Labour faces the greatest crisis in the history of its tradition. It won a massive majority in Parliament on the basis of just 34 per cent is the vote. In its first year Labour has faced an unprecedented wave of cynicism and reactionary anti-politics generated by 14 years of Tory rule, the politics of Brexit, and the rise of the populist right led, by Trump and Musk in the US band Farage in the UK, and an acute loss if vision.
Gone are the days when Reform — which used to support electoral reform —gets five MP in return for 14.5 per cent of the votes. We have reached the stage where the First Past The Post System is good for reform and now gives it the road to unlimited power.
Polly Toynbee, of the Guardian, argues that the danger of fascism in Britain is real and that the most effective way of ensuring that Farage does not take office on a narrow and reactionary mandate with unlimited power is to introduce proportional representation in advance of the next Westminster in four years’ time or whenever.
She sets this out in the Guardian of Monday September 1st in an article fittingly entitled: Keir Starmer’s legacy could be (either) electoral reform – or Farage as prime minister.
She is absolutely right when she says that “MPs should abandon that self-deluding pretence that it could never happen here in our “moderate” and “tolerant” land. “On the contrary, Britain is at more risk of a populist right takeover than many of our European neighbours. With Labour in an electoral slough of despond, and the Tories looking dead already, the reptilian grin of Nigel Farage haunts the political landscape after his satisfactory summer spent stoking division and cynicism”.
The far right are setting the agenda in British politics. Nigel Farage and Reform UK — a neo-fascist party that praises violence — is leading polls at 30 percent. Tommy Robinson who is a Nazi sympathiser mobilised a 150,000 people, on a fascist and racist platform, on the streets of London, on Saturday September 13th, in what was in the biggest such march in British history.
In a further article, in the Guardian of September 9th, which is a sequel to that of that of September 1st, Toynbee rightly argues that now:
“Labour has just one overriding task. Forget all the other missions and milestones: Britain faces a peril that was beyond imagining a short time ago. Saving the country from Nigel Farage is the urgent, patriotic duty of this government; it is vital that it prevents an extremist, racist, authoritarian takeover which would be against the will of the overwhelming majority of the population. Nothing matters more.”
Patriotism aside, she is right. She goes on to say that: “The Labour government has come adrift. It lacks direction and purpose… Now a new role and function have arrived, uninvited. It’s not a political choice but an obligation when the country is under attack from a poisonous enemy. Electoral malfunction risks gifting unrepresentative power to a nativist, xenophobic, divisive, anti-democratic, utterly mendacious party which spouts contempt for knowledge, science and expertise, let alone community and compassion, and calls it “common sense”.
As fellow Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedman puts it on September 19th: “The march towards the darkness is becoming a sprint. In the US, warnings about the autocratic ambitions of Donald Trump that were once dismissed as hyperbole and hysteria now seem, if anything, too mild. Faster than most imagined, he has moved to weaken institutional checks on his power – whether the courts, the universities, the civil service or the press – and now has set to work gagging his critics, even, it seems, to outlaw large swathes of the opposition.”
Unless Starmer makes major improvements to the standard of living for the poorest in society, stops grovelling to the likes of Peter Mandelson, supports migrants and asylum seekers rather than demonising them, and transforms the energy market through an abundance of clean, and cheap, renewable energy, Labour will suffer heavy defeats in both the Welsh Senedd and Scottish government elections in May next year, and after that Westminster could see a neo-fascist government for the first time ever.
“Here’s the paradox” Toynbee says, in her September 1st article: “Proportional representation allows populist-right parties into parliament but can stop them governing unchecked. FPTP keeps them out of parliament, but forces mainstream parties to co-opt their policies: see how the idea of withdrawing from the European convention on human rights is no longer a fringe issue. Labour, too, has undoubtedly been pushed further right by populist outsiders.”
She goes on: “No crystal ball can predict an election still nearly four years ahead. But Labour has the power and the duty to protect the country from the worst possible result, a hard-right populist government elected by a thin minority. The risk is substantial. It’s no longer in Labour’s self-interest to refuse a reform backed by nearly two-thirds of voters”.
Every labour MP, she says, should read the new pamphlet on electoral reform called just published by Compass: The Temper Trap — how Proportional Representation Tames the Populist right.
It seeks to analyses how a system designed to keep the lid on the pressure cooker of populism has become its dangerous enabler. With the old duopoly supplanted by five – soon to be six – UK-wide parties, having one winner take all and seizing the elective dictatorship of a Commons majority only increases voters’ political disengagement.
She says “Voter support for electoral reform in all-important general elections now stands at 60% – its highest ever. People used to believe our system brought Britain strong and stable government, but the chaos of recent years has demonstrated that this isn’t the case… Instead of being a barrier to dangerous outsiders it has become a springboard, catapulting Reform UK closer to power.”
The Green Party
The Green Party faces the same dilemma. Zack Polanski’s victory in the Green Party leadership election, welcome as it is in terms of making the party a more organisationally effective, opens up the same problem. If Farage has even a chance of winning the election (and his odds are much better than that) it would be a disaster if the green vote, which is likely to be much bigger than in the past, let him in.
It implies either an electoral pact with Labour or a change in the electoral system. A Farage victory would set green politics, and indeed progressive politics more generally, back a generation — beyond the point of no return as far as the
destabilisation if the global climate is concerned.
In fact the Green Party suffers acutely from the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system — as would a new left party. At the last general election the Greens saw four MPs elected when they should have had forty — which speaks volumes for the electoral system.
Unfortunately Polansky rejects an electoral pact with Labour at the present time, saying only that his job is to build the Green Party, though he has said that he would work with a new left party if on exists.
The problem is that if the next election is down to a choice between Starmer, or whoever else if the leader of the Labour party at that time, and Farage, and the outcome is Farage — and it is hard to bet against such an outcome at this time — we will all be in deep trouble. A Fascist victory would be the biggest setback for the workers movement in this country since it emerged on the scene in the 19th century.
Alan Thornett Sept 23 2025
