In May, Wes Streeting became the first cabinet minister to concede that Reform UK is the main opposition at the next election. Angela Rayner has now said much the same and declared that Reform must be held to account for making undeliverable ‘wild promises’. This is difficult when Reform is so small and unaccountable in Westminster, but what about the local councils they now control?
The local elections in May delivered a political earthquake: the Conservatives lost 675 seats, Labour lost 189 and Reform gained 677. The latter gained control of 11 unitary and county councils plus two mayoralties. Nigel Farage kicked off his victory tour in my home city Durham, where he advised all council staff working from home or on diversity issues to ‘seek alternative careers’. Such hubris was built on the back of Reform’s astonishing capture of the council – 65 seats out of the 98 available, and Labour left with only four councillors. What lessons should we take from this?
Notwithstanding some conciliatory early noises from the new leader of the council, Andrew Husband, the dominant tone has been one of divisive dog-whistling led by the new deputy leader, Darren Grimes, who comes with a chequered history relating to the Vote Leave campaign and his time as a presenter on GB News.
Grimes has wasted no time in delivering a ceaseless stream of invective on his many social media accounts, all of them popular and monetised. Much of this relates to actions by the council across a range of performative furores such as removing Pride and Ukraine flags from County Hall, refusing non-existent DEI training, and removing all reference to climate change in council structures. Understandably there are already reports that some officials are looking to leave the authority.
The performance optics came to a head recently with Reform councillors (all resplendent in MAGA-style caps) voting for Durham to become the first local authority (from a group of over 300) to rescind a 2019 declaration of a climate emergency. The stunt was pure Passport to Pimlico farce, but it garnered the desired regional and national attention.
It would be a mistake to think that Reform is surfing a massive populist wave. In Durham, Labour still came second and secured 21% of the vote share but only 4% of the seat share; Reform had 37% of the vote share and 66% of the seat share. In other areas where coalitions, pacts or deals are possible, Reform seems to have pariah status. The party was shunned in Northumberland, and it is attempting to govern alone as a minority administration in Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and Leicestershire.
Two-party politics looks to be now superseded by multi-party politics, and progressive parties who find Reform to be a toxic force need to be more willing to work together. More fundamentally, the voting system surely needs to be changed to reflect the complex preferences of the electorate. Elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd are already decided by versions of PR, and FPTP has been ditched for the next round of mayoral elections. It now needs to be adopted more widely for local and national elections otherwise we could easily end up with more populist councils – and indeed a government – supported by a tiny minority of the electorate.
The challenge to truth
But there is an even deeper threat posed by populist politics, one that upends everything we have previously taken for granted: the challenge to truth.
Combating misinformation in the post-truth society is fast becoming the hottest political potato. Populists have some of the most memorable tunes – from Take Back Control to Stop the Boats, there is a simplicity and succinctness that cuts through to voters. These messages are then relayed in smart ways to reach the widest audience – it is no coincidence that with 1.2 million followers on TikTok, Farage is outperforming all other parties and politicians,.
Platform design and algorithms subsequently combine to create a misleading impression of a society on the brink of breakdown – a supposed malaise that is leapt upon and magnified by the right wing press and, in turn, the BBC. Nationally and locally, Reform has flourished on this ‘post-truth’ politics. The easiest way to capture people’s attention is by providing emotionally engaging content featuring dog-whistling misinformation. In Durham, Grimes is a past master at this dark art, with pithy tweets like: ‘Does anyone else feel that Britain is about to snap?’
As Eliot Higgins points out, ‘in this algorithmic chaos, every citizen is a broadcaster and every truth contestable’. It is no longer necessary to establish credentials with editors, journalists, or referees; anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection is now a potential ‘influencer’ with an audience.
How to counter this situation is a massive challenge, but a good starting point is conceptual clarification. Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan, in a report for the Council of Europe, distinguish between misinformation (when false information is shared, but not deliberately) and disinformation (when false information is deliberately shared and intended to cause harm).
Arguably we are rapidly moving from misinformation to disinformation – the genie escaped from the bottle along with Trump and Brexit in 2016, and the cork seems to have gone missing. Examples abound – Trump sacks the chief of the Labor Statistics Bureau because he doesn’t like her statistics; Andrea Jenkyns, the Reform Mayor of Greater Lincolnshire declares she ‘doesn’t believe’ in climate change – the science simply doesn’t count.
There is no silver bullet for addressing this dangerous slide into post-truth oblivion. Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, advocates the introduction of Open Source Investigation (OSI) teaching in schools, colleges, and universities. This involves accessing openly available information (including Freedom of Information requests) to investigate, understand and make critical judgements on issues ranging from the very local to the multi-national.
Things like OSI are, however, a long-term project. In the meantime, it is down to those who are the subject of populist misinformation and disinformation to challenge the narrative and change the story. The banter and posturing going on in County Hall, Durham, might seem of little importance, but it is the gateway to something much bigger and corrosive. It seems grandiose to argue for a return to Enlightenment values like truth, reason, and evidence, but without it what are we?
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
