THE far right will only be defeated once the labour movement reclaims its mantle as the real challenger to vested power, corrupt politicians and a failing economic system, the Communist Party declared on Tuesday night.

Johnnie Hunter told the party’s political committee that the lesson of the local elections was that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer “is not just deeply unpopular, but so too is his platform — of more austerity and a failure to invest in public services while slavishly funding the slaughter in Ukraine and continued support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”

Reform UK, the big winners of last week’s local elections, “clearly represent the naked big business interests of finance both here and in the United States, and seek to mislead working people with typical anti-immigrant rhetoric,” Mr Hunter observed.

But “Reform’s rise can’t simply be explained by simple appeals to racism alone. Their success lies in presenting themselves as an anti-Establishment force.”

Despite a poor night for the Tories, he believed “the prospect of a potential Tory-Reform alliance still looms which could produce a hard-right super majority.

“As across Europe, the treachery of social democratic parties of working people is facilitating the rise of the right. The response of the left and trade union movement can’t be to write off all working people duped into voting Reform as knuckle-dragging racists.”

Instead, communists should seek to become the foremost resistance in communities to the austerity and war agenda, fighting for “public services and a dignified life at home, not war and slaughter abroad.”