Reform are marching into Merseyside, where is the fight back? |
Reform are marching into Merseyside, where is the fight back?
Political editor Liam Thorp says many will be concerned by the progress of Nigel Farage's right wing populists and says more clear water and signals of hope must be offered to push them back
Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage speaking during a campaign event(Image: Jacob King/PA Wire)
As a journalist, it is always a good idea to get out on the streets of a community to really understand what is going on there.
Having heard reports the St Helens borough of Merseyside was seeing a rise in support for Nigel Farage's right-wing populists, Reform UK, I decided to head to the town's centre to take the temperature last week and find out how much truth there were in these reports.
You can read my full piece here, but to offer a brief synopsis, it feels like the ruling Labour group which has run the town for most of the years since the borough was formed in 1974, is in big, big trouble.
Labour insiders had already told me the local group fear they will lose control of the council at May's all out elections and Reform are likely to be the largest party - if not the outright majority holders.
While I did find a fair few Farage-sympathisers on the streets of St Helens, what struck me more was the level of disappointment and frustration felt towards the Labour Party, both locally and nationally.
People like Billy Bridges, 77, who told me he had always voted Labour, but won't again. He said: "They are just not looking after us." There were others who weren't enamoured with Farage, but said it was time to 'give him a go', which perhaps showed the level of apathy being shown towards Labour and the traditional political parties.
A few days after my article was published, Reform UK announced sitting St Helens Councillor David Hawley, who represents the Bold & Lea Green ward of the town, was joining their party.
St Helens councillor David Hawley has joined Reform UK from The Green Party
The fact Reform had gathered another councillor in St Helens - the third in the group - was not necessarily a surprise given the aforementioned rise in support, but what was really surprising was that this councillor was joining from the Green Party, talk about a journey.
The news was announced on Wednesday around the same time that it was revealed that three former Tory councillors in the Wirral would also be joining Nigel Farage's party. Andrew and Kathryn Hodson and Graham Davies, who all previously represented the Conservative Party, have now formed the party's first political group in the peninsula.
So it is clear there is now momentum in the traditional Labour bastion of Merseyside for Farage and his party - and for those that find his brand of right-wing, anti-immigrant populism deeply unpalatable, there will be plenty of concern.
The question that will follow will be, where is the fight back?
At times it feels like much of the country is sleepwalking into the dramatic scenario where Reform and Farage could seize power - and all the many ramifications that will come with that. We are already seeing how they operate in power in parts of the country already.
At last year's local elections, Reform made its most significant mark at the ballot box, sweeping up 31% of the vote and gaining a majority on 10 local councils. It has hardly been plain sailing from that point on.
The party won 57 of 81 seats on Kent County Council and stated that authority would be an "advert" for how it would operate in power. It has since lost nine of those councillors, with many of them suspended or removed after a dramatic video showed council leader Linden Kemkaran shouting and swearing at her own councillors.
In Cornwall, where Reform took 28 seats in the elections to become the council's largest party, the weeks that followed saw a raft of resignations, suspensions and toxic infighting which quickly depleted their numbers - including the departure of the group's leader.
And in Nottingham, the Reform-led council banned its local news organisation, Nottinghamshire Live, from council events and from receiving press releases because the council's Reform leader objected to scrutiny.
And in a number of Reform-led councils, where voters were promised the party would freeze or cut council tax, they have proposed increases after the reality of austerity-battered budgets hit home.
Make no mistake, this is all just a foretaste of the potential chaos which could be to come if Reform continue to be successful at both a local and most concerningly, a national level - and that's before we even address the impact such electoral victories would have on the lives of so many people who have chosen to make this country home.
Reform announced last year that they would seek to abolish what is known as Indefinite Leave to Remain and require all migrants to apply for renewable five-year visas, which would only be available to people on high salaries or who meet strict criteria.
Having spoken to many people who have completed the already long and arduous route towards settled status in this country, Farage and co's plan to strip people of this status and force them to reapply under such difficult rules would be devastating. It could also be disastrous for the nation's economy.
But with all this evidence of how Reform would - and in some cases are already - behaving in power, we once again find ourselves asking where the real fightback is?
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves during a visit to Neville Hill TrainCare Depot in Leeds, for the announcement of plans to improve connectivity in the North of England.(Image: PA)
Many feel rather than taking the fight directly to Farage et al, the Labour government has instead sought to parrot some of their most divisive policies, including on the issue of ILR.
And on a local level, those in Merseyside who fear what Reform could bring to the region would surely like to hear more from their local leaders about how they can be pushed back as they begin to make inroads here.
It's not as if there haven't been warnings. People are often surprised when I tell them Reform candidates came in second place in three of five of Liverpool's city parliamentary seats at the General Election in 2024.
But while it is important to rigorously and routinely highlight the chaos already being inflicted on Reform-led council areas around the country, it is also essential for others to highlight what they are doing positively that Reform would undo.
One strong example of this arrived over the past week. After years of broken promises from governments, Labour finally committed to a huge upgrade of rail travel across the north of England - including a brand new line between Liverpool and Manchester.
This is a promise backed by £45bn in promised funding. Cynic's may point out that it will take decades to deliver and Labour may not be in power in a few years, but at the very least it creates some clear water here in the north between them and a prospective Reform administration.
Richard Tice, the party's deputy leader has already told contractors not to bother bidding for work on the massive new project because his party in power would cancel the largest transformation for travel in the north in a generation.
His party will now have to explain to millions of voters why they think this part of the country, left with Victorian infrastructure and services that aren't much better for so long, do not deserve the improvements that the current government are promising.
These are the dividing lines that those hoping to thwart Reform's progress need to see more of. Whether there will be more of them to come, we will have to wait and see.