The deflating Faranskis
Has populism peaked?
The Greens are now Your Party. And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
In early May Zack Polanski (née Paulden) saluted the local council results with a brave statement not about the future, but about the present: “It is very clear,” said Mr P, “that the new politics is the Green Party versus Reform.”
There are some words in the English language that, in common usage, often mean the opposite of what the user is trying to say. “Surely” is almost always deployed when the psychologically unmoored speaker is trying to get to grips with the unexpected. In politics, being “clear” is an attempt to persuade the listener that the speaker can detect a road ahead through the contingent murk.
Was Zack perhaps entitled to his clarity? Nine weeks earlier, Hannah Spencer, the Green Party candidate, had won the Gorton and Denton by-election handsomely, with “Matt” Goodwin of Reform coming second. In the English council elections, Reform had won an additional 1,450 seats and the Greens more than 400. Zack went off to the conference of the main teaching union (formerly the NUT), strutted his stuff and got a standing ovation where once only Labour dared to tread – and where it would often get booed by the traditionally far-left delegates.
This piece argues that he was premature. Even by the time of the council elections there was some indication that we had reached peak populism. Now, as Andy Burnham prepares for the premiership and Kemi Badenoch begins the long, slow Tory recovery, the signs are that we are entering a plural-party polity (sorry about that), with Labour and the Conservatives back in the mix. Whatever the “new politics” consists of, it is not “Green Party versus Reform”. And here’s why.
Reform’s high tide
Let’s start with Reform UK at its high-water mark. In January 2025 Reform overtook the Tories in opinion polls, never to fall behind again. That April they did the same to Labour – just nine months after Keir Starmer had gained his massive majority. In May Sarah Pochin (of “too many blacks in ads” fame) won the Runcorn by-election by a whisker, with Reform coming from nowhere. That October Reform hit its high-water mark, polling at 32 per cent. At that level, given the vagaries of our system and the division of the opposition parties, you can begin to think about going back to your crypto donors and preparing for government.
Within weeks of that poll, some of the most colourful fruit was hurling itself from the Tory tree and being harvested by Reform, including the thwarted would-be leader of the Tories, Robert Jenrick. When a man that ambitious decides that you’re the most likely vehicle for his journey to the top, it suggests that your prospects are luminous.
In this country, the foundations of successful general election campaigns, and the source of experienced and rooted politicians, are provided by local government. Good councillors have to be practical and know their constituents. Now Reform has lots of them, and they won’t all be duds.
Lean, mean and green
A few months after the 32 per cent Reform poll, with Keir Starmer enjoying reverse-North Korean levels of support as measured by pollsters, the Greens several times equalled or slightly exceeded Labour, polling in the high teens.
Much of the Green surge has been attributed to Polanski, erstwhile actor and boob-enhancing hypnotist, and, like some of Britain’s most erratic politicians (Lembit Opik, Liz Truss, etc.), a former member of the Liberal Democrats. “Key to (his) approach,” a BBC website report told readers, “is Polanski’s approval of Nigel Farage’s ‘storytelling’ skills, which he told BBC Newsnight could be harnessed to send a different message to a wider audience, including Reform UK supporters. He said the Greens had to ‘connect with that anger and turn it to hope, turn it to possible solutions’.”
This is the old populist one-two-three: tell everyone that their anger is justified because everything is terrible; tell them that it’s all someone’s fault; tell them that the solutions, given how bad things are, are remarkably simple.
People liked Polanski’s story. At Gorton and Denton the Greens pulled off that remarkable victory, mobilising social liberals and Muslims. Polls shortly afterwards indicated the real possibility of a Green surpasso, if only the party could maintain its momentum. In a couple of polls the Greens actually led Labour, albeit while polling in the high teens. May saw the Greens win councils such as Hackney in London, where they reduced Labour from 50 seats to nine and won the mayoralty. There were similar, if less dramatic, victories in Lewisham and Waltham Forest. The Greens also won councils in more rural areas.
There was also the apparent windfall of the implosion of Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s Your Party (a name about which enough jokes have been made already), leaving the Greens standing alone to the left of Labour. This was predictable, and I predicted it, but it still provided a boost to Zack Polanski, who had aimed a large part of his appeal at precisely the voters and activists whom Corbyn had hoped would support him.
The receding tide: Reform
By this week Reform was polling around 26 per cent, with Labour and the Conservatives not too far behind. Those figures, translated into a general election result, could mean practically anything, but they don’t point to a Reform majority. They suggest the growing possibility of an even split on the Right, which in turn makes it far from impossible that Badenoch’s Conservatives might become the right-wing voter’s best hope of defeating Labour when the next election comes. Personally, I’d bet on Reform losing its poll lead altogether in the next six months.
Why? First, those 1,400 council seat wins could reflect a genuine enthusiasm for Reform, but I don’t see it. It’s a shame that many voters seem to treat council elections as a way of expressing a view on national politics without the jeopardy of seeing a change of government. You can afford to do it. Makerfield, where something substantial seemed at stake, was a consequential election and, despite its theoretical winnability (unlike Gorton, its demographics made it one of Reform’s top ten hopes), Reform bombed, even though the Tory vote completely collapsed.
With the exception of the German AfD, far-right parties in Europe that are closing in on a share of power have generally edged towards the centre. They do not espouse leaving the EU or NATO and have, to an extent, tempered their anti-migrant rhetoric.
In the UK the opposite has happened. The Right as a whole has become engaged in a bidding war, promising not merely to “stop the boats” and cut legal migration, but to deport millions of people already in the UK. The pull has come from the millionaire farmer and Reform defector Rupert Lowe and his Restore Britain party. Restore has attracted an entire social-media subculture of young men who regard being described as “racist” as a compliment and seek to live up to the epithet.
These may not be people that Farage and co. want in Reform, but their energy, and their willingness to openly shout the race thing at the dogs instead of whistling to them, has shifted the acceptability window sharply towards open declarations of the supposed incompatibility of non-white ethnic groups and “indigenous” Britons. I’ve written about this on here before. People who radicalised over Brexit, then moved on to immigration and the boats as matters of numbers and control, have now migrated themselves to race and ethnicity. This pull has even tugged influential members of the Conservative Party towards racial politics.
