Over the last decade, we have seen a fundamental shift in the political landscape. This began with the rise of UKIP, driven by the agenda of Nigel Farage, who insisted that membership of the EU was the root cause of the United Kingdom's problems. UKIP's success in the 2014 European Parliament elections marked a genuine anomaly in British politics: for the first time since 1906, a party other than Labour or the Conservatives had won a national vote. That result forced David Cameron to include a referendum on EU membership in his 2015 election manifesto, a decision driven not by principle but by the electoral threat UKIP posed to Conservative voters. The 2016 referendum produced arguably the most significant constitutional change this country has ever seen: the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, delivering the goal UKIP had campaigned for since its founding.

Despite the subsequent collapse of UKIP, the emergence of Reform UK over the past several years represents the same political project under new branding, again driven by Farage himself. This time, however, Reform is not campaigning to leave Europe. They are campaigning to fix the problems that, in many cases, Brexit itself created or failed to solve. The vehicle has changed; the rhetorical strategy has not. Reform continues to deploy what the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci called "common sense", the process by which a particular political framing becomes so naturalised that it appears obvious, inevitable, and beyond question. Blaming immigration for structural economic failures, positioning the political class as a corrupt "elite" betraying ordinary people, and presenting radical right-wing policies as simple pragmatism: this is not new politics. It is the oldest trick in the populist playbook, now turbo-charged by social media and a fragmented media landscape.

Immigration: Did Leaving the EU Really Strengthen Our Borders?

Immigration was one of the central arguments for leaving the EU, but not immigration in a broader sense. Farage and the Leave campaign specifically targeted EU Freedom of Movement: the right of citizens from any EU member state to live and work in the UK without restriction. The implicit promise was that ending this would reduce overall migration numbers and restore British "control" over who entered the country. It was, as the famous campaign slogan put it, about "taking back control."

The reality has been rather different. Before the 2016 referendum, small boat crossings across the English Channel were so rare as to be statistically negligible. By 2022, approximately 45,000 people had crossed the Channel in small boats, a figure that has continued to generate front-page coverage and political crisis.1 More strikingly, total net migration, covering all routes into the country, reached a record high of 745,000 in the calendar year 2022, revised upward to approximately 873,000 by the ONS using updated methodology.2 This figure dwarfs anything recorded during the peak years of EU Freedom of Movement, because the post-Brexit immigration system, with its expansion of skilled worker visas, international student routes, and humanitarian schemes for Ukrainians and Hong Kongers, has attracted record numbers of non-EU migrants. The UK ended free movement with the EU; what it did not end was migration.

This creates a striking political paradox at the heart of the Reform project. Farage campaigned for over a decade to end EU Freedom of Movement. Having achieved this, he now leads a party whose central platform is that immigration, now predominantly non-EU immigration, is out of control and threatening the fabric of British society. The target has shifted; the rhetoric has not. Where UKIP's "common sense" identified EU migrants and bureaucrats as the problem, Reform's "common sense" now identifies small boat crossings and a broken Home Office. The structural argument, that Britain's problems stem from years of austerity, chronic underinvestment in housing and public services, and wage stagnation, receives no such attention. Pointing to a visible, racialised "other" as the source of national decline is, as the sociologist Stuart Hall argued, a defining feature of authoritarian populism: it transforms structural problems into identity conflicts.3

The political consequence of this has been a bidding war on immigration between the mainstream parties. Both Labour and the Conservatives have, at various points, adopted tougher rhetoric and policy on immigration in response to Reform's pressure, a dynamic the political scientist Peter Mair predicted when he described the emergence of "cartel parties" whose primary instinct is to absorb rather than confront challenger movements.4 The Rwanda Plan, introduced under the Conservatives and subsequently scrapped by Labour, represented the most dramatic expression of this: a policy widely condemned by human rights organisations, overturned by the Supreme Court, and ultimately replaced by other restrictive measures. The agenda of the populist right has become the common sense of the mainstream, without ever being seriously interrogated.

Economic Growth and Sovereignty: Another Promise Broken?

Brexit was sold not only on immigration but on two further claims that proved equally difficult to deliver: economic growth through sovereignty, and a financial "dividend" that would fund public services. The most memorable encapsulation of this was the Vote Leave campaign bus, which declared: "We send the EU £350 million a week — let's fund our NHS instead." The figure was immediately disputed. The UK Statistics Authority described its use as "a clear misuse of official statistics," noting that the actual net contribution, after accounting for the UK's rebate and EU spending in Britain, was closer to £250 million per week.5 The Institute for Fiscal Studies called the claim "clearly absurd."6 No weekly surplus has materialised for NHS spending; the OBR and IFS both warned that the broader economic impact of Brexit would outweigh any budgetary savings.7

The economic verdict on Brexit has not been kind. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that leaving the EU has reduced UK trade intensity by around 15% compared to a scenario in which the UK remained a member, and has reduced GDP by approximately 4% compared to what it would otherwise have been.8 By late 2023, UK trade intensity remained 1.7% below its pre-pandemic level, while the rest of the G7 had risen 1.7% above theirs, a divergence the OBR described as consistent with its forecast that Brexit would reduce UK trade intensity by 15% in the long run.9 Business investment lagged consistently behind comparable economies throughout the post-2016 period. Against this backdrop, the government's flagship post-Brexit trade initiative, joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), generated considerable fanfare. The government's own projections put the long-term GDP benefit at +0.06%.10 That figure is not a typo.

The sovereignty argument has proven similarly elusive. The formal gains are real: the European Court of Justice no longer has jurisdiction over UK law, and the UK can now negotiate its own trade agreements. But the practical constraints remain substantial. Any UK business trading with the EU still meets EU regulatory standards, what economists call the "Brussels Effect", because the gravitational pull of a market of 450 million people cannot be escaped by formal constitutional exit. The Trade and Cooperation Agreement contains "level playing field" provisions that manage divergence from EU standards. AUKUS, the security pact with the United States and Australia announced in 2021 and celebrated as a symbol of "Global Britain," commits the UK to decades of procurement decisions and strategic obligations that are themselves a form of sovereignty constraint. The politician Enoch Powell once argued that sovereignty is indivisible; it cannot be pooled or shared. In a globalised world, every international agreement tests that proposition and finds it wanting.11

Reform and the 'Common Sense' Strategy

Against this backdrop of broken promises, Reform UK has constructed a remarkably effective political platform. In the 2024 general election, the party won 14.3% of the national vote, the third-highest share of any party, and over four million votes.12 They came second in 98 constituencies, 89 of them to Labour, with particular strength in the north of England and Wales.13 Nigel Farage, on his eighth attempt, was finally elected to Parliament in Clacton.

Yet 14.3% of the vote produced just five seats, fewer than 1% of the House of Commons.14 This is the most dramatic illustration of Britain's First Past the Post electoral system producing deeply disproportionate outcomes. Labour won 63% of seats on 34% of the vote; Reform won 0.8% of seats on 14.3% of the vote. The Electoral Reform Society described the 2024 election as the most disproportionate in British electoral history.15 This is not merely a technical footnote: it reveals that the Westminster Model's claim to democratic legitimacy rests on an electoral system that systematically misrepresents the preferences of millions of voters, a structural democratic failure that Reform has been quick to weaponise in its own messaging, despite having previously shown little interest in electoral reform.

Reform's rhetorical strategy deserves analysis on its own terms. The party has successfully constructed what the sociologist Stanley Cohen called a "moral panic": a situation in which a condition, episode, or group of persons "emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests."16 Immigration, and specifically small boat crossings, has been framed not merely as a policy problem but as an existential civilisational threat requiring emergency action. This framing serves multiple political functions simultaneously: it provides a simple, visible, emotionally resonant explanation for diffuse anxieties about housing, healthcare and wages; it positions Reform as the only party willing to name the "real" problem; and it defines the political class's reluctance to use more extreme measures as evidence of elite betrayal rather than legal or humanitarian constraint.

What makes this strategy particularly potent is its delivery mechanism. Reform has built a significant digital infrastructure on TikTok, YouTube and X that allows it to bypass traditional media gatekeepers and reach audiences, particularly young men, who have withdrawn from conventional political engagement. This is not new in principle; UKIP used the same approach in a more primitive form, but Reform's digital reach now significantly exceeds its traditional media coverage, creating a parallel information environment in which its claims can circulate largely unchallenged.

The Future: Realignment or Absorption?

The question of what comes next for Reform is genuinely open, and the answer has significant implications for British democracy.

The structural case for continued Reform growth is strong. FPTP severely under-represents the party: a modest geographic concentration of its vote, the kind of shift that drove the SNP's dominance in Scotland or Labour's traditional northern heartlands, could produce a dramatically different seat count at the next election. Polling in 2025 suggested Reform could become the largest party in a hypothetical election, though such projections should be treated with caution given the volatility of multi-party politics under FPTP.17 The party is also consolidating in areas of prior strength. Research by Oliver Heath and Chris Prosser at Royal Holloway found that Reform is solidifying support in Leave-voting constituencies, making its geography more efficient for seat conversion.18

But there are powerful reasons for scepticism about Reform's long-term trajectory, and they are structural rather than contingent. The first is what the sociologist Robert Michels called the "Iron Law of Oligarchy": as any organisation professionalises and seeks institutional power, it tends to develop the same elite-serving, inward-looking characteristics it was created to oppose.19 UKIP is the most obvious precedent. It achieved its primary goal, the Brexit referendum, and then collapsed, partly because goal displacement left it without a compelling reason to exist, and partly because its most talented figures (including Farage) defected to other vehicles. Reform faces the same risk: if the mainstream parties absorb enough of its immigration agenda to neutralise the core grievance, the energy that drives it may dissipate.

The second risk is the absorption dynamic itself. Labour under Keir Starmer has adopted significantly tougher rhetoric on immigration, set net migration targets, and emphasised border security as a government priority. This is precisely the pattern that political scientists describe as "cartel party" behaviour: the mainstream absorbs the challenger's most popular positions to prevent electoral haemorrhage, without necessarily solving the underlying problems those positions speak to.20 Cameron did this with UKIP and the 2016 referendum; the result was Brexit. If Starmer does it with Reform and tighter immigration policy, the result may be a further normalisation of the idea that immigration is the primary cause of Britain's social problems, with all the consequences that carries for race relations, democratic discourse, and the actual structural reforms that would improve ordinary people's lives.

The third, and perhaps most important, question is whether Reform represents a genuine political realignment or a protest movement in search of a purpose. Nearly 80% of 2024 Reform voters previously voted Conservative, suggesting the party has so far captured disaffected Tories rather than building a genuinely new coalition.21 The communities that back Reform most strongly are those hit hardest by deindustrialisation, austerity and the decline of public services, communities that, as the political scientist Peter Mair argued, have been abandoned by a cartel-party system more interested in managing the status quo than addressing structural decline. Their anger is real and legitimate. The question is whether Reform offers them anything beyond that anger, and whether the politics of common sense will survive contact with the responsibility of power.

Conclusion

From UKIP to Brexit to Reform, Nigel Farage has spent a decade and a half demonstrating that the politics of "common sense", simple explanations, visible scapegoats, and anti-elite rhetoric can move mountains. He forced a referendum that no one expected him to win. He delivered Brexit. He built a party from scratch into a political force that won more than four million votes. These are not trivial achievements.

But the promises that powered this movement have not been delivered. Net migration is at record highs. The £350 million NHS dividend was a fiction. Sovereignty turns out to be constrained by the same international system from a weaker position. The small boats are still crossing. And Reform now campaigns to fix problems that are, in part, the legacy of the Brexit Farage spent twenty years demanding.

What this tells us is not that voters were fooled, but that "common sense" politics operates on a different logic to policy delivery. Its function is not to solve problems but to name enemies, to take the diffuse, legitimate frustrations of people failed by the economic system and redirect them toward a target: immigrants, the EU, the "blob," the metropolitan elite. As Gramsci understood, the most powerful political act is to make one particular framing of reality feel like the only rational one. Whether that framing actually corresponds to the causes of people's problems is, in a sense, beside the point.

The deeper question for British democracy is not whether Reform will succeed or fail, but what its rise reveals about the system that produced it. A political class that has accepted TINA, There Is No Alternative, for forty years, that has presided over stagnant wages, housing crises, and crumbling public services while insisting that the market knows best, should not be surprised when voters reach for the most aggressively anti-establishment option available. Reform is a symptom of a broken political economy, not a cure for it. Until the mainstream parties are willing to address the structural causes of the discontent Farage has spent two decades harvesting, the politics of common sense will keep finding new recruits.

Footnotes

  1. Home Office, Irregular Migration Statistics, year ending December 2022. Small boat arrivals in 2022 were approximately 45,756. This figure refers specifically to irregular crossings of the English Channel and is entirely distinct from the total net migration figure of 745,000–873,000, which covered arrivals across all legal and illegal routes combined — the vast majority arriving by air on valid visas. ↩

  2. Office for National Statistics (ONS), Long-term International Migration, Provisional, November 2023 revision. Net migration for calendar year 2022 was revised from an initial estimate of 606,000 to 745,000, and subsequently further revised to approximately 873,000 using updated ONS methodology (November 2025 revision). Migration Observatory, University of Oxford, Long-Term International Migration Flows to and from the UK, January 2026. ↩

  3. Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (Macmillan, 1978). On "authoritarian populism" see Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal (Verso, 1988). ↩

  4. Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy (Verso, 2013). On cartel parties see Richard Katz and Peter Mair, "Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party," Party Politics 1(1), 1995. ↩

  5. UK Statistics Authority, letter to Boris Johnson, 17 September 2017. The Authority stated that continued use of the £350 million figure was "a clear misuse of official statistics." Full Fact, £350 million EU claim "a clear misuse of official statistics", 2017. ↩

  6. Institute for Fiscal Studies, Brexit and the UK's Public Finances, May 2016. The IFS called the claim "clearly absurd" and estimated Britain's net contribution at approximately £8 billion annually, not £18 billion. ↩

  7. Nuffield Trust, The Brexit Referendum Five Years On: What Has It Meant for the NHS?, June 2021. OBR estimates cited therein. ↩

  8. Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, various editions. The OBR's central estimate is that Brexit will reduce long-run UK GDP by approximately 4% compared to a counterfactual of remaining in the EU. LSE economist Tim Leunig has noted that at 4% of GDP, the economic cost amounts to approximately £850 million per week — significantly exceeding the £350 million the Leave campaign put on its bus. Financial Times, The Economics Show, October 2025. ↩

  9. Office for Budget Responsibility, How Are Our Brexit Trade Forecast Assumptions Performing?, March 2024 Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The OBR found that in Q3 2023, UK trade intensity remained 1.7% below its pre-pandemic level while the rest of the G7 averaged 1.7% above. Source: OBR Brexit Analysis page, obr.uk. ↩

  10. Department for International Trade, UK Accession to CPTPP: Impact Assessment, 2023. The government's own central projection for long-run GDP impact was +0.06%. This figure has been widely cited as evidence of the marginal economic gains from post-Brexit trade agreements. ↩

  11. On the indivisibility of sovereignty in the British constitutional tradition see Vernon Bogdanor, Beyond Brexit: Towards a British Constitution (I.B. Tauris, 2019). On the "Brussels Effect" see Anu Bradford, The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World (Oxford University Press, 2020). ↩

  12. House of Commons Library, 2024 General Election Results and Analysis, CBP-10009, updated September 2024. Reform UK received 14.3% of the vote and won 5 seats. ↩

  13. House of Commons Library, 2024 General Election: Performance of Reform and the Greens, September 2024. Reform came second in 98 constituencies, 89 to Labour, with 60 in the north of England and 13 in Wales. ↩

  14. Electoral Reform Society, A System Out of Step: The 2024 General Election, July 2024. Reform received over 4 million votes (14.3%) and won 5 seats (0.8%). The Gallagher index score of 23.67 made 2024 the least proportionate election in modern UK history. ↩

  15. Electoral Reform Society, ibid. Political scientist John Curtice described Labour's majority as "heavily exaggerated" by the voting system. ↩

  16. Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (MacGibbon and Kee, 1972), p.9. ↩

  17. Multiple polling organisations, including YouGov and Techne UK, reported in 2025 that Reform was polling in first place or joint first place in voting intention surveys for a hypothetical general election. ↩

  18. Oliver Heath and Chris Prosser, 2024 General Election and the Rise of Reform UK, Royal Holloway University of London, 2024. The research found that nearly 80% of 2024 Reform voters previously voted Conservative, and that Reform is solidifying support in Leave-voting areas. ↩

  19. Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1911; English translation, Free Press, 1962). ↩

  20. Katz and Mair, op. cit. On the Labour response to Reform see also UK in a Changing Europe, various policy briefings, 2024–2025. ↩

  21. Heath and Prosser, op. cit. ↩