There is no simple, agreed definition of far-right, but we urgently need one:
- We know what ‘right-wing’ means – and we have many examples of people we know are right-wing but who draw the line at extremist policies;
- A reasonable definition of far-right can draw on that distinction; and
- We need to be clear about this now, because there is a real chance that the UK may be heading towards a far-right government after the next election.
We know what ‘right-wing’ means
Who is right-wing? Almost everyone would be comfortable saying that long-time Conservative politicians like Sir John Major, Philip Hammond, Lord Clarke and Dominic Grieve are right-wing.
And there are journalists like Andrew Neil and Max Hastings whose positions on most issues could reasonably be described as right-wing.
Even if we do not agree with them on all points, we have a feeling that ‘far-right’ would not be an appropriate description for these people.
And that is because they are not extreme. They place limits on how far to the right they would want their policies to be; and they have made that clear.
Sir John Major, for example, would see destruction of the NHS – or even privatisation of it – as too extreme. He criticised the Conservative cabinet on this point:
“The concept that [the Cabinet] would care for the National Health Service is a rather odd one: Michael Gove wanted to privatise it; Boris wanted to charge people for using it; and Iain Duncan Smith wanted a social insurance system. The NHS is about as safe with them as a pet hamster would be with a hungry python.”
Philip Hammond was also critical of his former colleagues for being too extreme – particularly in relation to their quest for a hard Brexit:
“The Conservative Party has been taken over by unelected advisers, entryists and usurpers who are trying to turn it from a broad church into an extreme right-wing faction. Sadly, it is not the party I joined.”
Ken Clarke pointed out that our constitutional checks and balances were being dangerously weakened by Johnson and Cummings:
“We are dangerously close to the ‘elected dictatorship’ that Lord Hailsham, the former Lord Chancellor, warned us about half a century ago.”
Dominic Grieve has made it clear that he believes UK human Rights would be at risk if we repudiated the European Convention on Human Rights:
“Leaving the Convention would have serious constitutional consequences. … It would undermine the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and threaten peace in Northern Ireland. … The UK’s departure from the ECHR would also harm its international reputation. Comparisons with countries like Russia and Belarus, which are not signatories, would weaken the UK’s credibility in addressing global human rights abuses.”
Max Hastings, the former editor of the Telegraph was horrified by the rightward movement:
“What’s heart-breaking … is that our country does seem in the eyes of the world increasingly ridiculous. … ‘what has this country done to itself over the last 15 years?’ … The [extreme] right is now running Britain and it’s a terrifying sight. … For the sake of the Conservative Party and for Britain, they’ve got to go.”
And the Facebook exchange shown at the top of this article between Andrew Neil and Zia Yusuf (Reform’s co-owner with Farage) shows that there are human rights issues which Neil would not want to sacrifice in policy-making.
All of these right-wingers are drawing the line at extremist policies. That tells us something valuable.
A reasonable definition can draw on that distinction
Some people interpret ‘far-right’ as being synonymous with Nazi – but adopting such a definition is unhelpful. There is a huge gulf between literal Nazism and what a moderate right-winger would consider acceptable. If we do not have a word for anything in that gulf, we have no way to describe the dangers until a Nazi party emerges.
A reasonable definition needs to be one which can distinguish between moderate right-wing views and those which moderate right-wingers view as extreme. And the examples above help us to draw that line.
The definition we are adopting is as follows:
| Far-right: a right-wing party or individual who sets out to weaken or destroy vital public services such as state education or healthcare, weaken human rights legislation, or weaken or remove democratic safeguards such as free and fair elections or the separation of powers (so that politicians are no longer subject to the rule of law). |
We need to be clear about this now
According to this definition, Reform is a far-right party. Farage has expressed his admiration for Trump and his Project 2025, and explicitly hinted at what might be in a UK version of that project:
- replacing the NHS with an insurance-based system;
- getting rid of human rights and equality legislation;
- weakening the independence of the judiciary;
- slashing taxes for the wealthy and benefits for the vulnerable;
- abandoning efforts to check climate change;
- appointing an unelected cabinet, chosen by the owners (see below).
Farage seems to believe that private sector expertise is the answer to every problem. He even suggested that Britain’s privately owned and run water companies need more private sector expertise. America’s experience with Elon Musk shows us that being good at tech does not make you reliable in government.
But even more importantly, the idea of voting for a party and then finding that the Cabinet is full of people whom no one has elected and no one (apart from the owners of the party) has any say over is undemocratic.
On the issue of democracy, the polls are telling us a worrying story. The chart below is taken from Electoral Calculus and shows their estimate of the results of a General Election held tomorrow.
So the stakes are high, and our media are by-and-large not calling out how high they are. By continuingly platforming Farage without calling out that his party is far-right, they are complicit in his rise.
After the next election, the UK could very well have a far-right government, and hardly anyone is saying so.
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