Civic nationalism fails again in Chester by-election
Posted by admin978 on December 2, 2022 · Leave a Comment
Last night’s by-election result in the City of Chester constituency gave further proof that the Farage era is over – a fact that will not surprise regular H&D readers but might be news to others.
During recent weeks there had yet again been media hype (encouraged by some academic observers) suggesting that civic nationalism of the Nigel Farage variety might again be on the rise in the UK.
Farage is no longer a party leader, but is closely associated with Reform UK, led by his close associate Richard Tice and backed by some of the same donors who financed Farage’s previous ventures, the Brexit Party and UKIP.
Pollsters and academics have recently argued that Reform UK might be the beneficiary of public disgust with the Conservative governments of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, and Farage has hinted he might make a comeback to assist Tice.
Yet as regular H&D readers will know from our detailed analyses of local elections across the UK, the truth is that Reform UK barely exists at grassroots level. It hardly ever contests local elections, and when it does the results have been dismal.
Parliamentary by-elections are a different matter, because Reform UK is lavishly funded by Eurosceptic tycoons, so its lack of activists can be masked by throwing money at glossy leaflet and poster campaigns.
Even so, the ballot box is pitiless in revealing the truth about a dying party. Reform UK’s candidate Jeanie Barton polled only 773 votes (2.7%), losing her deposit and finishing a distant fifth.
In Chester yesterday the circumstances should have been ideal for a ‘right-wing’ protest party. Everyone knew the Tories couldn’t win this by-election, so the ‘wasted vote’ argument that often damages smaller parties did not apply. Moreover, Sunak’s Conservative Party is unpopular in any case. We are facing an economic crisis with many households struggling to make ends meet. And in the very week of the by-election, UK census figures were released that should have alarmed every racially-conscious voter. Nigel Farage did his best to make immigration an election issue, but voters simply aren’t interested in Reform UK.
And there’s a good reason for that lack of interest. You can’t fool the voters for ever, and it’s now obvious to even the uneducated that Farageism is simply a form of ultra-Toryism. Reform UK is dedicated to the values of global capitalism: the very values that have driven mass immigration for decades. Its ‘free market’ ideology would (as Liz Truss showed when she attempted a milder version) be disastrous for most Britons.
Since last December when Tice himself spent a fortune in the Old Bexley & Sidcup by-election and polled 6.6%, his party has contested a further five parliamentary by-elections and lost its deposit each time, with its highest vote being 3.8% in North Shropshire almost a year ago.
Reform UK’s latest lost deposit reflected its utter irrelevance in the eyes of almost all Chester’s electorate, and similarly dire results can be expected at the next parliamentary by-elections, again in North-West constituencies, at Stretford & Urmston on December 15th, and West Lancashire on a date yet to be fixed in January or February.
The only good news for Tice and Farage is that their party finished well ahead of its two populist rivals (which is scarcely surprising since they are equally irrelevant to the concerns of most voters, and have far less money than Reform UK to spend on their campaigns).
UKIP – the party Farage led in its heyday – now barely exists. Its candidate Cain Griffiths finished seventh with 179 votes (0.6%).
And the anti-lockdown, anti-vaccination party Freedom Alliance finished bottom of the poll with only 91 votes (0.3%) for its candidate Chris Quartermaine. There are many H&D readers who sympathise with Mr Quartermaine’s interest in what might politely be termed fringe science and contrarian attitudes to the CoVID pandemic. These things are of course open to debate, but frankly only a fool would now believe there is any electoral potential in CoVID conspiracy theories.
It’s time for nationalists to cut the crankism and return to the basics of racial nationalist politics. While there is a long hard road ahead to achieve either an ideologically credible movement or an electorally credible party (or ideally both), the recent Census results have emphasised that only racial nationalists – not civic nationalists or conspiracist cranks – have answers to the UK’s long-term crisis.
