A-Infos (en) UK, ACG, Can Reform go Green? (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Reform is a right-wing party led by millionaire-with-five-houses Nigel 
Farage; it is racist, anti-working class, and funded by the rich. They 
are Climate Crisis deniers and oppose Net Zero policies to stop the 
production of carbon (fossil fuels etc) which cause global warming. 
Years of cuts and austerity implemented by the major political parties 
(Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems) have rightly made many people angry 
and disillusioned with politics-as-usual. Reform have benefited with 
councillors and an MP (Nigel-never-in-my-constituency-Farage). They 
blame the housing and cost of living crises - and all other injustices - 
on immigrants and refugees, rather than the global Capitalist system 
which is based on wealth and power for the few - bosses and landlords - 
at the expense of the rest of us.
Reform are currently drafting the green policies needed to keep many of 
their supporters and win new ones. For example, they oppose building on 
the Green Belt and propose stopping the waste and destruction of bottom 
trawling which destroys seabed life and where much of the catch is 
thrown back dead. Reform are threatened by the rising popularity of the 
Green party and anger at the anti-green policies and climate change 
inaction of the Conservatives and Labour.
However, the biggest Green issue is the global climate crisis, which is 
already causing heat waves, fires, droughts, storms and floods, with 
many dead or forced to flee their homes worldwide. Reform oppose all 
policies to tackle the crisis. Why? - because they are funded by Fossil 
Fuel companies and the super-rich whose wealth is based on exploiting 
us: they need business-as-usual.

Reform
The last few years have seen the rise of Reform UK. After his adventures 
with UKIP, Nigel Farage created Reform UK. In some ways it is a 
regrouping of the Tory right, heavily laced with populism, fake appeals 
to 'the people'. This is becoming increasingly clear with the defection 
of Tory MPs to Reform. Reform claims to speak for the underdog and the 
disenfranchised and aims to grab working class votes. But a quick glance 
at that party and its backers shows that it is financed by billionaires 
with their own objectives, not those of the working class and the poor. 
Its main backers are Christopher Harborne, a crypto billionaire residing 
in Thailand, Richard Tice, himself a Reform MP, and a multi-millionaire, 
Nick Candy, billionaire property developer, and other billionaires and 
millionaires. Farage himself is from a privileged background, and an 
ex-Tory, and many Reform MPs are themselves super rich.

These are the real people behind Reform UK, property developers, City 
speculators and elite members of the Establishment.

Reform UK is no friend to the working class and the poor. It wants to 
further privatise the NHS, scrap environmental controls and raise tax 
thresholds. It despises the poor it claims to represent. One of its MPs, 
Lee Anderson, another former Tory, sneered at people using food banks, 
and then later criticised nurses who were forced to use food banks, 
saying "they've got something wrong with their own finances."

The media, including the BBC, has fostered the rise of Reform. The cost 
of living crisis, rising rents, the ongoing collapse of public services, 
and virtual pay freezes, have seriously affected the working class. Each 
successive UK government, whether Tory, Tory /Lib-Dem coalition, or 
Labour, have failed to improve living standards for workers. This, 
aggravated by Labour's increasingly anti-working class policies, have 
brought about an increasing disillusionment with the mainstream parties.

This developing class anger is being captured and diverted by Reform, 
which uses migrants as scapegoats and focuses widespread despair and 
anger on refugees and migrants, camouflaging the real culprit for 
growing misery and poverty, the capitalist system.

In this process, both the Tories and Labour have moved to the right.
The Green Party
The Green Party remains a minor force in UK politics, with its 
environmental and social justice platform. However, its recent more 
populist rhetoric and disillusion with the Labour Party has resulted in 
some growth - both in terms of members and representatives. While it has 
taken a more populist tone its policies remain entirely reformist, 
advocating for green social democratic capitalism rather than systemic 
change. While the party plays a critical role in highlighting 
environmental issues, it is not positioned to challenge the structures 
of capitalism effectively. It is a party which calls for radical change 
but won't go so far as to oppose capitalism and its institutions 
altogether. Even the World Bank and the IMF still have a place in the 
Green world. Because such radical change does not go with the grain of 
capitalism and its media cheerleaders, and because it is so hard to 
achieve, efforts are made to temper the message and render the 
organisation more like that to which people are already accustomed. 
Unfortunately it is precisely the established ways of thinking, acting 
and organising that have created the ecological and political swamp in 
which we are sinking. The more this process of adaptation occurs, though 
it may make for survival within the world of parliamentary and 
capitalist politics, the worse it bodes for real improvements in our 
lives. It also diminishes the Greens' claim to have a thoroughly fresh 
perspective, especially as other parties, have recently applied a Green 
gloss to themselves.
Labour has proved how thoroughly anti-working class it is, with its 
latest attacks on pensioners, WASPI women, and on civil rights. This is 
not to mention its increasingly strident rhetoric around war fever, its 
increased defence budget and its drive towards conscription.
Whether you vote or not for one of the less unsavoury names on your 
ballot card, the fact remains that a vote cast, either at national or 
local level, every few years, doesn't seriously challenge the system. 
What is needed is organising in the workplace and the neighbourhood, to 
counter austerity measures, closures of hospitals, libraries, youth 
centres etc. This must lead on to new forms of organisation that empower 
all of us and looks towards the creation of a new society built on 
equality and freedom. Some call this direct democracy, others workers' 
democracy, we call it anarchist communism.

JackDaw May Day special:
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A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
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