The Politics of Abandonment

I had started writing a draft for a piece not to dissimilar to this one around a month ago: chiefly looking at the proliferation of the far-right, the cataclysmic shift in the Overton window, and where progressive politics needs to cut through. They say a week is a long time in politics, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that I’ve had to rip up that draft in light of recent events; namely: the so called ‘raise the colours’ protests, the Reform Party conference and, of course, the killing of Charlie Kirk in Utah.

Each of these incidents has, in its own way, both reflected and accelerated the rapid normalisation of extreme rhetoric within mainstream discourse. Indeed, the sense of urgency and instability is as scary as it is palpable, with established political boundaries now appearing increasingly porous and pointless.

Speaking of porous and pointless, perhaps an apt place to start would be with the Reform Party conference which provided about as much substance as a loose stool. The main take away for most, I’d imagine, would have been Andrea Jenkyns bizarre performance of her own song which, being generous, would not have looked out of place as one of the early round comic relief acts on Britain’s Got Talent.

The fact that this was the key take away from the Party conference of Reform who, lest we forget, have a double-digit lead in the polls, is in itself an incredible reflection of an uncomfortable truth: we heard nothing on a policy basis because they know we didn’t need to. What Reform have on their side is an increasingly fractured and frustrated public who, in many areas, are bursting at the seam in anticipation for simple blame game rhetoric, the likes of which Reform specialise in. Why consider political and economic nuance from parties and experts who have held power for so long while living standards decline and wages stagnate? The thesis provided by Reform, Tommy Robinson, and the other neo-fascists is a simple yet appealing one: those in power have failed you, the fringe must now rule.

These developments are not new, nor occurring in isolation; they are symptomatic of a broader disillusionment sweeping across much of the electorate. People are no longer merely dissatisfied but rather actively angry, and this anger is being harnessed by those adept at simplifying complex issues into digestible, emotionally charged slogans. Crucially, this shift has made it far easier for fringe voices to gain traction and legitimacy, further eroding the already fragile trust in traditional institutions. This started long before Brexit, before UKIP, and before the BNP: this sentiment has been brewing on fertile ground for some time now and, I fear, is leading to a critical boiling point.

Once obvious and mockable dog whistles, “globalism”, “invasion”, “climate hysteria”, etc, now blast through public life at as insufferable a volume as a U2 concert. Former fringe morons now have blue ticks (embarrassingly paid for), broadcast slots, commercial backing, merch lines, and armies of rage-engagement bots. Wasn’t it so much nicer when it was just the odd dodgy comment at the family barbeque? At least there you just give a disapproving glance and move on without having to worry about your uncle becoming the next MP for Clacton. Sadly, it’s now no longer something we can merely point at and laugh at in its absurdity: this is the mainstream.

This, I think, links quite nicely into the ‘raise the colours’ protests. A phrase borrowed, presumably, from a Pirates of the Caribbean DVD menu, has seemingly been turned into a battle cry for people who genuinely believe the England flag is banned in England. There is a grim sort of irony in people waving St George’s Crosses while claiming they've been “silenced”. Indeed, one wonders how silent you can be with a megaphone in one hand and a printed placard in the other, but alas, logic is now woke, and therefore part of the problem.

Mocking them, however, while tempting (and, in fact, partially done above, so do feel free to call me a total hypocrite as you read the rest of this piece), misses the point, and missing the point is something many of us on the mainstream Left have become very good at.

Behind the flags, behind the chanting, behind the casually racist Facebook groups and the deeply unfunny memes, lies a very real and very painful truth: people feel abandoned. Not just by politics, but by the systems and structures that were supposed to protect them. That they are expressing that abandonment through reactionary fury and neo-fascist dispositions doesn’t make that fury illegitimate but rather more urgent and more dangerous.

For over a decade now, communities across Britain have been slowly hollowed out. Not by boats, or Brussels, or BLM, but by a sustained, strategic campaign of austerity, proudly delivered and paraded by successive Conservative governments and quietly enabled by a broader consensus that prioritised “fiscal responsibility” over basic decency and human prosperity. Libraries shuttered, youth centres gone, an NHS on the brink, social housing left to rot, Councils stripped bare and then blamed for the mess. A social fabric, once threadbare, now exists as little more than frayed cotton on the floor.

Into that vacuum steps anger which is only directionless until someone gives it direction and purpose.

Enter Trump, Farage, Bolsonaro, Le Pen, Milei, Robinson, Tate, Wilders, Meloni, etc. These are people who don’t need facts. On the contrary, facts are the enemy, fear is the friend, and the people are the vessel to carry this fear to ballot box. They just need a scapegoat and a flag. Blame the migrant. Blame the woke. Blame the climate mob. Just don’t blame the people who actually wrote the cheques that gutted your town centre, your school, your country.

And what does the Left do in response? In too many cases, we roll our eyes, we moralise, and we post think pieces about how thick their followers must be (yes, I will freely admit the irony here). We retreat into the comfort of our own righteousness, forgetting that telling someone they’re wrong on its own has never once made them listen harder.

There is, quite simply, no progressive future that comes from sneering at the disaffected. That’s not solidarity, that’s self-soothing and changes nothing.

The Labour Government needs to understand this. While Keir Starmer’s softly-softly, flag-hugging strategy may well deliver nods of approval in the strategy room of 10 Downing Street, it will not heal the country, and it will certainly not close the chasm between the centre and the edges. It will not prevent the next wave of street protests, or the next populist surge, or the next Tommy Robinson rebrand.

What will? Well luckily for you this 25-year-old living in his detached house in Hove has the answers (don’t worry, again the irony isn’t lost on me)! We need to fix the rot at the source.

That means bold, unapologetic investment in the people and places politics has long ignored. Rebuilding social housing, reopening Sure Start centres, cultural funding for towns, not just cities, a genuinely progressive tax system, a benefits system that dignifies, not demonises, building proper transport infrastructure (I mean good grief HS2 still gives me nightmares). It means creating a country people can believe in again, not one they feel the need to “take back” by demonising and being active participants in the scapegoating of the most vulnerable.

It also means stopping the endless and increasingly troubling legitimisation of far-right framing in pursuit of poll numbers. Ultimately, if you accept their questions, you end up with their answers. For Labour, this will not win voters but only continue to alienate more and more of those who already deeply wish to see a progressive future for Britian. I dare say that haemorrhaging votes and support from both sides of the political aisle is not a prudent strategy, but I’m not paid the big bucks in Westminster.  

Let’s now pivot slightly to the killing of Charlie Kirk in Utah, a moment that, if anything, should have been an opportunity for sober reflection on the dangers of incendiary rhetoric, dehumanising language, and the online radicalisation pipeline that men like Kirk helped engineer. But reflection, it seems, is for cowards, and cowards, according to the modern Right, are anyone not prepared to shoot from the hip and scream about the civil war they crave so badly.

Instead, the aftermath was hijacked almost instantly: grievance became currency, and Kirk became an overnight martyr with his followers showing no introspection, no accountability, but just gleaming with this new chance to weaponise rage and play the victim. This is where the political climate and fertile soil of populist falsehoods have lead us.

The inconvenient truth is that none of this is in the realm of the abstract anymore. We are long beyond disagreeing on tax rates or transport policy. Rather, we are at a point where the political mainstream is sleepwalking towards legitimising hate and is continuing to build arms factories producing the ammunition for the leeches of Trump, Farage, Robinson, etc.

What do we do? Where do we go from here? It’s a question I’ve often posed in the closing of my pieces. Seldom, however, has the answer been so urgent.

We must build a politics that is not only competent but has its basis in care, tolerance, and respect. One that recognises that dignity is not a luxury, but a right. One that doesn’t sneer at the working class when they vote “the wrong way” but instead asks why they felt no one else was listening. One that doesn’t obsess over what the leeches on the Right are saying but focuses on what we are building because, let me tell you, there is an awful lot of progressive good happening in this country and under this government. But it must go further.

We must make it possible for people to live good, stable, meaningful lives: not just in cities, not just in the wealthy leafy suburbs of the WAGS, but in every corner of this country. That’s not just how you beat the far-right, it’s how you make them irrelevant and the subject of ridicule they so richly deserve to be.

So let us build to a future we don’t fear, but believe in. When we eliminate fear, we can lay the foundations no longer on the poison soil of hate and division, but on the soil of hope and solidarity.