This is a critical moment for British politics. The dramatic rise of Reform UK over the last few years and growing resonance of its far-right rhetoric gave Nigel Farage’s party huge gains in the May 2025 elections, winning 10 councils, a parliamentary by-election and 2 mayoralties.
Reform UK is a growing electoral threat with increasing support, free publicity in the media, defections, and increasing funding from right-wing donors. They are now clearly ahead in the opinion polls, and are attempting to create an image as a credible alternative to the unpopular Tories and Labour.
The normalization of Reform’s xenophobic anti-immigration platform comes in the wake of years of Tory dog-whistle xenophobia culminating in mainstream parties like Labour shifting to the right on these issues.
This poses a very real threat to the country’s political stability at a time when Britain’s democratic institutions show worrying signs of strain. The 2024 general election produced the most disproportionate result in British history (Labour won 63% of seats from just 34% of votes). Dark money flows through our politics via legal loopholes that remain unaddressed. Trust in democratic institutions has fallen to historic lows.
These conditions create fertile ground for authoritarian populism to take root. Reform UK is not simply another protest movement to be waited out. It represents a sophisticated attempt to exploit the vulnerabilities in our democratic system at precisely the moment when that system is at its most fragile.
The concern is that if the Labour government’s policies to rebuild public services and raise living standards don’t materialise then voters are going to seek alternatives – with Reform UK standing to benefit the most.
The next general election is likely to be in 2029 but Labour could call it earlier. If Reform UK and the Tories form some sort of electoral pact to not stand against each other then between them they could win a majority of seats. This might feel unlikely at the moment but it is important to remember how volatile UK (and global) politics is these days. The Tories won a large majority in 2019 and then Labour won a landslide majority in 2024 so it is entirely possible voters will swing far to the right in the 2029 general election.
This could result in a number of outcomes:
- Reform UK and the Tories could form a far-right coalition government.
- OR Reform UK forms a far-right minority government supported by the Tories with a confidence and supply arrangement.
- OR Reform UK might win a majority and form a far-right government.
Any of these possibilities would result in a highly unstable government that would likely collapse after a few years due to Reform’s lack of government experience, unworkable economic policies and Farage’s dangerous and divisive far-right agenda which is similar to Trump’s in the US.
The HOPE not hate campaign group against far-right extremism in the UK identified Reform UK as the biggest far-right threat to the UK in 2025. Ironically, Elon Musk’s AI Grok also identified Farage as one of the five biggest threats to the UK.
STOP REFORM UK 