Reform UK conference: A bright blue pipeline to white nationalism

As Reform UK members gathered for the final day of the party conference, hundreds of masked black-clad protesters descended on Dover. Chanting "Christ is King", the paramilitary-esque demonstrators blocked roads leading up to ferry terminal. The parallels with Oswald Mosley's blackshirts were clear.

A day later, masked men were among hundreds of people who gathered in Portsmouth to protest the arrival of 140 migrants who had been rescued by coastguards in the English Channel. The crowds pelted police with bricks, smashed vehicles, and waded into the sea to prevent the boats from coming ashore. Right-wing social accounts began inciting against the RNLI.

The marches were organised by Patriot Platform, a far-right group set up in June by Daniel 'Danny Tommo' Thomas, a confidante of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (otherwise known as Tommy Robinson). Since being jailed more than a decade ago for a drug-related attempted kidnapping, Thomas has styled himself as a born-again Christian and has become one of the chief organisers of a new wave of radical anti-migrant activism.

"Very, very soon, we are going to send a message that will make sure they understand that we will not go down without a fight," he said in a threatening video message a few days ahead of the protests. It was also an implicit challenge to the party that has done more than any other to mainline ethnonationalism into the public discourse yet whose racial politics are considered too "liberal" by the extreme right.

Appearing electable

Reform had seen its annual gathering as an opportunity for a reset. It would use the media attention to clean up the image of its scandal-hit leader Nigel Farage and present itself as a moderate government-in-waiting to the electorate. It limited space in the programme for its trademark anti-migrant boosterism, instead leaning heavily into fringe events focused on housing, political reform, and the prosaics of local government.

Great Replacement Theory, after all, doesn't tend to win you the centre ground of British politics.

Almost everyone I spoke to at the gathering appeared to choose their words carefully. They all agreed that migration needed to be curbed but ummed and ahhed when I asked for their thoughts on large-scale deportations. But in the main hall, the crowd's endorsement of racism and appetite for mass expulsion was clear.

Zia Yusuf, who has positioned himself on the right of the party, dedicated his 20-minute speech to setting out exactly what he would do to minorities should he make it into power. "We will launch the largest mass deportation operation in modern history", he declared to huge applause. The "invaders", he said, would be rounded up by the British marines. The navy would stand at "maximum readiness" to confront the small boats crossing from France.

Matt Goodwin garnered a roar of laughter after declaring that British people are being replaced by "drug-dealing goatherders". Six months after his distant second-place finish in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Goodwin was still serving up cope, promoting debunked conspiracy theories about widespread electoral fraud by the Islamic community.

Jordan Bardella, the protégé of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, had a headline slot on the main stage in what was the latest example of the growing internationalism of Europe's far-right.

The conference's sinister edge intensified during Farage's climactic address at the end of the first day. Already delayed by 20 minutes by what Reform said was a security threat, the speech was marred by disruption, with climate protesters in the crowd derailing proceedings on four separate occasions.

Footage captured by The New Arab broadcast ugly scenes as a mob descended on one of the female protesters, hands clawing at her face, yanking her hair, and pulling her to the ground, before security guards dragged her screaming out of the room. Another video showed a man striking a protester with a walking stick.

The party was evidently prepared for the disruption. Boring – Farage's trademark response to hecklers – flashed in all-caps white letters on the stage, triggering chants around the room. It also seemed comfortable with the mob violence. "Oh boo hoo… get a life," sneered Robert Jenrick when he was asked about the disturbing footage.

Pressed against the masses in the crowd slowly filing out of the arena, I overheard one man exclaiming how "invigorated" he had felt by the protests. For him, it was further evidence of a liberal establishment running scared, that Nigel's "People's Army" were making their voices heard (albeit by assaulting women in front of the nation).

Competition

Reform has for most of the past two years been riding high the polls and many in the media have helped position the party as a credible contender for government in the next election. Yet it has never been clear whether Farage, in his quest to become 'electably racist', would be able to keep the ultras onside as he tried to airbrush the party's darker edges.

The chief threat to the party is Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain, an avowedly ethnonationalist splinter group which doesn’t mince words about what it feels must be done to alter the country’s demographics. Lowe, himself an ex-Reformer, is known for his straightforward assertions about British racial identity and is candid about his aim to expel more than a million unauthorised migrants from the country.

He has also successfully won the support of Elon Musk, who sees in Lowe a more fitting candidate for his far-right redesign of Western Europe.

June’s by-election in Makerfield provided the first real datapoint about the damage Restore Britain could inflict on Reform if it becomes perceived as insufficiently hardline on migration. The 3,111 votes it collected in the Manchester constituency were not enough to be the difference-maker, but on a different day, in a different race, the potential for it to split the vote in key races is clear.

A Reform councillor who didn’t want to give his name expressed concern about the potential threat. "If we’re not careful, they could make things very hard for us," he told me.

Before the party's conference had ended, the appearance of Tommo's blackshirts on the south coast brought this tension to the fore. Would Reform reject far-right vigilantism or would it align with the aspiring paramilitary outfit threatening the RNLI? Farage tried to have it both ways. On the one hand he sympathised with Tommo's goals and portrayed migrants as rapists and murderers. On the other, he distanced himself from his methods, calling for a ban on face coverings and branding the use of balaclavas "disgusting".

Farage's transgression was made clear the following day when the Patriot Platform's commander-in-chief gate-crashed a televised interview with Zia Yusuf in Portsmouth. "What Nigel Farage has done is not good," Thomas said in a menacing tone, a finger pointing at Yusuf's chest. "Nigel has to be very careful with his words … take this message back to him."

Farage may have triangulated, but others in the party appear to have gotten the message. Goodwin declared that he "completely, unequivocally, unambiguously" supported the masked activists. Yusuf lambasted Tory leader Kemi Badenoch for describing them as thugs and suggested he could deport two million migrants.

As the foreign donations scandal puts Farage's future in ever increasing doubt, Yusuf and Goodwin are betting that the future of the party lies in those most willing to appease the darkest fantasies of the extreme right. Farage may have wanted the conference to relaunch the party as a "government-in-waiting". Instead, it only further revealed its true face: a bright blue pipeline to white nationalism.

Matthew Hoare is a political journalist with more than six years reporting from the region. Prior to joining The New Arab, he worked as a senior editor at Egypt’s largest independent business news outlet, Enterprise.

Follow Mathew on X: @matt_h_9

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.