Across Europe, far-right movements have gained ground: Germany’s Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally are already outpacing their mainstream rivals. 

Now, polls suggest that trend may have reached Britain, where Nigel Farage’s populist Reform party is topping Labour and Conservative parties. 

Disillusioned voters across Europe, from Romania to Germany to France, have grown frustrated with unfulfilled promises from mainstream parties and turned to far-right movements, which have increasingly embraced nationalist and populist stances.

Reform UK has tapped into that same anger. One recent poll put Reform at more than a third of the national vote, suggesting it would win a landslide if elections were held last month. 

Reform’s surge is deeply concerning for the UK’s Muslim communities, says British Muslim scholar Usaama al Azami, a former Oxford lecturer now teaching at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar.

“I am following the rise of Reform with considerable concern, particularly since my family lives in the UK,” Azami tells TRT World, adding that Labour’s pandering to the worst elements of Reform and Conservatives’ rapprochement with Nigel Farage’s party have been extremely alarming developments for Muslims.   

Farage has long used migrants and Muslims as “scapegoats” for Britain’s economic problems, says Azami.  

In recent years, the UK has seen an increasing Islamophobic violence, which experts see as part of changing attitudes across the continent. Still, they also see “a chilling double standard” in British media and law enforcement agencies over hate crimes. 

If Reform comes to power, minority groups, including Muslim communities, fear that it could embolden extremists. 

Is Reform against Muslims? 

In this year’s local elections, Reform made a breakthrough, claiming 677 of more than 1,600 seats contested across the UK. Farage interpreted their significant gains as making his party the main opposition.

But concerned human rights groups and Muslim organisations were alarmed. Some new Reform UK councillors shared Islamophobic content on social media, including posts from Britain First, a far-right party notorious for anti-Muslim rhetoric.  

Paul Harrison, a Reform councillor from Leicestershire County Council, allegedly endorsed a post by Britain First leader Paul Golding on X. 

In the post, Golding asked his supporters whether they backed mass deportations, sharing an AI-generated picture of Muslim men with Pakistani flags, according to the Guardian. Harrison responded with a ‘yes’. 

In June, Zia Yusuf, a leading member of UK Reform, who describes himself as "British Muslim patriot”, resigned as party chairman after a new Reform MP pushed Prime Minister Keir Starmer to ban the burqa, a move Yusuf called “dumb”. While he rejoined the party in another role only days later, Reform’s burqa push left scars in British Muslim communities. 

British Muslim groups, like the Muslim Women’s Network, have seen the burqa debate as a stark illustrations of rising “anti-Muslim sentiment”. 

“This is a frightening time for Muslims,” said Baroness Shaista Gohir, chief executive of the Muslim Women’s Network UK. “Barely a week goes by without statements that reinforce harmful stereotypes, fuel fear and hatred, and deepen societal intolerance. Muslim women who wear the headscarf in particular, are made to feel especially vulnerable and unsafe.” 

‘Total failure’ of the British system

While Reform’s rise concerns a wide range of British minority groups, experts also point out that the ascendancy of the right-wing populist party is related to “the total failure of the existing parties” to fix the country’s growing political and economic problems. 

The Reform Party has captured this British discontent, particularly from an immigration policy perspective, explains Rod Kiewiet, professor of Political Science at the California Institute of Technology. 

“I fully expect Reform to win the next election and for Farage to be PM. I believe that at that point the Conservative party will essentially cease to exist, as they are the party that should have been most able and likely to tap anti-immigration sentiment. Labor may decline markedly as well, but they are not likely to go away completely,” Kiewiet tells TRT World. 

The professor also sees that this possible remarkable change will pave the way for other relatively small parties like the Liberal Democrats, who have slowly gained ground in recent years, and the Scottish National Party (SNP). 

Erik Goldstein, an emeritus professor of International Relations and History at Boston University sees the upsurge of Reform as “part of a wider rise of populist parties” across the world, adding that “the same concerns that exist elsewhere no doubt arise” in the UK. 

Like Kiewiet, Goldstein also finds Reform’s rise “not surprising” because the Labour party government has created frustration in its voters that the pace of change is not faster a year after its MPs claimed a significant majority in the parliament. 

“Reform has been very effective at harnessing this not unusual phase of the political cycle,” Goldstein tells TRT World.

However, he notes that much can happen between now and the next election, scheduled for 2029. The British electoral system also makes it challenging for the Reform Party to achieve a majority in Parliament.

An August poll showed Reform leading Labour by 15 points, a result that if repeated in an election, “would deliver a landslide majority of more than 400 seats, leaving Labour with fewer than 100 and the Conservatives close to being wiped out completely,” the poll reported. 

If Reform claims power in the UK, it could lead to a realignment of the existing political party system, says the professor. 

“While Reform has been good at criticism, it has few clear solutions, which make it difficult to see what would happen,” he adds.