Former Lancashire MP Jack Straw says Labour should not fear Reform UK
Former Blackburn MP Jack Straw has said Labour must not panic over the surge in support for Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party which saw it take control of Lancashire County Council in May.
In a wide-ranging interview in The Guardian , the former Home and Foreign Secretary, who represented the town in Parliament for 36 years until 2015, said its current poll lead did not make the result of the next UK General Election a forgone conclusion.
He also praised its Independent MP Adnan Hussain who won the long-term safe Labour seat by just 132 votes in July last year as a ‘thoroughly decent’ man.
The 79-year-old said he believed Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his cabinet were “head and shoulders” above opposition politicians and would reap the rewards of a gradual improvement in the economy and public services, which would not come immediately.
On Reform UK’s opinion poll lead Mr Straw said: “We have been here before in terms of an insurgent party leading in the polls.
“So I think it is the famous phrase – don’t panic.”
He said Mr Hussain’s victory on the back of strong local feeling about the situation in Gaza in Blackburn and Sir Keir’s stance on the issue was hardly surprising.
He said he knew Hussain and thought he was “thoroughly decent” and added: “Politics there has always been complicated.”
But Mr Straw said it was clear that politics was fracturing in a way that would start to produce unpredictable results – particularly under first past the post, which he favoured abolishing.
On electoral reform he said: “The party needs to think about that.
“And it would get through, I think people understand that in a multi-party situation, first past the post is potentially unfair.
“It can produce really quirky results.
“Farage could come through on that.”
Asked if he envisage Nigel Farage becoming Prime Minister, he said: “There is a chance.
“I think it’s a small chance, smaller than he thinks.
“The Tory party appears to me to just be collapsing.”
Although he admitted he did not forsee Labour’s recent plummet in p[popularity he said: “In 2000 of course we lost the mayoral election to Ken Livingstone; that was regarded as a great humiliation for Labour.
“So, not being Pollyanna-ish about this, but my instinct is that things will gradually improve.”
The former cabinet minister said Labour faced not only a terrible economic inheritance, but fundamental damage to the fabric of democracy by the previous Conservative governments, primarily Boris Johnson.