From Farage and Trump to Elon Musk, the right is well practised at using jokes and memes to hint at what they want to do without making the argument out loud. But they have another trick: claiming to be “normal people.”

Not far right, just right

In an interview with the Economist, after being described as supporting the populist right, far-right and fringe parties (such as the AfD in Germany), Elon Musk shot back:

No, I support the normal people; what you call the far right, falsely.

He, of course, went further. With offense is the best defense, Musk took a moment to:

admonish [the interviewer] and the media for the absurd characterisation of the far right; it is false and misleading and nonsense.

Musk’s defense echoes a banner from a riot in Rotherham in 2024 that saw an asylum hotel set on fire:

We are not far right, just right.

Even today, Nigel Farage used a similar defense after an investigation was opened into a £5m gift he received. He triggered:

a people versus the establishment by-election [as] a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment.

Manufacturing normal

Clearly, this defense is commonly resorted to. But none of the actions these people were defending are representative of normal people. Most people do not set asylum hotels on fire, nor receive £5m from crypto billionaires, nor become the first-ever trillionaire.

“Normal people” is then a rhetorical shield. The defense functions as an escape from accountability. Rather than answering the question, the right calls their position “normal” to remove the need to defend it as a choice and frame the opposition as abnormal by comparison.

Farage’s Clacton by-election framing, for example, tried to turn an investigation into an undisclosed £5m personal donation into “people versus the establishment.” “Normal people” becomes a reflex when the radical-right faces scrutiny from a regulator, journalist or court.

Imaginary electorate

The idea that radical-right forces are backed by normal people is also largely imagined. In the UK, Reform’s politics have no democratic mandate. They have never received a majority of the vote in elections, nor in polling. Already, it seems like Reform’s support has hit a ceiling, based on the rest of the electorate disliking them too much to be converted. That leaves them with around a quarter of the electorate to work with.

In the Senedd elections this year, Plaid Cymru beat Reform into second place, 43 seats to 34. Reform then lost three successive by-elections to three different challengers: Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly, the Greens in Gorton and Denton, and Labour’s Andy Burnham in Makerfield. It seems like the majority of voters actually turn-out against Reform. The “normal people” that these figures speak of are not a norm at all. They do not represent any majority demographic either.

Digital manipulation

Where organic numbers are lacking to support the radical-right’s claim to normality, the idea can be digitally manufactured.

A BBC investigation suggested pro-Reform bot activity across social media platforms. If “normal people” is the political product being sold, the digital era allows that product to be manufactured rather than recruited. None of the rhetoric is coming from normal people either. Currently, a set of extraordinarily wealthy and socially privileged political actors present themselves as the voice of “normal people.”

Musk became the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX went public. Farage was privately educated at Dulwich College, the son of a stockbroker, and spent his early career as a commodities trader. Rupert Lowe was privately educated at Radley College, worked in the City, chaired Southampton FC and is worth about £30 million. Elite actors are claiming to represent ordinary people, while artificial content amplifies the idea that ordinary voices agree with them.

The resulting impression of consensus then gets treated as proof of normality to use as a shield against accountability and a weapon to isolate the opposition.

Blitzkrieg, not shrinkage

The key thing to remember is that these people do not want a smaller state; they want to tear down the established institutions so they can wield the state unchecked.

The writings of Dominic Cummings are a useful guide to what the radical-right’s vision of government actually looks like. Cummings was the strategist behind the Brexit-era Vote Leave campaign, coined ‘Take Back Control’, and, as a result, became Boris Johnson’s chief adviser. After all these experiences, Cummings has laid out, in detail, what he thinks needs to be done:

bring in 20 hotshots, fire all the permanent secretaries, put them in charge of this, use the actual powers of the PM, close departments, open them, fire people.

Cummings would then want that backed immediately by:

a whole series of primary legislation, repeal the Human Rights Act, repeal the Equality Act, reform how judicial review works, bin the Climate Change Act.

All that within the first year in office. And if the House of Lords tries to block it:

we’re going straight at the King, we’ll appoint 600 new peers, and it’ll be blitzkrieg on you guys.

Cummings’ wrecking ball

We know that Cummings’ program for government might have some influence on Reform’s program. In 2024, Cummings and Farage had dinner to, in Farage’s own words, discuss:

the blob and what were the practical problems of coming into government.

In the same spirit of Cummings’ wrecking-ball approach to government, Reform’s deportation plan, Operation Restoring Justice, is a blueprint for state expansion: leaving the ECHR, disapplying the Refugee Convention and the UN Convention Against Torture, building a detention estate, and a new enforcement unit, UK Deportation Command.

The worst part might be the data dimension, as the plan would create an enforcement data centre/data-fusion system, mandate biometric capture during police encounters, and establish automatic data-sharing between the UK Deportation Command, Home Office, NHS, HMRC, DVLA, banks and police. Reform’s plan would then expand policing, detention and surveillance, undermining fundamental legal architecture.

Dismantling those constraints is the precondition for everything Cummings and the populist right desire; a revolution against institutions that protect normal people carried out in their name. It should also be noted how much their plans stray from traditional British conservatism, which revolved around preserving the established order and British institutions.

Call it Restoring Justice or taking back control, the right’s true project is building a new normal in the radical-right’s interests, not those of everyday people, with fewer institutions left standing in the way.

Featured image via Reuters

By Hugo Harvey

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