“Support for Reform is much more than a protest vote, finds new British Social Attitudes research” is the title of the press release for the new BSA report ‘Who supports Reform?’, published in June this year.
The BSA report is based on a small subsection of responses to the annual British Social Attitudes survey conducted between August and October 2025. Overall, 18% of respondents to the survey were categorised as being ‘supporters’ of Reform. That categorisation was based on responses to a series of questions designed to “capture whether someone identifies with and has an emotional attachment to a particular party, even if currently they might not vote for that party”.
Only half of those categorised as a Reform supporter had actually voted Reform in 2024, and the timing of the survey means these findings are not a reliable indicator of the character of Reform voters in the 2026 May elections.
The report is structured around two explanations for the rise in support for Reform in recent years. Is this “a cry of protest against the material policy failures of successive governments?” Or “maybe support for the party is primarily concentrated among those with a ‘socially conservative’ outlook”.
In reality, it is impossible to separate ideological outlooks from the experience of living under ‘material policy failures’. Attitudes do not stem from individuals in isolation, but are shaped through our experiences of living in capitalist society. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the findings of the report point to contradictory conclusions.
The purpose of the report is to draw out the social policy implications, in particular, to inform the policy choices and priorities for Labour and the Conservatives. If Reform support is “primarily grounded in dissatisfaction with the performance of recent governments”, then the authors anticipate improvements in the economy, living standards, and the health service might lessen Reform’s popularity. However, if support is primarily rooted in a “pro-Brexit, socially conservative outlook”, then the future of Reform “and British politics more generally will rest heavily on who can win the competition for the support of the country’s social conservatives”.
In other words: should Labour continue to attempt to out-reform Reform, or can they regain support based on delivering improvements?
These shallow perspectives rest on a fundamental misunderstanding of what has taken place in British society in the past decade and of the limited capacity of Labour to both deliver improvements to living standards at the same time as remaining loyal to the interests of British capitalism in a state of decline.
The report claims that Reform UK are the “new challenge to the traditional post-war order of British politics”. Going on to assert it was Reform who “helped inflict on the Conservatives the biggest defeat in their history” and are now “undermining Labour’s electoral prospects too”. In reality, Reform is a product of the declining support for the former establishment parties and the continued absence of a genuine pro-worker alternative, rather than the cause.
Successive Conservative and Labour governments have acted in the interests of British capitalism in relative decline within an increasingly unstable and crisis-ridden global capitalist system. Neither party has delivered improvements to the living standards for the majority. Endless austerity and stagnant real-term wage increases have eroded the social reserves of all the capitalist institutions, including establishment political parties.
All of this is supported by the findings of the report, if not the analysis of the reporters. Those defined as Reform supporters were more likely to be struggling financially and most dissatisfied with the state of the NHS. They had a lack of trust in the government and politicians and lacked “confidence in the ability of the British state (and perhaps the two traditional parties of British government) to solve the policy challenges that it is currently facing”.
Reform supporters were also more likely to “strongly agree” with three statements aimed at assessing support for populist arguments: “The people, and not politicians, should make our most important policy decisions; politicians talk too much and take too little action; there is a conflict between the ordinary people and those in power in Britain”.
Although “as measured by these items at least, much of the public apparently has a populist outlook”, with 73% agreeing that there is conflict between ordinary people and those in power in Britain!
The figureheads of right-populist parties in Britain and internationally have built a base by posing as ‘anti-establishment’ and appealing to those disillusioned with capitalist institutions, promising, among other things, to restore ‘prosperity’. They continue to exploit the political vacuum.
Most of the blame for the problems of British society is misdirected and shrouded in reactionary and divisive ideas. Such ideas can have greater resonance when they appear to line up with or match experience. This is one of the reasons why it is a fallacy to counterpose a ‘protest vote’ – as evidenced by general dissatisfaction – and “distinct ideological outlooks”.
The report authors conclude that “support for Reform is not simply an expression of ‘protest’. Although those who back the party are more likely than voters in general to be struggling with the cost of living, to be concerned about the health service, and to be unhappy about how the country is being governed, they are distinguished above all by having a socially conservative outlook that is reflected, inter alia, in their attitudes towards immigration, equalities policies, and welfare spending”.
This conclusion is fundamentally flawed. Not only is there a failure to recognise the interaction between experience and ideology, but ‘socially conservative’ attitudes are presented as a fixed characteristic like a shoe size. This is a major error, especially stark given a strength of the BSA is the ability to offer snapshots of changing social attitudes.
For example, on attitudes towards immigration there have been phenomenal shifts within the BSA survey results over time. In 2011, 42% thought immigration was ‘bad’ for the economy compared to 21% who said it was ‘good’; the rest took a neutral position. In 2017 – the year Jeremy Corbyn won a million voters from UKIP on his anti-austerity manifesto – just 17% answered ‘bad’, with 47% responding that immigration was ‘good’ for the economy. While in recent years there has been an increase in those responding ‘bad’, there are still 11% more people responding that migration is ‘good’ than in 2011, with two-thirds taking either a positive or neutral position.
This itself is evidence that anti-migrant ideas are not fixed, and while Reform supporters may currently hold attitudes that are out of step with the general population on issues such as welfare, this does not mean they will remain ‘ideologically distinct’ forever.
Further, the section dealing with how ‘ideologically distinct’ Reform supporters are is far from conclusive. While there does seem to be a higher concentration of support for Reform among survey respondents categorised as ‘authoritarian’ rather than ‘liberal’, the report also concluded it would be “a mistake to describe Reform supporters as markedly ‘right-wing’.”
Those supporting the following statements were categorised as ‘left-wing’: “Ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation’s wealth”; “big business benefits owners at the expense of workers”; “government should redistribute income from the better-off to those who are less well off”. Of all those defined as ‘left-wing’, 15% were also categorised as being a Reform supporter. In contrast, 17% were identified as Green Party supporters.
Overall, the report leaves far more questions than it does answers on the true nature of ‘who supports Reform’ – no breakdown of responses in relation to social class is given, for example.
But even in its limited form, the actual data that is included – if not the conclusions given – point to the real potential for sections of Reform supporters who currently hold reactionary attitudes to be won away from such ideas based on a class appeal, as happened in 2017 under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
Promoting the flawed idea that all Reform supporters are far-right, and ideologically distinctive because of their socially conservative attitudes, will further entrench division within the working class, which is counterproductive to the aim of winning such sections of the working class away from Reform.
Bea Gardner