The UK’s Local Elections Are a Win for Right-Wing Populism

And the left need to do something about it.

It’s been an awfully long time since Andrea Jenkyns has popped into my easily irritated mind. Around eight years ago, in the run up to the 2017 General Election, I spent some of my free time in between studying for my A-Levels dismantling and removing Andrea’s printed face from the streets of Morley and Outwood, my native constituency. Some would call it vandalism, but my friends and I would call it cleaning the place up a bit. At sixteen and seventeen years old, we were unable to vote, so did what we could in the form of activism. She was elected that year by a margin of just 2,104 votes, and it pained me to think that, had my comrades and I been a bit more thorough in our tidying up, we may have ultimately helped put her out of a job.

I went to war with her again just a couple of years later. This time, however, I was able to exercise my democratic right to vote for the first time, and I went to the polling station with my mum to put a big “X” in the box beside Deanne Ferguson’s name. Admittedly not for Ferguson’s local policies, which I’m sure were very good, but for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.

I wasn’t too sure what socialism meant back then, and you could say I’m even less sure now, but what I was sure about was that Corbyn was someone I could really get behind and root for. He was the uncharacteristic charismatic leader, the classic antihero, he believed in what he was saying, and had a long history of being anti-establishment. I remember fondly he appeared in between acts at The Libertines’ gig at Prenton Park in 2017. I was in attendance and chanted his name to the tune of The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army”, albeit not really knowing who or what I was chanting for - but he appealed to people.

After hopelessly voting red in December 2019, I sulked back to university in Liverpool where I remained sporadically for four marvellous years, and during that time, I lost touch with Andrea Jenkyns. I’d seen the odd bit of humorous controversy online, like the time when she made the middle finger gesture when she was the education secretary, or her association with the clusterfuck that was Liz Truss.

It was to be third-time lucky in the 2024 General Election when she finally, like so many of her Conservative colleagues, got turned over. However, I was foolish and naive to assume that that would be the end of her political career. It was only when I passed some roadkill the other week (unrelated), that she popped into my mind for the first time in months, and after a quick Google search of “Andrea Jenkyns latest” like a weird stalker-fanboy, I discovered that she’d cut her hair, defected to the Reform Party and was running to be the first Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire.

Not just a win for Jenkyns

Her win can’t surprise many. To her credit, she fought bravely during a hard campaign, in a county where she was once a Conservative councillor. Both times she was elected in the late 2000s, she narrowly defeated the British National Party candidate, so it doesn’t come as too much of a shock that Lincolnshire voted Reform. What is shocking though, is the magnitude of her victory, coming in the form of a forty-plus-thousand strong majority.

The most alarming thing, however, is that it’s not just a win for her, or a win for Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, but it’s a win for right-wing populism as a whole.

The ever-growing nationalist ideology, largely centred around anti-Muslim immigration, which prides itself on being “anti-establishment” and “for the people” has not yet infiltrated the British political system until now. Of course, the UK has flirted with hard right sentiments in the past, with the EDL, UKIP, For Britain, and even certain factions of the Conservative Party, but only in other European nations have we seen right-wing populism really take centre stage.

We’ve seen it in France with Marine Le Pen, and Hungary with Viktor Orban. More recently, in Germany with the AfD, Italy with Giorgia Meloni, Belgium with the current Prime Minister Bart de Wever, and in Romania, with election front-runner George Simion. This way of thinking, as we know it, has been categorically popularised by Trump, upon which many are now following his blueprint - the “I don’t care, I’ll say it how it is” stance, the representative of the “silent majority”. It’s something they all have in common…

Another thing they all have in common is the tendency to make ludicrous comments, and the Reform Party rosette which Andrea Jenkyns now sports gives her even more scope to make outrageous statements. She made her victory speech in a silver, sequin dress, with enough blue eye shadow to rival candidates on RuPaul’s Drag Race and, when commenting on migrants, said they should be “put in tents”. When this comment was challenged by Sky News, she made an exception for “genuine asylum seekers from Ukraine etcetera…”

Right-wing populism stems from a distrust in mainstream politics and a desire to preserve cultural identity. It’s dangerous. It thrives on division, fear and identity politics, it scapegoats minorities and incites violence. It views everything as a conspiracy, and in doing so, undermines democratic norms - think Trump rejecting the 2020 Election result and subsequently causing the Capitol riot.

I’m fascinated by this ideology, namely as an apprehensive outsider; I read extensively on Narendra Modi whilst travelling through India, the Vox party in Spain are a group I’ll always keep an eye on, and now that I’m in Australia, I have to keep up with the medley of political parties on last week’s ballot paper that all associate with right-wing populism (Liberal-National Coalition, Trumpet of Patriots and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation).

Australia didn’t fall for it

For right-wing populists in Australia, attack was the worst form of defence, and they quite simply self-imploded. All three parties adopted Trump-like tactics for the electoral campaign, to which the Aussies didn’t take to kindly. So much so that the leader of the opposition, Peter Dutton, who was nicknamed “Temu Trump”, actually lost his own seat. Trumpet of Patriots and One Nation on the other hand, didn’t win any seats and the whole affair ultimately resulted in a landslide win for Albanese’s Labor Party.

Australia didn’t fall for it, and neither did Canada. Greater Lincolnshire and Runcorn did though, and the left need to retaliate. Quickly - as UK Labour are a lost cause, seemingly cosying up to Farage and Reform’s policies instead of tackling them head on.

There’s no point dwelling on what they could have done, but it’s worth noting that this was a huge missed opportunity for the Greens and, to a lesser extent, the Lib Dems. They must now make the most of the chaos that Reform has caused, and use the distrust that people have in the two main parties to their advantage. The same goes for the smaller parties, and it would come as no surprise to see more parties emerge out of this political earthquake.

Even from a position of apprehension, it’s exciting. The rise of right-wing populism shows that people can come in and rock the apple cart, and if there’s any positives to take away from it, it shows that someone, a charismatic leader who people can get behind, can come in and rock the apple cart as a force for good. Where they’re going to come from and what they’re going to look like is beyond the extent of my thinking, but they too will champion the working class and fight for the people, just as the populists have. They’ll be strong and ambitious when talking about policy, and bold and fearless when standing up to the bullies and calling out the lies. They’ll be less cautious and more committed. They won’t necessarily be Jeremy Corbyn, they won’t necessarily even be socialist, but they’ll tackle the populists head on, and they’ll be quick - they need to be.