For the last year or so, left-leaning UK voters have been subjected to the looming nightmare that Reform – a bunch of xenophobes and welfare-state-slashers – might form the next government. There has been very little silver lining to this. The one bit of schadenfreude to be gleaned is the impending annihilation of the Conservatives as an electoral force. For someone (like me) who grew up in the 80s, this is really quite the thing – even if what they come to be replaced by might be even worse.
It is becoming more and more up for question, though, whether Reform are replacing the Tories at all, or merely reinventing them under a new name. There are two elements to this. First, as Reform realises it might have to govern soon, it is walking back some of the more batshit elements of its programme (though many remain!), and at least attempting to talk the talk of administrative competence. It is moving closer in several respects, that is, to a more conventional Tory position, even as the Tories lurch to the right. Second, recall that one of Reform’s major structural problems is a lack of would-be MPs and ministers who are in any way competent. The people who have been elected as local councillors have made them a continual laughing-stock.
To some extent this hole is being plugged by constant defections of former Tory ministers (no, I’m not claiming these people are competent! But they are trumpeted, at least, as showing the party has experience and gravitas). But every former Tory minister who joins (today it was Nadeem Zahawi, tomorrow who knows?) raises the question of whether Reform are killing the Tories, or saving them by giving them a new flag to wrap themselves in. Would a Reform government be, in personnel and to some degree in platform, that distinguishable from the kind of Tory government Truss might have led if she hadn’t gone down in flames so quickly?
This also prompts questions about whether the continual defections of prominent Tories to the party might, at some point, be noticed by some of their prospective voters. Reform holds together a fractious coalition of voters, many of whom do not consider themselves Conservatives and might indeed hate the Conservatives (it is, remember, a protest party above all, and protest parties are not meant to be fond of people who have until recently spent years in government). As more and more Tory grandees join the ranks, might the coalition start to fracture?
{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
MisterMr 01.12.26 at 4:54 pm
This seems to me a sadly familiar pattern, where the traditional free market right dies because nobody believes anymore in a free market that lift all boats, but people instead of going left go to a xenophobic populist “social” right, which uses liberals, globalism and immigrants as scapegoats for all ills of society, while not actually doing anything to solve said ills.
I don’t know how things look in the UK, but from the description in the OP things sound dire.
Tm 01.12.26 at 6:09 pm
It’s a familiar story by now: Right wing voters claim to be anti-establishment, until they are the establishment. They’ll back a government stacked with discredited Tory ministers without a moment’s hesitaion as long as they also get the racism and fascism they have signed up for.
I hasten to add that Starmer’s ineptutude and incompetence ist just beyond belief. A prime minister with almost unlimited power, using that power almost exclusively to enact the policies of his political opponents. Has this happened before?
Matt 01.13.26 at 12:00 am
Second, recall that one of Reform’s major structural problems is a lack of would-be MPs and ministers who are in any way competent.
My impression, from Australia and, even more, the US, is that this can be much less of an impediment to electoral success than we might hope. It’s even unclear how far it will impede political success, if a good part of the goal is just to trash things in various ways.
Charlie W 01.13.26 at 8:28 am
If there’s any pattern to be seen, it’s perhaps that the OG Tories recover as Reform slumps a bit. Possibly exactly because they start to resemble each other better.
#3: The ‘elect us, we’re just the incompetent wreckers you yearn for’ narrative is also weakened by a stream of defections from the Tories. Although tbf Truss was a pretty good wrecker in practice, but it’s not the image.
Sophie Jane 01.13.26 at 11:18 am
They’re also keener than other UK parties to go full Trump on trans people, granted all the current options except the Greens seem to think we’re surplus to requirements and in need of culling. Which is a concern for me because it’s the kind of policy that’s likely to br kept in place as a sop to the far right even if they soften on other stuff
engels 01.13.26 at 12:42 pm
nobody believes anymore in a free market that lift all boats, but people instead of going left go to a xenophobic populist “social” right, which uses liberals, globalism and immigrants as scapegoats for all ills of society
Actually in Britain they went left for about 5 years until that was squelched, partly by some of those same liberals.
nonrenormalizable 01.13.26 at 1:43 pm
Are you ruling out (based on whatever “red-line” the Reform UK leader utters today) the possibility of a merger with the Tories or a re-naming (i.e. the “Conservative and Reform Party”, as opposed to the “Conservative and Unionist Party”, if the Election Commission or whoever allows it?) ? Part of the older party’s longevity has been its adaptability in its outward ideology while continuously serving the interests of a diminishing wealthy core and a fluctuating group of other interests.
One reason why such a merger might be difficult is the current organisational structure of Reform. As I understand it, it’s more like a company with shares, of which Farage is the majority-holder. I think that allows him to keep a tight leash on things, but (in line with the OP’s point) as more established figures enter his party, they might find his monopoly of power rather stifling.
Though one might see this as analogous to Trump’s grip on the Republican Party and the consequent obsequiousness of GOP elites towards him, Farage doesn’t have quite the same draw with an extra-party power base (nor the same underlying threat of violence against dissenters).
Chris Armstrong 01.13.26 at 2:16 pm
@7 – I think the crazy organisational structure is one reason a formal merger is unlikely. Another is Farage’s history of betraying everyone he works with sooner or later. Then there’s his megalomania – this would not be a party in which even government ministers could expect to have a say over policy. We can also add the fact that some prominent Conservatives have ruled it out in clear terms – though promises can be broken…
Laban 01.13.26 at 5:00 pm
They’re pushing their luck with Zahawi, as dodgy a guy as ever got did a tax return. If Boris Johnson wants to do the Tories a real favour he should defect to Reform asap. He’d halve their vote as he halved the Tory vote.
Alex SL 01.13.26 at 9:01 pm
It doesn’t really matter if that process or realisation will fragment the coalition of Reform voters, because (or as long as) those voters don’t change. Millions of people have heard Farage speak and have been able to compare his predictions about Brexit with the actual outcomes of Brexit yet still conclude he should be given a go at running the system that keeps them supplied with drinking water, food, medicine, public transport, electricity, safety, etc., just like tens of millions of people in another country have concluded that the serial fraudster and bully who cannot articulate any thought more complex than “fake news!”, recommended injecting bleach to deal with a viral infection, and then tried to overthrow democracy should be given another go.
About a third of voters in many ‘Western’ nations seem to have turned into the society-level equivalent of a middle-aged guy who thinks that murder-suicide is the only possible solution to not getting along with his wife. Whatever happens at the next UK election and whatever brand name the main right-wing party there will bear in 2035, democracy cannot survive an electorate like this forever. Unless something fundamentally changes about the media and the education system and ideally the electoral system of the UK, those voters putting Incitatus in charge remains a question of when, not if; and although this post is not about the Labour party, at this point they have to be mentioned briefly, because if anybody would be available to implement reforms that could save democracy and rule of law, they oh who am I kidding hahaha there is no way I can type this out with a straight face.
Moz of Yarramulla 01.14.26 at 3:45 am
I fear you will get a right-wing party stripped of its moderates as has happened in Australia. Since Howard (~1990’s) we’ve seen repeated deselections and resignations to the point where the real selection fights are between theocrats and libertarians.
Whether that party is a revitalised Conservative one or Reform bolstered by wingnuts and chancers defecting I have no idea. You might get another formal coalition.
Ideally Labour would be willing to allow the non-English parties a role in government, but I understand that that’s outside the Overton Window. Perhaps The Greens are more acceptable?
Neville Morley 01.14.26 at 11:13 am
@AlexSL #10: I think this is unfair, to Incitatus, who never asked to be made a senator (or, used to make a point about the power of the emperor and the spinelessness of the senate) and was never given the opportunity to demonstrate his aptitude for power. Unlike Farage and his gang, who have clearly demonstrated their venality and malicious incompetence.
MisterMr 01.14.26 at 1:56 pm
In the meanwhile, the EU and Starmer’s government are finalizing a pact where the UK basically “dynamically adopts” EU regulations on foods and drugs, so that basically the UK accepts to follow EU regulations and all the various custom checks can be avoided.
This is seen as a sort of capitulation by Farage and his followers (which it is, but this is because Brexit was a stupid idea to begin with) so that if Farage gets elected, he said he will not respect this pact.
For this reason, the EU is inserting a “Farage clause” in the pact that if one of the sides breaks the pact it will have to pay a loto of money to the other for forcing them to rebuild customs.
I guess this is the kind of thing that inflames UK nationalists and gives votes to Farage (otherwise he wouldn’t be publicly saying that he will break the pact), so evidently a lot of voter not only didn’t learn from Brexit, but apparently liked it and are now doubling down.
I’m a bit surprised beacuse my impression was that conservatives too in the end realized the problems with Brexit and sorta disowned it, but instead it seems to be still popular?
Chris Armstrong 01.14.26 at 2:19 pm
@13 – The spin is that, despite having pretty much the hardest Brexit imaginable, it wasn’t hard enough. If it had been (whatever that might mean), we’d have trade deals with Mars by now.
engels 01.14.26 at 2:53 pm
conservatives too in the end realized the problems with Brexit and sorta disowned it
The conservatives under PM Cameron opposed Brexit. He called the vote to try to wring concessions from the EU and to shut Farage’s supporters up, assuming people would be easily be scared by the political/business establishment into voting Remain. Oops.
Alex SL 01.14.26 at 11:07 pm
Moz of Yarramulla’s comparison with Australia raises another important point: it usually doesn’t matter very much if either extremists take over a traditionally moderate party or vice versa, because any traditional party has a large complement of rusted-on low-information voters who don’t even notice or maintain denial regarding how much the ground has shifted under their feet. On the one side are centre-right voters in denial about how radical the right-wing party has become, on the other centre-left voters in denial about how centre-right the left-wing party has become while rejecting the Greens who largely promote the policy preferences of those centre-left voters. Lots of inertia.
That is even more so in two-party systems, where many more voters will vote for the main party on their side of the spectrum even if it nominates a wet noodle as the top candidate, because lesser evil, tactical voting, etc., and frankly, that also applies to me. It is not as if Labour only got 10% of the vote when Corbyn was in charge; clearly, most traditional Labour voters continued to vote Labour by default during that time. So, whether the Tories or Reform are the main right wing party of the UK in ten years probably has no influence on whether that main right wing party is being run by neonazis or by traditional conservatives; all four possible combinations are reasonably likely.
Neville Morley,
Fair points.
Moz of Yarramulla 01.14.26 at 11:38 pm
To be a hard enough Brexit for some of them you’d have to tow England out into the middle of the Atlantic. I suspect many in the EU would support that.
Or the cliche statement that {idea} cannot fail, it can only be failed.
John Q 01.15.26 at 2:51 am
The same thing is happening on the left, with the rise of the Greens. There isn’t enough support for neoliberalism to sustain the old duopoly. I wrote about this here
https://crookedtimber.org/2016/02/29/the-three-party-system/
Plurality (FPTP) voting makes situations like this a total mess. It would be plausible, in a Welsh election for instance, to have six serious candidates, and the winner coming in with 20 per cent of the vote. Four or five candidates and winners with 30 per cent will be likely in many cases. The case for merger (or non-compete agreement) is strong. It would be disaster if Reform-Tory managed it while Labour, Green and LDP all ran separately
John Q 01.15.26 at 2:55 am
Alex SL @10 As I said in my three-party post, between 20 and 30 per cent of voters in most countries have always been fascists in waiting. Mostly, they didn’t think much about politics and voted (if at all) for conservatives politicians who pandered to their prejudices but did nothing much about them. But whenever a plausible fascist option has appeared, theyve gone for it.
harry b 01.15.26 at 3:19 am
Friends/relations in local government (I have enough, all Labour, that you shouldn’t try to attribute the following quote to a particular person) think that this year and next will be very valuable for Reform in identifying which of their councilors are nutters, which are loyal and which are competent. Those who are loyal and competent (and of course there are some – direct quote from a very left wing Labour councilor “X and Y seem like decent people who really enjoy being good at being councilors and won’t seem crazy to voters because they’re clearly not”) will be selected as PPCs. Now, of course, these are people who were not and wouldn’t have been Tories, but are in many ways more like traditional Tory councilors than actual Tory defectors.
I agree with JQ’s two preceding, depressing, comments. The one upside of Reform is that they are attracting Tories with limited appeal and that NF is a nasty little shit who has a long long track record of being unable to get along with anyone with any ability. But when the stakes are high enough maybe he can?
Tm 01.15.26 at 8:40 am
MisterMr: “This is seen as a sort of capitulation by Farage and his followers (which it is, but this is because Brexit was a stupid idea to begin with) so that if Farage gets elected, he said he will not respect this pact.”
I doubt that a Farage government would actually renege on this pact because then, he would have full responsibility for the ensuing chaos. He’ll use this as a campaigning device but once in government, I doubt he’ll follow through. Compare Orban, who with all his dirty talk about the EU doern’t even remotely dream of taking Hungary out of the EU. He could do it any day if he wanted to but he would pay a heavy price and he knows it.
Brexit was the perfect political bomb for Farage: he could blow up the political system without paying any price because he wasn’t in government. This only works of course because he also had a lot of oligarchic media support.
MisterMr 01.15.26 at 11:26 am
John Q 19:
“between 20 and 30 per cent of voters in most countries have always been fascists in waiting”
If you look at social psychology studies, there is actually a strong variance in this (and the USA really has a lot of hRWAs VS other countries):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism#Western_countries
I think that while “fascism” can to an extent be explained as a psychological tendency, the greater or smaller diffusion of that tendency has to be explained by other macro facors, like economic insecurity or perhaps other stuff.
Tm 21: I tend to believe that this kind of moronic politicians (e.g. Trump) actually believe their own BS. They likely don’t have principles, but they don’t either feel the need to actually understand if what they say is true or not, only if it is accepted by followers, so in the end they’ll do the stupid thing, IMHO.
Also the UK isn’t as dependent on the UE as Hungary, because it’s much bigger.
engels 01.15.26 at 12:02 pm
between 20 and 30 per cent of voters in most countries have always been fascists in waiting… whenever a plausible fascist option has appeared, theyve gone for it
This supply-side theory of fascism seems to invite the question of why all these plausible fascists suddenly appeared.
harry b 01.15.26 at 7:02 pm
I just heard a reporter refer to “someone with the standing of Robert Jenrick” as if that standing was high, which shows just how low the Tories have fallen.
Alex SL 01.16.26 at 1:50 am
John Q,
I kind of agree; taking the country in which I grew up for the most part, it would be foolish to think that only 5% of German voters were nazis between 1945 and the rise of the AFD. But your “plausible option” is doing too much work in my opinion, because plausible options have been available much more often than they have succeeded at getting that level of open support.
These people could have concluded in 1960 or 1985 that the CDU/CSU were only pandering to them but not actually implementing their policy preferences and given a neonazi party like NPD 25% vote share. But at that time, they didn’t. Why not? Something changed, and best I can tell, it is that they have become emboldened, lost any semblance of shame and the understanding that there are lines you don’t cross if you want to be considered a decent human.
It is also possible that they have collectively forgotten that there are consequences for pushing their preferences to the maximum. I think a lot of us have ideas that we think are obviously best for society if all those other people would just understand (I certainly do), but normal people grasp that if at least a large plurality of their compatriots are opposed to this obviously beneficial thing, forcing it on them is not an option, because that will fracture peaceful co-existence; if our side does that, the others will punch back at some point, and in extreme cases, that ends with your house in rubble and your leaders being hung by the Red Army. This generation of voters, journalists, and politicians has experience with and no grasp of the seriously hard times that result from seriously unwise decisions. It is all a game to them. Things really are different than they were a few decades ago.
Alex SL 01.16.26 at 1:52 am
has no experience with, sorry
John Q 01.16.26 at 5:41 am
Alex SL @25 I don’t know enough about Germany to comment, but I had real examples in mind
* Poujadisme in France, which started Le Pen’s political career in the 1950s
* The surge of support for Enoch Powell in the UK, following the “Rivers of Blood” speech in the 1960s
* The repeated bursts of support for Pauline Hanson in Australia, beginning in the late 1990s
* The Northern League and its successors in Italy, again going back to the 1990s
As long as the dominant political parties/coalitions and the political/business class as a whole coalesced around some version of neoliberalism (or, in the early postwar period, moderate social democracy) these outbreaks reliably fizzled out. But now that’s not the case
engels 01.16.26 at 9:31 am
Jenrick was also a Remainer btw. Farage otoh has been a broken record since his Dulwich school days (fees £60 000).
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-fascist-nazi-song-gas-them-all-ukip-brexit-schoolfriend-dulwich-college-a7185236.html
Laban 01.16.26 at 3:37 pm
In the end it all boils down to the fact that UK (and US) people’s lives have got a lot worse over the last few decades – and are on course to get worse still. When people in the Guardian comments section start looking back at the early 1990s as a golden age (‘you could buy a house!’) then you know you’re in trouble.
I took a look at Rightmove the other day, Chester Street in Oxford, a street of terraced houses built for the Victorian working class. Number 30 went for £95k in 1995, and 30 years later for £950k.
Tm 01.19.26 at 8:57 am
Alex and John 25, 26: The reason why fascism had no traction in most countries until recently is because the media and, crucially the economic elites didn’t support it, didn’t promote it and fund it. There have always been powerful right wing media, like Springer in Germany, but they tended to clearly distance themselves from the extreme right. The capitalist class supported moderate right wing parties that operated within the liberal democratic order, supported the rule of law and a minimal welfare state. An order which by the way has been extremely profitable to the capitalists.
Only recently have they they started calling all this in question and attacking the very order that has worked so well in the capitlists’ interest for so long. It is absolutely the economic elites that have been instrumental in normalizing fascism and making fascist parties viable contenders for political power. It is amazing to what extent this fact is still being downplayed or even denied within left and liberal circles, even though a simple look at Trump’s regime makes clear that it’s a fusion of oligarchic and fascist power (and it’s policies are exptremely unpopular despite most of the corporate controlled mass media supporting them!).
As to why this is happening now, I do think the temporal distance from 1945 is an important factor. Apparently it took about 80 years, about a lifetime, until the experience of Nazism and the war has sufficiently faded to make a new iteration of fascist politics viable.
I absolutely do not find any of the economic explanations habitually offered for the rise of fascism plausible. Least of all the narrative that “people’s lives have got a lot worse over the last few decades” (Laban 29), which is absolute bullshit. What is true and certainly an important factor is the rise of inequality over the last decades, which has created a new/old oligarchic class that doesn’t feel bound by the post war compromise.
Tm 01.19.26 at 1:30 pm
PS the French sociologist Vincent Tiberj argues in a very interesting study that there is no rightward shift in the expressed views of French citizens over the last few decades. According to opinion surveys, the French public has become more, not less tolerant towards immigrants, more accepting of religious and sexual diversity. He concludes that the political rightward shift is not driven by the opinions and preferences of the mass of ordinary citizens but from above, consistent with my argument.
Vincent Tiberj: «La droitisation française, mythe et réalités». Presses universitaires de France. Paris 2024
engels 01.19.26 at 6:56 pm
If anyone who voted for Trump is a fascist, presumably that means anyone who voted for Biden is a genocide supporter.
There is definitely a section of the US population that is batshit crazy but it’s nowhere near 30%. Eg I was recently looking at the numbers who support the Greenland BS and it’s much, much lower. It’s depressing how closely this kind of analysis mirrors the “tribalism” it claims to oppose.
John Q 01.20.26 at 3:52 am
Engels @32 The Greenland poll results would be encouraging if I weren’t aware of public responses to the Jan 6 insurrection. In the immediate aftermath, 87 per cent of Americans said it was important to find and prosecute those responsible. As of now, 30 per cent support Trump’s pardons. If he goes ahead with an invasion of Greenland and doesn’t fail spectacularly in the process, that 30 per cent will back him and a large group of centrists will excuse himself.
Tm 01.20.26 at 8:17 am
engels and JQ, the 30% number is at least not implausible. You are right about only 14% supporting conquering Greenland (and 30% support buying) but according to the same poll, 28% said the murder of Renee Good was justified. I consider this a good poll because a clear majority (but still only 54%) say it was unjustified.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-trump-greenland-trump-poll/
These numbers always have to be taken in the context of a media (both legacy and social/online) environment that is about 90% controlled by oligarchs close to or directly connected to the regime. Propaganda works. I therefore like to stress that Trump is and remains unpopular despite a level of media Gleichschaltung that is absolutely unprecedented in US history.
The fact remains that a hard faction of maybe 25 or 30% consciously supports Trump’s fascism. That however leaves a majority of 70-75% who have the power to put an end to this nightmare.
Laban 01.21.26 at 12:48 pm
“I absolutely do not find any of the economic explanations habitually offered for the rise of fascism plausible. Least of all the narrative that “people’s lives have got a lot worse over the last few decades””
In the UK, the ratio between median house prices and median earnings has approximately doubled in the last 30 years. There are houses full of 29 year olds with doctorates or masters degrees living in single rooms like undergraduates.
In the States?
https://www.resiclubanalytics.com/p/the-vanishing-young-homebuyer-median-first-time-homebuyer-age-jumps-from-28-in-1991-to-38-in-2024
28 years old ? The median age of first-time U.S. homebuyers in 1991. 38 years old ? The median age of first-time U.S. homebuyers in 2024. In other words, the median first-time U.S. homebuyer in 2024 (age 38) has been out of high school for 20 years but is also only 24 years away from the earliest age at which they could receive Social Security benefits (age 62).
Or to go back further
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-typical-male-u-s-worker-earned-less-in-2014-than-in-1973/
The typical man with a full-time job–the one at the statistical middle of the middle–earned $50,383 last year, the Census Bureau reported this week. The typical man with a full-time job in 1973 earned $53,294, measured in 2014 dollars to adjust for inflation.
I was able to buy a house age 24, and I was unloading lorries for a living then. All our children have needed help from us – God knows how people get on without the Bank of Mum and Dad.
Tm 01.21.26 at 12:58 pm
Interesting new polls from UK. I’m copying this from bsky:
Extraordinary polling from
@yougov.co.uk
today, showing the
@greenparty.org.uk
in first place across all working age people
????Grn – 20.5%
????Lab – 20.3%
?Ref – 20.1%
????Con – 15.5%
baffling why 60% of pensioners are supporting Con/Ref who will slash public spending that mainly goes to pensioners
Laban 01.21.26 at 6:53 pm
@Tm – That must be a very new poll, I can only see them leading among under-30s as here:
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/53923-how-would-britain-vote-at-the-start-of-2026
somebody who remembers just a few years back 01.21.26 at 7:33 pm
Tm @ #36 is baffled by why pensioners would vote for people who will slash pensions and turn them out onto the street to die in the snow. The answer is that they are willing to sacrifice anything to make sure that the nurse who sees them at their local health appointment is at least as white as tilda swinton. the promise to get brexit done properly this time (strangle all polish people who can be shown to own a van and firebomb the local curry shop) motivates them beyond their own livelihood and comfort. Just because you and I won’t sacrifice our lives for racial supremacy doesn’t mean nobody will.
Tm 01.22.26 at 10:56 am
38, you know I just copied that from bsky. But the high number of 60% (haven’t checked whether it’s correct) is somewhat baffling.
Tm 01.22.26 at 1:01 pm
Thanks 37. The details are very interesting. An intersting bit about housing tenure: 32% of those who “own outright” support reform, 26% Tories. The owners still vote right. Among those with a mortgage, the results are more mixed. Social renters support 37% Reform, amazing. I assume mostly pensioners. Those who “live with family/friends” lean left, I assume mostly young people.
Tm 01.22.26 at 2:40 pm
Btw (sorry for multiple comments): the age profile according to this poll is “traditional” in the sense that younger voters lean left, older voters right (and women left, men right). This is as one would expect but differs from a pattern increasingly observed, e. g. in Germany, that the voter base of far right parties is mainly concentrated among the 40-60 year olds.