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Farage on a tank

“There’ll be riots”: Farage gets in line to implement austerity

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Over the past year, Nigel Farage has changed his tune massively. From touting policies like re-nationalisation, he is now talking about “waging war” on “benefits culture”, even if it leads to riots. This is an open declaration of class war.

Nigel Farage, in Reform UK’s programme, once touted policies like re-nationalisation of the water companies, and talked about taking on the bankers.

But over the past year, he has made an about-face on all of this, with his party leading in the polls, and the prospect of winning a general election in 2029 – or sooner – on the table.

A “tougher society”

These days, Reform’s approach has taken a sharp pro-market turn, in order to curry favour with the capitalist elite.

The party has been accepting the defection of opportunist Tories, and implementing austerity in local councils under its control – councils that are, in true establishment fashion, also swimming in corruption scandals.

Farage is beginning to make it clear on which side his bread is buttered: on the side of capital, as his Reform’s list of party donors attests.

Recently, Farage has come out with statements about Britain needing to become a “much tougher society”. As part of this new, “tougher” vision for the future, the Reform leader has promised to “wage war” on Britain’s “benefits culture” – no matter the consequences.

“There’ll be riots, and there’ll be strikes, and there’ll be protests,” he told the Daily Mail. “That’s what we’re going to have to do. It has to be done. We just can’t afford it now.”

This is in effect an open declaration of class war, should Reform get into power: quite the betrayal of the ‘ordinary, pro-English-worker bloke’ image that he has demagogically tried to portray for so many years up to this point.

One big divide?

In the same interview, Farage stated: “There is one big divide in British society, and it’s not based on class…[it’s] those that work and those that don’t.”

In cynically trying to turn the working class and poor against one another, what Farage naturally chooses not to mention are the people who actually contribute nothing to the world: the parasitic billionaires and bankers.

This year’s welfare budget is expected to come in at around £333 billion. By comparison, in the past year, Shell and BP brought in a combined revenue of £462 billion – enough to cover that bill and more, if all that wealth was under society’s control.

In the first quarter of 2026 alone, UK energy firms reported record profits of over £26 billion, with BP’s doubling due to tumultuous oil prices. At the same time, a third of children in the UK live in poverty.

For the vast majority, Britain is already a “much tougher society” – and workers and youth are reaching their limits.

Class struggle

Whichever party gets into power in the next general election, they will have to make the same cuts and attacks on the workers as Starmer has, and as the Tories before him.

The interest payments alone on Britain’s sovereign debt are £126 billion this year. This is an inescapable weight around the neck of any capitalist politician or party.

Farage is trying to place the blame for the welfare bill on the millions of people supposedly on disability benefits for “mild anxiety”, as well as on all the migrants and asylum-seekers apparently living in luxury in temporary accommodation.

Yet many can already see who is really commandeering society’s funds for their own ends.

It is the working class that produces all of the wealth in society. And it’s the billionaires who then use this to fill their own overflowing offshore coffers, while kindly parting with a few pennies in the form of poverty wages.

Farage is correct: there will be riots, strikes, and protests as austerity continues to make the lives of workers and poor a living hell. There is only so far you can go before the straw breaks the camel’s back.

But if Farage thinks his comments are meant to quell the concerns of the establishment and assure them he would have it all in hand, he is sorely mistaken.

Any of these protests he foresees under his premiership could easily erupt into mass class struggle in Britain – a struggle that the RCP is preparing to secure the victory of every day.

Reform councils oversee cuts and chaos

Staffordshire sets the trend

A year ago, Staffordshire became a trend setter: Reform gained the majority in the county council elections, winning 49 of 62 available seats.

Council leader Ian Cooper promised to fix potholes, decrease council tax, and launch “forensic” investigations into “profligate” spending.

This was based on the assumption that the local council – which Farage called one of the “wokest in the country” – was throwing away millions on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and climate ‘causes’.

A year on, what has been accomplished?

Pothole repair projects have been openly abandoned. Austerity budgeting continues, with council tax up by almost four percent. In fact, there have been no significant changes to spending – especially not the councillors’ salaries, which continue to hit six figures!

There is also no end to the controversy and dramatics taking place behind the scenes.

Reform councillors have openly described the county council as a “theatre” where no real decisions get made. Complaints about councillors’ behaviour have increased 15-fold in under a year – and 88 percent are about Reform councillors.

Ian Cooper has recently stepped down as leader after his secret social media account for making racist comments was exposed. Meanwhile, another Reform councillor who made similar comments remains in their post!

The people of Staffordshire had become exhausted by years of bitter Conservative control. This is not a unique sentiment. After 7 May, many other councils – with voters tired of both Tories and Labour – have seen their Reform contingent balloon and even take the majority.

But Staffordshire’s experience shows the chaotic reality of Reform control. They shout about exorcising phantom DEI expenditure, while providing no actual change for workers who voted for them – and ultimately committing to austerity just as much as their predecessors.

Caitlin Watson, Stoke

Our councillors are robbing us blind!

Worcestershire County Council has spiralled into a £70 million funding deficit that, without extra government support, will mean bankruptcy by May 2027.

In response, the council increased council tax by 4.99 percent in April 2025. But this only papered over 30 percent of the deficit. And so Worcestershire Council has now raised council tax further by a whopping 8.98 percent – with no wider long-term plan, so we can expect a combination of further tax hikes and austerity.

Worcestershire Council was dominated by the Conservatives for decades, until Reform took over in 2025. Out of its 57 councillors, half receive salaries over £100,000 – a reward for carrying out brutal attacks against the working class. The mean salary of people in Worcestershire, by contrast, is £32,000 before tax.

Out of its 57 councillors, half receive salaries over £100,000 – a reward for carrying out brutal attacks against the working class.

The council cannot rinse the population much more without causing an epidemic of poverty. In-spite of this, these councillors have already voted to raise their own allowance by 17 percent, while cutting pay for 150 ‘less important’ members of staff.

The communist demand that all elected officials should be paid no more than the average wage of a skilled worker has never been more necessary. For Worcestershire Council, this would save them £3 million overnight!

But evidently, for ‘our’ representatives, their livelihoods are more important than bettering the lives of working people.

This is why we are building the RCP in Worcester: to actually secure a better future. Get organised and join us to fight back!

Tom Kilburn, Worcester

Fighting the far right – exposing the real enemy

Nottingham protest shows need for class politics

On 10 May, RCP comrades from Derby, Nottingham, and Lincoln joined a counter-demonstration in Nottingham to oppose a group calling themselves ‘the Flag Men of Derby’.

This group was an extremely heterogeneous mix: ranging from loud far-right racists, to confused people wanting to stand on a small hill and sing Rule Britannia.

Some of these reactionaries were there to purposefully intimidate Nottingham residents and to antagonise. But others appeared to have been won to the right on ‘bread and butter’ issues – and even disgust at the Epstein files.

Although significantly larger, the counter-demonstration struggled with its strategy in light of this mix. Some yelled blanket accusations of fascism and, at times, even physically confronted the demonstrators. This provided the heavy police presence with a cover to arrest a number of counter-demonstrators.

We instead put forward slogans such as: ‘Who cuts our jobs to save their profits? Not the migrants, it’s the bosses’; and ‘Labour Party, shame on you! You’re to blame for Tommy’s crew’.

These chants served to widen out the struggle against racism, connecting it to the fight against the decrepit ruling class that peddles these ideas in the first place.

Whilst we couldn’t set the tone of the counter-demo as a whole, we did connect with a wide layer of the counter-protestors.

One of the eight people we met who are now looking to join the party said we stood out because we were “the only ones putting forward solutions – class solutions – to the problem”.

This is the task of communists – to draw out what connects these struggles and aim all of our efforts towards the overthrow of their root cause: the capitalist system itself.

Oliver, Nottingham

What’s the real waste of money?

After months of hounding by far-right protestors, Brook Hotel in Norwich, which was contracted out to house around 200 asylum-seekers, has closed down.

Despite protestors making claims that the area was being “overrun”, I live nearby and have never actually encountered any residents. In fact, Brook Hotel was the only asylum hotel in Norfolk, a county with a population of almost a million.

While initially relatively peaceful, the protests soon escalated into harassment and intimidation of both residents and locals. I was even wrongly confronted and accused of living in the hotel, and harassed for being an “Afghan”.

After months of hounding by far-right protestors, Brook Hotel in Norwich, which was contracted out to house around 200 asylum-seekers, has closed down.

In response to the unrest, authorities first installed a steel fence and 24-hour security, and have now decided to shut the hotel and relocate its residents. So, ironically, protests which claimed to be over public money being ‘wasted’ on asylum seekers ultimately increased costs.

Of course, what isn’t said is that this is all pennies compared to the billions of public money Starmer’s government actually throws away on defence spending – subjecting millions worldwide to further imperialist upheaval and misery.

Sam Apao, Norwich

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