Operation Elastic Farage

Reform UK has tied itself in knots over the Iran War - and it highlights a contradiction at the very heart of right-wing populism

Immediately after Donald Trump launched his lethal assault on Iran, key voices on the British right united - as they often do - to offer their unconditional, full-throated support.

Keir Starmer’s cautious middle-ground approach was condemned as cowardice, even a cynical concession to Muslim voters. For Nigel Farage, his top lieutenants, and much of the tabloid press, only one thing seemed to matter: the drums of war were sounding.

“We should do all we can” to aid the US assault, Farage argued. Reform Deputy Leader Richard Tice claimed that, if his party was in power, “we would be helping the Americans and the Israelis in any way they saw appropriate.” Nadhim Zahawi said that Britain “should join the bombing,” and Zia Yusuf accused Starmer of “disgracing Britain” for not joining in full force.

But the realities of the conflict quickly set in on the public. By March 9th, 61% of Britons said the reasons for the full-fledged aerial assault on Tehran - which killed hundreds of civilians in addition to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini - were unclear. A further 59% opposed or strongly opposed Britain’s involvement in the war in any capacity.

Reform UK had begun goose-stepping to Trump’s militant mood music without considering the material reality of the conflict. There wasn’t (and still isn’t) a clear strategy for the attack or its fallout - the Trump administration offered about five different conflicting rationales all at once. In the short term, hundreds of thousands of British citizens across the Middle East face turmoil and explosions. And in the long-term, supply shocks and refugee crises threaten to cause further economic and political chaos here at home.

Essentially, this war is likely to bring to bear all of the things that Reform voters hate. It would be a disaster for the neglected towns and struggling post-industrial communities that they appeal to. It will almost certainly create an unprecedented new influx of refugees. And it associates them with a blind willingness to jump into foreign quagmires with the United States - a habit the British public is rightfully quite wary of.

And so faced with that reality - their populist fantasies meeting the cold, hard facts of war - Reform’s response was predictable. They’re now simply pretending they never said any of it. As if nothing happened, Farage, Tice, Jenrick and others have come out to say that while they agree with Trump’s motives, they don’t think getting involved in a war would be good for Britain right now. It’s gaslighting on an unprecedented scale - no apologies or even self-awareness about their blatant screeching U-turn.

In a sense, the Iran war has served as a useful test for Reform. A major geopolitical event like this one will separate the easy talk from the hard yards of foreign policy.

Once again, Reform reveals itself as a coalition of contradictions. Are they neoconservative war hawks or “Britain First” isolationists? Loyal to Trump’s geopolitical agenda or Britain’s national interest? Is this a revolt against elites or a party run by millionaire financiers promising deregulation and Thatcherite economics?

The Canadian historian Quinn Slobodian, author of Hayek’s Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right, told me once that you have to separate the “supply side” (the leaders and donors) of a movement like Reform from the “demand side” (the voters). That there is a fundamental disconnect between those two groups, the former peddling compelling narratives for the latter - even if they don’t believe it themselves.

Farage, Tice, and the rest live in a world where backing Trump is a cost-free gesture. It's a line in their ‘MAGA’ script, a way to generate a clip for GB News. They don't live in the world where the consequences land. The supply shocks, the refugee crises, the community breakdown. And when it’s clear their script isn’t well-received, they simply switch it out for a new one.

And that, I think, is the real indictment of both right-wing populism and the political system that enables it. It’s not just that Reform UK embarrassingly changed its mind on a key foreign policy decision, but that its mind was never really made up in the first place. That they hold no core or foundational principle, they can simply attempt to read the room and perform their way to success.

This is what a broken democracy looks like. Politics has become a hall of mirrors, a closed-loop system of gestures and counter-gestures.

Reform UK rode into Westminster promising to smash the consensus. But Operation Elastic Farage has revealed they have nothing to replace it with other than whatever Trump does (and no one can truly predict what that’s going to be). The right-wing populist revolution, it turns out, is just another turn of the wheel.