Having attracted its first MP in the form of a Tory defector, the former Brexit Party is catching up with the government in the polls.
ADVERTISEMENTMost western European countries have at least one major radical right-wing party either in government or close to it.
Italy’s government is run by the Brothers of Italy and Lega; the Finns Party remains part of Finland’s coalition government, the Sweden Democrats are in a confidence-and-supply deal with a mainstream right-wing coalition in Stockholm, and Germany’s AfD, France’s National Rally and Spain’s Vox all carry serious electoral weight – even if their chances of actually leading national governments remain slim for now.
Thanks in part to its electoral system, the UK has not yet seen a party like this make major gains at the ballot box outside of previous EU Parliament elections. But with the ruling Conservative Party unable to close a 20-plus-point polling deficit against the Labour Party, that could be about to change.
With a general election set for sometime this year, Reform UK, the rebranded version of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, is rapidly catching up with the governing Conservative Party in the polls. It currently has only one MP: Lee Anderson, who defected from the Tories after falsely claiming the Muslim mayor of London was controlled by Islamists.
Reform’s ideology has much in common with Europe’s radical right in general. As stated by its leader Richard Tice, it emphasises “traditional” values, including “pride in British history/culture” and law and order, while rejecting mass immigration, environmentalism, trans inclusivity, and “Islamic extremists on our streets”.
While its national polling numbers currently put it at 10-15%, a level that does not guarantee it will even win seats in parliament, Reform seems to be pulling voters away from the Conservatives at a time when they simply cannot afford to lose them.
Right and wrong
Reform has repeatedly and vehemently insisted it is not a “far right” party, and has threatened legal action against media organisations that label it as such.
Yet according to Dr Katy Brown of Ireland’s Maynooth University, there are undeniable similarities between Reform and its counterparts across the English Channel.
“Reform shares a number of ideological and policy positions with established far-right parties in Europe,” she says, “for example proposing net-zero immigration, adopting trans-exclusionary definitions of gender, and claiming to fight so-called ‘woke’ ideology.
“This places them much in line with parties like the Lega and National Rally, so it’s clear that such comparisons are not only warranted but also important in highlighting the exclusionary politics on which the party is based.”
The “far right” label has also been rejected by European parties that are far more openly radical than Reform. National Rally has its roots in the old French right, dating back to apologists for the Vichy collaborationist regime and the Algerian war of independence. The Finns count defenders of the Nazis among their ranks, while Vox has been frequently accused of nostalgia for the fascist regime of Francisco Franco.
Over the line
Reform’s stated policies aside, some of its candidates have also espoused extreme views in public.
On the one hand, Tice spoke out sternly after a major Tory donor was reported to have made viciously racist and sexist remarks about a black Labour MP, Diane Abbott. The Tories were slow to condemn his comments, and were widely criticised for their hesitancy.
And while the Tories did ultimately cut Anderson loose, many of their current MPs and candidates have pushed into the realm of conspiracy theory – with former prime minister Liz Truss increasingly associating with extremists on the American right.
However, Reform's hands are hardly clean on this front.
Besides Anderson’s unfounded claim that the Muslim mayor of London was in the pocket of Islamists – which he made before Reform welcomed him – there is the example of Ginny H Ball, whom Reform dropped as a parliamentary candidate after she made a litany of racist statements.
Another candidate was dropped after referring to Scotland as “a turd that won’t flush”.
Expert Brown, whose academic work focuses on the mainstreaming of extremist and radical ideas in European politics, cautions that Reform’s insistence it isn’t a far right party should not be taken at face value. Instead, she adds, we need to think about why it and other parties are so keen to reject these labels.
ADVERTISEMENT“It is a common strategy for parties to attempt to seem more acceptable by overtly distancing themselves from supposedly more extreme examples,” she explains. “It is crucial that we challenge these self-characterisations – else we risk allowing them to set the agenda for how they are defined and perceived, which can ultimately facilitate their normalisation.”
The future
But political normalisation aside, the deciding factor in Reform’s future may be its leadership.
In its days as the Brexit Party, Reform was led by the right-wing anti-immigration politician Nigel Farage, who previously helmed the UK’s top Eurosceptic party, UKIP. That party performed well in European Parliament elections but never made much headway at Westminster level, and Farage ultimately abandoned it.
With him gone, UKIP shrank dramatically while welcoming figures from the extreme racist fringe. Meanwhile, Farage helped create the Brexit Party, which made a big impact in the 2019 European Parliament elections.
But when it came time to fight the British general election in 2019, Farage agreed to stand aside for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in most seats, giving the government a clear path to re-election on the campaign slogan “Get Brexit Done”.
ADVERTISEMENTFarage then left the party’s leadership, where he has been succeeded by the far more obscure Tice. But according to some polls, if he were to take the leadership, he might immediately give Reform an instant bump, and possibly even pull ahead of the Tories.
That almost certainly would not give Farage a path to government – but it would once again make him too loud a voice for mainstream British politicians to ignore.
Euronews has approached Reform for comment.