‘Labour’s socialist values and traditions are not the problem – they are the solution.’
Kim Johnson is the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside
The recent local elections sent a clear and urgent message: the threat from the far right is real, and as a party, we cannot afford to ignore it. Reform made significant gains by exploiting fear, frustration and alienation – particularly in working-class communities that once formed the backbone of Labour support. Their rise isn’t just a symptom of Tory collapse. It’s a challenge to Labour’s credibility and purpose in government.
People want change: real, meaningful, material change. But in too many places, they’re not hearing it from Labour. Reform is stepping into that vacuum – not because they have credible answers, but because they’ve mastered the art of blame. They offer scapegoats instead of solutions, division instead of hope. If Labour doesn’t rise to meet this challenge with courage and clarity, we risk sleepwalking into something far more dangerous than just another right-wing party.
Some voices argue that Labour’s problem is being ‘too liberal’, too focused on minority rights or ‘too metropolitan’. That analysis is not only wrong – it’s dangerous. It accepts the far-right framing that social progress and solidarity are somehow to blame for people’s struggles, instead of decades of austerity, deregulation, and a political class that has failed to deliver for working people.
The idea that Labour should retreat from defending migrants, LGBTQ+ communities or trans people is both a political miscalculation and a moral failure. Britain’s working class is not one-dimensional. It is white, Black, Brown, straight, queer, migrant, disabled, and more.
These are not distractions from the class struggle – they are the class struggle. The fight against racism and scapegoating is the same fight as the one against low pay, poor housing, and crumbling public services. You can’t defeat one without the other.
Reform is gaining ground not because of progressive values – but because people are fed up. Fed up with stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, long NHS waits, and a sense that no one in power is really on their side. But Reform doesn’t offer solutions. It offers rage. It takes real anger and misdirects it at immigrants, trans people, and so-called ‘woke culture’ – when the real enemy is the rigged economy and the elite interests who profit from it.
Runcorn must be a warning we can’t ignore. Labour cannot afford to try and outflank Reform on issues like immigration or cultural identity. People can smell inauthenticity. If they want the hard right, they’ll vote for the real thing. If we start talking about migration as a ‘problem’ or imply we’ve gone too far in defending equality, we’re not just playing a losing game – we’re helping shift the whole debate further into dangerous territory.
What we need is a politics that speaks to people’s pain with honesty and hope. Labour should be the party saying: your child can’t get a dental appointment not because of a refugee, but because the Tories cut public health services and handed contracts to their mates. You can’t afford rent not because of asylum seekers, but because landlords have been allowed to extract ever more from people’s pockets with no serious regulation. Your job is insecure not because of migrants, but because your union rights have been gutted and your wages have been deliberately suppressed.
If Labour isn’t saying these things – clearly, confidently, and repeatedly – then of course people will look elsewhere.
We need to stop fearing our own shadow. Labour should be calling for wealth taxes to rebuild our public services. Labour should be leading the charge on public ownership – of water, energy and rail – because they belong to all of us. Labour should not be afraid to take on profiteering landlords, rip-off bosses, and billionaire press barons who stoke fear and division to protect their own wealth.
If we don’t step up now, the alternative won’t be more of the same – it’ll be an extreme right-wing government. One that smashes rights, pits neighbour against neighbour and rewrites the rules of democracy to cling to power.
The choice for Labour is not between ‘identity politics’ and ‘bread-and-butter issues’. That’s a false dichotomy. The real choice is between offering people a sense of hope and justice – or allowing the politics of hate to fill the void.
We don’t need to retreat. We need to go on the offensive – with radical, working-class politics that unites people across race, gender, and background. That builds homes, funds services, raises wages and tackles inequality. That offers real answers to real problems.
Labour’s socialist values and traditions are not the problem – they are the solution. The fight against Reform is not a culture war. It’s a class war. And it’s time we started acting like it.
Image credit: House of Commons – Creative Commons
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