We need new strategies to respond to the far right

Global power is shifting, the authoritarian far right is winning, and civil society across the UK is not yet responding meaningfully to this new reality. All the causes we work on are in jeopardy (migration, climate, any kind of social justice and so on). But authoritarianism also threatens civic space for change making work – from grassroots activism, community and union organising, to NGO campaigning and philanthropic funding for all of this. In this piece I attempt to make sense of the current moment, explain why it matters, and provoke strategic reflection on what is needed.

I’m also offering an online workshop exploring scenario planning and strategy, and I’ve started a new slack channel to start connecting up folks having these conversations, make new connections, and move into action together (more info on these below).

This is hard stuff to look at – if you need to, read it a little at a time, make space to process, and come back. There are no easy answers, and even writing this is hard. But much as it is helpful for us to ignore what is happening in politics and the wider world, to make space for the joy, challenges and presence of our daily lives (where we are fortunate enough to be able to do this), if we don’t spend at least some time reflecting on the big picture we won’t be able to work to oppose it and build something different. There are already many people facing such existential jeopardy now they’re not able to look away. Besides which, all know the poem ‘first they came for…’ and it isn’t very long.

This is about Reform…

Reform won sweeping victories in recent England council and mayoral elections, are well funded by billionaires & financiers (often shifting donations from the increasingly broke Tories), and have an impressive and growing ground game (with 120 new branches around the country). Latest YouGov MRP polling shows the far right party led by Farage winning the largest number of seats if an election were held tomorrow. Obviously the next general election is a way off, but there are local, Mayoral, Holyrood and Senedd elections coming in May 2026.

Even more pressingly (and depressingly) Reform’s ideas become more mainstream every day as they are echoed in discourse, media and government, shrinking civic space, increasing racist hatred. This isn’t new, but it is getting worse. It’s already affecting many people’s lives, especially people who have migrated here, Muslims and communities of colour.

…But it’s also much bigger than Reform

There can be a bit of an island mentality in the UK – but although we’re surrounded by water our society is fundamentally interconnected with the wider world through trade, diplomacy, art, media and discourse. As with much else happening in the UK, our political situation cannot be separated from what is happening across the globe.

The trends have been there for the last 15 years or so, but we’re now seeing a more rapid shift in global hegemony (more on what I mean by hegemony here), away from neo-liberalism towards a more authoritarian capitalism. Some are using the term “techno feudalism” or “broligarchy” to describe the new hegemonic alliances of far-right/ ethno-nationalist (or nativist) power we’re seeing coalesce to take power in the USA (Musk, Zuckerburg, Besos etc) for example. And the Trump Government has close ties to Modi in India, and obvious alignment with Putin’s Russian authoritarianism, taking inspiration from Orban in Hungary, and so on. This global shift isn’t yet fixed or stable, but it’s gaining momentum and headed in a nasty direction.

This is a global problem

To give an idea of the scale of the problem, I recently worked for The Fund for Global Human Rights with fellow consultant Ali Torabi to scope the potential direction of new programming at the intersection of racial justice and securitisation (the way that societies are ‘securitised’ through the laws, technology and discourse of the security playbook restricting civic space). We interviewed racialised activists all over the world and brought some of them together in an advisory group to guide the work. We found that movements everywhere are almost fully occupied with firefighting their repression, largely unable to take space to think strategically or move to power building long term strategy aimed at shifting root causes. Even in countries where ‘progressive’ governments had recently been elected with a mandate to change things, we found the rise of authoritarianism was pushing in from all sides, making it hard to do things like revoke repressive security laws or to turn things around.

This doesn’t mean there is no hope – we heard many incredible examples of movements working to change things. But they’re under-resourced and under stress. I think we need to be able to look squarely at the problem and understand its gravity to find a way forwards. We’re in a moment of systemic fracture and crisis, but that also means big shifts are possible in a much better direction if we can build power and momentum in a radically different direction.

What is the ‘Far Right’? Understanding the language*

By ‘far right’ I mean political parties, movements, groups etc that are ‘anti-system’ and opposed to liberal democracy. This grouping can be further divided into the extreme far right which totally rejects democracy with a revolutionary approach (literal Fascism for example) and the radical right (e.g. Reform). The radical right accepts democracy in essence but rejects many aspects of liberal democracy (like the separation of powers into an executive, legislature and judiciary, to provide checks and balances against tyranny), and is more reformist (clue is in the name here).

There have been a few waves of the far right since the second world war (when its credibility had been pretty decimated by the horrors of Fascism / Nazism). The most recent fourth wave, from 2000 to the present, was fueled by the September the 11th terrorist attacks in 2001, the 2008 financial crisis / recession and the hyperbole around what has been labelled the ‘refugee crisis’ since 2015, with an increase in people on the move across borders.

This most recent wave has seen its ideas mainstreamed into popular discourse, governing political parties and policy. E.g. the trajectory of the ‘hostile environment’ (a term which new Labour used long before May’s suite of policies) through to Starmer describing the UK as ‘an island of strangers‘ just weeks ago.

The contemporary far right is fundamentally ‘nativist‘ or ‘ethno-nationalist‘, an ideology which claims to uphold the rights of those who are ‘native born’ over immigrants who are othered and blamed for societies’ challenges. Combining nationalism and xenophobia, nativism is often racist and Islamophobic. End game of this for the radical right would be an ‘ethnocracy’ – a democracy in which citizenship is based on ‘native’ ethnicity.

Authoritarianism is a term ordinarily used to describe political systems which reject plurality, reducing democracy and civil liberties, but can also be used to refer to the belief in a society with a tough punitive approach to any deviations, strictly ordered and with patriotic morals at its core. Both of these definitions are central to the contemporary far right. Often ‘deviant’ criminal behaviour is blamed on people who have migrated and other minority groups (like trans women, for example).

Populism has also become central to today’s far right, a philosophy which divides society into a corrupt elite vs a homogenous and somehow pure idea of ‘we the people’. Modi has described his Indian BJP party as ‘for the people’ and the competing Congress party as ‘for the elite’; Farage is always describing himself as a ‘man of the people’.

* These definitions are from Cas Mudde’s book ‘The Far Right Today’

What does Reform say it wants to do?

The growing far right (nativist, populist and authoritarian) movement presents a compelling ‘us vs them’ narrative (‘them’ being ‘elites’ and people who have migrated), and a simple story about how to fix things. It’s easy to see how Reform’s policies are informed by the ideology of the far right as set out above. Reform’s 2024 Manifesto says they will:

• take the ‘hostile environment’ much further, blocking applications for asylum and deporting (and revoking citizenship) of anyone ‘foreign’ found guilty of a crime
• ‘cut bureaucracy and red tape’ and cut taxes in a governmental ‘efficiency drive’ likely to resemble the slash and burn shock tactics being used in the US, rolling back on democratic oversight
• increase NHS privitisation
• kill ‘net zero’ climate ambitions, which they are wrongly blaming for high energy prices
• increase policing and expand prisons while rolling back on what is classified as a ‘hate crime’
• introduce a ‘patriotic curriculum’ for schools, and incentivize private schools
• cut out of work benefits for anyone who refuses to take two job offers
• scrap the Equalities Act and efforts around ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’
• launch an ‘anti corruption unit’ with the power to send MPs to prison.

All the causes we care about

I can’t imagine the causes central to any of the movements I’ve supported would be anything but badly affected by Reform UK taking power, if they do even half of what they have promised.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you we’re living in a time of polycrisis, and these crises are all fundamentally interconnected, feeding into each other. We’re seeing a deepening of the climate crisis, increasing migration, instability and conflict (including genocide in Palestine, and the devastating mineral resource control driven conflict in DRC), rising inflation and a cost of living crisis – all while the richest get richer.

I can see how it could be comforting to trust that there are simple solutions to these problems, but the reality is that Reform’s policies aren’t going to help any of this. They’re going to make things worse and shrink the space in which we can rally against their agenda and build something better.

A threat to movements and civil society

Because of their fundamental distrust of democracy, far right parties and movements seek to limit civic space, dismantling many of the structures that could limit their power. This means the space in which people, groups and institutions can participate in a countries’ governance.

In one sense, civic space is literally just that: a space, physical or digital, where people (not governments or businesses) come together to exercise their human rights and core freedoms. Civic work helps shape our politics, economies, and social realities.

To be more precise, civic space can be defined as a set of legal conditions experienced as a lived environment that enables people—whether alone or with others, physically or online—to be active in their communities, to speak out, to organize, to gather together in protest or to help one another, and to participate in the governance of their community, area, or country.

Civic Futures definition of civic space

I know the first thing this bring to mind, for me at least, is impact on the right to protest. We’ve seen many erosions of this here in the UK, and the imminent proscription of Palestine Action (meaning it would be designated a terrorist organisation and membership of it would become illegal) is just the latest of these. The recent militarised response to LA protests against ICE immigration enforcement in the US offers another recent example of this. But this is (pardon the pun) just the tip of the iceberg…

All of civil society is increasingly affected

It’s not just the more radical end of protest at risk. In countries like India, NGOs have been severely restricted for some time now. It’s very much within the realm of possibility that we could see charities being prevented from campaigning at all. Far right authoritarians do not like being lobbied – there’s no reason to think they would listen to even the most insider actors. Philanthropic funders could lose their charitable status – in the US we’re seeing threats to revoke the tax free charitable status of climate philanthropy for example. Looking at global trends, the far ranging impacts of far right authoritarian mainstreaming and power are likely to include:

• Increasing repressive use of laws and other regulations to limit protest and campaigning
• Restrictions on what can be shared through all forms of media
• Constrained ability to access and influence decision making at all levels of government
• Digital and physical attacks on activists, campaigners and their groups/organizations
• Harassment and surveillance of activists
• Restrictions on activities of philanthropic funders

Civicus, the civil society alliance tracking civic space, classified the UK as already obstructed in 2024. Not many countries are ranked as ‘open’. So again we’re not talking about something that could happen if Reform gains more electoral power – it’s very much a global trend that’s already impacting us.

We can all see already that campaigning approaches which used to work, seeking to change laws and policies through lobbying, research, charitable campaigning with digital mobilisation and so on, are just not delivering. So we need new strategies, and to take this moment seriously.

All this is a lot – but it’s far from hopeless

This is probably the bleakest thing I’ve written. The reality of what is happening is bleak. But it is far from hopeless. The moment is one of instability and the far right have historically been terrible at sustaining international collaborations. Everything is still to play for and deepening crisis continues to offer the opportunity to change things radically, for better as well as worse. I can see many routes forwards, but they involve processing the situation first.

Civil society needs to take some bold, radical action, to try new things, build new alliances and connections. We need to organise in communities, while building the connective tissue so local to UK wide movement actors can support each other and stand in solidarity. And we need new ideas, strong alternative propositions for a way forwards. These are just a few of my thoughts. I don’t have all the answers, but I believe we can find them together, and indeed that coming together is the start of the solution.

Connect with others & continue this conversation

I’ve set up a slack group called Building Beyond Authoritarianism to connect up folks worried about this and talking about it, to make connections beyond siloes, to share what you’re already doing, and to foster collaboration to try new things together. If you’d like to join you can message me on Linked In or email me, and I will send you a link to join.

I’m running an online worksop with fellow consultant Jim Coe called New Strategies for the Far Right – initially on July 16th but we may repeat it if there is demand. It’s for anyone who wants to explore the scale of the problem and the impact in the UK – now and in the future, on the causes we care about and the space to agitate for change. We’ll provide space for some headline reflection on future scenarios and strategic responses, and connect people with the same concerns and challenges.

I’d also love to hear your thoughts below. Is my analysis right? What do you think is needed? Or maybe you’re already doing something you’d like to share?

If you’ve enjoyed my writing & would like to support me to create and share more you can buy me a coffee. I share my work for the love, in the hope that its useful to strengthen movements, and that’s the biggest reward. But if you feel moved to donate something (no pressure at all) it would be gratefully received.