{"id":88606,"date":"2024-07-05T20:29:10","date_gmt":"2024-07-05T20:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/05\/reform-u-k-s-success-is-latest-sign-of-strength-for-europes-far-right\/"},"modified":"2024-07-05T20:29:10","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T20:29:10","slug":"reform-u-k-s-success-is-latest-sign-of-strength-for-europes-far-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/05\/reform-u-k-s-success-is-latest-sign-of-strength-for-europes-far-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform U.K.\u2019s Success Is Latest Sign of Strength for Europe\u2019s Far Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/07\/05\/multimedia\/05uk-blogreform\/05uk-blog-update-farage-bpkh-facebookJumbo.jpg?resize=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Reform U.K.\u2019s Success Is Latest Sign of Strength for Europe\u2019s Far Right\" title=\"Reform U.K.\u2019s Success Is Latest Sign of Strength for Europe\u2019s Far Right\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Keir Starmer and the Labour Party may have won Britain\u2019s general election, but another politician was also looking happy on Friday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Nigel Farage, Britain\u2019s veteran political disrupter and Brexit campaigner, saw his new anti-immigration Reform U.K. party secure five seats in Parliament and it could have been more. Reform won more than four million votes nationwide \u2014 around 14 percent \u2014 making it Britain\u2019s third most successful party by that measure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It was the latest successful result in Europe by populist, right-wing parties, and it instantly drew comparisons to the National Rally, which is seeking to become France\u2019s biggest party in that country\u2019s parliament in a final round of voting on Sunday. In his campaign, Mr. Farage said immigration had \u201cdiminished\u201d the quality of life in Britain and that \u201cthe time has come to stand up and say \u2018enough is enough.\u2019\u201d He has called for a \u201cfreeze\u201d on nonessential immigration, blaming it for putting pressure on health services and housing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Britain\u2019s electoral system of first-past-the-post tends to work against smaller parties, meaning that Reform collected far fewer seats in the 650-member House of Commons than its vote share might have indicated. Still, Mr. Farage sounded triumphant on Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThere is a massive gap on the center right of British politics, and my job is to fill it,\u201d he told jubilant supporters after it was announced that he had won a parliamentary seat in Clacton, an economically distressed seaside region, by a big margin. It was his first successful run after seven failed races for Parliament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He said his party would also \u201cnow be targeting Labour votes,\u201d building on its second-place finish in the popular vote to become the dominant center-left party in several seats in northern England.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But the Conservatives may be most worried for now by Reform\u2019s sudden rise. For years, Mr. Farage has tormented them, pushing the party to the right. Pressure from the U.K. Independence Party, which he once led, prompted the Tories to offer the Brexit referendum in 2016 that led to Britain\u2019s withdrawal from the European Union.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ahead of the general election, Mr. Farage suggested he could mount a takeover of the Conservatives if they suffered a cataclysmic defeat. A meltdown on that scale was averted. But with his three fellow lawmakers, Mr. Farage now has a bridgehead in Parliament, resources to build up his fledgling party and a platform from which to harass the Conservatives \u2014 as well as target voters in some traditionally Labour areas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Success could bring greater scrutiny. During the election campaign, Mr. Farage endured a wave of criticism after Channel 4 News aired an expos\u00e9 in which an undercover investigator secretly filmed Reform campaigners in Clacton making <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/28\/world\/europe\/racist-homophobic-reform-uk.html\" title=\"\">racist and homophobic statements<\/a>, including using a racial slur to describe the incumbent prime minister, Rishi Sunak.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Farage is no stranger to controversy. A strong supporter of Donald J. Trump \u2014 he had initially said he wouldn\u2019t run for Parliament so he could campaign for Mr. Trump in the United States \u2014 he has also argued that the West had provoked Russia into invading Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">His love of the limelight and his reluctance to delegate could hamper his ability to build his new party into the force he claims it will become. But he has nevertheless been able to force his way back onto the political stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">With Mr. Sunak saying on Friday that he would step down as party leader, the Conservatives must decide on a new leadership and direction, and whether to build back by appealing to centrist voters or those on the hard right.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In the general election, the Tories lost dozens of seats to the centrist Liberal Democrats, so some moderates see that as a reason for their party to tack to the center. But others are worried that Mr. Farage\u2019s noisy but often effective voice will push the party farther to the right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/07\/05\/world\/europe\/reform-uks-success-is-latest-sign-of-strength-for-europes-far-right.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Keir Starmer and the Labour Party may have won Britain\u2019s general election, but another politician was also looking happy on Friday. Nigel Farage, Britain\u2019s veteran political disrupter and Brexit campaigner, saw his new anti-immigration Reform U.K. party secure five seats in Parliament and it could have been more. Reform won more than four million votes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/07\/05\/multimedia\/05uk-blogreform\/05uk-blog-update-farage-bpkh-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9789,305,1793,15304,9459,4239,37151],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88608,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88606\/revisions\/88608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}