The populist, hard-right Reform UK party has topped a voting intention poll for the first time, sending shockwaves throughout the British political establishment.
According to a YouGov poll conducted on February 3rd, 25% of voters would support the Conservatives, 24% would support the current ruling Labour Party, and 25% would support an election in the United Kingdom.
According to the poll, 9 percent of voters would support the Green Party and 19% would support the Liberal Democrats.
Founded in 2021 as a relaunch of the Brexit Party, Reform UK has focused on immigration, housing and combating what its party manifesto termed “woke ideology”, according to its party manifesto.
In the July 2024 general election, Reform UK, which is led by Nigel Farage, secured 4.1 million votes – a result widely seen as a triumph given the party’s young age.
Hope Not Hate, a British anti-far-right organization, recently released a poll polling 17, 000 people, showing Reform UK could occupy up to 169 of the 650 seats in Parliament and emerging as “a major political force in Britain.”
“Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is attempting to present itself as a new alternative by tapping into disillusionment to advance their own extreme agenda. If they succeed, they will drag British politics further towards division, hostility and distrust”, the group wrote on X on Monday.
Meanwhile, according to the Guardian, some Labour MPs have established a pressure group to strengthen their base in areas where Reform UK placed second overall.
One unnamed MP told the news outlet, “We need to do more, especially with illegal immigration,” one of our main messages to the leadership.
Al Jazeera spoke to Professor Aurelien Mondon, a senior lecturer in politics, languages, and international studies at the University of Bath, about the significance of these polls and what the far-right party’s growing popularity says about the country.
Al Jazeera: Reform UK topped a You Gov poll for the first time. How did this surprise you?
Mondon: Unfortunately, I am not surprised as this follows a long trend and nothing has been done to stop it.
In fact, I think the Labour government gave its supporters priority as the party put its pet issues [such as immigration] at the center of its efforts to advance reform.
Because of this, their ideas have been mainstreamed, and some people feel like they should support Reform because even the government’s purportedly left-wing counterparts are in agreement with them.
Al Jazeera: What do these surveys suggest about people’s feelings towards Reform?
Mondon: It reveals more about how people feel about reform than about Labour. It is crucial to avoid reading this poll as suggesting that Reform is on track to win the upcoming election.
We should be concerned that Labour has continued on the verge of austerity and the mainstreaming of far-right ideas, and has shown itself incapable of dealing with the numerous crises that face the UK.
You don’t need reform to set the agenda, mainstream its discourse, and implement far-right politics, as we have seen in numerous cases.
Al Jazeera: In the summer of last year, far-right riots targeted several Muslim and ethnic minority communities across the country. What best describes the political response to those tensions?
Mondon: The extreme minority has grown more up as a result of the mainstream actors’ inability to properly respond to these riots, as did the downplaying of counterprotests, which showed that anti-fascist sentiment is much more prevalent than its contemporaries.
The Labour government, which has instead chosen to focus only on the reactionary interests of the minority, has deliberately ignored these groups of the population, either at the extreme end of far-right politics or publicly and decisively opposed to them.
Al Jazeera: Elon Musk, a tech billionaire, has rekindled his hatred for immigrants with his supporters, sparking outrage on the UK’s political divide. What does this reveal about the rise of right-wing populism?
Mondon: This demonstrates a wider institutional failure to stop the spread of what my colleague and I have called the “reactionary tech oligarchy.”
When it was always obvious that their commitment to democracy was at best thin, never should so much power and wealth be distributed to so few people.
Musk is not a unique individual, but a product of the increasingly democratic system’s failures.
Al Jazeera: If Reform becomes more popular, will people become more outspoken about their support of the party, and its agenda?
Mondon: Unfortunately, this has happened in other contexts and is likely to happen here.
The polls show that Reform is rising, and mainstream politicians and media continue to use its rhetoric as if it were based on valid concerns. This will put a lot of pressure on communities at the extreme end of these politics.
Al Jazeera: Could Reform UK one day lead the country?
Source: Aljazeera
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