With Reform UK predicted to win up to a dozen seats in the 2026 Holyrood election, Alex Massie has said “We can no longer claim that Reform is an English nationalist project.”
Why would you have claimed that anyway, Alex? What is it about Reform that makes them English nationalist? Do you know how many times England was mentioned in the Reform UK manifesto? Zero. Nil. Zilch. They didn’t mention England at all. Was there an England flag backdrop at their UK conference? Err…no.
Maybe they had England flags at their Scottish and Welsh conferences? No, there were no flag backdrops at the Scottish conference and giant Union and Welsh flags at the Welsh conference. Maybe they had England flags at their English conference? No, they didn’t have an English conference.
The fact that Reform UK don’t mention England or use England’s symbols (as one would expect an English nationalist party to do) doesn’t stop all and sundry on social media referring to them as English nationalists. Quiet Riot Podcast, for example, expressed the view that “I want to see the xenophobic, toxic, English nationalism of Farage and his cabal defeated and roundly. I don’t want Trumpism in Britain.”
This sort of remark is straight out the Trump playbook. Trump calls Democrats communists; Quiet Riot calls British nationalists English nationalists.
There is no point ‘othering’ Reform UK as English nationalists just for the self-righteous glow. It’s just playing to the prejudices of the people in your bubble. At present, Reform UK are not English nationalist. They do have a policy to make St George’s Day and St David’s Day public holidays but the majority of English and Welsh people support that. Jeremy Corbyn promised the same.
Reform UK exhibit the same Anglocentric British nationalism as the Labour Party and the Tories. Farage conflates UK-wide policy and England-only policy just as Starmer does. Both prioritise the British flag and talk about Britain even when they’re discussing an England-only policy area.
No doubt Farage will engage in some English populism at some stage, he’s done it before. He’ll get out a Cross of St George for St George’s Day or the football and everyone will say ‘Ha! An English nationalist!’, as if Starmer and even Gordon Brown didn’t do the same.
None of this is to say that Reform UK couldn’t become English nationalist. There may come a time when it makes electoral sense for Reform to be pivot to English nationalism. Labour abolishing English local councils and handing planning consent for housing estates, wind farms and prisons to Westminster or unasked for regional mayors is just the type of thing to increase English anger to the levels that will give Farage pause for thought. But don’t expect him to lay down his Union Flags just yet, he’s on a roll and he’s beating the established British nationalist parties of Westminster at their own game.
English Commonwealth 