We’ve had our fair share of comebacks recently. Oasis are getting the band back together. Primal Scream are back for a new album. Labour have returned from the political wilderness. I’ll let you choose which of these were the most in demand.
Someone else returned too. Donald is back and I’m not surprised. He never really went away, unfortunately.

Thousands of column inches and social media posts have been dedicated over the past fortnight to outrage, disbelief and tactical analysis. Was it the Musk effect? Did Biden hang on too long? Was Kamala Harris too much of a “California politician”?
Actually, let’s stop right there, forget the USA for a minute, and take a look a bit closer to home.

Home is where a matter of months ago riots broke out across the UK. Home is where less than six months after they were elected in the wake of the most disastrous of Tory regimes, Labour is trailing in the polls. Home is where one in five voters across the UK would vote for the Reform Party if there were an election tomorrow.

Reform UK will hold their first Scottish party conference in Perth on the 30th November and whilst their position in Scotland remains weaker than across the UK, they are growing and will be bolstered by recent polls in Wales showing them second to Labour but ahead of the Tories and Plaid Cymru.

The truth is that across these islands, the far right is here. We can shake our heads in horror at the far-right government in Italy, or the rise of Marine Le Pen in France, or of course the Trump victory, but we’d be better off asking ourselves – and by ourselves, I mean the broad range of supporters of social democracy – Labour, SNP, Green and non-aligned – how we got into this mess and, much, much more importantly, how we get out of it.

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I’d say there is a storm coming, except we are probably already in it. When the interests of big business and the perceived interests of a large enough section of working people appear to coincide, terrible things can result.

The first myth to be disabused is that the far-right is stupid. Nothing could be further from the truth. Their sophistication in terms of the issues, how they organise and how they communicate is way ahead of other forces. They seek out poverty and industrial decline. They talk to the safety fears in communities, particularly those of women and children.

They thrive where our housing stock is crumbling.
The second myth to be disabused, and this is far more important than the first, is that those who choose to support them are stupid too.

By and large people don’t vote for Trump because they think he is a rounded and persuasive politician any more than UK voters think that Farage is a political mastermind. They do so for a complex combination of reasons, some economic, some social and some tactical.

Shouting “yah boo you are a racist” at the over 10 million adults across the UK who are probably currently aligned with the Reform Party is not a strategy that can continue.

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Neither, and here lies a fundamental truth that our political class of centrist leaders have thus far ignored, is policy accommodation with the right. Whether the issue is migration, LGBT+ rights or so-called benefit cheats, normalising the views of the far-right, even where they find a reflection in the attitudes of some voters, only strengthens them and weakens the rest of us.

Instead, let us start by talking about our former industrial heartlands. Areas in the North East and North West of England, the Port Talbot area of South Wales, and yes Grangemouth too. Communities and communities of workers who have been, and are being abandoned, because they are apparently not economic. Workers who have listened for decades to proclamations about new growth, community re-generation and now the Just Transition to a brighter green future, all the while still waiting for that hospital appointment to come round and scraping together the cash to pay for their rising rent.


Secondly, let’s talk to workers and their communities and not about them. If migration is a major issue, and it is to people across our communities, let’s have that discussion, not shy away. If people fear that their taxes will rise, let’s talk about tax and who should be paying it. If people are turning against the need to act on climate change, let’s show them why their energy, insurance and shopping is all linked to it.

Meanwhile, let’s campaign for some really obvious and really popular things like investing seriously in our industrial future, abolishing the hated council tax and reinstating the winter fuel allowance.

If this sounds like I think that I, or the trade union movement has all the answers, we don’t. We do have an impact but we’re not all knowing. Through trade unions, members have come together to increase their wages in the face of the cost-of-living crisis. Through us, members campaign along with their communities to defend jobs. Trade unionists are often the last people standing when they come for our public services. But it’s not enough. We need to do much more.


For us it starts with those workplace conversations, with workplace organising and providing alternative avenues to make change. At the end of the day, for all of their anti-politics rhetoric, Farage, Le Penn, Meloni and Trump are just another breed of power-hungry politicians indebted to their corporate masters.


And, of course, we will never have any truck with racism in any form. While the Reform Party meets in Perth on 30th November, we will be holding our annual St Andrews Day March in Glasgow. Workers and communities across Glasgow and wider Scotland will come together to say that there is no space for far-right agitators in Scotland. We will always be visible in the fight against the far-right. We are in the midst of a battle that we cannot afford to lose.


Roz Foyer is general secretary of the STUC