We like to think we are different, us Brits. The idea of British exceptionalism is deeply embedded in our national psyche.
We convince ourselves that our values, our way of life, our institutions, are somehow unique – that things that affect other countries, even those very like ours, could never happen here.
And so we watch as hard-right politicians rise to power all around us – across the Atlantic, the North Sea, and the English Channel. We look on, too many of us, with an utterly misplaced confidence that the same could never happen here.
The truth is it could and, if we carry on as we are, it will. In fact, it gets more likely with each passing month. A new report by Sara Khan, the Government’s former counter-extremism tsar, confirmed what many of us already know: that our country is deeply divided. More divided, in fact, than anywhere else except the United States.
The report is a sobering read. Khan writes: “Growing disillusionment with democracy and severe distrust of our institutions, as well as growing anger and resentment about social economic and political challenges, represent a ‘boiling pot’ of issues we must now face up to.”
Face up to them we must, or it will soon be too late. The “boiling pot” Khan describes is the exact mix of anger, alienation and fear that has proved so fertile for extreme views over the centuries. It is the same set of circumstances that, in many Western countries in recent years, has allowed the likes of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, Viktor Orban and Geert Wilders to prosper.
Britain may well be next. Khan’s report outlines the toxic combination of factors that make conditions for a political revolution in the UK increasingly favourable. A struggling economy, widespread deprivation, a state that is seen to be failing, community breakdown, social fragmentation, a sense of national decline – all of it spells opportunity for those promising to tear up the status quo and do things differently.
In other words, the stars are aligning for a Reform UK surge. And Nigel Farage knows it. Last week he predicted that Reform would form the next government – a claim that would have been derided only a few months ago. Nobody is laughing now.
Reform has formed itself into a functioning, if at times farcical, political organisation. Farage now has a platform from which to launch a major assault on the British political establishment. And the conditions for a political insurgency grow ever more ripe.
This has been a long time coming. As Khan writes: “A resilient democracy requires the public to have sufficient trust and confidence in institutions and elected leaders to be able to reject divisive… narratives, conspiracies and disinformation.”
The trust and confidence of which she writes have been decimated by recent Conservative governments. Their incompetence and malfeasance saw public services destroyed, communities shattered and living standards eroded, while scandal after scandal confirmed the public’s worst perception of politicians.
Sir Keir Starmer promised to change that, but too has made a poor start. The frequent flip-flops and the sense that the Government has misled people over the need for tax hikes only deepens distrust in politics.
It is little surprise, then, that trust in mainstream politicians has evaporated. 45 per cent of people in the UK now believe that, whoever is in power, they would “almost never” trust the government to put the national interest ahead of its own political interests. That figure has almost doubled since 2020, when only 23 per cent said the same. As the audience boos and jeers the main acts ever more loudly, Farage stands in the wings, waiting for his moment.
A Reform surge is coming – that much seems clear. The only unknown is how strong it will be. This largely depends on Starmer.
The Prime Minister often talks about delivering change being the best way to rebuild trust. He is right, but this cannot just be about fixing what is most obviously broken. Filling in potholes, or making it easy to get a GP appointment, is only a small part of the solution.
To truly win back the terrain that Reform has seized, Starmer must also show he understands people’s concerns about less tangible things – the pace of change, the loss of community, the emptiness and isolation at the heart of much of modern life, the sense of national decline.
People do not vote for Reform because they necessarily think that Farage has all the answers – they just believe that he understands what they are feeling in a way that others do not. Starmer needs to show that he does too. He needs to demonstrate that is listening, engaging, and recognising people’s worries about the modern world in a way that too many recent leaders have failed to. If voters finally feel heard by mainstream politicians, fringe parties will struggle to break through.
Millions of people in Britain feel that, over the past decade or two, their lives have got worse. There is a widespread feeling that not only did the political establishment fail to stop this, but that it didn’t care. People trying to voice concerns that their communities were being gutted, or their jobs were becoming less secure and less meaningful, or their children’s prospects were being eroded, weren’t given the attention they should have been.
The political and media classes struggled to understand it and so decided it was easier to dismiss or ignore them than try to understand and engage. And so we end up here. We are on the cusp of a Reform breakthrough, and no amount of misplaced confidence in our own exceptionalism will protect us from the political winds sweeping across the Western world.
Ben Kentish presents his LBC show from Monday to Friday at 10pm, and is former Westminster editor
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