Reform surge reflects the failure of social democracy to deliver material improvements

Martin Shipton

When the main theme of an election campaign is an issue over which the parliament concerned has no power – in this case immigration – it’s clear that our democracy has become dysfunctional.

The disgraceful hijacking of the Caerphilly by-election by Reform UK’s pernicious stirring up of racial hatred is opportunistic and dangerous.

The demonisation of the Nation of Sanctuary programme has made the Ukrainian refugees who have been its main beneficiary feel unwanted in the community that gave them a kind and human welcome when they fled Putin’s brutal attack on their homeland.

Scapegoat

But there’s another factor we are in danger of overlooking if we simply bemoan the tendency of the far right – which is increasingly assimilating the traditional right in the form of the Conservative Party – to scapegoat minority groups on social media. We need to take on board the failure of social democracy to deliver the material improvements people want and need.

Alun Davies, the Labour MS for Blaenau Gwent, spoke to me after a tough constituency surgery in which, like many other MSs no doubt, he was confronted with the distressing problems people face when they’re condemned to poverty.

He said: “If you look at what’s happened since the financial crash of 2008, social democracy has been in retreat in much of the West. Even when social democratic parties have got elected – like in the UK, Macron in France or Scholz in Germany – they’ve won on what is essentially a conservative manifesto, with the policies they’ve delivered continuing with a different elements of austerity and not getting to grips with their countries’ real economic problems.

“In these circumstances the people who suffer most are not the rich and powerful, who are sustained partly by their own wealth and partly by policies that are geared to their needs, but the poorest, who don’t have their own resources to fall back on.

“As a consequence, the conditions are created where the poison spread by a party like Reform, where minorities are blamed for everything that’s wrong, takes root. We’re seeing it in Caerphilly at the moment.”

Living standards

Davies is convinced that the only way for social democratic parties to recover is by offering policies that resonate with people and that are geared towards improving the material living standards of ordinary people.

He said: “In the Labour Party, people know what kind of society they want to see, where progress is made towards reducing the inequalities that exist and improving living standards for the bulk of people. I’m sure that Welsh Labour members get that and want to implement such policies.”

Davies is also convinced of the need to change the Westminster voting system, whose application is becoming increasingly erratic. He said: “The First Past The Post electoral system that we have for UK general elections has become a serious problem. It can lead to distortions where the number of seats won by a party is grossly disproportionate in comparison with the number of votes it has obtained.

“In 2024 Labour under Keir Starmer won a landslide at the general election, yet got less votes than it did under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, when the result in terms of seats was seen as an unmitigated disaster.

“Because First Past The Post is so unpredictable and it’s possible for a party to win a big majority by polling not much more than 30%, it’s very plausible that an extremist party like Reform could win power despite a big majority voting against it. Although Labour benefitted from it in 2024, First Past The Post could end up killing Labour.

“Proportional representation at Westminster elections is long overdue and I wish UK Labour would accept that.”

Next Thursday’s by-election in Caerphilly won’t determine the result of next year’s Senedd election, but it will provide campaigning momentum to the party that comes out on top.

Degradation

The degradation of our democracy is plain to see in the pitifully inadequate, but potentially successful, messaging being posted on social media by Reform.

Top billing – yes, you’ve guessed it – goes to yet another deliberately deceitful attack on the Welsh Government’s Nation of Sanctuary programme.

The Reform post states: “Next year, back a party that will put your interests first:

* End the Nation of Sanctuary Asylum Policy. Put Wales first, not open borders.

* Support Welsh Families & Train Our Own People. No more forgotten communities.

* Bin The 20MPH Limit. Bring back common sense.

* Slash Wasteful Spending. We’ll scrap the political pet projects and fund frontline services instead.”

Goebbels-style

Nigel Farage admitted when he visited Caerphilly this week that he knew more than 80% of the money allocated to the Nation of Sanctuary project was spent on resettling refugees from Ukraine, who are not asylum seekers. Yet the lie has continued being told ad nauseam, Goebbels-style.

The nebulous promise to “support Welsh families and train our own people” comes across as a not-too-subtle attack on people like doctors and nurses from overseas who keep the NHS running. It is completely unrealistic to believe that it would be possible to deport thousands of foreign NHS workers and replace them with highly trained people from Wales. The same applies in relation to other jobs.

However unpopular the 20MPH speed limit may be among some motorists, there is statistical evidence that shows road accidents have decreased and fewer people have been killed. And the scheme has been nuanced so that on roads where the 20MPH limit is not seen as necessary, it can be replaced by the local authority after public consultation.

The promise to “slash wasteful spending” is another piece of Trump-inspired nonsense that is already unravelling in Reform-controlled local authorities in England, the biggest of which, Kent County Council, has admitted that such supposedly wasteful spending barely exists. Instead, school budgets are being eyed up for cuts and an inflation-busting council tax increase is considered unavoidable.

Deeply cynical

Reform’s approach to next May’s Senedd election is deeply cynical. Its cheap sloganising falls a million miles short of any kind of programme for government. It is insulting Wales and its people by failing to offer serious solutions for the country’s many problems, instead regurgitating the kind of rhetoric it would use in a community council election.

Where is the sense in this Reform material that Wales is a nation in its own right, with its own lawmaking parliament? It’s not there at all.

Reform offers nothing but discord, which is hardly surprising for a party funded by billionaires who want to deregulate the businesses they own, bring back a reliance on fossil fuels, strip workers of employment rights and cut tens of billions of pounds from public sector budgets while introducing tax cuts for the rich.

Of course people who are struggling to get by have been let down by successive governments, but anyone in such a position who thinks Reform will improve their lot is seriously deluded.