They're only gonna get more popular as the material conditions of the working class worsen as they're one of the only parties that's framing themselves as being against the status-quo. The UK left seriously needs better organising otherwise we're gonna see mask-off fascists in power
not to sound too doomer but this basically goes for all of europe rn. i don't think the left has really reckoned with how out-organised we are and how close full-on fascism is. we're in much more of a 1924 moment than a 1974 or even 2004... it's scary:(
Nobody is "out-organized" most of these chuds aren't organized at all. Did you see the right wing riots in the UK? A bunch of drunk out of shape hooligans wheeling flaming single-family plastic bins toward police, eating shit, then scattering? The guy who dancing in front of riot pigs got hit in the head and then nuts by his own guys' bricks? These are your fascists right now. Reform UK aren't even fascist they're standard rightist conservatives; nigel farage was already in power before. There is nothing to be defeatist about; and defeatism does nothing but help the reaction.
The fascists are more organized in places like Germany but there is also an actual militant left in Germany, including underground people whose names are barely known who had a leader recently put in prison for organizing beatdowns of right wing leaders that stifled a lot of their willingness to show their faces for a while. These are dialectical relationships that both inevitably struggle with each other and rise as contradictions sharpen.
It has always been 'scary.' It will never not be 'scary' to be revolutionary and challenge established powers. I guarantee you it becomes much more scary if we pretend to ourselves and try to convince others that doom is right around the corner and already happening and so paving the way for that to actually come true. Defeatism is counter-revolutionary. Read Lenin, including his writings and pamphlets on strategy and tactics during the revolution, and don't concede yourself to panic-mongering. The point at which your opponents are right-now-stronger is not a doom but is a point of conscious retreat and consolidation to attack the points where they are weak. And to discern this requires objective looks at reality as it is now, not vaguely possible futures to overwhelm oneself with, or dead pasts to be swamped in. We don't live in 1924 we live in 2024. We are making history every day.
The left doesn't gain members by complaining that "the fascists are too strong and it's scary" (particularly when it's not even true), the left gains members by being active and present, and masses hitherto complacent or deflated seeing us communists being incisive in critique and decisive in action; seeing the left at the front, moving and pushing against the weakest junctures of capitalism and reaction and rupturing them to expose un-ignorable realities and bringing more people into recognizing we are right; while crushing or deflecting the sharpest points thrust against us and against those poor and oppressed who not only deserve better morally, but politically are also inherently the most revolutionary body necessary to mobilize. But that only happens when their confidence is gained that they can stick their necks out because we've been doing it, because they face more risk than anyone.
Ask yourself and look carefully and critically with an eye to reality as it is now. Where are the working left masses? Stuck in dead end parlimentarism in the labour party? then our job is foment a split in the labour party by loudly and constantly, at every point we can meet them and the masses they have bound in their dead-end politics --- along their meetings and campaigns and conferences and canvassing and campus talks etc., exposing and explaining in propaganda the intractable contradictions which render labour incapable of furthering the will of the workers or meeting the challenges as they are needed to be met. This has been happening in the US with the Democrats and will continue to. Forming temporary coalitions with other smaller left-bourgeois reformist parties to do so if we have to; while maintaining independence of criticism and propaganda and acting under an openly communist banner, to rupture the biggest contradictions and bring more to our side by seeing we are right, and then move onto the next point of contradiction which is keeping the working masses in mire.