Bored in Oxford, three weeks after the end of term and with everyone else having gone home, I decided to take an impulsive day trip to see the Reform UK rally in Birmingham on the last Sunday before election day. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, as a committed Liberal Democrat and a son of immigrants, I was most certainly apprehensive. I was viewing it essentially as a learning experience, a chance to discover what had driven these people towards Nigel Farage’s newest political entity.
After an extremely pleasant National Express bus trip and getting slightly lost in the NEC- I found myself in a huge hall, which I later learnt houses around 5000 people. There was an unmistakeable buzz in the room. I got the feeling that the people there felt like they were witnessing something really important. I doubt many of them had been to a political event before, and they’d been uniquely drawn in by Reform. I saw lots of England football shirts, and even a couple of Make America Great Again hats. It was a notably old audience, it seemed like the vast majority were 50+ with an assortment of young men too. I saw very few young women, and very few people from ethnic minorities.
The event was extremely well run, with food and drink stalls, and they even managed to drive their election bus in somehow. The speaker line up consisted of Chief Exec Paul Oakden, Ann Widdecombe, major donor Zia Yusuf (I recommend that you watch this speech in particular), Richard Tice and of course Nigel Farage. When my friends realised where I was off to, I was surprised at the number of messages I got saying ‘stay safe.’ I had never considered that I might be at risk at this event, but apparently a number of my friends (all students) thought that I would be utterly unwelcome. I didn’t find that to be the case at all. Everyone was exceedingly polite, and while I didn’t make any effort to engage in any political conversation, I’m sure they would have been more than willing.
The speeches centred on a few central political themes- the Tories have failed, the state is too big, we should be patriotic, immigration is too high, there are only two genders. ‘Put British people first’ was uttered repeatedly. Each speaker got a rapturous reception from the audience.
I think they were translating anger into messaging in a way that other parties failed to do in this election. These are people who haven’t seen palpable economic growth in years, seen the culture of their cities changing, and their public services creaking. Reform have managed to direct that anger, to give them a sense that the ‘British’ people had been ignored, and that they present the answer.
I share very little politically with Reform UK. The way that they’ve continuously demonised immigrants has been a significant contributor to the horrible nature of our public discourse on the issue. Their attempts to erase trans people are deeply damaging. Some of their candidates demonstrated the very worst of what British politics has to offer. Their rhetoric is dangerous, and we need to ensure that we challenge it at every turn. I’m sure many of our nation’s bigots and racists showed up to vote for them on the 4th July; but I also think that many of their voters are just normal people, completely disillusioned with our politics.
I don’t share their beliefs, but I do share their anger. While mine gets directed into delivering leaflets with yellow bar charts on them and advocating a progressive cause; theirs has been directed to slogans like ‘Make Britain Great Again.’
Our country is broken, people’s wills are broken. I’m sure the majority in that room were not bad people. We need to be careful not to demonise everyone we disagree with – we need to try and understand them. The answers Nigel Farage peddles to very real problems seem simple (but usually misguided), and it’s our responsibility to challenge their validity with vigour, strength and importantly – compassion.
Nigel Farage entered to speak like a pop star; with dramatic music and pyrotechnics. The energy in that room was electric. I get it, I really do. Politics has failed these people (it’s failed us all really) and I suspect it will continue to fail them. I won’t be surprised if their poll numbers continue to grow, and a vocal Farage in Parliament will only help them. My trip taught me to listen a little more, and to pay a little more attention to the why behind people’s choices. I implore you all to do the same.
The responsibility now turns to us to take on their ideas, take on their politics. To advocate for moderate politics, by demonstrating its success. But we must not make the mistake of demonising their voters.
* Zagham Farhan is the Returning Officer, and a former President, of the Oxford Students Liberal Association.
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12 Comments
It seems we share things with Reform voters -Broken politics ,wrecked services etc. We too should be directing that anger, confusion into clarity of purpose, into making a positive country, rebuilding its structure .If they are 50 plus, are they more concerned about the future for their children? If so, it is a ‘we have more in common than that that divides us’. The party has to assuage that fear ,anger and steer it away from the right. One thing that does unit both parties is election reform. Maybe we can start with this.
Whether we have much in common with Reform is very much open to debate. There’s also the question of what really motivates Reform supporters. On electoral reform, is their view led by the fact that they have only 5 seats on more votes than we have? We need to maintain our support for STV and mention it on a regular basis. I’ve seen quite a few comments saying that now that we’ve learnt how to get a good number of seats under FPTP we will probably lose interest in PR. We must remember that the Tories and Reform might not fight each other next time. We need to concentrate on the good government that PR can bring – and we also need to support PR for local government, even if that means that we won’t have the big majorities in some councils such as Eastleigh and Richmond.
There has been some research into the prime concerns of Reform voters: above all, worries about a broken and corrupt state linked to poor public services; immigration too high and impacting on everyone’s quality of life
The Reform leadership however is much more laissez-faire and free market. Whereas Reform voters are in favour of more public spending.
There are definitely points in common with the concerns of LD voters.
We don’t need to change our policies to appeal to Reform voters; our stance on care and the NHS would probably attract most Reform voters.
Also our common sense stance on immigration might well appeal to Reform voters disillusioned with repeated impossible promises from the Tories and Brexiteers.
I suspect you are being far, far too kind to the people who attended the Reform meeting. I doubt any of them were under any illusion about what sort of politics it was espousing prior to joining it and, even if they were, there’s no way they could have believed in their naïve illusion if they had turned up at a meeting or two.
An excellent review. Well done. It wasn’t clear from the review whether the room was full (ie 5,000 people) or less crowded? It reminds me that when UKIP first surfaced I asked a friend of mine to go to a UKIP rally in Peterborough, as a spy, to report back. I didn’t go because, as a LD party member with a slightly more public profile (Party Registered Treasurer) I was worried that I might have been recognised. My friend returned from the rally making the comment that “this man (Farage) talks a lot of sense” and became a UKIP supporter from that point on! Perhaps not the best result! To my mind Farage is very much a ‘political ChatGPT’. He makes statements that sound incredibly plausible but actually consist of fragments of rhetoric, based on dodgy facts, selected from various right wing sources, and stitched together for maximum inflammatory effect. In the computer industry we call the large language models that drive ChatGPT, and similar systems, ‘stochastic (random) parrots’. Given the fact that Reform UK appear to be a one policy party (‘immigration, immigration, immigration’) I would suggest that designation fits their rhetoric too. It seems to me that Labour are highly incentivised to deal with illegal immigration and once they do, wherefore Reform? Only time will tell.
I think that’s where the various Farage offerings succeed – they are good at selling their message as ‘common sense’ and logical and simply being rational. They are good at sleight of hand to emphasise particular facts, whilst neglecting to mention anything that might introduce a bit of nuance. Once you get people locked into a way of thinking then confirmation bias, and the normal human condition of not wanting to admit you got something wrong goes a long way to protecting them from challenges.
Not that they are the only ones who are guilty of that approach, but they make it work for them.
They have the added benefit of not having any history or record to be scrutinised, and it’s inevitable that a fair chunk of their votes come from people with unrealistic expectations who are angry at the government and more established parties for not achieving the impossible, including, but not limited to making Brexit work.
I’m sure many of those attending do not consider themselves racist, and they see attempts to label them as such as evidence we are the ones who are out of touch. We might think it, but it’s an ineffective (and IMO lazy) argument.
Reform managed to get nearly 5,000 people to a rally just before the general election. I wonder how many other political parties could do that?
To be fair from our point of view we were much better off knocking on doors and delivering leaflets on the final weekend before the election.
Today Reform have 5 MPs and 5 years to get ready for the next general election. If they can knock up 10% of the vote in a set where they did nothing, just think how much difference it will make if they get their act together next time.
The irony of what Nigel Farage has done is that he has made British politics more European. We too have a major populist political party and this time round their main impact was to almost destroy the Tory party – the most successful political party at winning elections in the world.
I think the article is a very welcome one. We need to take Reform seriously. If they succeed, we fail. The big divide today in British politics is less about class and more about whether you are a graduate or not. This divide is made worse by “liberal elitist” attitudes from progressive graduates that you often find on Twitter that claims that Reform supporter are racist, stupid and “gammons”. You would think that if graduates really are so intelligent they would have more self-awareness? The reality is that we live in different headspaces and do not make the effort to understand how people think.
The less publicity Farage and his bunch of Fascists gets the better. They use the standard extremist right wing tactic of inventing a grievance and then identifying a minority group of people to blame. With the Nazis it was Jews and homosexuals with this lot it’s all immigrants. Perhaps we should be pointing out that Britain’s aging population needs immigration to maintain essential services.
The big loser in the recent election is our democracy. The national turnout was just 60%. A better way to look at it is 40% of the people entitled to vote could not be bothered to exercise the basic civil right which earlier generations of British citizens died to give us. Turnouts in the upper 70%s were common a few years ago and members of all governments should be thoroughly ashamed to have reduced the peoples’ trust, faith and support for our political system to such low levels. Keir Starmer claims one of his aims is to restore that faith and trust yet he has just appointed two ministers, Douglas Alexander and Jacqui Smith, both of whom who were involved in the MPs expenses scandal just a few years ago. That’s not a very impressive start and we must hope his performance substantially improves.
Excellent article. For many who feel ignored it is possible to offer positive messages that will counter the populist nonsense from Farage et al. I used to reckon that if I got a UKIP voter on the doorstep I could bring them round to vote LibDem by telling them all the good things we were doing locally to improve things for people, even if this was before we had control of the council. But it has to be backed up with real action, or we will be lumped in with the ‘all the same’ bracket too. And it is not so easy now that Reform have momentum and ‘acceptability’. I think the lesson nationally is we have to engage, rather than dismiss as ‘nutters and bigots’ – most of those voting for them are neither.
This is a really good, and thoughtful article – thank-you.
May I give a portrait of the Reform fastness of Ashfield where I am, and my MP “The Leeanderthal Man”, which fits his ‘back to basics’ self-perception and style?
Mr Anderson is the Curate’s Egg with a fairly substantial personal vote, and is often misrepresented in the demonisation which does not help critics get their message across.
Anderson was an attentive Labour Councillor, by all accounts, and in my view is chasing the old UKIP vote which was fairly large here, with nods to the further right, the Conservative Right and Old Labour. He understands poverty and social issues more than will be acknowledged by ‘North London’ opponents, having been a single dad, a Citizens Advice staff member, and office manager for the previous MP.
Demographics have significantly changed , but perhaps not far enough yet to impact.
Here, afaics everyone follows Lib Dem techniques in their local activism, especially the Ashfield Independents, who *were* Lib Dems up until shortly after 2015 and dominate (~42 seats out of ~45) District and County politics. IMO they may have peaked due to the criminal record of the Deputy Leader, and the Leader being up before the Courts on umpteen criminal charges in 2025.
Interesting times. My side-project is to make Reform as the “Hi-de-Hi” party, since they have Clacton, Skegness, Boston and Great Yarmouth, and a vague “back to the 50s” feel.
Good article, I share some of your concerns, populism doesnt have the answer, however neither does the far left. The sexual revolution has affected the West deeply, native populations by themselves do not have the population base to sustain economic growth. The natives need bigger families to not rely on immigration. Immigration provides short term answers whilst creating even longer term problems, not least social cohesion. There is something fundamentally wrong with the West when it keeps using immigration to deal with its problems.
Vernon Bogdanor has an interesting analysis of the rise of the Reform party in contrast with the SDP of the 1980s https://inews.co.uk/opinion/reform-no-fimmick-here-to-stay-election-3155168. He concludes ” [Reform] is likely to prove a continuing presence in Britain. It articulates a mood of alienation and disillusionment, masked by an electoral system which misleadingly suggests a wave of enthusiasm for Labour. But there are too many voters who feel that the political system is not working for them.”
Immigration was a ley issue in the Brtexit referendum and has been a key issue in the rise of reform. Millionaire donor Zia Yusuf is chairman of the outfit. A Scottish born son of immigrants from Sri Lanka.
The Brexit referendum revealed significant resistance to further immigration to the UK among Asian communities in particular. Similarly, British trade unions have been historically cautious around mass immigration seeing it as potentially undermining the collective bargainng position of union members.
These disparate strands of electoral support or policy make Reform a serious political force during times of disillusionment with traditionally dominant poloitical parties.