Crossing the Divide: Reaching Reform Voters in a Fractured Britain.

Why understanding perception, not just policy, may be the left’s biggest challenge ahead of the local elections.

Photo by Red Dot on Unsplash

This article is from our greatly appreciated regular contributor Claire Jones, and it’s a piece that asks some uncomfortable but necessary questions about how we’re engaging with politics right now. It doesn’t flatter, it doesn’t shout, and it feels particularly important as we head into the local elections.

If you have any ideas that you would like to contribute to Bearly Politics, please feel free to send those to iratusursusmajor@gmail.com.

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Reform is still polling strongly, escaping mainstream media scrutiny, receiving absurdly large amounts of funding, and enjoying fragmentation and non-co-operation among left block parties. Hence, in the upcoming May council and Senedd elections, we, as progressive campaigners from the left and centre left, have a vital role in curbing Reform support. This, then, is a good moment to pause for some introspection.

The locked room

Progressives are good at intellectual navel-gazing. Imagine a room with many doors, each firmly locked but containing a letter box through which corroborating information pours daily – in-depth investigations of Reform’s questionable finances, new angles on Reform’s climate denialism and radical-right links, more Reform councillor revelations. Locked inside, we drown in an excess of supporting evidence, up to our necks in paper, unable to move outside and act where we could make the biggest difference.

Most viewers of this ever-replenishing corner of the political ecosystem are on the same ideological page. Faith is placed in the ‘outward ripple’ principle that some progressive content will somehow make it somewhere beyond the echo-chamber walls. But we have to question the efficacy of this supposed movement. If it happens, arguably, its influence is marginal.

Continuing investigative research and analysis is essential. But we should also go forth and communicate with Reformers, using our understanding of them and their perceptions of us to refine our messaging.

“Campaign groups need to be better at getting out into the community” Nick Lowles

The ‘persuadables’

Of the five voter types that emerged from Hope Not Hate’s research, three groups, together representing over 50% of Reform supporters, are persuadable: squeezed stewards, reluctant reformers, and contrarian youth. They share deep cynicism about establishment parties and want radical change.

Undecided voters are another key demographic. For brevity I’ll refer to all these ‘persuadables’ as ‘Reformers’.

Automatic barriers

But do we really understand how we’re perceived? Assumptions Reformers make about progressive campaigners are significant obstacles to communication. We are the ‘snowflake wokerati’- soft middle-class elites detached from the grinding existential coal face of life, a dodgy bunch of sandal-wearing, tax-hiking, motorway-blocking tree-huggers, contemptuous of people’s desire to restore cherished traditional values. Instead we favour crackpot ideas fed us by climate science quacks, and the deeply gender confused, whilst welcoming in alien invading cultures.

They perceive us, frankly, like we perceive them – as ill-informed, dangerously manipulated by propaganda, and a threat. This is a poor starting point for campaigning.

Polarisation

These preconceptions are amplified via relentless rage-baiting from press and social media that tips defensiveness into hostility. The left and right blocks are no longer two sides of one nation separated only by finer points of difference on economic strategy, state intervention, taxation, etc. Polarisation has shunted us into fundamentally different opposing universes.

It’s clear Labour lacks the will to tackle the media’s pernicious role in this process. The Levison Inquiry gathers dust whilst OFCOM continues pretending GB News is news. But, instead of railing from the safe confines of our echo-chamber about media toxicity, we have, for now, to work with it.

Elements of truth

Nor are the Reformer’s perceptions of us pure caricature. It turns out we are prone to self-righteous intolerance of opposing views and presumptuousness about the self-evident correctness of our own. Research by More in Common revealed that progressive activists grossly overestimated voter support for taking in more refugees, placing it 17% higher than the actual rate. We’re also more likely to believe our opponents have been misled by misinformation. 72% viewed Leave voters negatively, in contrast to “backbone conservatives” only 24% of whom viewed Remainers with the same contempt.

Labels like “judgemental and dogmatic” aren’t entirely unfounded. To deter Reformers we must recognise our own assumptions and prejudices and how they might influence our campaigns.

Complacency

In the meantime, these preconceptions add to the unsurprising feeling that facing Reformers is daunting and ‘sitting it out’ more appealing. We quietly hope events will step in and do our work – that some huge scandal uncovered by diligent investigative journalists will hasten Reform’s recent poll dip, or that, strained by the weight of Farage’s ego, the party will internally combust.

But it would be folly to rely on these outcomes. It’s how democracies get caught out by the sneaking creep of authoritarianism. We can’t afford to sit back with crossed fingers.

Immigration

Only some ‘persuadable’ Reformers, notably the ‘squeezed stewards’, are stridently anti-immigrant. Nevertheless, immigration remains Reform’s ‘go to’ rationale for Blighty’s woes. The party’s links with international radical-right organisations also creates conduits (from think tanks to local community groups), all pushing anti-immigration propaganda. The sheer quantity of St George’s flags draped around Britain is a measure of its effectiveness.

Given these points and the likelihood of immigration featuring on the doorstep, it’s difficult to sidestep and worth exploring. However, the rift between progressives and Reformers on immigration is particularly acute.

Sliding attitudes

Much progressive campaigning is premised on the view that our cost-of-living crisis generates a sense of unfairness and competition over scarce resources. If services and living standards are improved then resources will become more accessible and fairly distributed. Competition will ease and, with it, hostility to migrant competitors.

This economic solution can’t be the full story though. ‘Ethnic replacement’ anxiety is also a powerful cause, driving fear of being overwhelmed and the need for control.

These emotions complicate the narratives surrounding immigration. Views like ‘I’ve honestly nothing against black people. I just want my country to remain recognisable’ may be sincerely held. But, as easy prey for radical-right manipulators, they are a minute step away from outright racism.

Similarly, resource scarcity may be cited as a genuine reason for anti-immigrant sentiment or wheeled out as post-hoc justification – ‘my beef with migrants is that they’re threatening my white identity. Blaming them for my difficulties getting a GP appointment, house or job is just a handy excuse I read in my favourite news-rag that I’ve tagged on to help vindicate the hostile stance I’d already adopted’.

So, campaign messaging that resource scarcity isn’t caused by immigrants misses the point if the Reformer’s concern, whether explicit or concealed, is ethnic takeover of their white national identity. For them, immigrants in the care sector for example are a problem, not a positive. No amount of leafletting showing how valuable or long-standing they are, how much tax they pay, or that 95% of them are legal, will calm fears about ‘Britain becoming a multi-ethnic state governed by Sharia law, rife with Pakistani grooming gangs’.

This approach actually risks increasing anxiety by presenting the wokerati as bent on exacerbating the very problem these Reformers want to control. Campaign messaging therefore needs to, for example, be location sensitive. The ‘immigrants welcome’ posters that enhance a community-cohesion initiative in Lewisham will backfire on the walls of Epping or Brumby, Lincolnshire. There they’d act like therapeutic attempts to cure wasp phobias by ‘opening the window next to the patient and letting the swarm in’.

Of course, we want to convey that immigration enriches UK society in multifarious ways. But we should also recognise that, in certain contexts in our polarised society, some campaign messaging risks creating as much Reform support as it diminishes.

A broken promise too far?

Irrespective of their immigration views, Reformers rage at establishment politics for the cost-of-living crisis. We feel we know the solutions – reduce living costs through green levies, renewables, infrastructure investment and nationalisation, cut poverty, not tax, to stimulate growth, stop the ‘privatisation premium’ including the £2bn per year we hand to corporate profiteers.

To this end we want to show how Reform is not a voice of change ‘on our side’, but an unholy mix of yet more self-serving, neo-liberal elitism and sheer incompetence.

But we face powerful political ennui. ‘Starmer loathing’ stems from his personality, his mistakes, and the press’s long-standing penchant for ‘left-bashing’. But it’s also about timing – his arrival after 14 years of political broken promises and shredded public trust. Labour’s biggest failure was to ignore the pathological extremity by 2024 of this disaffection. The policy steps and comms management required to repair it were very different from even a few years earlier.

The Green Party is capitalising brilliantly on the principle that ‘hope springs eternal’. But others, particularly those for whom the cost-of-living bites hardest, view politics through a lens of protracted despair. And despair requires expectation management, seeking endless reaffirmation via confirming events. When Labour increases benefits and the minimum wage, it’s safer and easier to remember the bad press, potholes and rising energy costs - disillusionment protects itself by factoring out ‘the traitor’s achievements’.

But campaigns which seek to cut through this disillusionment by simply delivering facts showing ‘how Reform is not on your side’ fail because the source isn’t trusted or therefore believed. To get across that Reform policy actually endangers Reformers themselves, campaigners have first to counter the Reformer’s preconceptions. This involves, amongst other things, being genuinely receptive to their cynicism and sense of disempowerment, and showing willingness to grasp the Reformer’s viewpoint, including on difficult matters like race and Starmer loathing.

Two-way dynamics

Campaigners are also working against the penetrating flow of radical-right propaganda, constantly destabilising our neat voter categories. For Reformers caught in this current, beliefs still held on Monday about the value of net zero, raising taxes and immigration, may be tottering by Friday.

Beliefs mutate both ways fortunately. UK-wide initiatives to raise awareness about the economy, strengthen community bonds and promote values of tolerance and inclusivity are antidotes to despair that re-ignite a sense of individual and community empowerment and efficacy. But the two-way current is dynamic. To counteract degradation from radical-right influence, campaigns should be outward-facing, constantly widening their net beyond their comfortable left demographic to also draw in Reformers wherever possible.

Cutting through

For the May elections, we must be realistic about success. Only some Reform voters can be reached. We have to set expectations appropriately, toughen up, and aim for constructive interactions where possible. Also, the ‘preconceptions’ problem means that the most valuable campaign approach is to avoid being explicitly linked to left or centre-left parties. A non-partisan approach allows a clearer, more credible focus on deterring people from voting Reform.

The campaign group, Compass Oxfordshire has developed a range of themes, principles and methods to help counter some of the obstacles explored here and to encourage voters to recognise the dangers of voting Reform. For further information look out for our forthcoming presentation.