There’s a dangerous delusion taking hold in British liberal commentary, and now taking root within the Labour Party, that the old ideological axis of Left and Right is dead, replaced by a new contest between the “mainstream sensible” and “radical outsiders.” Jeevun Sandher’s piece on LabourList is only the latest to push this view: a technocratic analysis wrapped in soft-focus empathy, urging Labour to split the difference between Farage and the Greens. But politics does not take place in a vacuum. And yes, it is still about Left and Right.
Let’s begin with the sleight of hand. Sandher groups Reform UK and the Greens together as “radical outsiders,” as if they are two sides of the same coin, expressions of the same economic despair, channelling anger in different directions. But this is ideological obfuscation. The Greens are well to the left of Labour on most economic, environmental and social issues. Reform UK is a fascist party rooted in anti-migrant scapegoating, climate denial, and flag-waving authoritarianism. To equate the two is not just false, it’s reckless.
Reform voters don’t just want “change.” They want reaction. They want the welfare state shrunk, migrants expelled, political correctness crushed, green investment scrapped. It is a fantasy to imagine these voters as latent social democrats, waiting for Labour to offer them a well-insulated council house and a retraining programme. Many of them are voting against the very premise of a multicultural, redistributive, post-industrial Britain. Pretending otherwise flatters a constituency that has been fed decades of far-right poison.
Sandher’s diagnosis ignores that economic pain doesn’t produce politics on its own. It produces ideological responses to that pain. And here’s where the Left/Right divide becomes unavoidable. Faced with stagnating wages and crumbling infrastructure, the Green-curious voter demands rent caps, climate jobs, and wealth redistribution. The Reform voter demands a boot to the face of the migrant care worker. That’s the difference. Both are responses to decline. But one blames capital, the other blames the most vulnerable.
Sandher tries to square the circle by saying it’s not about ideology but affordability. Get cash in pockets, build more homes, insulate roofs, and jobs will follow. But the how of these solutions matters. Take housing. Building affordable homes requires confronting developers, landlords, and speculators. It means controls, public investment, redistribution. That is a left-wing project. Reform doesn’t want that. They want more buy-to-let for native Brits and tougher rules for migrants. Green voters want ecological planning. Reform voters want a bulldozer.
The idea that Labour can “target both” by being technocratic and cost-focused is a fantasy. You cannot triangulate between those who want green public housing and those who want no housing for refugees. You cannot split the difference between a voter who wants fossil fuels banned and one who wants net zero scrapped. And you cannot win back the working class by collapsing Left and Right into a meaningless spectrum of affordability.
In practice, Sandher’s framework encourages Labour to keep inching right, to keep borrowing the language of “control,” “British jobs,” and “earned settlement.” But as we’ve seen from the immigration white paper, that only boosts Reform’s worldview. Labour does not win by mimicking its enemies. It wins by offering something fundamentally different.
So yes, it is about Left and Right. It always has been. The future Labour must fight for is not a bland centrism with better insulation. It must be one of redistribution, public ownership, democratic control, migrant solidarity, and climate justice. A real break from neoliberal rot, not a managerial patch-up job.
You can’t out-Reform Reform. And you shouldn’t try to. The answer to voters’ despair isn’t to validate their worst instincts. It’s to lead—to name the enemy, to fight for justice, and to win. That means picking a side. Left or Right.
Which side is Labour on?
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