BRITAIN

Party: Reform UK

Leader: Nigel Farage, Reform UK founder and its leader since June 2024; Richard Tice is deputy leader since July 2024. Farage is a former leader of UKIP and the Brexit Party.

Type Leader: Founder Nigel Farage is a familiar far-right figure in Britain known for his racist and anti-immigrant statements, particularly against Muslims and Islam. In 2014, Farage suggested people with HIV be banned from moving to Britain. His views have led to attacks against Farage including “milkshaking” – throwing a milkshake at someone (or hot coffee) by protesters who accuse him of being a far-right racist, fascist, and homophobe. Farage supported Brexit, but now claims it failed to improve Britain’s economy. He is a big fan of Donald Trump’s, and even considered campaigning for Trump in the US.

Platform: Reform UK is a successor to the Brexit Party, and is structured as a limited company, where founder and leader Farage owns a controlling majority of shares, and Reform’s paying supporters have no voting powers. Reform UK is a right-wing, nationalist, populist party with a Euroskeptic, avidly anti-immigrant platform. It supports low taxation but opposes the government’s net-zero energy policy, and would fast-track nuclear energy. On June 27, a secret Channel 4 recording revealed Reform members using offensive racial, Islamophobic and homophobic language.[i] Other would-be Reform candidates include Hitler apologists, and conspiracy theorists to the point where Farage admitted his party’s difficulty fielding suitable candidates, and 16 were dropped for inappropriate or offensive comments[ii]. Reform takes a dim view of NATO and the EU, and a more positive view of Putin. Farage has blamed the West, NATO, and the EU for “provoking” Russia to attack Ukraine. Farage is a big fan of Donald Trump’s, and considered campaigning for him in the US.

European Parliament: Britain left the EU system in 2020. Reform UK has five MPs in the UK House of Commons, one in the London Assembly, and is allied with the Reform UK-TUV alliance in Northern Ireland.