Britain is much closer to tyranny than many realise, according to a recent analysis by Owen Jones. The warning follows chilling comments by Zia Yusuf, a leading figure in Reform UK, who described Tory and Labour politicians as “traitors to their country” and promised a “reckoning”. Historically, those labelled traitors have not fared well, Jones notes.
The UK’s centralised state and lack of a codified constitution make it particularly vulnerable to authoritarianism, Jones argues. Unlike the US, Britain has no state governments, no federal courts, and parliamentary sovereignty means a majority government faces few obstacles. Reform UK’s proposal to replace the House of Lords with a “more democratic” second chamber is vague, with details left for future debate.
Successive governments have already built an authoritarian framework, Jones says. Anti-protest laws and anti-terror legislation have curtailed liberties, and the current Labour government has proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, leading to mass arrests of protesters. Left-wing commentators Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur have been banned from entering Britain on grounds of public good.
Reform UK plans to leave the European Court of Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act, stripping legal protections. It wants to create a British version of ICE for mass deportations, targeting not only undocumented migrants but also those with indefinite leave to remain and foreign nationals in social housing. Zia Yusuf has boasted that “lawyers and judges will be powerless to stop any of it”.
The party also proposes politicising the civil service, replacing leaders with political appointees from the private sector, and giving ministers power to sack civil servants. It would grant the government direct control over police and attack judicial independence, framing it as a war on “activist judges”. Reform demands an end to “two-tier policing”, claiming without evidence that left-wing movements and minorities are treated leniently while far-right rioters are persecuted.
In practice, Jones warns, this means a crackdown on the left and minorities. Reform is committed to banning pro-Palestinian protests and has called for “Antifa” to be proscribed as a “hate organisation”, despite no such organisation existing. The party also wants to scrap the Equality Act, removing core protections against discrimination, and Nigel Farage has claimed that growing numbers of young Muslims do not share British values, raising fears of a ban on “all forms of Islamism”.
