The upstart hard-right party on the march in Britain

A more immediate victory could come Thursday, when it will battle the Labour and Green parties in a special election in Gorton and Denton, a suburb of the northern city of Manchester. Though this is a traditional Labour stronghold, the pollster and consultancy Electoral Calculus gives Reform a 59% chance of winning.

‘Values and traditions’

Braverman has never hidden her hard-line views, especially on the subject of migration and identity. As former home secretary, she was an enthusiastic advocate of sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda, a plan that some (at the time) fellow Conservatives labeled as “brutal.”

She was born in London to immigrant parents of Indian origin. And though she describes herself as a “British Asian,” she wrote in an article for Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper last year that she “will never be truly English,” an identity she said was “rooted in ancestry, heritage, and, yes, ethnicity — not just residence or fluency.”

For decades, this exclusive view of British national identity appeared to be waning — at least in some parts of the country. More than 16% of the country’s population is foreign born — a proportion that jumps to around 40% in cities like the capital, London.

But Reform’s popularity has spiked, harnessing anger over the ongoing cost-of-living crisis and dilapidated public services, and increasingly persuading Britons that immigration is to blame.

Chris Parry, a former NATO commander and rear admiral in the British Royal Navy, is standing as a Reform mayoral candidate in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight — Braverman’s political backyard. He sees the country divided between people who prioritize British “values and traditions” and those who favor “multiple other authorities, religions,” and “international institutions that have manifestly failed to do what is needed,” he said.

“It’s not ethnonationalism. It’s basically an identity which says, ‘Look, my primary allegiance is to Britain and nothing else.’”

“Brits don’t like revolutions — we’re not extremists,” the former helicopter officer said.

Instead he wants a “quiet revolution” to “break a system that really isn’t working.”

‘Very strong’ nationalists

The story of Reform’s rise “is not a million miles from the Trump phenomenon,” according to John Curtice, politics professor at the University of Strathclyde and Britain’s best-known pollster.

Farage has called immigration a “scourge,” promising the “emergency” mass deportation of 650,000 people, while “restoring order” to “lawless” Britain. He has pledged his own “DOGE unit” would mete out drastic government personnel cuts while scrapping its carbon emissions targets.

Supporters tend to be “very strong” nationalists who are concerned about both regular and irregular immigration; they are skeptical of diversity, green energy and the idea Britain should apologize for its colonial past, Curtice said.

Many are drawn by Farage himself, “clearly the most talented political communicator among the U.K.’s party leaders,” according to Tim Bale, politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, with the caveat that one challenger may be Zack Polanski, leader of the fast-rising Green Party.

Both Reform and Greens are harnessing deep frustration with the Labour Party, in power since 2024, and the Conservatives, which ruled for the previous 14 years.

Real wages have stalled since the 2008 financial crisis, which inspired more than a decade of austerity cuts that saw government departments slashed between 20% and 25% and gutted public services.

“They’re all as bad as each other,” Fareham native Kye Coates said of the country’s traditional parties. It’s a common refrain in a country where “don’t know” often outpolls Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Conservative opponent Kemi Badenoch.

“I do think we need to sort out immigration,” said Coates, 40, who is unemployed and replies “diddly squad — but I’m working on it” when asked about his longer-term career prospects.

Among Fareham’s landscape of empty lots, vape stores and bookmakers, he was enjoying a cigarette in the low winter sun alongside his friend Donna Wesson, 42, who does some domestic cleaning work in the mornings.

“It might be time to give Reform a go,” he said.

Plenty disagree.

Almost half of Britons think Reform is a racist party, YouGov found in September.

Neither Reform nor Braverman’s office responded to repeated requests for interviews and comment. Previously, the party has denied allegations of racism or being “far-right.”

Palpable fear

What “Reform wants is to send people back who are here illegally and have no desire to have Britain as their primary allegiance,” said Parry, the mayoral candidate.

For this movement, Braverman’s switch presents opportunity and danger: giving Reform a prize scalp, but also ammunition for the claim that this is merely the Conservatives renamed.

Braverman was an uneasy Conservative, saying last month she has felt “politically homeless for the best part of two years.”

She was fired as interior minister in 2023 for saying police favored pro-Palestinian “hate marchers” over English nationalist demonstrators. A year earlier, she described her “dream” and “obsession” of deporting asylum-seekers to Rwanda, earning her the nickname “Cruella” among opponents. In 2025, she turned up at Trump’s second inauguration in Washington wearing a MAGA hat.

Her record of widely criticized comments includes saying in 2019 that her party was battling “cultural Marxism” — a reference to an antisemitic conspiracy theory and words described by the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate as “deeply disturbing.”

Other Conservative switchers include Robert Jenrick, a former housing secretary, and Nadim Zahawi, who in July 2022 served as Boris Johnson’s finance minister for 48 hours before joining an internal coup to oust him.