Reform UK leader Farage dogged by restive right while courting Britain’s middle

LONDON – Fresh from telling US lawmakers that curbs on online speech have plunged the UK into “authoritarianism”, Mr Nigel Farage will be trying to keep his own party’s representatives in check at Reform UK’s biggest gathering yet.

For the past year, Mr Farage has been trying to professionalise his upstart band of one-time Brexit campaigners to show it could be a credible governing party by the time the next general election is due in 2029.

Those efforts will be put to the test on Sept 5, as 12,000 members, newly elected councillors and four MPs descend on Birmingham for Reform’s annual political conference.

It is a key moment for Mr Farage, who is drawing increased attention after months of leading opinion polls over Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

While Mr Farage’s tough stance on immigration has garnered backing in Britain and his campaign against restrictions on social media posts has won him an audience in the US Congress, he is toeing a fine line. He is not only trying to satisfy right-wing political demands, he needs to court more moderate voters.

“Nigel Farage has faced a balancing act throughout his political career to preserve the credentials of a mainstream populism that is distinct from far-right extremism,” said Mr Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think-tank.

He thinks the “radicalised online right and the voters that the party needs are engaged in a tug-of-war pulling Reform in opposing directions”.

“The stakes are higher than ever before,” Mr Katwala said. “Farage now seeks to be seen as a credible candidate for prime minister, not just the outsider.”

For a rapidly growing organisation – Reform was founded as the Brexit Party in 2018, and now has more than 239,000 members – that is a difficult task. Reform has already had to expel one councillor appointed in May’s local elections, after racist social media posts he had published surfaced. That is despite an expanded vetting procedure aimed at weeding out candidates with extremist views.

Comments left under Reform’s live-streamed press briefings suggest the ejected councillor is not alone among the party’s followers. While many warn far-right social media users against “bringing our party down”, others direct racist comments at Mr Zia Yusuf, an ex-Reform chairman who now leads its local government efficiency drive. 

Several frequently tell the Scotland-born son of Sri Lankan migrants to “get out” of the country, while others ask: “Why is an immigrant speaking?”

Such abuse – and a suggestion from Reform MP Sarah Pochin that the party should push to ban the burqa – prompted Mr Yusuf to quit the party earlier in 2025, before being drawn back by Mr Farage mere hours later. 

These are the types of sentiments that Mr Farage will be keen to play down during the party’s two-day jamboree in Britain’s second-largest city. But the tension between differing visions for the party is evident in the programme, with cardiologist and “Make America Healthy Again” proponent Aseem Malhotra speaking alongside Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Conservative and former Brexit minister under former prime minister Boris Johnson.

Close Johnson ally Nadine Dorries announced her defection to Reform on Sept 4, in the latest effort to show the party’s broadening appeal. All of Britain’s “big five” business lobby groups – the Confederation of British Industry, Federation of Small Businesses, British Chambers of Commerce, Institute of Directors and Make UK – will attend the Reform conference, Bloomberg reported in August.

Mr Farage’s visit to US President Donald Trump earlier this week was another effort to firm up support across a dynamic and fractious right. Culminating in a picture in the Oval Office, the trip will be welcomed by many on the right who identify with the disruptive President. 

Some 56 per cent of Reform voters hold favourable views of Mr Trump compared with 16 per cent of the country as a whole, according to polling by YouGov. And the show of statesmanship could give Mr Farage an air of legitimacy that has so far evaded his rivals further to the right. 

Chief among those rivals is anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, who has been repeatedly backed on social media platform X by billionaire Elon Musk in recent months. A flag-waving campaign, backed by groups linked to Mr Robinson, has spread across a country normally reserved about its patriotism in recent weeks, prompting Mr Farage and Mr Starmer alike to affirm their own support for the display of national symbols. 

Mr Musk and Mr Robinson have thrown their support behind the Advance Party, a more hardline alternative led by former Reform member Ben Habib.

Mr Robinson is urging supporters to attend a major rally in London on Sept 13, being billed as a demonstration for free speech.

That sort of challenge from the right helps explain Mr Farage’s trip to the US earlier this week to campaign against Britain’s Online Safety Act and pay a visit to Mr Trump. The rift between Mr Trump and Mr Musk has created space for Mr Farage to firm up his bond with the US leader and burnish his credentials with the online right. Mr Farage also met US Vice-President J.D. Vance while Mr Vance was holidaying in Britain this summer. 

The Trump-Farage relationship is a worry for Labour, which is also trying to stay on the right side of the US President and is being buffeted in its own policymaking by Mr Farage’s popularity.

Anger around the number of asylum seekers going to Britain, a topic Mr Farage has repeatedly brought up over the summer, prompted Home Secretary Yvette Cooper this week to announce a temporary ban on refugees bringing their family members into the country.

“There is a heightened sense of urgency for politicians across the Labour Party,” said Mr Praful Nargund, director of the Good Growth Foundation think-tank, who thinks MPs now realise the need to take on Reform head to head.

For instance, the group has called on government to reopen an international train station in the southern English town of Ashford.

“MPs, many of them facing Reform on their doorstep, know it is delivery that counts now,” Mr Nargund said. BLOOMBERG