BRITAIN’S Communist Party leader Robert Griffiths calls tonight for a left-wing programme to smash the threat of Reform UK and the far right.

In his new year’s message, Mr Griffiths said the British economy was “severely unbalanced, unplanned and under-invested; and over-reliant on the City of London, a parasitic property market, inward foreign investment, and income from overseas operations. 

“Moreover, this is an economy shot through with financial corruption that increasingly infects our political system.

“No wonder millions of people are disillusioned, cynical and even defeatist about the prospects for real change. 

“Labour is feeling the backlash against more broken promises as nothing really changes.

“The big danger now is that right-wing, far-right and fascist forces see an opportunity to capitalise on the political vacuum that has existed since before the last general election. Labour’s vote fell by half a million back in July; only one in three voters and one in five electors plumped for Starmer’s pink elephant.

“It won’t be enough to attack Reform UK and the gutter press only, or even mainly, on vital issues of immigration and racism. The Communist Party will continue to expose the class character of Reform’s billionaire, pro-City, pro-Trump leadership and its right-wing views.”

But Mr Griffiths said no amount of attacks on Reform would pay off unless the left was in a position to offer hope.

“The only alternative in the interests of working-class people is a left-wing programme: tax the super-rich and big business; renationalise energy, water, steel and mail; cut carbon emissions and create jobs; impose price controls on the monopolies; invest in public services; scrap Britain’s nuclear arsenal and rebuild manufacturing.”

Mr Griffiths said the Communist Party had grown in the last year and would mobilise for the English local elections in May.

“Unlike Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, we are not silent in the face of Israel’s genocidal destruction of the Palestinian people of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

“That’s why the Communist Party says: Palestine will be free! Build the Communist Party of Britain! Long live the international communist movement!”