BOTH THE “CENTRE” AND THE COBWEB LEFT WALLOWED IN FAILURE, WHILE THE FAR RIGHT EASILY HAD ITS BEST YEAR ~ Rob Ray ~ Reform UK has consistently topped national polls in 2025 as the “anything but LabCon” choice, with its predictable and often ridiculous incompetence in local government barely making a dent on numbers. Barring a minor miracle, it will win big in May’s local elections. Meanwhile its street wing, in the form of Tommy Robinson’s mob, managed to pull out a record crowd for Unite The Kingdom and litter every lamp-post from Kent to Yorkshire with the butcher’s apron. KEIR? HARDLY Much of the blame for this must be laid at the feet of former human rights lawyer Keir Starmer, whose journey from McLibel activism to implacable opponent of left dissent went supernova when his government proscribed a non-violent direct action group, Palestine Action, as a terror organisation. A monumentally stupid decision on all counts, not least for his own political future, as for many, it stripped away their last illusions of Labour as a progressive force. The impact of Labour’s attitude to the left, its abandonment of promised policies, and its seething hatred for protest can’t be overestimated in terms of where it finds itself entering 2026. Starmer’s wing of the party, its eminence thoroughly greased by Morgan McSweeney, never did understand that over the long term, if you have no tame corporate media you need grassroots activity. Not for the election-time door knocking, but for the shield it provides online. When no-one wants to defend you, because you make it clear you despise them, all that gets heard is the negative voice. The impact of this choice, to deliberately insult and alienate its own base, can be seen in the wake of the Autumn Budget, which did have a few vaguely centre-left ideas in it, and the Employment Rights Act, which (even watered down) genuinely does introduce a handful of protections for working people. Nobody cared. No-one has been jumping in on socials to pat Labour on the back, not even the old guard of (lower case r) reformists who previously would have been saying “see, this is better than the Tories”. And as a result, it all goes one way. As many predicted when Starmer first started purging Labour’s ranks of anti-Zionist Jews and rolling back on his leadership promises before the general election, a total reliance on public exhaustion with the Tories was never going to hold up, and so it has proven. With a grassroots shattered by its own hubris, an implacably hostile corporate media, and a public refusing to trust a word said by party or government, how Labour might pull out of the nosedive is anyone’s guess. All of which, in tandem with the Tories’ own self-immolation, has opened the void through which Nigel Farage sauntered. YOU’RE KIDDING ME … To his left, meanwhile, all has been chaos embodied by the extraordinary saga of Your Party. What were they thinking? Freedom has never made many bones about its position on Corbyn and the ultimate uselessness of the cobweb left, but even we weren’t predicting such an immediate and comprehensive proof. It’s hard to think of a critique, sneer, or bald-faced insult that could do justice to the absolute fucking shambles of it all. Amidst perhaps the most dangerous political situation of the postwar era, we watched a handful of inflated egos take all the potential energy created by Labour’s desertion and explode it into little pieces. The people I feel most sorry for are those who genuinely, for just a little while, believed it could go somewhere. Not in a patronising way, but in the comradely sense of knowing how it feels to have hope in a project and see it dashed. That is what the likes of good ol’ Corbs, Zara Sultana, and the various “revolutionary” parties should feel ashamed of: they took the energy and hope of hundreds of thousands of people and stamped it into the mud, unnoticed amidst the squabbling and scrabbling for position. There can be no better example of why we don’t need parties, but to turn outwards and organise the working class directly — place the horse firmly in front of the cart. Leave that pack of blithering idiots behind and give up on their decades of abject, piteous failure. SAVED BY THE (GREEN) BELL? The beneficiaries on the left from these twin towers of dung were, of course, the Greens under their affable, well-meaning and occasionally analytically shallow new leader Zack Polanski. No word of a lie, it’s been nice hearing someone be direct and relatively uncompromising in his language while taking on the press this year. His absolute refusal to play the “how many rights can we take away from trans people this week” game, in particular, is the sort of confidence many on the left could stand to learn from. But, even setting aside obvious anarchist critiques of the inchoate core and systemic shortfalls of the Green Party project, there are plenty of limitations on its surge, which already seems to have peaked. The Greens have no friendly media. Not the Independent, not the Guardian, not even the Morning Star, which (in the absence of a functional Communist Party offering) has broadly plumped for Your Party as the home of a more Proper socialist politic. And the Star is probably correct there — pathetic though Corbs and co. may be, their platform is at heart red economics, while the Greens are, well, green, with social democracy largely tacked on as an often uncomfortable coalition-building exercise. Much like the Lib Dems, green parties are notorious for opportunism, most notably in Germany where they frequently enter coalitions with the conservatives. So it remains to be seen how deep its commitments will run when placed under pressure. WHAT ABOUT US? Perhaps I’m being Mr Bias of Cheerleader City, but I think the direct action movement, particularly that wing of it which refused to simply roll over on Palestine and proscription, deserves a great deal of praise this year. It’s been a hard one, in which it became clear long sentences for non-violent dissent are here to stay, surveillance and repression are on the rise, and money has poured in to fuel our opponents. But thousands of people stood up to be counted, knowing they could face prison terms, knowing they would be mocked and mistreated. There has been a great deal of bravery on display throughout the year, and everyone involved should be proud of themselves. Always under the cosh, always few and underfunded, facing up to a State that increasingly has done away with even the slightest respect for privacy and human rights — the fact you keep going is frankly incredible. If 2025 has shown one thing, though, it’s that we’re right. The “practical” cobweb left and their electoral obsessions won’t save us; they can’t even save themselves. They’ve been given chance after chance, and shown that even if they could win power they probably shouldn’t. We need grassroots strength. We need the force of unified working class communities who can disrupt business as usual and make those in power sit up. It was direct action this year which, time and again, rattled the government where the conferences of electoral leftists produced only a distant gale of laughter. As we head towards the spectre of a far-right government which will show us no more mercy than this one, I can only say: keep going. Because they sneer at you. Because they seek to silence you. There is no greater proof of a government’s fear than a law designed to stop you from doing what you’re doing. You’re right. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Images: Radical Graffiti The post 2025: A gilded year for the right, hubris fulfilled on the left appeared first on Freedom News.

WHILE STARMER FLASHES HIS MORAL VOID AND FARAGE GETS A BBC FLUFF JOB, THE PEOPLE CARRY ON FIGHTING ~ Tabitha Troughton ~ For UK comedy, these days one has to depend on the promotional videos still scuttling out from the Prime Minister’s office, like perky little cockroaches. In the recent attempt to launch “Phase 2” of the government, together with “a more powerful Number 10”, the feet of Downing Street staff trudge upstairs (“don’t show our faces!”); the Prime Minister tries to place papers neatly into a folder, and fails; the Prime Minister tries to enthuse his team with “good spirits, confidence and conviction”; someone’s hand fiddles, too menacingly, with a ballpoint. A final close-up shows the Prime Minister clicking, with great concentration, followed by a smirk of triumph, on a mouse. There isn’t, curiously, an England flag in sight—not even a Union Jack; just a sizeable painting of a large, vaguely human-shaped, melting, black blob, directly behind the prime-ministerial chair. It’s not, of course, a depiction of a lost soul, but still the country flails, trapped in Starmer’s moral dissolution. Racists waving flags menace asylum seekers, people of colour, and their allies: Starmer says he loves flags. People swallow vicious, hate-filled lies, egged on by billionaires and supremacists: Starmer “gets” the lies; Great Yarmouth faces a weekend of “the UK’s biggest white power gig for a decade”: Yvette Cooper is wheeled forward to confirm that her house is permanently tricked out like a mini-roundabout. Since then, we’ve had a Cabinet reshuffle which resembles nothing more than the Cups and Balls trick. “You thought David Lammy was under here? No, he’s miraculously turned up here! Oooh, where’s Yvette Cooper gone?”—except that nobody cares where the balls are, and there’s already far too much bollocks to cope with. Assisted suicide! Badgers! Farm tax! Water shit! Cost of living! Welfare cuts! Peter Mandelson! The British public, welded to the rails, stares down the barrel of a train tunnel, from which a puffing, jeering, farting, purplish monstrosity lurches towards them. But worry not, Parliament has been back at work since 1 September and is carrying on as usual. A peaceful young woman in prison is on hunger strike, and in critical condition, detained for 9 months so far without trial. Police are holding back tears as they arrest peaceful protestors for terrorism. Meanwhile the Israeli government continues to starve Gaza and erase it, and increase the conquest of the West Bank. More IDF soldiers have kill themselves. Presumably in later years Starmer will think back fondly to the time he united opposite poles at asylum demos, with the chants of “Keir Starmer’s a wanker” coming heartily from both sides. That’s the cost of holding the centre, say the grown-ups, shaking their heads, but the centre has not held, even if “being a bit murdery” could exist, and, sadly, anarchy has yet to be loosed upon the world. Instead, Labour’s backroom boys are now “fighting like rats in a pack” over the leadership succession, which, again, no-one else cares about—unless perhaps someone is busy trying to reanimate Margaret Thatcher’s corpse. What’s to say about Reform UK, except that the large majority of the country seriously do not want them, despite continuing, slavishly fawning publicity from the mainstream media? Almost every time the mobile group of flag-wavers appear in front of what everyone persists in calling “hotels”, they’re outnumbered. Reform are losing councillor after councillor. Their four MPs, and the leadership, already fight like venal politicians in a sack. The Great Yarmouth white power gig turned out to have sold around 500 tickets, about the size of a bowls club, and has now, thanks to locals and campaign groups, been cancelled. Nigel Farage, who, as Il Duce-elect, still needs to retain his parliamentary seat, has come out as hating his own constituency. Fail not the BBC, which can make Uriah Heep look like a man of principle on a Sunday. Never mind what the people want: Reform, with its lies and racists and fear-mongering and riot-stoking and threats and long-held desire to make handguns freely available is what, we’re being told, they are going to get. “Unless Starmer is able to meet this moment”, falters the Guardian hopefully, like someone trying to insert a metal key into an electronic lock. And lo! Into this horrible scenario gallops Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party, his stallion of truth for once charging down the media bull, meriting not only more coverage in 5 minutes than the Green Party has had in a decade, but a picture in the understandably conflicted Guardian which made him look like a vampiric Shrek. And yea! Looming in the background are Corbyn and Sultana’s “Not Your Party” which manages to be far more attractive than Reform, despite not having a leader, or leaders, or even a manifesto—by golly it’s the Paris Commune! Or maybe State and Revolution. All the while, the people carry on, fighting against this genocidal black pall. From the heart of the Cotswolds to the centre of Edinburgh, from the doubling of numbers queuing for arrest in London’s Parliament Square, to the thousands on the streets of Belfast, the last few days alone are bursting with increased opposition. It’s astonishing. We should do all we can to make it effective, too. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Peter Marshall The post Farts, flags, and the melting black blob of UK politics appeared first on Freedom News.

“OH GARÇON? I’D LIKE ENOCH-WAS-RIGHT TORYISM WITH EVEN MORE GRIFTING, PLEASE. YES OF COURSE I’LL HAVE THE SIDE OF SELF-SABOTAGING INCOMPETENCE AND UNHINGED SHOUTING AT CLOUDS, THAT’S THE FLAVOUR RIGHT THERE.” ~ Rob Ray~ Jordan Tarrant-Short, a man in his 30s who has somehow never quite managed to throw off that Young Tory look, won an unremarkable by-election on May 2nd in a quite striking way.  For the last five years Tarrant-Short has been standing in Rochdale by-elections as a Tory and losing, handily, to Labour candidates. Despite a couple of second places, it’s never been close. Something about his self-satisfied, smirking, oleaginous Conservative chops just couldn’t cut through in a red seat.  Yesterday however he won in the Balderstone & Kirkholt ward by-election, tearing down a 31-point gap established in 2021. All he had done was switch parties to Reform.  As with most council by-elections, we’re talking small numbers of voters – 2,362 people turned out. But the way they split is notable:  Reform UKJordan Tarrant-Short (Elected)76632.55%LabourLeanne Greenwood62426.51%Workers Party of BritainLaura Pugh39816.91%ConservativeMudassar Razzaq2129.01%IndependentBilly Howarth1807.65%Liberal DemocratsChariss Laura Peacock1094.63%GreenMartyn David Savin652.76% Compare this to the 2021/2024 elections: Labour 1473/108660%/53%Conservative and Unionist710/29829%/7%Greens186/1508%/7%Freedom Alliance. No lockdowns. No curfews88/–4%/–Workers Party of Britain–/395–/19%Liberal Democrats–/122–/6% As I say, striking. While a large chunk of the people who still care to vote – barely 28% of the electorate – moved over to Reform, they did so to back a longtime Tory candidate who had repeatedly failed, and badly, in previous outings. But the stolen votes from Labour, and nearly as much so from the Tories, aren’t just going there. The Workers Party picked up nearly 400, while their former candidate, the far-right activist (and Reform sympathiser) Billy Howarth picked up 180, and the Lib Dems grabbed 109.  Why am I talking about this somewhat obscure bit of voting drama in the wake of Reform’s general surge? Because I think this microcosm speaks a great deal about the abject state of electoral politics, at the tail end of decades of centrist neoliberalism telling us There Is No Alternative if you don’t want worse to get in. This turn away from the status quo is not a sudden collapse, but a natural conclusion of a spiral decades in the making. In this thumping embarrassment for centrism – and even of classic hard-right politics as Labour increasingly hangs out in spaces previously reserved for the likes of the BNP – we have the public’s ultimate reply. There’s no credible left grouping, and the status quo is an ongoing slide into impoverishment. So for the loyal election-goer, what remains is varying formats of nationalist who promise they care about you even if they don’t care about the lives of refugees, and who haven’t had a chance to screw things up yet..  Much is being made of these gains essentially being a protest vote, along the lines of Nigel Farage’s most successful-ever political vehicle, Brexit.  But there’s a fair bit overlooked in that sentiment, depending on who you talk to. For some, this party led by a multi-millionaire, public funds-robbing, tweed-toting chinless stockbroker’s son, a multi-millionaire property baron and a millionaire Goldman Sachs alumni is genuinely seen as the honest voice of the common man. For others it’s a means to an end on immigration (even though the party offers very little that Labour isn’t already doing ). And for some, it’s a simple fuck you to the status quo, even though this is a party led by the rich with policies like “cut waste” and “fill potholes” – truly revolutionary.  A significant difficulty for the status quo parties is that (entirely warranted) criticisms of Reform as bought and paid for by the offshore rich, infested with corruption and fascists, led by a proven liar, is in large part simple hypocrisy. With the exception of that last (clearly not the dealbreaker at local level that you’d hope) they can all be Spiderman memed. Especially, in Starmer’s case, the constant, bald-faced lying and breaking of pledges alongside a rapidity of decline into anti-working class barbarism that has shocked even those of us who knew from the start where it was headed. As the Novara Media crew noted in their coverage, the consensus of opinion when you talk to people is “they’re all as bad as each other” and when you mix that with the sense that Reform are at least getting up the right noses, it’s (clearly) a potent mix. One which exposes the complete stupidity of Labour’s strategies in all kinds of areas, most particularly migration – it doesn’t matter how nasty government policy is, it can never “address concerns” that aren’t based in policy but in feelings and habit. The left, specifically the Greens, meanwhile have made modest gains but nothing like the breakthrough needed in an era so open to shift that both the major parties lost two thirds of their seats. Some of this is beyond their control: Worthies are less inclined to sink money into opening a fully-funded propaganda network (like GB News) to pump out Green talking points than far-right billionaires who see direct value in shifting culture rightwards. And The likes of the Mail, Sun, Times etc are less likely to give them a break if they get mentioned at all. Other elements are more the Greens’ own fault – lackluster leaderships who haven’t the media chops of a Farage, difficulties in the coalition of left and right, and a failure to cut through with head-turning policies or a sense of, for want of a better word, prickishness against the powers that be. They’re nice, well-meaning. And in the world of politics that translates as useless. So in this sense it’s not always a protest vote, as such. It’s a “what else am I going to do” vote. Reform’s approach is tailored for a particular strain of “everything’s shit especially London” British miserablism, but other than a particularly indulgent line on barely-concealed racism it’s really quite remarkable how unremarkable this London SW1-based party is. What it has is the same lack of tarnish from time and power that Corbynism had, in its early days. For non-politicos it’s a brand, for the most part they didn’t know or care who Darren Grimes was beyond some faff or other on GB News – though they will now he’s head of Durham Council. The jabber about a Tory-Reform pact being pretty laughable, the next couple of years are about Reform trying to manage the places it now controls, expand its voter base beyond an enthusiastic core and come up with some policies which sound good enough for government (as opposed to nonsensical stuff about taxing solar panels or swapping income taxes for sales taxes). That will be much harder, and there will be lots of opportunity for them to stuff it up. But in that vein, should anarchists care? We aren’t part of the vaunted (and largely obsolete) “ground game”, many of us don’t even vote. Well yes, of course. Mainly because where Reform leads, news agendas follow. Social culture follows in large part from the debates those news agendas produce. And social culture is where the battle lies for helping working class people of every stripe, under any party. We don’t need to be Labour supporters to go after Farage’s merry band of posh far-right grifters – they already stink up our communities with their mean-spirited whining. The Tarrant-Shorts of this world, before they were Reform, were knocking about in blue rosettes saying the same crap. It’s on us to make clear that when politics is a pile of bullshit the solution is not to find another cowpat and call it caviar. The vaccuum in party poltics is filled by Reform mostly because “who else” – and our anser to that is simple. There’s no-one else, especially not Reform. It’s just us, all of us, versus them. Voting has never been more useless, government never so unhelpful, capitalism never so greedy. It’s time for working people to take matters – the future – into our own hands. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pic: Nigel Farage, from Wikipedia The post All change in the councils: Except it isn’t appeared first on Freedom News.

BOUND TO CAPITALISM AND ELECTORALISM, THE STATIST LEFT HAS NOTHING TO OFFER DURING A PERIOD OF CRISIS AND RESTRUCTURING — LEAVING THE FIELD TO THE FASCISTS ~ Blade Runner ~ Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed the resurgence of a familiar historical pattern, with segments of the working class and poorer communities increasingly turning to far-right figures like Trump and Le Pen. Austria is the latest country to take a sharp rightward turn, with the anti-immigration, pro-Russia Freedom Party (FPÖ) securing the winning position in last Sunday’s election, which had an impressive 80% voter turnout. This confirms a growing trend seen recently in countries like Italy, Hungary, Poland, Brazil and France. Mainstream left-wing circles often interpret this shift as a result of their own perceived “failures” to address working-class concerns. A common argument is that a ‘class reversal’ has occurred, with leftist parties being co-opted by educated neoliberal elites. Others contend that the left has abandoned economic analysis in favour of identity politics. However, the root issue lies in the failures of the electoral democracy system itself. The feelings of betrayal and disillusionment stem from the statist left’s historical failure to challenge the spectacle of electoral politics, which serves to maintain the class system at all costs. Instead, leftist parties co-opted periods of insurrection and unrest, during the collapse of social democratic ideals in the economic crises at the dawn of the 21st century. By doing so, the left (focused today on the Green New Deal, identity, and human rights) has positioned itself as one of the two pillars of hegemonic politics, the other being the right (focused on climate change denial, nationalism, and religion). The modern statist left faces a fundamental tragedy. Bound to electoralism, it becomes entangled in the web of neoliberal governance, offering neither real alternative solutions nor effectively challenging the capitalist system during a period of crisis and restructuring — a time that should be a prime opportunity to steer forward on a new path. Meanwhile, the elite stays in control by diverting workers from direct action and steering them toward far-right electoral options or orchestrated xenophobic riots. These distractions buy time for the ruling class to restructure production and political systems to adapt to the grim realities of climate collapse and ecocide. Ironically, it is the far-right, not the left that thrives on false promises. Far-right leaders cloak themselves in anti-establishment rhetoric, positioning themselves as champions of the “forgotten” working class. By exploiting myths such as the ‘Great Replacement’ and the degeneration of Western civilisation, they channel working-class anger into nationalism and xenophobia. Their agenda once again fractures the working class, dividing it along racial, ethnic, and national lines. Once in power, the far-right capitalises on the economic desperation that initially propelled their rise, imposing austerity and anti-worker policies that further deepen inequalities. In this way, they reinforce both material and ideological barriers that protect the privileged within the citadel from the excluded ‘others,’ spreading fear and hatred on both sides. The excluded are denied entry into the zones of prosperity inside Fortress Europe, while the state exerts control over the ‘prospering’ population showing zero tolerance for anyone who falls outside the boundaries of depressive capitalist realism. The solution does not lie in reforming left-wing electoral parties to bring them in line with the ongoing collapse of the capitalist system. It lies in building a movement that rejects the entire framework of electoral politics. The answer is in direct action, mutual aid, and community-based organising that rejects both the xenophobia of the far-right and the hollow promises of the left. Only with radical class consciousness and anti-authoritarian organisation can the capitalist and state structures that continually betray us be dismantled. The post The far right, the left, and the trap of electoral politics appeared first on Freedom News.