From inequality to fragmentation: (re)opening the door to Nigel Farage

It is one of the great political ironies of recent European history that Nigel Farage's UKIP won a grand total of one seat in the 2015 general election, but was nevertheless influential enough to lead Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron – against the advice of his strongest allies – to hold a disastrous referendum and make Brexit, UKIP's raison d'ètre, a reality in 2016. 

A related irony is the fact that while immigration was one of the driving motivations behind the vote for Brexit, Britain has experienced record levels of immigration since leaving the EU. In the four years that followed the official enactment of Brexit in 2020, successive Tory cabinets adopted an increasingly "inflammatory" line on migration, with Suella Braverman's interventions marking – for many – the nadir. The official numbers, however, consistently demonstrated the government's inability or unwillingness to act on that rhetoric, sparking the eventual revolt of would-be Conservative voters that contributed to a Labour landslide in the 2024 general election. 

Now, with Farage's Reform UK coming out on top in the 1 May UK elections (local council and mayoral elections, as well as one parliamentary by-election), the question is whether Farage is on the verge of finally consolidating his political influence into direct parliamentary power.

(Neo)Powellism

Analysing the options for characterising the ideology of Reform UK, associate editor of New Left Review Oliver Eagleton in the New Statesman rejects "conservative", "fascist", and even "far right" in favour of "Powellism". In 1968, Conservative MP Enoch Powell delivered the "Rivers of Blood" speech that would become the ur-text of British anti-immigration rhetoric. Even at the time, the speech was characterised by conservatives and liberals alike as inflammatory, and Powell was promptly sacked by Conservative leader Edward Heath, who said the speech was "racialist in tone and liable to exacerbate racial tensions".

For Eagleton (and many others), Powell used immigrants as a "scapegoat" for the decline of the British Empire and national pride. "The continuities with Farageism", writes Eagelton, "are plain to see: an obsession with the symbols of Englishness; a plan to restore 'national pride' which amounts to little more than hardening the borders and strengthening big business". However, "Reform is not responding to the atrophy of imperialism but to the crack-up of neoliberalism: feeding off the despondency and enervation left in the wake of this failed experiment. Its greatest source of political oxygen is not the decolonisation of India in 1947, but the Great Recession of 2008"

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Ultimately, Eagleton doubts whether Reform can sustain itself beyond mere opposition. "Farage’s politics are also inconsistent in much the same way as Powell’s. He has no desire to change Britain’s growth model – a rentier state with a large, low-wage service sector – yet he abhors the immigration that sustains it. [...] Were Reform to come to power, it would surely founder on such contradictions. But in opposition it can continue to confect hysteria about its pet issues, from 'small boats' to 'two-tier justice', aware that the government will do nothing to push back."

Reform UK voters’ leftwing agenda

While Keir Starmer's line on immigration is hardly soft, and the numbers of arrivals have remained stubbornly high, data indicates that the rejection of Labour in the local elections has much more to do with inequality than concerns about immigration. Visiting Grimsby – an economically deprived city that was a Labour stronghold until 2019, returned to Labour in 2024, and gave Reform a landslide victory this May – Gregor Atanesian in BBC Russia certainly encounters many who are angry about immigration ("I'd vote for Nigel, or anyone who'd take a machine gun and stop those boats"), but also former Labour loyalists who defected due to issues related to the cost of living: “I voted Labour all my life, voted for them in 2024. But what did they do? Raised the council tax and abolished the winter fuel allowance.” 

In the Guardian, Jessica Elgot writes that "senior Labour figures have been sharing data that appears to suggest the party’s actual biggest risk is from losing progressive voters angered by a perceived inaction on the cost of living and potential cuts to public services." Indeed, the data on voters who defected from Labour indicates that their main concerns were related to economic inequalities, while immigration was low on the list of priorities. 18% of Labour voters chose not to vote Labour due to "failure to control immigration", versus 28% of non-Labour voters. In contrast, between 35 and 23% of former Labour voters rejected Labour due to things like "removal of the winter fuel allowance", "failure to reduce cost of living", "failure to improve public services", "failure to stand up to the rich and powerful". 

The data also shows that the overwhelming majority of Labour defectors would shift to the Greens (43%) or Liberal Democrats (40%) in the next general election. What this suggests is that Starmer is wasting his time trying to court the anti-immigration vote, and should spend more time "speaking directly to progressive voters". In fact, polling also shows that Reform voters are not necessarily hostile to the more traditional Labour platform: "Reform voters support a strongly interventionist, leftwing economic agenda," Elgot writes, "including nationalising utilities, higher taxes on corporations and for Britain to take steps to protect national industries from foreign competition."

An increase in the supply side of politics

For many analysts – Hannah Bunting in The Conversation, David Gauke in The New Statesman, Paula Surridge in the Guardian – the key takeaway of the May 2025 elections is "political fragmentation". Providing a fascinating insight into how such fragmentation is measured, Bunting, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative British Politics at the University of Exeter, concludes that "this election broke records for the extent of fragmentation – a significant movement away from the dominance of the two parties that have dominated British politics for the past century." 

For her part, Paula Surridge points to an increase in the "supply side of electoral politics", or "who appears on the ballot paper".  "At these English local elections," the professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol writes, "almost everyone was able to vote for Reform UK if they wished to, something that was not even true at the general election in 2024". 

And while Reform UK did simply replace the Conservatives in certain areas, the Liberal Democrats, who came second overall, also received plenty of votes from disillusioned Conservative and Labour voters. "This is far more than a story of an insurgent party disrupting the status quo", Surridge writes. "It is a story of a deep disillusionment with the political parties that have been in charge in British politics for a century. The electorate saw two unpopular governments, one they recently got rid of and one a large majority did not vote for less than a year ago. No longer bound by old loyalties of class or party, voters are willing to try something else."