In the United Kingdom’s local elections held at the start of May, the hard-right Reform UK party won the most votes, took control of ten councils, swept up hundreds of council seats, seized two high-profile mayoralties, and even snatched a parliamentary by-election by a mere six votes. Led by former United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) frontman Nigel Farage, the party is currently polling 32 percent, ten points ahead of the governing Labour Party.
James Poulter is a British investigative journalist with over 20 years’ experience monitoring the far right.
What is driving this newfound popularity? Reform’s campaign centred on right-populist themes, such as sharply reducing immigration, opposing costly “Net Zero” climate policies, cutting taxes, and railing against an out-of-touch political establishment. These issues resonate with voters frustrated by high migration and stagnant living standards, many of whom feel the Conservatives and now Labour have failed to deliver better public services or economic relief.
Its anti-establishment message taps into growing voter disenchantment with the two-party system, driven in large part by the cost-of-living crisis. In some ways, it appears to be reviving the energy of the Brexit insurgency in a new form — after all, Reform’s support base closely mirrors that of its Eurosceptic predecessors, UKIP and the Brexit Party. Its voters tend to be over 45 years old, disproportionately male, and almost uniformly pro-Brexit. A large majority backed Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019.
Geographically, Reform’s strength is concentrated in the Midlands, northern towns, and non-metropolitan southern counties of England. Support is minimal in cosmopolitan London or Scotland. In the most recent local elections, the party attracted both disillusioned Tory voters in traditional Conservative shires and blue-collar communities in post-industrial Labour heartlands, unseating dozens of incumbent councillors from both major parties.
Commentators suggest Reform’s rise reflects a moment of broad political dissatisfaction. “Reform's success … undoubtedly reflects the mood of an electorate that still has little faith in the Conservatives and which now is disappointed by Labour's performance in office. However, it is evidently proving most popular in a very distinctive part of Britain that overturned the political tables a decade ago in voting for Brexit and which now has done so again”, observed polling expert Sir John Curtice. With both main parties unpopular at once, Reform’s emergence is a phenomenon “almost without parallel in British politics”, says Tony Travers, professor of government at the London School of Economics.
Absent an unexpected political setback, Reform appears to be on course to form the next UK government. Should this happen, Britain could see its most far-right ruling party in decades, openly aligned with Trumpism and committed to a nationalist agenda sharply at odds with established democratic values. Such a government would likely introduce harsh anti-migrant policies, erode civil liberties, and aggressively privatize public services — policies that could fundamentally reshape British society and reverse generations of social progress.
Populism with a Silver Spoon
Nigel Farage is a right-wing British politician and celebrity political commentator turned media personality. Despite cultivating an anti-establishment image, he is a privately educated millionaire who previously worked as a commodities trader at the London Metal Exchange. Following seven failed attempts, he was finally elected to Parliament at the 2024 general election, after serving as a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 until the UK's departure from the EU in 2020 — for which he is entitled to a generous pension, despite being a lifelong opponent of the institution.
Farage was born wealthy. His father was a stockbroker who walked out on the family when Farage was five. He was educated at the prestigious Dulwich College in south London. While at the school, Farage was accused of holding fascist views. Teachers warned against making teenage Farage a prefect due to concerns he expressed “racist” and “neo-fascist” views, according to a letter obtained by Channel 4 News. Staff reportedly accused him of offensive behaviour and singing Hitler Youth songs.
Farage launched the Brexit Party in April 2019 as European elections loomed due to a Brexit delay, effectively ditching UKIP to remain politically relevant and eligible to retain his MEP seat.
When he left school at 18, Farage began work as a trader in the City instead of going to university. He was a Thatcherite troublemaker, but quit the Conservative Party after the UK signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. In 1993, he joined the newly formed UKIP to campaign for Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, and first ran unsuccessfully for parliament in 1994.
According to letters found in an archive obtained by The Guardian, Farage asked Enoch Powell, infamous for his 1968 “rivers of blood” speech, to endorse UKIP that same year. UKIP later twice invited Powell to stand as a candidate. Farage has described Powell as a political hero, saying that while he was wrong about racial integration, the “central thrust” of his immigration views “hold true”. A UKIP aide claimed Farage approached Powell purely for his Euroscepticism, not his views on race.
In 1997, Farage reportedly met two members of the fascist British National Party (BNP). He met Mark Deavin, then-BNP head of research, for lunch shortly after Deavin had been expelled from UKIP for infiltrating the party. A photograph of the meeting appears to show Farage with Deavin and Tony Lecomber, a BNP figure with convictions for explosives and stabbing a Jewish teacher. At the time, Farage denied any memory of meeting Lecomber and claimed the photo may have been “doctored”. Farage told The Guardian: “I briefly met Mr. Deavin at his request … I have no recollection of ever meeting or speaking to Mr. Lecomber in my life.” The Guardian also noted concerns among UKIP members about Farage’s use of racial slurs in pubs after meetings.
Farage’s European career began around the same time, elected to the European Parliament as a UKIP MEP for South-East England in 1999. He became leader of UKIP for the first time in 2006 and then became a regular face on TV. Farage has appeared on the BBC's flagship political debate programme Question Time 38 times and has made multiple appearances on the broadcaster’s satirical TV programme Have I Got News For You.
The politics Farage advocates are similar to those of his close friend, US president, property developer, and reality TV star Donald Trump. The pair are anti-immigrant, anti-climate action, pro-fossil fuels, and in favour of tax cuts to shrink public spending. Both men grew rich during the Thatcher–Reagan era in the 1980s, and to some extent have continued those political projects into the modern age. Trump and Farage have both appeared on reality TV, Farage as a contestant on ITV’s I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, Trump as the host on the American version of The Apprentice. They seem to purposely blur the lines between demagoguery, celebrity, and business to gain political power for their own enrichment.
Farage the Flip-Flopper
This early blurring of politics and celebrity helped UKIP make an electoral breakthrough at the 2009 European elections, where the party won nearly 2.5 million votes, more than the Labour government. After the election, Farage resigned as UKIP leader to stand in the 2010 general election, telling The Times: “the internal fights took up so much time”. On election day, he was injured in a plane crash while flying with a UKIP campaign banner. Investigators said the banner tangled with the aircraft’s tailplane, forcing it to nose-dive. The pilot was later convicted of threatening to kill both Farage and an air accident investigator. In November 2010, Farage returned as UKIP leader after winning the party’s leadership election.
Farage’s flip-flopping over his involvement in political parties is what led to the creation of Reform. After playing a leading role in the 2016 Brexit referendum, he resigned from UKIP live on the radio in 2018, ending a 25-year membership, citing party leader Gerard Batten’s appointment of anti-Muslim hate preacher Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) as an adviser. As a former BNP member and former leader of the English Defence League, Yaxley-Lennon had been banned from joining the party under Farage. The latter said Batten was “obsessed with the issue of Islam” and warned UKIP was becoming a party “fighting a religious crusade”. Farage remained an MEP while UKIP went into a period of decline. Supporters of Yaxley-Lennon have since taken full control of the increasingly irrelevant party.
Farage launched the Brexit Party in April 2019 as European elections loomed due to a Brexit delay, effectively ditching UKIP to remain politically relevant and eligible to retain his MEP seat. Farage said the party would be “deeply intolerant of all intolerance” and boasted it had already raised 750,000 pounds in small donations. He distanced himself from UKIP’s embrace of the far right but continued to use anti-migrant rhetoric and culture war politics. Batten meanwhile dismissed the new party as “just a vehicle” for Farage to get re-elected.
Much Like Trump in the US, Le Pen in France, or Milei in Argentina, Farage uses a blend of celebrity, nationalism, and culture war populism to appeal across class lines and disrupt the established political order.
Farage left the European Parliament when Britain left the EU, and the Brexit Party changed its name to Reform. Farage said he was stepping back from party politics in 2021 and became a prime-time presenter on the GB News channel, which launched that year promising opinion-led, anti-“woke” programming. Backed by pro-Brexit funders, the channel hired ex-Brexit Party figures and embraced culture war themes.
He spent most of the lead up to the 2024 UK general election campaign insisting he would not stand in the election, but a month before the vote, Farage announced he would be a candidate for Reform and take over as the party's leader once again. Now, having returned to frontline politics, Farage could be set to become Britain’s next Prime Minister.
Flirting with the Far Right
The transformation of the British political scene has been fuelled by events across the Atlantic. Farage’s friendship with Trump looked like it was opening the door to funding from the world’s richest man, billionaire Elon Musk. But despite holding meetings with Farage and the billionaire treasurer of Reform, Musk has since withdrawn his support and called for Reform to replace Farage, after the latter distanced himself from Yaxley-Lennon.
Musk said Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” and praised then-Reform MP Rupert Lowe’s posts online, saying they “make a lot of sense”. Musk had falsely claimed Yaxley-Lennon was imprisoned “for telling the truth”, prompting Farage to clarify he was jailed for contempt of court, not for exposing grooming gangs. Farage, who had said Reform was in funding talks with Musk, responded: “Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree ... I never sell out my principles.”
Yaxley-Lennon’s incarceration has been a divisive issue in Reform. Howard Cox, Reform’s former London mayoral candidate, is one of a handful of senior figures to quit the party over its stance. Cox previously said he was “one of that lot” when deputy leader Richard Tice distanced Reform from Yaxley-Lennon supporters. He later revealed he had been “threatened with expulsion” for speaking out and said, “That’s why I got out.” Ben Habib, who was removed as deputy leader in July 2024, also defended rallygoers backing Yaxley-Lennon, calling them “Reform voters and our friends”.
The divisions that Musk exacerbated peaked with the expulsion of one of Reform’s then four MP’s, Rupert Lowe. Lowe is a millionaire ex-football club-owner-turned-politician who sat as a Brexit Party MEP, elected to parliament alongside Farage. Lowe is also a heavy user of Musk’s social media platform X, where he echoes far-right talking points and calls for mass deportations. This led to his popularity rising within Reform, and with Musk’s backing, he emerged as an internal rival to Farage.
Unluckily for Lowe, Farage has a reputation for swiftly removing emerging rivals. Farage’s electoral vehicles are personality cults. Reform’s internal divides are rooted in Farage’s centralized leadership, a chaotic organizational setup, and the lack of a grassroots base or experienced party infrastructure. Despite its growing electoral appeal, the party has repeatedly failed to contain dissent, build collective leadership, or present a unified front. These weaknesses threaten to derail its ambitions.
Farage’s party has already achieved one major goal: reshaping British politics in its own image and shifting the political centre further to the right.
Lowe lost the Reform whip the day after he gave an interview attacking Farage and calling the party a “protest movement led by the Messiah”. Reform responded by accusing Lowe of bullying staff and threatening party chair Zia Yusuf. The Crown Prosecution Service later confirmed it would not bring charges over the alleged threats, and Lowe has denied any wrongdoing, claiming he’s the target of a political witch-hunt. Nevertheless, the fallout from Lowe’s expulsion confirmed how tightly Reform is controlled by Farage and prone to internal divides, particularly when potential rivals emerge.
At the same time, the party is attracting interest from the same British far right Farage disavows. Mark Collett, a former BNP youth functionary and current leader of the fascist group Patriotic Alternative, urged his supporters to view Reform not as a competitor but a vehicle for advancing their aims. Collett encouraged his followers to stop running candidates against Reform, arguing that “any ethno-nationalist party going up against Reform will always be humiliated” because both are seen by voters as “anti-immigration”, while only Reform has the credibility and resources to succeed. Instead, he suggests that those “not known, who have a clean public image” should “join Reform” and “help to steer that party from within”, while others work to build a nationalist community outside the electoral system to “advocate for the civil rights of the indigenous people of the British Isles”.
A spokesperson for anti-fascist research group Red Flare said: “Mark Collett and his supporters are rabid neo-Nazis who have expressed admiration for Hitler, glorified the Third Reich, and have variously denied and celebrated the Holocaust. Members of PA have been sent to prison for terrorism and hate speech offences. These fanatical Hitler sympathizers openly voicing their support for a political party with five MPs should set alarm bells ringing for the millions of people in Britain opposed to fascist and racist politics.”
Riding the Wave
Reform’s meteoric rise is not just a domestic story. It reflects wider political trends: the global collapse of centrist parties, the growth of reactionary anti-establishment movements, and the mainstreaming of far-right politics. Much Like Trump in the US, Le Pen in France, or Milei in Argentina, Farage uses a blend of celebrity, nationalism, and culture war populism to appeal across class lines and disrupt the established political order.
Reform’s current polling strength, consistently over 30 percent, combined with Farage’s high personal profile have fuelled speculation he could become Prime Minister. For that to happen, support would need to remain stable for another four years. Given the volatility of British politics, this is anything but guaranteed. The party will face scrutiny in the areas it now controls and will have a record in local government to defend. Its internal chaos, weak organization, and reliance on Farage remain significant vulnerabilities.
What is certain, however, is that Reform has accelerated the breakdown of Britain’s two-party system, with the Conservatives losing out most significantly. At the most recent local elections, the Conservatives lost all 18 councils they were defending, with Reform taking eight of them. In December, Reform claimed to surpass the Conservatives’ 131,000 members. New polling shows the public is slightly more likely to view Reform as the main opposition, and believe Farage is more likely to become Prime Minister than new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
Dan Evans, a writer and sociologist from South Wales and author of A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie, said:
Reform, like most modern right-populist movements, is a cross-class coalition which draws support from right across the social spectrum, from the working class to wealthy professionals. However, I believe their main support base and ideological centre of gravity to be the lower-middle classes. Their ideology is anti-establishment, anti-statist, and focused largely on producerism, which appeals directly to this class’s worldview. In this sense, Reform and Farage are very much descendants of Thatcherism.
Evans highlights how Reform’s appeal is rooted not just in cultural grievances but in the economic decline of the lower-middle classes. This is a group often described as the “squeezed middle”: self-employed tradespeople, small business owners, and mid-level professionals whose livelihoods have been eroded by stagnant wages, rising costs, and shrinking security. These frustrations, Evans argues, form fertile ground for a populist, anti-establishment message. Evans added:
It’s also important to note that they are a consequence of the middle class collapsing, the squeezed middle, or whatever you want to call it. They’ve arguably been hit harder than any other group by austerity. That is to say, they are appealing to very real economic anxieties.
This sense of grievance and disillusionment has helped Reform build a base among those who feel left behind. Labour’s early period in office has combined moderate social investment with austerity-style cost-cutting that has unsettled parts of its traditional base. The party has raised taxes on employers while sticking to tight self-imposed fiscal rules, but high-profile cuts like means-testing winter fuel payments and imposing inheritance tax on family farms have alienated pensioners and rural landowners. This has opened space for Reform to gain ground among working-class and disaffected Tory voters alike. In May, when Labour lost control of councils across England to Reform, the insurgent party framed itself as defenders of older people and rural communities against technocratic indifference.
As Reform grows, anti-racist campaigners are worried about other parties adopting racist policies in an attempt to appease Reform voters. Kojo Kyerewaa, a national organizer for Black Lives Matter UK, argues that Farage’s political project has consistently pushed Britain’s major parties towards harsher policies on migration and race:
Reform is the latest iteration of Farage's far-right political career. In terms of their impact, from UKIP in 2006 to Reform in 2025, Farage and his political allies have consistently pushed both Labour and Conservatives to increase state violence towards migrants. As Reform won 4 million votes, almost half as much as Labour, Labour under Keir Starmer’s leadership have not only increased their anti-migrant and pro-deportation rhetoric. They have pioneered policies such as live-streaming deportation flights, breaking records for the greatest number of children and adults deported in a 12-month period, and now pledging to double the waiting time, from five to ten years for legal migrants to apply for British citizenship. In the Runcorn by-election, the Labour candidate who was narrowly defeated by Reform campaigned to close the hotel hosting asylum seekers in the constituency. Reform has normalized and agitated for increased violence towards migrants and other minoritized people from the street to the state. It is likely that they are on course to become a coalition partner for the next government.
Farage’s party has already achieved one major goal: reshaping British politics in its own image and shifting the political centre further to the right. Its influence is measured not only in seats, but in the agenda-setting power it now wields. Whether or not it wins in 2029, Reform has established itself as a dangerous, destabilizing force in British democracy — one that is part of a much larger, deeply worrying international trend.