In his lively response to right-wing critics of Nigel Farage and Reform UK, Gawain Towler makes prolific use of the novel term “the Corbynista right”. This is clearly intended to be pejorative. “Corbynista” denotes ideological fanaticism and “a visceral loathing of anything that smells faintly pragmatic”.
Well, fanaticism is to be opposed — and one has to be pragmatic. But here’s a question: didn’t the actual Corbynistas have a point?
Of course, I disagreed with them politically. I’m not left-wing, never mind that left-wing. But when it comes to Keir Starmer and his allies, well — they were pretty much spot on.
Corbynistas argued that the Starmerites were pretending to be sympathetic to their causes but would sell them out once in power. If anything, they underestimated the truth of this. Starmer is a snake who called Mr Corbyn his friend before betraying him to the point that he says he would not even wave at him across the road. (Corbyn rightly called this “primary school stuff”.) He did ruthlessly expel his left-wing rivals while promoting people who have dedicated themselves to “[putting] the hard left back in their box”.
In power, Keir Starmer might be too left-wing for many of us but it is not hard to understand why the Labour left would be disgusted. His ideas for welfare reform are severe enough that he has alienated not just Corbynites but Dan Hodges — a Blairite commentator for whom Ed Miliband, never mind Jeremy Corbyn, was unacceptably left-wing. (“This is getting obscene now,” Hodges said about Starmer’s benefits cuts.) The prime minister effectively signed off on Israel’s invasion of Gaza and opposes the cessation of arms deals with Israel. He says favourable things about Donald Trump. You don’t have to agree with the Labour left to understand that all this does not make Starmer marginally different from his left-wing rivals but dramatically opposed to them. I might think their politics are delusional but they are not just being purists or fanatics here.
There is ample cause for Reform right-wingers to be concerned that they are being sold a bill of good
Right-wing critics of Nigel Farage and Reform UK are not just being purists or fanatics either. Yes, there are people who will not be satisfied with a right-wing candidate if he is not goose stepping down Whitehall. This is not meant as a defence of those eye-twitchers. But there is ample cause for Reform right-wingers to be concerned that they are being sold a bill of goods.
Exiling the popular Rupert Lowe MP on very dubious grounds made Reform UK look a lot like Mr Farage’s personal plaything. That Farage condemned Lowe for using “dark and dangerous” words like “mass deportations” also justly inspired misgivings. Yes, if you oppose illegal migration, as Farage claims to, then you support mass deportations. That doesn’t mean that you should say it seven times before breakfast but to wring one’s hands about it looks faintly dishonest. Reform’s cack-handed Boomer-tempting energy policies made the party look incompetent and unfocused. Then there is their elevation of preposterous figures like Nicholas Lissack — a man who has as much chance of getting out the youth vote as I have of being the first man to set a foot on Mars.
I doubt that Mr Towler’s defence of Reform’s soundness will be convincing. Reform, he says, have a “hardline stance on illegal migration”. But Reform UK voters want a pretty hardline stance on legal migration too. That need not make them “anti-migrant”, to use Towler’s term for the “Corbynista right” (though I’m sure some of them are). A lot of them have just appreciated that Blairism and the Boriswave have had far bigger consequences than small boat crossings. Yes, Reform UK have said they will dramatically lower immigration. But so did everybody who has ended up in government in the last few decades. It is hardly surprising that people are twitchy.
As an expat, I do not support or oppose Britain’s political parties, but I can understand why natural Reform UK voters are suspicious. I agree with Towler that extremism should be opposed, and that experience should be embraced, and that a broad variety of voters should be appealed to, but Reform have to understand why this could all sound like a bunch of euphemisms for selling out. Dismissing their critics as right-wing Corbynistas would be the opposite of a positive step.
