Across the Western world, established conservative parties face a common dilemma: how to respond to populist challengers on their right flank. Britain’s version of this story has its own particularities, but the underlying dynamic is recognizable. I argue that the competition between the Conservative Party and Reform UK is producing what I term “populist conservatism,” a distinctively British variant of the transnational national conservatism movement, deeply rooted in the Thatcherite and Powellite ideological traditions but infused with a populist style and anti-establishment energy that Conservative statecraft was traditionally more wary of. This populist conservatism now dominates ideological debate and party competition on the British right. The question is no longer whether it will prevail, but which party will lead it.
A recent by-election illustrated the stakes. On 26 February 2026, the Green Party won the constituency of Gorton and Denton in Greater Manchester from Labour with 40.7 percent of the vote, their first ever by-election victory. Reform UK finished second on 28.7 percent, while the governing Labour Party (which had held the seat in 2024 with more than half the vote) was pushed into third. The Conservatives’ result was perhaps the most telling of all. The party polled 1.9 percent, their lowest ever vote share in a by-election, and lost their election deposit for the first time since 1962. As the psephologist Professor John Curtice noted, this seismic result meant “the Conservative-Labour duopoly that has long dominated post-war British politics has never looked weaker.” While much of the focus was understandably on the crisis facing Labour and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, for the Conservatives too the collapse to irrelevance in such a significant electoral contest (and in an area where they finished second as recently as 2019) is extraordinary.
From Disaster to Existential Crisis
The portents of this crisis were seen in the 2024 general election. The Conservative vote share collapsed by twenty percentage points to the lowest in the party’s history. Its final tally of 121 seats was the worst since 1832. After fourteen years of crisis and instability in office, the party’s statecraft was in tatters. Statecraft, in the sense developed by Jim Bulpitt, denotes the strategic capacity of a governing party to win elections, retain office, and manage the political agenda effectively—privileging institutional competence and elite governance over populist mobilization. It is precisely this tradition of technocratic credibility and deference to constitutional convention that populist conservatism has progressively displaced. Yet there was a sliver of comfort. The Conservatives retained their position as the Official Opposition, and Reform UK (which had crept ahead in several polls during the campaign) failed to outpoll them on election night. Reform’s 4.1 million votes exceeded UKIP’s previous high in 2015 but fell well short of Nigel Farage’s prediction of six million. The widely trumpeted “inflection point” did not materialize.
After fourteen years of crisis and instability in office, the [Conservative] party’s statecraft was in tatters.
That was then. By early 2026, the picture had changed dramatically. Reform was consistently leading national polls on around 28 to 31 percent, with the Conservatives languishing around 18 to 21 percent. A More in Common MRP election results projection in January 2026 estimated that Reform would win 381 seats if a general election were held at that point, giving it a parliamentary majority of 112. A series of high-profile Conservative defections to Reform, including the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, reinforced the sense of momentum. In February 2026, Nigel Farage unveiled the first appointments to his frontbench team in an effort to position Reform not as a protest party but as a government in waiting.
A Symbiotic Relationship
It is tempting to see all of this as new, but the competition between the Conservatives and the populist right has deep roots. I argue that it is best understood as a symbiotic relationship that has evolved over several decades and that this relationship has been the incubator of the populist conservatism that now dominates the British right. UKIP, founded in 1993, gradually grew from a single-issue Eurosceptic outfit into a broader populist force. A widely held assumption is that the Conservatives have simply drifted towards populism in response to pressure from the radical right; this is, however, misleading. As Tim Bale has shown, it was the Conservatives that first fused populism and Euroscepticism, a strategy then adopted by UKIP, not the other way around. The traffic in ideas and positioning has always been two-directional.
It was the Conservatives that first fused populism and Euroscepticism, a strategy then adopted by UKIP, not the other way around. The traffic in ideas and positioning has always been two-directional.
The Brexit saga intensified this dynamic. The Conservatives recruited Leave voters at the expense of UKIP in 2017, hoping to spell the end of that party. But Theresa May’s failure to deliver Brexit prompted Nigel Farage’s dramatic return with the Brexit Party in 2019, which triumphed in the European elections and pushed the Conservatives into fifth place. Boris Johnson’s subsequent general election victory, built on a broad Leave-based coalition, appeared to settle the matter. However, instead of withering, the Brexit Party rebranded as Reform UK and evolved into a fully-fledged right-wing populist party, unbound from its single-issue past. Both parties now operate within the ideological space of populist conservatism, even as they compete fiercely for the voters who inhabit it.
Populist Conservatism in Britain
What distinguishes the British case from its European counterparts is the depth of the conservative intellectual tradition from which the populist right draws. In Britain, both the established conservative party and its populist challenger claim the same ideological inheritance, and as such both the current Conservative Party and Reform UK now represent what is most accurately described as “populist conservatism.” This label captures the fact that the outlook is deeply rooted in the British conservative tradition, especially Powellism and Thatcherism, while acknowledging the adoption of a populist political style that Conservative statecraft was traditionally more wary of. This populist conservatism is concomitant with the transnational national conservatism movement that has garnered prominence in recent years, but it is also a distinctively British phenomenon with its roots and development decisively shaped by the electoral competition on the right in the UK over several decades.
In Britain, both the established conservative party and its populist challenger claim the same ideological inheritance, and as such both the current Conservative Party and Reform UK now represent what is most accurately described as “populist conservatism.”
In recent years the intellectual landscape of the British right has narrowed considerably. As Peter Dorey has observed, the Conservative Party has atrophied intellectually, with Thatcherism entrenched as its dominant outlook. Johnson’s purge of opponents to a hard Brexit straitened things yet further. After the 2024 election, the number of Conservative MPs associated with the party’s “One Nation” moderate wing fell to just half a dozen. This “narrowing of the British Conservative mind,” as Charlie Ellis put it, has been amplified by a thriving right-wing media ecosystem encompassing GB News, a proliferation of podcasts, and increasingly close connections with the Trumpian American right and the National Conservatism movement.
The contest to succeed Rishi Sunak as Conservative leader illustrated how thoroughly populist conservatism now dominates. The winner, Kemi Badenoch, declared her mission was to return to “traditional conservative values” and positively revelled in being compared to Thatcher, whom she described as her “idol.” Her main rival, Robert Jenrick, ran a campaign characterized by Thatcherite messages and populist language on immigration, an approach Nigel Farage himself described as an attempt to “out-Farage Farage.” The distinction between “mainstream” conservatism and the far right, whilst always arguably more a matter of degree than a fundamental one, has become decidedly blurred.
The Electoral Dilemma
The dominance of populist conservatism has not resolved the electoral competition on the right; if anything, it has intensified it. The question of how to deal with Reform has consumed the Conservative Party. Analysis of the 2024 election found that the combined vote share of the Conservatives and Reform exceeded that of the winner in 137 Labour-held seats. Finding a way to reunite the Leave-based coalition of 2019 therefore suggests itself as a route to electoral recovery. Yet there are significant barriers.
In April 2025, Robert Jenrick (at that point still in the Conservative shadow cabinet) vowed to “bring this coalition together […] one way or another” and warned of the “nightmare scenario” of a split allowing Starmer to win again. Kemi Badenoch, however, has dismissed the idea of a Conservative-Reform pact as “for the birds.” Farage, leading comfortably in the polls, has little incentive to agree to one and has variously expressed his desire to destroy the Conservative Party outright. From the opposite direction, January 2026 saw the launch of a new movement, Prosper UK, led by former Mayor of the West Midlands, Sir Andy Street, and the former leader of the Conservatives in Scotland, Baroness Ruth Davidson. This group argues that the Conservatives should occupy the moderate center ground to differentiate themselves from Reform UK. The party is, in short, being pulled in two directions at once.
The party is, in short, being pulled in two directions at once.
The Populist Ratchet
Whatever happens next, the dynamic of party competition on the right is already being framed and conducted within the parameters of populist conservatism. Rising support for Reform increases the pressure on Badenoch to compete with Farage on immigration, the European Convention on Human Rights, and net zero. More Trumpian attacks on the judiciary, civil service, the BBC, and universities are likely to emanate from both parties as they are drawn further into what is arguably a vortex of populist one-upmanship. This dynamic will further unmoor the Conservative Party from its more traditional statecraft approach.
In 1995, Andrew Gamble observed that the passion and conviction in British politics was still mostly on the right and warned that, should the center-left miss its opportunity to reshape the British state, the future might belong to a reinvigorated populist conservatism. Thirty years on, that warning looks prescient. The Starmer government has struggled to assert itself despite its large majority; eight in ten voters now think Britain is becoming a worse place to live. The right in Britain is being reshaped, not by one party triumphing over the other, but by a symbiotic competition that is entrenching populist conservatism as the dominant ideological force. For international observers, the British case offers a distinctive lesson. In France and Italy, the populist challenge to the mainstream right grew from post-fascist traditions distinct from the conservative mainstream. In Germany and the Netherlands, the challengers emerged from within mainstream conservative parties but subsequently radicalized well beyond them. The British case is distinctive because both the Conservatives and Reform UK continue to operate within the same conservative intellectual tradition. The result is not the displacement of conservatism by populism but the fusion of the two. Whether it will be the Conservatives, Reform UK, or some amalgamation of the two that emerges to lead this populist conservatism remains to be seen.
Richard Hayton is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Leeds, and Editor of The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. He has published widely on British politics, with a particular focus on the politics of the right. This blog draws on his article “To conserve or to reform? The reshaping of the Right in British politics,” published in British Politics.
Image: Made by John Chrobak using “Nigel Farage Trago Mills June 2024” by Owain.davies licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
