, which would have given them a clear victory in the seat, even without additional progressive Labour voters switching their votes to them. In Hull and East Yorkshire, won by Reform (48,491), it was already the case that Liberals came second (37,510), but a combined progressive candidate could have beaten that, as it would have mobilised the 5,000 votes that went to the Greens, and drawn away the required remaining 6,000 votes from progressive Labour voters, as Labour already sank to fourth place with 18,568 votes.
Increasingly, as Blue Labour loses further support, and as it becomes apparent that tactical voting in favour of progressive bourgeois parties can defeat it, and, also, the other main reactionary nationalist parties, it will, on the basis of first past the post, also, provide a basis for a similar claim that a vote for Labour, is a vote for Reform/Tories, and will consolidate the progressive vote around the Liberals and Greens, in the absence of any international socialist alternatives. It is that latter alternative that we must seek to build, by arguing inside the labour movement, including inside the Labour Party itself, that the reactionary nationalist agenda of Starmer's Blue Labour, and its refusal to oppose Brexit, and commit to rejoining the EU, on the basis of a struggle for a Workers Europe, is leading to disaster.
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