Britain’s Reform UK party held its party conference last week. Founded as the Brexit Party in 2018, Reform has moved on from its early focus on the UK–EU relationship to set out a wider right-wing populist policy platform and seeks to present itself as a future party of government.
Prior to last year’s election, that seemed a distant prospect. But the party now has four MPs – on par with the left-wing Green Party but still far behind the Liberal Democrats. Over the summer, Reform had significant wins in local elections and has climbed in polls on voting intention – hitting 31 per cent in some polling aggregates in September. Much could change in the four years before the next election – but the prospect of Reform forming a government, or being part of one, is more likely than it was 18 months ago before the July 2024 election.
Reform’s main focus is migration, which has led UK headlines over the summer. But the first year of the current UK Labour government has been dominated by broader foreign affairs issues, including the Trump administration’s reluctance to underwrite European security, the war in Ukraine, and the challenge of spending more on defence (and more effectively). The pillars of UK foreign policy have also changed – particularly as the US becomes a less reliable security partner. A future Reform government would need answers to these challenges. The question is, does it have them?
Migration and deportations
Migration dominates Reform’s political offer. In late August, the party said it would be prepared to deport up to 600,000 migrants in a parliamentary term if it wins power, particularly via deporting asylum seekers. It is not clear if the focus would be on new arrivals or those already in the UK, but the numbers suggest this could cover bespoke humanitarian schemes responsible for a significant number of asylum seeker arrivals in the past five years – including for Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan.
Deporting this many people would involve withdrawing from international treaties including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and striking returns agreements with conflict-affected, hostile or authoritarian states. From 2002 to 2025, the top five origin countries of those claiming asylum in the UK were Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Eritrea. Returns agreements are also difficult to conclude and opaque, very few of the UK’s existing agreements have been published.
While some schemes have brought numbers down, many are ultimately not implemented in full or have only a short-term effect. For example, several reports into EU returns agreements say they were not fully honoured in practice. Countries receiving returning migrants can also use agreement negotiations to extract concessions that serve their own priorities. A future Reform government will want to do rapid deals, but the interests and politics of counterpart countries will make it unlikely they can achieve this at the pace they suggest, even aside from the opaque concessions to hostile regimes they may need to make.
Zia Yusuf, the Reform UK party chair, has described return agreements as the party’s planned ‘almighty foreign policy push’, but this could leave little space for a future Reform government to manage other international issues. Balancing relations between major powers – particularly the US, Europe and China – has consumed much of the foreign affairs focus of the current government, including managing the risk that the US will withdraw from backstopping European security altogether. A playbook of Eurosceptic and anti-migration sentiment may offer political benefits, but it does not offer answers to these new security questions, which throw the UK’s relations with the US and Europe in a new light.
The UK–US relationship beyond Trump–Farage ties
Reform’s approach to the US relationship is unclear. Its leader Nigel Farage often highlights his personal relationship with US President Donald Trump who, like other populist leaders, prioritizes personal ties. But these do not guarantee US concessions or support in a fundamentally self-interested, and volatile, administration – as has recently become painfully clear to India’s Narendra Modi.
Trump himself remains unpopular with British voters. He will also not be in power after the next UK general election (if elections are held as scheduled). Whether a Reform-led government could translate any personal affinity with Trump into concrete outcomes with the wider US populist right after Trump is unclear – ‘America First’ leaves little room for the interest of allies. It is also unclear how Reform would navigate growing US protectionism, or a future American administration led by a Democrat.
The UK’s role in European security
A key question for any future government will be the UK’s role in European security and the defence of Ukraine. Although Farage recently backed Kyiv’s NATO aspirations, he has previously said the expansion of NATO – and the EU – ‘provoked’ Russia’s war. Reform voters themselves are sceptical of sustained British support for Ukraine absent US leadership, raising doubts about what role a Reform government envisions for the UK in deterring Russian aggression – or any planned ‘coalition of the willing’ for Ukraine in the longer term.
