This February, the York and North Yorkshire branch of Compass, a cross-party and cross-community action network, welcomed Neal Lawson, executive director of Compass, to meetings in Scarborough and Harrogate. Beginning with discussion of a key Compass publication, After The Riots, these meetings aimed to start wider community engagement with the problems arising from the upsurge in support for Reform UK. This led to discussions about ways to resist the establishment of the far-right in local politics, especially in the run up to this May’s town council elections.
The threat to liberal democracy and social justice from Reform UK is serious, its agenda including: creeping privatisation of the NHS, an end to climate mitigation and net zero targets, reinstatement of tax relief for private education, exit from the European Court of Human Rights and repeal of the Human Rights Act, abolition of equality, diversity and inclusion regulations, and other assaults on social justice.
Why Scarborough and Harrogate?
Post-election analysis following last year’s general election revealed that Reform UK polled 21.8% of votes cast in Scarborough and Whitby and 10.9% in Harrogate and Knaresborough. Averaging 15.2% across York and North Yorkshire as a whole, they exceeded their 14.3% UK-wide vote share.
With Reform UK announcing their intention to contest as many local election seats as possible across the UK this May, Compass York and North Yorkshire had hoped to see a collaborative strategy among progressive parties to combat this threat, much as we have seen happen in recent French elections.
Inspiration from France
The New Popular Front in France’s 2024 National Assembly elections was a broad church of centre-left and left-wing parties including Socialists, Greens, and the radical left party France Unbowed (La France Insoumise (LFI)).
Although these parties had a history of factionalism and criticised each other in the run up to previous elections, the threat of the far-right roused enough popular pressure from student groups, trade unions and others for them to put tribalism aside and support a voting bloc to keep the far-right out of government.
Against every expectation, the tactic worked, and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally fell to third place in last June’s elections. French voters therefore responded positively to this principled political resistance.
Admittedly, France’s two-round voting system incentivises concerted action to mobilise electoral pacts between parties that share broadly similar values and objectives. Once less popular candidates have been eliminated in the first round, voters are then presented with a clear choice in the second-round run-off election between the two top placed candidates in each constituency.
Here in the UK, many from the centre and left of the political spectrum will have cheered France’s move to vote strategically, believing it to be not only brave but necessary in order to resist and push back against the far-right.
Where is North Yorkshire’s ‘popular front’?
Locally, Compass York and North Yorkshire has been asking, “Where is our ‘popular front’?” Where are the principled political leaders prepared to “put country before party” in order to undercut the far-right’s electoral ambitions in North Yorkshire?
Nationally, we must also ensure that Reform UK is unable to consolidate the advances that party made at last year’s general election when they were placed second in 98 Westminster seats.
So, where is the urgency that in France propelled left-sympathising leaders to get behind a progressive voting bloc, giving those resisting the rise of the far-right a clear idea of how to use their vote effectively?
Recent opinion polls suggest that Reform UK is currently attracting more than 25% national support and sometimes narrowly leads both the Tories and Labour. In North Yorkshire, potential seat gains by Reform UK in the elections for Scarborough or Harrogate’s new town councils would help the party to gather further political momentum, building the infrastructure and networks to support further gains in the 2027 North Yorkshire Council elections and, from there, to gain more MPs at the next general election in 2028/29. Progressives need to act decisively and strategically to avoid that risk.
Past experiences in 2020 and 2022
In 2020, the newly formed York and North Yorkshire Compass group embraced the National Compass warning, if ‘We Divide, They Conquer’. This alerted us to the possibility of ‘progressive tragedies’, when divided progressive votes allow right-wing parties to take seats.
We therefore cut our campaigning teeth on actioning this message, seeking to counter the risk of split votes by encouraging progressive political parties in North Yorkshire to work strategically together. But, in the absence of such cross-party collaboration, we campaigned for tactical voting, encouraging people to lend their votes to the best placed candidates in order to help overcome the flaws of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system.
This strategy worked to the extent that, in May 2022, the North Yorkshire Council (NYC) elections saw the seat share for Conservatives fall from their previous tally of 76% to 52%. Yet our dysfunctional FPTP voting system still gave them sole control of the council with a minority of votes cast. Despite increased representation for all the progressive parties, the Conservatives clung on to power, winning 47 of the 90 seats and securing a narrow overall majority on a vote share of just 41%.
A ‘Win As One’ strategic voting campaign
We followed a similar strategy again during the May 2024 election for mayor of the new combined authority of York and North Yorkshire, when we campaigned for tactical voting with a ‘Vote Smart versus Vote Heart’ message, securing pledges to vote ‘smart’ for the candidate believed best placed to win for all progressives.
This was a rehearsal for our general election ‘Win As One’ campaign in July 2024, when Compass York and North Yorkshire campaigned for the best placed progressive candidates to win in exchange for their confirmation of support for a proportional voting system. Such a system we believe would support greater cross-party collaboration by ensuring a wider representation of political opinion in parliament. Moreover, if all votes carried equal value, nobody need feel forced to vote tactically again.
Consequently, we endorsed the Liberal Democrat Tom Gordon as the best placed progressive to beat the Conservatives in Harrogate and Knaresborough and Luke Charters for Labour in York Outer. As a result, tactical voting by Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green voters contributed to progressive wins and Conservative losses in both those constituencies.
Progressives must unite for the common good
So far, so good. But, once the new government was formed with Labour’s ground-breaking but highly disproportional Commons majority, the progressive parties have largely retreated into their separate political silos and, as the number of member expulsions also shows, they remain antagonistic to any suggestion of collaborating in pursuit of shared values and policies that have the potential to unite most progressives. With the continuing rise of support for far-right groups, we therefore ask why won’t our ‘progressive’ parties work together for the common good?
So once again, in 2025, Compass York and North Yorkshire is stepping up and calling on Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green and Independent town council candidates in the upcoming Scarborough and Harrogate town council elections to present a de facto ‘bloc’ that signals to voters the risks of far-right wins if progressive votes are split.
We had hoped to see Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens in both Scarborough and Harrogate operate strategically in order to avoid counter-productive clashes between progressive candidates in some wards, while inadvertently giving right-wing candidates a clear run in others.
FPTP elections – which were designed to operate in a two-party system – are unable to deliver representative or even predictable results in the current multi-party reality. Where multiple candidates stand for election in any parliamentary constituency or council ward, it becomes possible for ‘winners’ (including extremists) to be elected on ever diminishing vote shares.
The risk of handing victory to Reform UK Ltd
Under FPTP, split progressive votes could hand Reform UK Ltd victory in some seats on a vote share of potentially less than 30%. These would be classic ‘progressive tragedy’ wards, where votes divided between a range of progressive candidates enable the election of a right-wing candidate representing only a small minority.
However, we know that when Labour, Liberal Democrats, Green and non-aligned progressives stand together, we form a popular majority and outnumber the forces ranged against us. So, to prevent Reform UK securing a foothold in the new town councils as launchpad for further gains in the 2027 NYC elections – and from there for yet more seats in parliament – Compass York and North Yorkshire is working to encourage conversations between a wide range of civic and political leaders as a means of creating our own ‘popular front’ such as we saw in France last year.
Putting country before party
We therefore say, enough of this fruitless competition between progressive parties! If/when Reform UK are celebrating what split progressive votes could deliver for them, it will be cold comfort that party loyalists can say, ‘At least we didn’t break any rules’!
Factionalism and tribalism on the left and centre is a gift to the far-right. But widespread fears of expulsion among party members make it difficult for party campaigners to work with others on engaging voters about the growing threat posed by the far-right’s extreme policy agenda. However, activists who understand the urgent need for electoral realism and concerted action to address the real risk of Reform UK dominance are not the traitors some claim them to be. On the contrary, Keir Starmer himself has repeatedly endorsed the need to “put country before party” – words echoed in this article by Polly Toynbee. Clearly, as she says, activists working strategically to secure local progressive victories are doing just that, which is what we believe a ‘popular front’ in North Yorkshire could and should do too.
Such a voting bloc would enable progressive parties to come together with civic and local groups to celebrate the hopeful spirit and resilience of our communities. That same ‘bloc’ could work beyond the elections to revitalise participation in local politics, empowering local community initiatives that celebrate what people have in common, not what divides them. In the words of Compass director Neal Lawson, when addressing the causes of last summer’s far-right riots at our February Compass meetings, “Happy, resilient communities don’t riot”.
Acting strategically for a hopeful future
No one party has the answer to building happy resilient communities, but parties working together from their different perspectives is a powerful message about a new pluralist way of doing politics. If we are to have any hope of challenging growing political alienation and distrust, leading towards far-right extremism, we need to provide hope that real systemic change is possible, and that politics can be done differently and more collaboratively.
To reinforce the point: if progressive parties fail to act strategically in these local elections, it could allow Reform UK to sweep to victory in several wards, thereby gaining a foothold in North Yorkshire politics. Even if most voters actively oppose them, far-right candidates can still win with minority support if their opposition is divided. That will not provide the hopeful future that Scarborough and Harrogate need and deserve.
We say, it’s time for more cooperation, and less competition, between people who share so much in common and time for party bosses to drop the taboos on enabling this to happen. Time, in fact, for a truly progressive and pluralistic ‘popular front’, starting in Scarborough and Harrogate.
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