3 hours ago
10
Sacha Hilhorst is right to highlight the fact that many Reform UK voters are disillusioned with the political status quo because their lives are ever less secure (I’ve interviewed Reform UK voters – and they’re much more progressive than you might think, 18 May). The issue at the heart of rightwing populism is an existential one: taking back control, as daily life feels insecure and out of control. But the essence of what Reform and the rest do is to swerve the causes of, and solutions to, this lack of security. Instead of looking at housing, welfare, rising prices, failing healthcare and, consequentially, failing health, they talk of control over borders.
The Reform project is to offer a racial solution to a class problem. It is not alone in this. Substituting race for class has been part of the agenda of the Labour party and the Tories whenever they have come under pressure. But bussing asylum seekers out of hotels or tightening border controls changes nothing. If we go back to those communities that fought to “empty the hotels” they are no more secure now and still just as poor.
The only effective solution is to establish a political alternative based around the same existential question – insecurity – and to fight for price controls, rent controls, debt write-offs, etc, as a coherent alternative.
The left too often forgets that for a substantial sector of the working class, the state is seen not as protector but as landlord and bailiff. If socialist politics is to be based on retaking control of the local state, it has to look at ending these roles and acting solely as an agent of, and shield for, the working class.
Nick Moss
London
At last, a writer who sees Reform UK voters as individuals, not just as part of the amorphous angry, reactionary “red wall”. Labour and the other European social democrat parties have rightly earned the scorn and anger of the “left behind”. They have been seemingly indifferent to the plight of those subject to the ill effects of increasing social and economic inequality.
Ameliorative measures that smooth down sharp edges of the free market system help, but they don’t change the fundamental unfairness of the social order. The evils that William Beveridge identified are still a scourge that disfigures society. Today we seem to have politicians who accept these as necessary evils, which can’t be removed without dire consequences.
Denying so-called agency workers in fulfilment centres the legal protections of worker status is wrong. No worker should be compelled to accept such bad working conditions as the price for a job. The politicians sound like John Brights – arguing for the retention of abusive child employment practices in 19th-century factories, the ending of which would make their businesses unprofitable.
Derrick Joad
Leeds
Sacha Hilhorst’s excellent piece rightly focuses on the general loathing of MPs taking second jobs. As the notion of banning denotes a smack of authoritarianism, which is easily attacked, might I suggest an approach whereby for every £1 earned by an MP in a second job, an equivalent £1 is deducted from their parliamentary salary. This may mean that the likes of Nigel Farage work as a parliamentarian for nothing, but they do it for the principle and the people, don’t they?
John Wilkinson
Hucknall, Nottinghamshire
