Jim Round and the Problems of Democracy and Accountable Leadership in Reform

Jim’s one of the many great commenters on this blog. Earlier today I put up a video showing a Reform politico rebutting the accusations of racism against his party by showing the various Black, Asian and ethnic minority candidates they’re fielding this election. Jim posted this comment in response. It notes that Reform and UKIP have nevertheless attracted racists, and that there are real issues of democracy and the accountability of the party’s leadership to their members through the fact that Reform is a limited company, not a political party as such. Jim wrote

“I don’t believe that all Reform candidates/members or voters are racist, just as it was with UKIP, some wanted out of The EU for genuine reasons, unfortunately the party attracted people who were racist, look at what is now left of UKIP.

I would however ask any persons reading this who are Reform members/would be members or voters to ask their local candidate/organiser:

Why are Reform set up as a Ltd company?

If Nigel Farage eventually decides to step down as leader, how is a new leader voted for?

How do I have a say in Reform party policies, do I get to vote on them or put ideas forward.

If Donald Trump asks Nigel Farage for any future assistance, will he still be representing Clacton constituents if he is elected as an MP?

How can I trust Nigel Farage to not only represent Clacton constituents (for Clacton residents) but also attend parliament due to his past record as an MEP?

Are a company similar to SCL/Cambridge Analytica currently helping Reform to manipulate social media like what happened during the EU referendum?

According to Companies House, the last filed accounts for Reform shows a loss, but Nigel Farage’s Thorn In The Side shows a profit, where is that money going and where is it coming from?

If any Reform voters/members can honestly answer this, I would be very interested.”

These are all very good questions. Some of the Leave supporters at the Brexit vote were non- or anti-racist left-wingers, concerned at the way EU membership had harmed British agriculture and industry. At the time of the plebiscite over EU membership there was talk of a ‘Lexit’ movement comprising these left-wingers. I distinctly remember a video on YouTube of people boarding some kind of bus to have their say on the issue. Several were lefties who wanted to make the point that not everybody voting for Brexit were racists. Tony Benn in an at least one of his books was very sceptical about the EU and the effect it had had on the British economy and jobs. He provides the stats showing how it damaged us when we entered the EU. Barbara Castle also appeared on an edition of the chat show Wogan back in the ’80s, when she criticised the EU’s laws guaranteeing the right to move and work across the EU as it meant that foreigners could come here and take people’s jobs. Which is what the racist right said about the EU and immigration generally. It sounded peculiar and particularly offensive coming from a prominent member of the Labour party, especially at the time Labour was positioning itself as pro-EU against the Eurosceptics in the Tories. But Brexit has also harmed us because since we joined the EU, most of our trade has been with it and that’s been damaged by our departure.

As for Reform and UKIP attracting racists, this is true, though the real hardcore anti-immigration types and Fascists have become increasingly critical. There’s a feeling I’ve detected among some of them that he’s ‘paid opposition’, just like Giorgia Meloni in Italy. He will say all the right things to them about immigration, but if he gets near power he’ll abandon his anti-immigration policies and join the establishment. I also found a video by a aggrieved member of the National Front complaining that UKIP and Reform had destroyed the real far right.

Reading some of the articles by Hope Not Hate about the NF, BNP, British Movement and National Action as well as other material on the Far Right generally, it seems to me that they were quite capable of doing that on their own. There was a piece by Lobster’s independent anti-fascist researchers that stated that the NF or BNP only had 200 core members. While it boasted a membership ten times higher than that, there was a very high membership turnover with many members leaving after a year. I think most of these were people who simply wanted to stop non-White immigration, but didn’t support Fascist and nationalist ideology.

Also, the genuine Fascist parties in post-War Europe were, at least until a few years ago, miniscule. Some of this is because of memories of the carnage, brutality and misery they caused during the War, but it’s also a problem in the Fascist movements before then. Hitler and Mussolini managed to transform their originally tiny parties into mass movements, but they gained power constitutionally through the established parties seeking coalition partners due to a breakdown in democracy. The biggest Fascist party in Britain was undoubtedly Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, but they were at one stage being subsidised by Mussolini. Their popularity waned because of the violence associated with them, as at Mosley’s Olympia Rally and then with the anti-Semitic thuggery and Jew-baiting. Normal people despise thugs. When the NF looked like it was going to take off in the late 60s and 70s, they had the support of at least one Tory MP, who later abandoned them because he was appalled at their violence.

In the 1920s there was a French Fascist organisation, the Croix de Feu, who were also car fanatics. They used to hold combined car and Fascist rallies. But genuine Fascism, in jackboots and uniforms, didn’t appeal to the French electorate and so they abandoned it and became more centre-right. Gianfranco Fini, formerly of the Italian neo-Fascist outfit the Movemiento Sociale Italiano did the same in the 1980s when he wound it up to create instead the Alleanza Nazionale, which was supposed to be ‘post-Fascist’ centre right. This spawned the filofascisti, like Fini himself, who were all supposed to be businessmen in sharp suits rather than black shirts and combats. This still didn’t prevent him from praising Alessandra Mussolini, the Duce’s granddaughter. I think she was still very much traditional Fascist. Fini was, I think responding to criticisms by her, and told her that she had a name that set his heart on fire. Presumably, he meant her and her grand-dad’s surname rather Alessandra. The same point about the embourgeoisement of Fascist parties is true of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. Under her father it was the Front National. The senior Le Pen always preferred to be described as a businessman, according to a recent Times Radio video on the appeal of her party to France’s yoof. One of Monsieur le Pen’s businesses was as a record manufacturer. This included records of Nazi marching songs. Excuse me, but I think I preferred Queen, Duran Duran and the Style Council. Marine le Pen began a purge of the Nazi stuff, calling her party National Rally. One of her rallies was opened by a Black rapper, and she was welcomed because she was a ‘patriotic Frenchwoman’.

Farage, I believe, has gained votes because he does attacks mass immigration without being overtly racist, although I entirely take the point that racists are attracted to his party. And there’s questions about the attitude of the man himself, as one of the teachers at public school thought he was a Fascist.

But behind this are real questions about democracy in his party. I don’t think they’re unique to Reform. I’ve got a feeling that there may have been issues like this about the short-lived Centrist Party.

These are serious issues coming after the Tories and Blairite Labour’s assaults on democracy and creeping authoritarianism.

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