THERE is a demand for answers to the escalating crises we are facing. In the elections many people found false answers in the simplistic, hate-filled politics of the populist far right.

But many more, alienated by and contemptuous of the corrupt political system designed to keep them in their place, plumped for something new that would be “one in the eye” for that system, and that they thought just might somehow be different.

Reform UK’s populist electoral stance was intended to reach very different audiences with a variety of views on things from climate change to workers’ rights, public ownership to immigration, trade unionism to foreign aid, feminism to public services.

Each Reform “tribe” turns a blind eye to those policies with which they don’t feel comfortable and focuses on those that reflect their particular views and fears.

It’s an unstable and volatile mix — but a vote-winner among the alienated and abandoned — particularly those with little or no experience of working-class organisation.

What Reform UK supporters do have in common is their absolutely justifiable loss of confidence in, and contempt for the political establishment of capitalism, their feeling that they have “lost control” of their communities, their anger at being ignored and abandoned — and their desire for a new start with strong leadership.

Do these things make the average Reform UK supporter a fascist, or even a racist? Of course not. But they do mean that, if their support is maintained and consolidated, they are likely to become ever more susceptible to ultra-right and fascist manipulation.

So how do we destabilise that support? Simply encouraging them to return to supporting or voting for one of the mainstream parties that they already hold in contempt doesn’t seem very likely to be successful.

Reform strikes a chord with people through its frequent references to very real problems we face — the political corruption of the Tory and Labour parties, the related crises across housing, benefits, NHS, wage stagnation, energy costs, public services, tax avoidance.

It appears “anti-Establishment” and asserts confidently that we just need to leave it to them — obscuring their plans to privatise services, to scrap hard won employment protections, to make huge social spending cuts, to sack climate change workers, to reduce big business corporation tax, to impose  a benefits system designed to force people into low-paid precarious work, etc.

But we know they are not just right-wing racist Tories. Capitalism is in crisis, and organised workers are fighting back. The ruling class requires measures of a much stronger brew from time to time to keep control — like Thatcher’s methods 40 years ago in the miners’ strike.

But now their crisis is not in response to a particularly determined and courageous struggle. It is their whole profit-driven economy — and the political system that serves it — that is in crisis. And not just in Britain, but across Europe and US.

The smell of fascism — the most coercive and oppressive form of capitalist state control — is in the air.

Reform is ready and willing to set that course. Its populist approach is a stepping stone further right. The fascist grouplets dream of gaining power through division and disorder, and they set out to create it.

But fascism as a political reality is a creation of the state when the wired-in conflicts and crises of capitalism reach such a point that the ruling class finds it impossible to rule in the customary way and so turns to open state coercion and suppression of opposition.

This is when the foul pond of ultra-right, nationalist and fascist groups become useful and necessary to the maintenance of the system. It is that process that Reform facilitates with its ever-rightward direction of travel.

So, Reform UK’s intentions to further attack the working class, its racism and xenophobia, its mutual support with US White House ultra-right politicians and billionaire capitalists, its leading members’ connections with European and US neonazis — all these things need to be urgently and loudly exposed to a wide audience in a first attempt to destabilise the support it has picked up.

But such exposure, demos and counter-demos are not enough — essential as the physical defence of our communities is likely to increasingly become.

We need a consistently applied realistic strategy, embedded in our communities, tackling head on the real political and economic issues that bear very heavily on us — the very issues that lead to some working-class people listening to the far right and fascists.

Ours is not the easy, tempting but fraudulent “Leave it to us” message of Reform UK to the alienated, fearful and angry. Our message to those same people, is, of necessity, truthful, difficult and demanding.

You have to get organised and active to bring about the changes you want to see — an end to low wages, job insecurity, the poverty/wealth gap, the degradation of our communities, the housing crisis, energy and cost of living price hikes, the crisis in social care, the sell-off of old people’s homes and other services, the destruction of the NHS, bullying bosses, crushing work routines, punitive “benefits” systems, perpetual war and genocide, the risk of extinction.

No-one will do it for you. Trades union councils, People’s Assemblies, Communist Party and Young Communist League branches and others need to provide the information, activity, means and training by which the people can act with increasing confidence and power.

In this the People’s Charter 2025 can play a very significant role. It’s very hard, demanding, often frustrating, often rewarding work. To coin a phrase — there is no alternative.

We need a full-on united front against austerity, poverty, fascism and war, features of today’s monopoly capitalism — the system that Reform UK 100 per cent supports and defends.