Clint Hatcher, Bristol Socialist Party
Another Reform scandal is under way as two leading members of Reform step down pending an investigation. This comes after the recent release of an undercover Channel 4 investigation into Reform’s dodgy political donations. James Orr and Dan Jukes’s exit out of Reform after being caught out by undercover journalists posing as wealthy Americans. They were caught on film discussing plans for how money from a fake foreign donor could be funnelled into the party through his son.
All the establishment parties have piled on Reform following this potential breach of electoral law. All the establishment parties still do however receive eye-watering donations from rich backers. The Socialist Party holds no truck with political parties courting these uber-wealthy members of the capitalist class, wherever they are from.
We have recently seen Lord Sainsbury, the businessman who has given millions to Labour since the Blair and Brown years – pausing donations when Corbyn was in charge – making another massive donation to the Labour Party. His latest donation has coincidentally lined up with Burnham’s recent push for people out of work to do some unpaid shifts at the supermarket Sainsbury’s. Supermarkets are raking in greater profits year by year and now they will get a workforce paid for by our taxes. And yet the working class faces a crisis of living costs, climate breakdown and conflicts erupting all over the world.
For too long, working-class people have only ever had the choice of establishment parties and Reform is no different. We need a party fit for the working class, where MPs only earn the wage of a skilled worker and we have the right of recall to get rid of them when dodgy dealings like this take place. But this recent debacle with Reform is not the first or the last time it will happen as we currently live in a society where it’s part and parcel for politicians to be ‘bought’ by the ruling class, through gifts and direct donations. We need a mass party that represents our interests, a new workers’ party armed with a socialist programme that can take the power out of the hands of the super-wealthy and their politicians and put the working class in the driving seat.
If you wanted to get an idea how the big bosses use the media and polling companies to get the people they want into power, the Channel 4 documentary gives a good example. Reform officials brag about how good value £30,000 worth of polls were when they get splashed across the front pages of the Times and Telegraph newspapers. A pollster is filmed explaining how journalists are delighted to get a good exclusive, not interested in the source of a poll’s funding, as it is “good copy”.
Channel 4’s exposé centres around arrangements to hide the source of money commissioning polls that are favourable to Reform. To allow big business owners to give their support to the right-wing party, without being exposed as doing so. The millionaires and billionaires backing Reform, and all the other establishment parties, aren’t doing so for charity – they will expect a return with business-friendly reforms when in power.
