🔗 Share this article

This time a year ago, I had just moved home to Britain from the US and was enjoying the almost widespread envious looks of US-based friends. Whereas they were looking down the barrel of a another Trump presidency with its guarantee of chaos and polarization, we had chosen Keir Starmer by a landslide and were feeling quite content with ourselves. I remember people complimenting me on the foresight of my move, which I certainly took even though political considerations had not been part of my reasoning.

Growth of Reform UK

Maybe the answer to that is Nigel Farage and his movement, which has somehow managed to channel the anger, disillusionment and embarrassment felt by many of people who voted for and were then disappointed by Brexit, and are now in search of a new fire to light. To this extent, the roots of the nationalist march last weekend and the ascent of Reform overall seem broadly of a similar nature with their US precursors.

It is a situation, at least in part, of people clutching at whatever that vows to dismantle a system that has consistently failed to benefit them.

What has felt alarming to a lot of us this year, though, is how quickly the political landscape seems to have transformed in this country, and how a leader as superficial as Farage could convince anyone to follow him anywhere, let alone in the path of No 10.

Frivolous Leadership and Political Ridicule

And by frivolous, I don’t mean in the populist demagogue style. You can oppose those men while admitting their ability as public speakers. Farage, by contrast, is a buffoon, a grinning clown openly taunted to his face by opposition members in Congress earlier this month when he appeared, at the request of Republicans, to give testimony before a House judiciary committee on free speech.

Farage didn’t orchestrate the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally on Saturday, of course; that was Tommy Robinson, the former BNP member with criminal records for assault, drug possession and fraud – facts that, British broadcasters were at pains to point out on Monday morning, shouldn’t label all those who attended at his march with the same brush.

Similarities and Divergences with the American Right-Wing Scene

US observers will identify this as a turning point: a parallel moment to that phase of Trump’s rise in support during which his backers were given endless favorable profiles in the US media, and asked to explain why supporting a man who said monstrous things did not make them in the slightest bit self-serving or monstrous.

Meanwhile, the whiplash speed of Reform and Robinson’s rise means that the nation Trump is visiting this week is seemingly very different to the one he engaged with in January. There may be a point when the US president pauses to appreciate his own work, and he will certainly be satisfied to see British far-right activists making progress.

But he is also a man who rejects and is eager to disassociate from “losers” – a group into which, arguably, his pal the prime minister presently falls, and who we can assume he will discard as quickly as he championed him.

Future Outlook: Momentum and Cultural Divergences

For the rest of us, it is a matter of waiting to see how much influence our own incarnation of the Maga movement will have. There are significant contrasts between the two nations that leave some large constituencies who came out in the US for Trump without direct British counterparts.

• British white nationalism references to the religious institutions as an factor, but conservative religious movements has no traction in a country where, historically, foxhunting is a bigger wedge issue than abortion.
• I can’t see JD Vance’s pro-birth stances, rooted in his fanatical Catholicism, being much of a viable option here, either.

In fact – and this may be pure jingoism on my part – Vance strikes me as the type of American who even Britons on the far right might regard instinctively as a odd little piece. On the other hand, if sufficient people are willing to pledge allegiance to a agitator or an ambitious pub bore, these are differences that may hardly matter.