British politics risks an unprecedented shift to the far right as a result of public disillusionment if a Labour government fails to enact radical change, the former shadow chancellor John McDonnell has warned.

Writing in the Guardian, McDonnell said the threat would come not just from Nigel Farage’s resurgent Reform UK but from the return of a Conservative party “shorn” of its moderate wing and dominated by populists.

McDonnell, who served in the shadow cabinet under Jeremy Corbyn, reflected the views of others on his party’s left who are impatient with what they regard as Labour’s too-cautious approach. “The central messaging of Keir Starmer’s electoral strategy is that he’s not Jeremy Corbyn and that Labour is not the disaster that is the Conservative party,” he said.

McDonnell pointed to the polling figures of Reform UK, reaching as high as 11%, as evidence of “how a far-right populist programme can pull the major parties on to a rightwing agenda”.

  • HelloThere
    link
    76 months ago

    nothing has actually collapsed

    Respectfully, I think this betrays your privilege / position.

    Things very much are collapsing, and it isn’t limited to the poor and destitute anymore.

    A friend of mine was telling me recently how the foodbank they volunteer at has had an absolute explosion of demand and is now being used by people who previously would have been donating food. This is because they are spending every penny they can on their mortgage.

    Granted, we are not in the middle of a great depression or anything like that, but things are very bad for a lot of people.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      36 months ago

      Granted, we are not in the middle of a great depression or anything like that, but things are very bad for a lot of people.

      But that’s my point. We are going to have to drop further for people to actually push back because obviously all the shit that’s going down isn’t making people revolt.

      It’s not “betraying my privilege” this is me watching the Tories get a stupid amount of votes considering their platform and there has to be a percentage of those struggling voting for them for any of this to make sense.

      Or the votings rigged.