For the first time in a century, Britain’s political order is fracturing. The familiar duopoly of Tory and Labour no longer commands the public’s faith. In its place, a new political battlefield is emerging – one dominated by the populist right and an insurgent socialist left.
On the right there is Reform UK, founded in November 2018, with other parties emerging, formed more recently and even further to the right. On the left there is a new party, provisionally named ‘Your Party’, not yet formed, and a radicalised Green Party, under the leadership of Zack Polanski.
What are the key policies of each?
Reform UK: The cult of Farage
Reform UK is a one-person, one-issue outfit, that being immigration.
Its leader, Nigel Farage, with an estimated wealth of between £3 and £5 million, is a privately educated ex-commodities trader. A ‘mate’ of Trump who, when he is cosplaying as a working-class guy, is often seen down the pub, having a chat, drinking pints with the lads or outside having a cigarette. When claiming to represent grieving farmers, he wears a wax jacket, banana-yellow corduroys and wellington boots.
Reform has been described as ‘the cult of Nigel’. Key policies include:
- mass deportation of people seeking asylum who arrive in the UK in small boats
- a ban on all non-essential migration, including student dependents
- withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights
- tax relief for private healthcare users and scrapping of net zero policies
- abolition of the 2010 Equality Act and removal of DE&I (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion) frameworks
Advance UK
Advance UK was formed in June 2025 by Ben Habib, who was ousted as Reform’s Deputy Leader after Farage returned to frontline politics in 2024.
Like Farage, Habib hails from the world of business, being the chief executive of a commercial property investment and fund management company. His net wealth is estimated at around £5 million.
Advance UK, by Habib’s own acknowledgement, is to the right of Reform. Habib has called for the detention and deportation of all illegal migrants in Britain:
‘Every single person in the United Kingdom who is here illegally should be detained and if possible, deported’. He went on to insist that those who cannot be deported should either face repatriation or remain incarcerated.
Born in Pakistan to an English mother and Pakistani father, Ben Habib exemplifies the fact that racism extends far beyond the attitudes and actions that White people direct at Black and Asian people. In fact, those on the receiving end of UK racism today are primarily migrants and Muslims.
However, there are signs that the Overton window is expanding. A prominent member of this party is the far-right street activist Tommy Robinson.
Restore Britain: Trumpian echoes in the UK
Restore Britain was formed on the same day as Reform UK. It is a movement, not (yet) a political party, led by Rupert Lowe who, like Reform UK, advocates mass deportation of every person living in Britain illegally, with a fully costed operational removal plan.
Lowe claims this can be done in three years by copying Donald Trump’s ‘hostile environment’. Ironically, the ‘hostile environment’ was actually a creation of Theresa May when she was Tory Home Secretary in 2012.
Lowe had a private education, before working in the City of London for several banks and becoming the Chair of Southampton Football Club. His estimated net worth is £1.2 billion.
The greens go radical: A new left force in British politics
The Green Party’s Green policies are well known:
- net zero by 2040, more ambitious than other major parties
- phasing out fossil fuels
- and public ownership of the ‘Big 5’ energy companies
With the election of Zack Polanski on an unashamedly leftwing platform, however, the party is also proposing a wealth tax, supporting transgender rights unequivocally and accusing Reform UK of fascism.
In order to move the endless droning on by Farage about migrants, Polanski wants to shift the focus to economic inequality; taxing the rich, rebuilding public services and ending privatisation.
As he told the Guardian, “economic justice is everything” while at the same time, as a gay Jewish man, retaining “solidarity with minority communities”.
A new party of the left: Hope amid division
In July 2025, Jeremy Corbyn and former Labour MP Zarah Sultana confirmed the launch of a new party of the left, with the working name of ‘Your Party’, to ‘take on the rich and powerful’ and campaign for the redistribution of wealth. In that quest, ‘Your Party’ now has the support of the Greens.
Corbyn self-identifies as a socialist and was leader of the Labour Opposition from 2015 to 2020, spanning the last months of the Conservative–LibDem coalition government and the first months of the Tories under Boris Johnson.
Under Corbyn’s leadership, the Labour Party greatly increased its membership, as he pursued a left social democratic programme that included renationalising public utilities and railways, and the reversal of Tory austerity policies.
Corbyn was suspended from the party by Keir Starmer in 2023 but went on to win his seat as an independent candidate in the 2024 General Election.
Sultana, also a socialist and a practising Muslim, won the honorary title of 2021 Young People’s MP of the Year from the Patchwork Foundation – which focuses on underrepresented and disadvantaged communities across the UK – to celebrate her work championing these groups.
In 2023, the New Statesman described her as a ‘genuinely viral politician’. Corbyn noted that the Party will pursue policies involving more taxation of the rich and public ownership of energy and water companies, and rail and postal services. On Gaza, the new party will demand an end to arms sales to Israel and ‘defend the right to protest against genocide’.
The movement’s vision
In a joint statement, Sultana and Corbyn, referring to the ‘great dividers’ in society, said:
…they want you to think that the problems in our society are caused by migrants or refugees. They’re not. They are caused by an economic system that protects the interests of corporations and billionaires. It’s time for a new kind of political party. One that is rooted in our communities, trade unions and social movements. One that builds power in all regions and nations. One that belongs to you.
At the end of November 2025, Your Party has its founding conference where grassroots members, on the basis of one person one vote, will decide the leader or leaders of the party and its key polices, a democratic process for which, as a member I can vouch.
The battle ahead: Equality or authoritarianism
Whoever is elected, one thing is clear: Britain faces a choice between a future built on equality, solidarity and democracy – or a slide into authoritarianism and exclusion, along a path that edges dangerously close to fascism.
The century-long political order may have collapsed, but in its ruins lies the possibility of renewal – if the movement for equality can seize the moment.
Mike Cole is Emeritus Professor of Racism Studies at the University of East London and Emeritus Professor of Education and Equality at Bishop Grosseteste University.
Racism and Austerity by Mike Cole is available on Bristol University Press here for £27.99.
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