ALMOST daily, the racist right pushes the boundaries of acceptable political discourse.

Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin has been forced into a mealy-mouthed apology for having “phrased poorly” her admission that “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people.”

The non-apology itself shows the increasing boldness of the right as it seeks to normalise open racial prejudice.

Pochin’s remarks have slammed as “racist” and a “disgrace” by Health Secretary Wes Streeting, whose observation that it marks a revival of “1970s and 1980s style racism” does point to the severity of the problem and the scale of the necessary fightback.

But that requires an understanding that Reform can push things so far because what passes for mainstream politics has danced to its tune for so long.

As Care4Calais’s Steve Smith said last week, the mask is slipping. When the Conservative Party’s Katie Lam talks of deporting legally settled people from Britain to make our country more “culturally coherent” — comments Tory leader Kemi Badenoch says are “broadly in line” with party policy — we see it is not refugees on small boats being debated, nor even the economic impacts of legal immigration.

The right is coalescing around demands to expel people who are “not like us” — measured against a typically incoherent jumble of racial and cultural signifiers. Hence Robert Jenrick’s “no white faces” venom about Handsworth. Hence an increasingly prominent campaign in the right-wing press to ban the burka, telling women what to wear in the name of opposing societies that tell women what to wear.

Can we turn back this tide? The recent Caerphilly by-election result suggests we can defeat it at the ballot box, which is essential.

Several factors were involved. A serious anti-racist campaign conducted locally (in this case led by Stand Up to Racism Valleys); a credible anti-racist candidate (Plaid Cymru refused to offer a “Reform-lite” narrative on immigration); tactical voting for the candidate best placed to beat Reform — and, crucially, a party that can appeal to anti-Establishment sentiment and offer change rather than excuses for the status quo.

In a lot of constituencies that would rule out Labour, assuming that the election of a newly mildly critical MP to its deputy leadership on a pitiful turnout will not prompt a sea change in its politics.

Left unity in particular campaigns will often be needed — but this doesn’t mean, as some argue, we should foreclose discussion around new initiatives like “Your Party” and line up behind the existing left party with the most momentum, the Greens under Zack Polanski.

Aside from varying local circumstances (the Greens in Caerphilly got just 1.5 per cent of the vote) there remain weaknesses in Polanski’s platform, such as a willingness to identify the left with the same cultural terrain it was beaten on last time (support for the EU, which is even more anti-democratic and militaristic than a decade ago); and potential strengths in a Jeremy Corbyn-led party arising from the mass Palestine movement, such as the possibility of an anti-imperialist outlook opposing the aggressive global role of the United States and Nato, key to fighting a far right which takes its cue internationally from the White House.

Beyond elections, there is systematic work to do building anti-racist consciousness in workplaces and communities. Reform’s 36 per cent in Caerphilly is still a dangerously strong result, enough to secure a win in many contests.

A mass anti-racist movement, with trade unions at its heart, is a priority now. But it cannot whitewash or make excuses for a political system that tramples on and disempowers working-class people.

Defeating the far right depends on building a class-conscious movement for change: people need something to vote for, not just against. Pochin’s poisonous diatribe shows how urgent that is becoming.