The new racial regime: ethnographic reflections on the mainstreaming of Reform UK and colour-blind racisms through the lens of civility

In this paper, I set out to examine the symbiotic relationship between reactionary right-wing discourses of Reform UK and those of mainstream British society. My argument is that to understand the attraction of Reform UK to British citizens we need to explore the ways in which their policies, beliefs and rhetoric are constituted by the often taken-for-granted norms and values of the so-called ‘mainstream’. From this standpoint, it becomes clear how this reactionary right-wing politics comes to appeal to British citizens across racial, ethnic, class and gender identities. In advancing this argument I build upon and develop the work and thought of the political theorists and sociologists Brown, Mondon and Winter (2023). These scholars contend that the media often mistakenly assume that far-right politics across Europe originates from outside of the ‘mainstream’ of political and public life. Consequently, the ‘mainstream’ of democratic European life becomes depicted as the ‘helpless victims responding to the right and what people want’ (2023). In stark contrast to this analysis, Brown and her colleagues argue that we need to see the mainstream of western social life as ‘playing an active role in the context in which these … ideas can flourish’ (Brown et al, 2023). In this paper, I demonstrate the mainstreaming of Reform UK’s politics by juxtaposing vignettes and interview extracts drawn from two periods of ethnographic fieldwork. The first phase of fieldwork involved my observations at Reform UK’s annual national conferences, public rallies and events held during the 2024 UK general election campaign period (Funded by the ERC, TWICEASGOOD, PI Susan Banducci). The second period of fieldwork includes in-depth conversational-style interviews that I conducted with individual Leave voters (Funded by the ESRC, Brexit and Belonging, PI Tyler). In my analysis, I trace how both Reform UK activists and my Leave interlocutors articulate and reproduce what Lentin (2025) and other sociologists of critical race and ethnicity theory have identified as ‘colour-blind’ (Bonilla-Silva, 2022) and ‘post-racial’ (Patel and Connelley, 2023) forms of racism that they suggest is the dominant form of racism within western societies. In my analysis, I attempt to draw out how that which Stuart Hall (1978; 2023) famously identified in the 1970s as, the ‘homegrown’ ‘indigenous British racism’ of the ‘postwar period’ is ‘repurposed’ (Lentin, 2025) within political and everyday articulations of colour-blind racisms underpinning the new racial regime. Throughout my analysis I shall consider the extent to which the theory and language of civility offer a useful framework for tracing the mainstreaming of the far-right politics of Reform UK within British society. I ask to what extent does Reform UK purport to articulate a politics of civility in speaking for the ‘decent silent majority’? I illustrate how this politics of civility is put to work to support the mainstreaming of homegrown indigenous British post-racial racisms.