The upstart hard-right party on the march in Britain

The story of Reform UK, led by MAGA ally Nigel Farage, “is not a million miles from the Trump phenomenon,” a pollster says. On Thursday it has a chance at an electoral earthquake.

Reform UK Launches 'Veterans for Reform' During A Press Conference In London

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage introduces former Conservative Home Secretary Suella Braverman to the crowd in London on Jan. 26.Leon Neal / Getty Images

Feb. 24, 2026, 12:00 AM EST

By Alexander Smith

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FAREHAM, England — This market town on England’s south coast is not usually associated with political upheaval, having voted for the traditional establishment Conservative Party at every election since 1885.

But the dramatic defection of Suella Braverman, one of the country’s most controversial politicians, made this town a vanguard of the MAGA-aligned Reform UK Party, which polls suggest is a contender to form the next British government.

“I feel like I’ve come home,” a smiling Braverman said before a cheering crowd last month when she announced she was leaving the Conservatives and joining the hard-right, anti-immigration party led by Nigel Farage, an ally of President Donald Trump, who has vowed the mass deportation of 600,000 migrants if he is elected.

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Braverman, 45, is the latest high-profile defector from the 200-year-old Conservative Party. Her move caps a remarkable two years for the insurgent right-wing party, rebranded from Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, which has led every opinion poll for the past 10 months and is widely seen as a serious contender to form the next government.

Since winning just five parliamentary seats in 2024, support for the party has exploded, riding a wave of anger over rising prices, squeezed government services and mistrust of traditional political parties and institutions. Reform’s pitch to voters is that, for many of these ills, mass immigration is to blame.

Republican Nominee Donald Trump Campaigns For President Across Pennsylvania — Reform leader Nigel Farage at a Trump rally in Reading, Pa., in 2024.Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file

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.

Suella Braverman visit to Rwanda — Suella Braverman during a visit to Rwanda in 2023 to view houses being constructed that could eventually house deported migrants from the UK.Stefan Rousseau / PA via Getty Images

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.

Anti-migrant Hotel Protest And Counter-Protests Take Place Across The UK — An anti-migrant protest outside an asylum hotel in Norwich, east England, in August 2025.Martin Pope / Getty Images file

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.

Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage Holds Rally In Falkirk — Anti-hate demonstrators as Nigel Farage attends a rally in Falkirk, Scotland in December 2025.Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

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.

Evening Standard newspaper headline poster reports that Conservative MP and Home Secretary Suella Braverman was sacked from her post, while former PM David Cameron is to return as Foreign Secretary — Newspapers report Braverman's dismissal from UK government in 2023.Mike Kemp / In Pictures via Getty Images

“The Conservative Party is facing an existential crisis,” Curtice said. “Farage’s aim is to replace them.”

This fear was palpable in Fareham.

“We had repeated assurances from her that she wouldn’t defect, so it’s a big surprise and a big disappointment,” said Harry Kewish, the local Conservative treasurer who answered the door at her former office. “She is convinced that she has made the right decision and will probably try to recruit some of us,” he said. “There are a lot of angry people.”

The question now is how high Reform’s ceiling is.

Having peaked at 35% in October, the party’s polling has settled back to 28%, according to several polls this month, still higher than any other party but not enough to rule without entering into a coalition.

Most of its new support since 2024 has been drawn from ex-Conservatives.

Another obstacle may be Farage’s longtime friendship and allyship with Trump. The president caused outrage in Britain — and particularly in military towns like Fareham, home to the HMS Collingwood naval training base — when he suggested British troops had not been near the front lines in Afghanistan. Farage said the comments were “wrong” but some voters are still wary.

“Some of their policies are a bit radical for my liking: the immigration stuff,” said Kevin Murphy, 70, a retired electrical engineer from nearby Porchester.

“I’m just afraid that with all these far-right policies that we’re going to end up like Donald Trump,” said Murphy, who cites the immigration enforcement raids in Minnesota as his chief concern. “If you look at what he’s doing in America … my god.”