A bold movement for social justice vs a self-serving lie machine
The UK has lately been on an accelerating hamster wheel of party and party leader ‘fire and rehire’, scrolling through options with gathering speed in a frantic ‘try every button’ approach.
Don’t look back: the limits of political patience
But, arguably, the wheel has stopped. Labour, it’s reasonable to suppose, is toast. As Andrew Marr observes, public patience has finally snapped. Why? Because they have been fed too much failed establishment politics and too much austerity for too long.
When Labour came to power in 2024, Starmer didn’t grasp the danger behind this ‘end of tether’ UK attitude, and instead made Freebiegate his party’s first fatal headline.
Labour went on to become irredeemably tainted by a series of bafflingly crass policy decisions and moral fence-sitting that has disgusted the nation. As Danny Finkelstein and Toby Helm note, Reeves’ likely November budget U turn can only deepen the wounds to a party in whom 74% – 77% of Britons already have little to no trust.
The further Labour falls from grace the harder it is for its MPs to fall back on their complacent trope: ‘it’s either Reform or us, so they’ll have to choose us’. Given Labour’s spectacular unpopularity, together with frictional resentment from their silenced left, a difficult November budget and potentially devastating May 2026 local elections, survival looks poor.
The whole sorry saga has been a political object lesson in the pitfalls of misreading your audience. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have abandoned their centre ground altogether and become mere Reform lackeys.
The public won’t look back now or grant second chances.
‘The centre cannot hold’
The shift away from the long-standing Labour vs Conservatives duopoly shows, some argue, that UK politics is shaping up as a multi-party system.
This view, though plausible, fits happier, more economically and culturally stable times. The emergence of new parties like Your Party and increased support for hitherto small parties (Greens and Lib Dems) masks the fact that, fuelled by the internet, the UK has become increasingly angry, polarised, and prepared to “roll the dice”.
The new duopoly
In this context, the rise (and rise) of both Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski tells a story. Arguably, we are moving towards, not a cheery spread of pick ‘n’ mix parties, but a different duopoly, one between the radical left, headed by Polanski’s Greens, already inching ahead of Labour in the polls, and the radical right, represented by Farage’s Reform, currently enjoying a strikingly large lead across polls. A further self-fulfilling exodus from Labour could occur if the Green’s size and hence viability as a Reform alternative grows.
These two options engaging the public’s interest are nakedly populist in calling for ordinary people to challenge ‘elite systems’: For Farage, such systems include the European Court of Human Rights, woke immigration policy; for Polanski, they include fossil fuel giants, corporate interests run by billionaires, etc.
One or both sides of this radical new duopoly may deflate before our eyes, ruptured by media attacks or unforseen events. Both may flounder against the painful realities of the bond markets.
However, the political landscape shows not only that the old duopoly is done but that voters across the political spectrum are now demanding a completely clean slate from government – anything other than the ‘before times’. If the success trajectories of the two parties continues, they could face a ‘fight to the death’.
Let battle commence
In this new political order, the ineffective centrism of establishment politics will have finally collapsed under the weight of public exasperation. ‘Politics as usual’ will be stripped back leaving a bare knuckle fight between one loud movement for social justice and another based on an inherently corruptible growth model.
This corruption is on full display in Trump’s crypto-leadership. If it’s not yet obvious in the UK this is because the far-right understand the need to camouflage their real intentions until in power.
How will these two opposing forces slug it out? Following the success of New York’s Zohran Mamdani, cost-of-living will be the ‘bread and butter’ common ground for both sides, with both framing it around their respective blame games.
Farage’s radical right Reform party will explain our affordability problems via woke immigration policy, served up with helpings of racism, xenophobia, anti-trans and other regressive culture ideology. Polanski’s radical left narrative will explain our economic struggles by focussing on unequal wealth distribution and corporate greed, linking these to workers’ rights, and also gender, religious and ethnic rights.
Battle fitness
On the right of this new political landscape is a party heavily subsidised by the global far-right ecosystem through Farage’s numerous connections with individuals such as Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Heartland.
Reform’s other powerful weapon is freedom from the constraints of truth. Aided by the tech broligarchy’s media moguls, Reform will continue gaining traction by flooding the zone with disinformation.
This dual armoury will hand Reform considerable advantages.
But in the radical left ring, Polanski, like Mamdani and unlike Labour, is fighting back skillfully on social media. Also, unlike Labour, Polanski can speak openly about corporate corruption and the revolving door between business, including fossil fuel interests, and government. He is free to articulate the public’s distrust of the establishment and their burgeoning desire to cleanse politics.
In particular, he can harness growing awareness that establishment politics can’t deliver because it lives in the pocket of corporate self-interest; also that these interests drive free market capitalism in directions that are coercive and destructive to people, social equality, and the planet.
Squeezes and wheezes
UK living wages and mental health are still unremittingly squeezed by a host of exploitations: from rent increase demands by private landlords to zero hours employment, exorbitant travel and prohibitive child and social care costs. Labour tinkering isn’t touching lived experience.
Meanwhile, our billionaires make fortunes overnight whilst asleep. Reform’s latest policy comments about reducing the minimum wage for young people, and reducing taxes for high earners, indicate that they don’t intend to rectify these iniquities.
So Polanski will have to show, not only that Reform won’t improve ordinary people’s lives, but why the motive to do so is absent. He’ll need to persuade the public that Reform is just another establishment party, one exceptionally keen to put corporate self-interest before the needs of the country. Once clarified, the left position shifts from being ‘radical’ to commonsensical.
The wealth trap
To this end Polanski will need to tackle the public’s conspiratorial suspicions about the redistribution of wealth and give this attitude a more deserving focus on Reform itself. A major obstacle here is the admiration for extreme wealth heavily cultivated by corporate interests to maintain subservience.
In the capitalist psyche extreme wealth is an essential good, with the deadly sin of greed reprieved as a useful driver for achieving it. Wealth aspiration becomes a stick with which to beat ‘the many’, including benefits slackers, for their financial failures and an excuse to exempt ‘the few’. Reform supporters, like MAGA, admire even obscene wealth and reject the possibility that its possession might interfere with the benevolence of their leaders towards ordinary people.
With at least nine extra parliamentary jobs Farage is the highest paid MP on an income totalling over £1 million since July 24. These activities include a side hustle promoting gold sales with Direct Bullion and a Las Vegas trip to announce his endorsement of crypto donations. Farage is currently being investigated for his failure to declare certain earnings and possible conflicts of interest with his parliamentary role.
Polanski will need to make the Reform curious think beyond their admiration for ‘9 jobs Nige’ to the impact this, together with his interest in non-transparent, unregulated currencies, his unwillingness to declare his financial interests, and his close involvement in the far-right ecosystem, might have on them personally. Admiration serves to distract people from considering their own role as the exploited.
The show down
In the UK, the cultivated admiration for wealth and anxiety about its redistribution creates a society of double standards and self-harming hypocrisy in which we support both regulation, state intervention and help for the vulnerable whilst secretly admiring the forces of unfettered wealth that completely undermine these aspirations. It’s a kind of cakeism – we want the dodgy relationships that, we’re told, foster economic growth and also an NHS that remains free at the point of use.
UK establishment politics has faffed around for too long trying to meld morally socialist principles with unfettered, coercive neo-liberal capitalist instincts, and make them somehow work together. We’ve ended up with a broken country, furious citizens, and leaders paralysed by their involvement with nefarious lobbying interests.
Labour hasn’t managed to escape this impossible conundrum. If the party has achieved anything, it is simply to have laid the conundrum bare, push the public to their snapping point, and ready us for the potential mother of all political battles – a mortal show down between Polanski’s bold movement for social justice and Farage’s equally bold self-serving lie machine.
Image credit: Gage Skidmore – Creative Commons
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