Who thinks Reform is racist?

Keir Starmer has dropped the r-bomb. Was he wise to do so?

Keir Starmer launched the Labour Party conference with an BBC interview drawing a dividing line between Labour’s ‘patriotic renewal’ and what he calls the ‘racist’ policies of Reform UK. His dropping the r-bomb was prompted by the interviewer (see end of below clip) and has become the story of the week.

I doubt that this was intentional. When I filmed my recent Ch4 documentary on Reform, I had doubts about using the r-word at all, given that I don’t think Nigel Farage or anyone around him is remotely racist. Using the r-word serves to inflame; my film set out to explain.

But not everyone takes my view. Ch4 commissioned Survation to do a massive poll on Reform: some 42pc said Reform it is racist, 42pc said it is not. On this incendiary issue, the country is evenly split. Why?

It’s largely partisan. Most Labour and Lib Dem supporters are happy to use the r-word — as are a third of Tories and, oddly, about a quarter of Reform voters.

It may come down to how you define the term. If you go by the dictionary — racism as racial bigotry, for which evidence is required — then there’s no case. But suspicion plays a role. Some voters just think Farage is probably a bit racist, and that’s enough for them to use the word. Others use racism more loosely still, to mean discussing questions of race or culture at all. Or being anti-migration. Especially in blunt terms.

Starmer said Farage’s plan to crack down on immigration was racist - which, given that the plan is unrelated to race, is nonsense. At least, by my definition. And if he’s saying that now, how will he ratchet up in a campaign?

In an age of deepening political polarisation — where one side sees the other as malign, motivated by bigotry or woke ideology — such labels have become reflexive. Some Remainer campaigners said Brexit was, if not explicitly racist, certainly fuelled by racism. “Not all Brexiteers are racist,” ran the argument, “but all racists are Brexiteers.”

But name-calling usually backfires. It creates sympathy for the target and makes critics sound shrill. This was part of what propelled Trump to power in 2016 — Hillary Clinton’s infamous reference to his supporters as a “basket of deplorables” being a classic example.

Dame Margaret Hodge, the former Labour MP, has seen this up close. She faced the BNP in her Barking & Dagenham seat and pioneered how to respond to the rise of new-right parties. She realised that there are two ways of reacting to a challenge: you can smear your rival by calling them racist, or ask where you are going wrong - and why, if the other guys are so bad, so many back them.

The name-calling methods lead to defeat, she says: the second to recovery.

I interviewed her for the film, and we didn’t get to use much of her fascinating comments. Which is a shame because she made some very interesting points on the r-bomb.

“Throughout that whole four-year period of campaigning against the BNP, I never called anybody a racist. The moment you do, you belittle their concerns about the impact of immigration on their community and unfairness coming into the system (as to who got a council home and who didn’t). If I had accused them of being racist, I would simply have driven them even further into the BNP camp because they would have felt offended that I didn’t really understand their concerns.”

What should Labour do now? Keir Starmer has decided to crown Nigel Farage the leader of the real opposition and today denounces his policies as racist. By the Hodge playbook, this is a case study in what not to do.

“I wouldn’t even talk about Nigel Farage at this time. People are angry with mainstream political parties; they feel let down by them, that nobody’s listening. They feel that people aren’t acting on their concerns, whether about migration or the cost of living. So what actually all the mainstream political parties have got to do is rebuild trust with their constituents. If they start attacking Nigel Farage, they offend those voters who feel really let down by us at this point in time and feel that we’re criticising them for expressing their anger with us by voting Reform. All they’re doing is sort of forcing them all into confirming their support for Farage.”

This dynamic - that a challenger party is strengthened when attacked by a larger rival - is important. It is a dial that can be moved by the challenger: you trigger them. Say or do something to get them talking about you: preferably in hyperbolic tones. This is the basic art of populist war, which Donald Trump mastered because the Democrats rose to the bait every time. This explains the effect of shock-tactics in election campaigns - Farage’s HIV/immigrant line in 2017, his Sunak/D-Day line in 2024 and his Sarwar/Pakistani line in Hamilton. Yes, condemnation comes, but with it, attention.

Labour’s main hope in the next election is to turn it to a referendum on a Farage premiership and hope that LibDems, Greens, even Tories will vote Labour to prevent a Reform UK governmental experiment from happening. This makes the case for toxifying the enemy.

If you’re attacked for making a point that most voters agree with, it’s a net plus. Already, Reform is gleefully using Starmer’s r-bomb and saying it’s a slur against voters. This has been the radical-right playbook for the last 15 years: troll the centrists, goad them into using intemperate language, make them look unreasonable. “Stuck in the middle with you,” they say. Here’s Reform’s Zia Yusuf:-

So dropping the r-bomb may be gratifying for Farage’s opponents to use. It may rally the base in the week of a conference. But as Margaret Hodge says, doing so when there is no grounds for it risks diminish you - and bolstering your opponent. Insurgent parties seek to move the debate on to their terms by polarising: if you call them racist, you succumb to polarisation. I was thinking of Hodge when I saw the smile on Yusuf’s face.

It could well be that Reform’s opponents keep playing into its hands.