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Rather worryingly, far-right rhetoric is becoming more popular in the UK not because the country suddenly became extreme, but because a lot of people feel ignored, financially squeezed, culturally unsettled, and politically dismissed. When everyday life feels harder and mainstream politics sounds vague or managerial, the angriest voices start to sound like the most honest ones.
Years of stagnant living standards and fraying public services create the mood for it. Recent British Social Attitudes findings showed record levels of people struggling on their current income, while trust in government has fallen dramatically over the long term. That is exactly the kind of atmosphere in which blunt, simplistic answers start to feel emotionally satisfying, even when they are politically poisonous.
Immigration then becomes the lightning rod. Concern about it has clearly risen again, and by October 2024 it had become the top “most important issue” for the first time since 2016. But that does not mean Britain has become uniformly far right. The data also shows the public is more mixed and more nuanced than the loudest slogans suggest. There is a big difference between anxiety about immigration, frustration with the state, and full-blown support for extremist politics, even though the far right works very hard to blur those lines.
Social media helps hard-line rhetoric spread faster than serious argument. Ofcom found that most UK adults now get news through online intermediaries, with major social platforms making up four of the top ten individual news sources, and trending stories remaining a common way people encounter news on social media. In that environment, outrage travels further than nuance.
So the real story is not simply “the far right is rising.” It is that distrust, insecurity, and social fragmentation are creating an opening for it. If mainstream politics cannot offer people competence, fairness, stability and a sense of belonging, someone else will offer them anger, blame and a flag. Sadly, for a growing number of people, that is starting to feel like an answer.
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We’ve been here before, the 1920s and 1930s. It didn’t turn out well.
People then were attracted to the far right and it’s so called solutions. Even the papers were backing the Nazis in Germany. The Mail, The Telegraph, The Express and even The Times.
At that time they blamed the Jews for all the problems, now it’s immigration.
There is no easy solution, we have been hammered since the 2008 banking crisis followed by Brexit, COVID and the Russians invading Ukraine, now it’s Trump attacking Iran.
Immigration is not the sole problem but it seems to be the focus on far right attention.1 user thanked author for this post.
A general “dumbing down” of a significant percentage of the population?
The silicon chip and now AI means you don’t have to think too hard anymore. Let’s face it, you don’t need to count out your money to make a purchase nowadays. Just wave your phone or a card at a machine!
Everything needs to be pigeon-holed or labelled. Housing shortage? Immigrants! Long NHS waiting lists? Immigrants! Job losses? Immigrants! Easy scapegoats fuelled by the likes of Farage and the gutter press.
I was driving down the A68 through County Durham last week and there were lots of Union Jacks and St George’s Crosses flying in places such as Tow Law and West Auckland. Absolutely no asylum seekers anywhere near yet they feed off the rhetoric.
Impoverished former mining towns of course, but they are flying the flags of the country whose government sold them down the river decades ago. Crazy!
Strange days!
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Yep, excellent post Sodiron, and all the above.
The biggest irony is that the flag fondlers’ great-grandfathers gave their lives fighting against exactly this kind of ‘politics’.
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