Warnings about the state of democracies have been plentiful in these times of widespread destabilization. Yet the xenophobic slogans chanted by more than 110,000 protestors on September 13 as they marched in the center of Westminster, the seat of British power, rang out like an alarm bell. Historically, the United Kingdom has been a country whose parliamentary democracy is seen as deeply entrenched and whose people − proud of their resistance to Nazism − consider themselves to be immutably "moderate" and resistant to extremism. And yet, the far right now occupies the streets and threatens to take power through the ballot box. The nationalist agitators who clashed with police, shouting "send them back!" in reference to foreigners, have now joined forces with the growing ranks of voters who support the anti-immigration party Reform UK.
Polling at 31% of voting intentions, the party − led by Nigel Farage, who inspired Brexit − currently leads by a wide margin, far ahead of the ruling Labour Party (20%) and the Tories (16%). This is unprecedented in a country with a century-long uninterrupted tradition of power transfers between the two major parties.
Back in 2014, xenophobia was already one of the main forces that drove the UK's split with the European Union, which was accused of enabling the unchecked arrival of workers from Eastern Europe. Since the UK left the EU, Poles can no longer freely move there, but they have been replaced by a record – and much larger – number of people who have come from former colonies of the British Empire (Nigeria, India, Pakistan and others).
Not only has Brexit – which only 32% of UK residents polled now consider to have been a good decision – failed to live up to its promise of "taking back control" of the borders, but it has also worsened the controversy over immigration, which has since been made even more toxic by Donald Trump's policies. It has reached the point where Vernon Bogdanor, a leading British constitutional law expert, warned in an op-ed in the Guardian of the "moral panic" that "inflammatory rhetoric" over immigration can generate.
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