By Paul Behrens
Among the zillion claims made by the Brexit campaign, one was always particularly hard to defend: that, having left one of the largest trading blocs in the world, Britain’s influence would increase. Takes a brave soul to say that. Or a foolhardy one.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Boris Johnson, shortly after the referendum results were in, proclaimed that we “can find our voice in the world again”, and, as Prime Minister, he talked about “firmly planting the British flag on the world stage once again”.
Oh, British influence has grown. If not exactly in the way he envisaged.
One thing is certainly true: Britain has taught the world a lesson. After all the misery that Brexit wreaked, its cousins Frexit, Nexit and Swexit are no longer talked about. One suspects the EU is rather grateful for that.
But there’s another influence that Britain has had on its neighbours, a more worrying one. It concerns the way in which, following Brexit, the far right managed to advance. At a time of ever increasing disenchantment with the referendum results (62% of people consider Brexit a failure; only 11% a success), you would have thought that the architects of this colossal shipwreck had no choice but to fall on their swords (which, in British politics, means retire to country estates or to the comfy benches in the Lords). Nor is it entirely true that the people were immediately happy to trust them with the family silver. At the last general election, Nigel Farage’s party gained five seats only. But that, of course, is not the whole story. There were council elections, too, in which Reform won a whopping 677 seats. There was an inordinate amount of airtime for them, for which the BBC has much to answer. And since the spring of 2025, Reform has consistently led the national opinion polls.
That has an impact abroad: other populists take note. In Germany, Alice Weidel, co-chair of the far right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), now considers the 2016 referendum “absolutely right” and a “model for Germany”. And the influence does not stop there: Farage’s long-standing criticism of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is slowly turning into a topic of discussion in Germany too, with a leading German Conservative promoting a debate about this.
The sheer rise of the far right is one point that marks the increasing influence of Brexit’s spiritual fathers; both at home and abroad. It is joined by two other aspects: on the one hand, the way in which the far right determines the political debate; on the other, the way in which the traditional parties have dealt with populists since Brexit.
For far-right influence on mainstream politics, it would be hard to find a better example than the changing attitudes towards the ECHR. When Suella Braverman in 2023 called for reform (not even the ditching) of the Convention, she seemed an eccentric voice. And when she mooted disapplying the Human Rights Act (the law implementing the ECHR), the former Minister Damian Green called it “the most unconservative statement I have ever heard from a Conservative politician”.
What a difference two years make. In October 2025, Kemi Badenoch not only announced her plan to leave the ECHR, but to quit other treaties as well, if needs be (the Refugee Convention would likely be among them).
Deportation is now the Tories’ holy grail: 750,000 people are to be removed within five years, a tough new “Removals Force” to be established. Legal aid in immigration cases will be scrapped: there “will be no need for lawyers”, because claims will be “fairly assessed against the criteria”. Presumably by Mrs Badenoch. That’s all right then.
How fortunate, then, that Britain is led by a human rights lawyer: exactly the right person to stand up to that kind of talk and tell the populists that migrants are our friends and that we need their invaluable work.
Strangely enough, the mood music from Downing Street is quite different.
Deportation figures are a measure of success for Starmer, too, with the government announcing that the “highest number of illegal migrants in five years” have been removed and taking care to note that those removed “include criminals convicted of drug offences, theft, rape and murder”. The chatbot of the Daily Express could not have said it better.
The government is happy to announce plans to slash, by two-thirds, the number of NHS doctors and nurses that were trained abroad. To ban overseas recruitment of care workers. To impose a surcharge on international students of 6% (that is, on top of skyrocketing tuition fees and not being allowed to bring your family members to the country).
The handwriting of the far right is everywhere. At about the same time when a massive far right gathering covered London in Union Jacks and St George’s flags, flags appeared on lamp posts in the Birmingham area, then all over the country. Birmingham Tory councillors saw nothing wrong with that and urged the council to put up flags in every high street “so we can all share in the pride of our great nation”.
What exactly “pride in our great nation” means was illustrated a month later, when Conservative MP Katie Lam suggested that a large number of people legally resident in the UK should have that right taken away. Once they went home, she observed, what would be left would be “a mostly… culturally coherent group of people”. If that’s too obscure, one can always rely on Robert Jenrick (then still a leading Tory) to make things clearer: in Handsworth, Birmingham, he said, he “didn’t see another white face”, and that was not the kind of country he wanted to live in. This was, of course, “not about the colour of your skin,” said the man who just talked about the colour of your skin.
Surely this was the point at which the government would provide a much-needed counterweight to far right rhetoric?
Where the flag mania was concerned, Starmer’s spokesman could not have been clearer. Asked if the Prime Minister supported the flag raisers, he replied: “Absolutely, patriotism, putting up English flags”. When it later emerged that the flag-raising movement was in part supported by far right activists, it surprised no one who had only the faintest interest in 1930s history.
Katie Lam’s comments were rejected (if only after a considerable delay), but, just in case anybody suspected Labour of being snowflakes, the government came up with its own tough plans. Migrants coming on certain visas will now have to speak English at A level standard and earn at least £41,700. To settle permanently, lawful residence for ten years will be required, a “spotless criminal record”, as well as “giving back by, for example, working in your local community”. (Needless to say, not many Brits would fulfil all these conditions.)
Those who are uncomfortable with the current political debate, are told that traditional parties have to take a tough stance on migration, lest they lose the field to Reform. (A strange argument, resembling that about a bombing target in the Vietnam war: we had “to destroy the town to save it”).
But even if you accept that, surely the higher purpose then is to send the populists packing?
What has really happened, is the opposite.
As early as April 2025, some Tory politicians dreamt about a coalition with Reform; only to be swiftly spurned by Farage, who, in light of their poor performance, wanted nothing to do with the Tories. You would be forgiven for thinking that that would be humiliation enough for anyone. Things work differently for the Conservatives: six months later, a poll revealed that 64% of them wanted a pact with Reform; 46% a full merger. Not that they are the only party that set their clocks by Farage: in November 2025, when Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood made her “tough” statement on the asylum system, complete with new attacks on the ECHR, Reform MP Danny Kruger said he recognised the “rhetoric” and speculated that she may have already put in an application to join Reform. Good old Westminster banter, sure, but with so much truth in it that the chuckle sticks in your throat.
Under these circumstances, is hope still an option?
There may be a light in the dark, not more than a flickering candle. But this is what keeps it alive.
If the far right, with all their Brexit ballast, with all their falsehoods about immigration, and with only five MPs, manage to set the political agenda, the same chance exists for those whose path is lit by truth, democracy and human rights. One third of the electorate – that is as much as Reform can attract – is a formidable force, that is true. But it can win only under one condition: that the other two-thirds give up the fight.
Dr Paul Behrens is Reader in International Law at the University of Edinburgh
