The only way to stopper Reform UK’s anti-establishment, far-right proclivity for perverting our fundamental political practices is to hope for Farage’s success in Clacton. Some of Reform’s cousins have trod this path many times: Alternative für Deutschland, MAGA, or Rassemblement National, all use the same method. The implicit goal is to erode the average voter’s faith in the system, and with it increase the belief that establishment parties take average voters for granted.

The event that best captures the folly of Keir Starmer was the sacking of three trade envoys and the suspension of “four persistent rebels” in July 2025, after he faced the most serious rebellion to his government yet. He and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, were attempting to push through a welfare reform bill which, according to its detractors, would have cut vulnerable people off of PIP. They failed, with backbench Labour MPs forcing them to reverse the welfare cuts. Instead

Robert Paxton’s seminal The Anatomy of Fascism conceptualises it not as a category but a political process: “all that is required… is polarisation, deadlock, mass mobilisation against internal and external enemies, and complicity by existing elites.” Nearly all are present in the UK. The collapse in electoral support for the Conservative Party and rise in support for Reform UK, the Green Party, the SNP, and Plaid Cymru are the most obvious political signs of polarisation. Ma

Over ten years later, Brexit remains era-defining, indirectly toppling yet another prime minister. Starmer has resigned. A resignation catalysed by the local elections that saw Labour lose almost five times as many voters to the Greens and Liberal Democrats as to Reform UK. Pressure from the pro-EU progressives and centrists was key to the end of the Starmer project, a fact that is at the front of Andy Burnham’s mind as he plans an ascent to Downing Street and has to take o

On Friday morning, news broke that one of Britain’s most recognisable political figures, Ann Widdecombe, had died. By mid-day social media was awash with tributes for a woman whose four decades in public life had taken her from Westminster to Brussels, and, most recently, to Reform UK as the party’s spokeswoman on Immigration and Justice. By mid-afternoon, national newspapers had published obituaries, some admiring and others searing in their criticism of a politician who pos

Where just a few months ago Nigel Farage seemed invincible, his political position has grown increasingly precarious in recent months. Nigel Farage’s decision to not declare a £5 million ‘gift’ from the Thailand-based crypto-billionaire Christopher Harborne remains the biggest threat to his momentum. The Reform leader claims to have “done nothing wrong”, but his failure to declare the money he received from Harborne, per rule 5 of the House of Commons code of conduct, prompte

It's time to stop thinking about the climate crisis as a problem for the future. If the past week of stifling temperatures in the United Kingdom has shown us anything, it is that global warming is a visceral, present reality. Yet at this very moment, when the effects of climate change are so tangible year on year, political discussion skirts around the issue. Squabbles over North Sea oil have dominated the conversation recently, despite experts having made it clear that arou

It is somewhat rare for an election to proffer signs that are simultaneously encouraging yet brutal for a party in British politics, but the Makerfield by-election proved just that for Reform UK. The result, while confirming that the party has decisively supplanted the Conservatives as the premier force on the British right, nevertheless exposed the possibility that Reform’s rise has itself birthed a coalition capable of stopping it. The encouragement is obvious; Reform amass

Carnage. I think that is the best way to put it. Massive council wins for Reform and an evisceration of Welsh Labour, epitomised by First Minister, Eluned Morgan, being ejected at break-neck speed from her Senedd seat, has rubbed salt into Labour’s backbench anxiety. The threshold for triggering a leadership challenge against the PM, the elusive and seemingly far-fetched 81 MPs, has been surpassed within the space of 48 hours. The only element that’s missing is a leader of th

On the surface Andy Burnham’s victory in Makerfield is unremarkable, if anything the 20% gap over second-placed Reform is a shining example of how Labour has lost significant swathes of support in the constituencies where historically the Labour vote had to be weighed rather than counted. Makerfield, an ex-mining, working class seat that has voted Labour since 1906 saw 35% of its electorate vote for a right-wing party. The result seemingly represents the phenomenon that has b

I have tended to support left wing parties, gravitating towards their ideas as regional and national politics played a growing part in my teen life. Seeking equality, eliminating poverty, helping the downtrodden and the marginalised, and defeating a self-interested elite have remained leftist constants, but the vehicle of these ideas for me has changed over time. Anarcho-communism was appealing in my early teens, then was Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. While Jeremy was never g

‘We’re living in a two-tier culture in this country where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities.’ These were the words of Nigel Farage in an ‘emergency address’ following George Nowak’s tragic killing in Southampton. It is rather rare to hear the Reform UK leader speak directly about race. He would feel much more comfortable ranting about illegal migration or asylum seekers. Farage appears especially keen to weaponise this mome

Reform UK’s burgeoning popularity has never stemmed from policy alone. A central pillar of its appeal has long rested in the promise of purification; an anti-establishment, anti-corruption party supposedly untainted by the deceitful Westminster habits that have set Labour and the Conservatives hurtling towards electoral devastation come 2029. If polls are to be believed, this gambit will reap lucrative electoral dividends for Nigel Farage’s latest insurgency project. But the

Reform UK has been bolstered over the past few years by a media sullied by millionaires selling easy answers to the less politically focused populace. This malaise has been growing in the background for many years, however, with reports of Elon Musk considering funding Reform UK, it could be a saga reaching its climax. My gripe is not just with Reform over this campaign, but also with the left-wing parties of Your Party (Jeremy Corbyn’s new home), and The Green Party. Through

As the May Local Elections approach, things look bleak for the political centre. Polling suggests Labour could lose close to 2,000 local councillors, while the Conservatives are predicted to lose around 1,000. The big winners will likely be Reform, who could gain over 2,000 councillors - with the Greens also expected to perform well, potentially gaining close to 500. There is, of course, good reason to be fed up with Keir Starmer and his government, particularly in the light

Politics have become quite boring today. This is not to say that the news is uneventful – five minutes of doomscrolling will quickly put paid to that idea. And the humanitarian cost of it all is mounting rapidly in a crescendo that should alarm us all. But for the most part the politics in the West today continues to conform to a number of routines and rituals that contain little new within them; they are ripples from stones already dropped into the pond. We can see this in

The epithet “they are all as bad as each other” has increasingly become a mantra up and down the country, much to the dismay of canvassers and candidates alike. Green, Tory, Labour, and Reform voters may individually have starkly disparate grievances, but most seem to feel that politics and politicians don’t seem to work for them. If one word were to sum up the national mood, it would undoubtedly be apathy. It is apathy that has led both major political parties to reach their

Earlier this month, Robert Jenrick was abruptly sacked by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch after screenshots of the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice’s resignation speech were sent to senior figures in Badenoch’s office. Memories of the infighting that characterised the latter years of the previous Conservative government were immediately evoked, a period in which Tory MPs routinely plotted against their leaders, forgetting their duties to the public to instead resemble

Over the weekend, Keir Starmer had to once again confront a problem in the shape of Andy Burnham . The issue was not really a new one for Starmer. In fact, by this point, talk of Andy Burnham angling for a seat in Parliament to challenge the Prime Minister has become a kind of political groundhog day. What was new this time was the fact that the problem before Starmer was no longer a hypothetical one, and Andy Burnham was - after months of speculation - attempting to make a

Ahead of the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary elections, Frederick Graham examines eighteen years of Scottish Nationalist rule and the state of Scottish politics. In Westminster and Europe, recent election cycles have revealed an increasingly consistent pattern: governing parties have become exposed to sharp electoral punishment. This trend has cut across ideologies. After four years the centre-left “traffic-light” German coalition was decisively punished at the ballot box. Acros