Monday briefing: What Farage's new obsession with nativism could mean

The Guardian

2 days ago

Good morning. In 2023, Nigel Farage went on a podcast to decry what he described as a culture of 'welfarism' in the UK, insisting it was making millions of people in the country lazy. ''I'm too fat, I'm too stupid, I'm too lazy, I don't get out of bed in the morning. I smoke drugs, give me money',' he said. ''I don't need to work, the state will provide for me' … We cannot afford it.'
Less than two years later, the self-styled free-market crusader seems to be singing a different tune. Last week, he publicly backed the removal of the two-child benefit cap – a move that would lift 350,000 children out of poverty overnight and ease hardship for 700,000 more.
So, what changed? At a press conference, he explained that removing the cap would help lower-paid workers have children. But then came the caveat: 'I want to emphasise that this is aimed at British families. It's not aimed at those that come into the country and suddenly decide to have a lot of children.'
He didn't stop there. Farage also floated more generous tax breaks for married couples, if elected, and tougher restrictions on abortion. He called the current 24-week limit 'ludicrous'.
This isn't a new strategy in Europe. Farage appears to be mirroring Hungary's Viktor Orbán, a pioneer in blending anti-immigration rhetoric with anti-abortion measures, while promoting nativist policies to boost birthrates.
For today's newsletter, I spoke to Sian Norris, author of Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global, about how these tactics are gaining ground in the UK, and what they could mean for the future of reproductive rights. That's after the headlines.
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When Sian Norris first began investigating the UK's anti-abortion movement, she came across an organisation called UK Life League. Its founder, Jim Dowson, is perhaps better known for starting the far-right party Britain First.
At first glance, the group seemed focused solely on opposing abortion. But once she started digging into their language and literature, it was clear that anti-abortion and anti-immigration rhetoric were being fused together. Alongside the usual scaremongering about migrants 'replacing' white Britons ran a parallel narrative: that feminists were suppressing the white birthrate through abortion and contraception. Together, these ideas were feeding the same conspiracy theory – the so-called 'great replacement'.
The group's magazine, Rescue, didn't exactly hide it. 'It would say things like: the children in our classrooms are being replaced by aliens, meaning migrant children, and that white babies were being aborted. It was very full of praise for people like Viktor Orbán and his family protection policy and his anti-migrant policies.'
The moment it all clicked for Norris was when she saw a cartoon shared by Mark Collette, the founder of far-right group Patriotic Alternative. 'It was a picture of hijabi-wearing women in a maternity clinic and white women in an abortion clinic with the caption 'this is white genocide'. It's this idea that white women are not doing their 'duty' making white babies.'
Norris also points to the man who carried out the terrorist attack against Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand. In his manifesto, he fixated on declining birthrates and blamed what he called 'selfish individualism' among women for not having enough children.
These links between anti-abortion politics and the far right, Norris said, shouldn't come as a surprise. Often misogyny is the gateway drug to the far right for young men. 'If you've got male supremacy in your head, then white supremacy is the next obvious step.'
The Orbán playbook
A couple of months ago, Norris went undercover to a Reform rally in Birmingham. In one event, the host was 'throwing out Labour policies' to gauge the audience's reactions, she said. Some topics got big reactions, like winter fuel allowance cuts or the lack of housing for veterans. But when it came to proposed cuts to disability benefits, she told me, 'it was crickets.' The silence was revealing.
'Benefits themselves aren't really a motivating issue for Reform voters,' she said. Farage was quite explicit about this when he backed calls to scrap the two-child benefit cap, not because he supports 'a benefits culture'. He is first and foremost concerned with demographic concerns. Norris described that as a 'classic tactic' from the far right when it comes to natalist policies.
'Orbán is the European politician that really normalised great replacement conspiracy theory. He was the one that would go to conferences and talk about replacement, talk about demographics. He would say that if you wanted a Christian Hungary and a Christian Europe, the way to do this was to incentivise ethnic Hungarian married women to have more children,' she said. 'And, we know that Farage is really influenced by the kind of Orban, US conservatism movement.'
She added that, for Farage, the driving force of this policy is not a concern about child poverty. 'He's talking about it because he wants more British women to have more British babies, and the fact that it would be coupled with this tax break for married couples is again a learned tactic from the far right in terms of what kind of families we value.'
A new front in the culture war
Farage has been active in British politics for more than three decades, but until recently, he had said very little about abortion. That changed last November, when he called for parliament to debate reducing the legal abortion limit from 24 weeks, citing advances in medical technology. The remarks marked a notable shift, which worries Norris.
'It feels like this is going to be the new front in the culture war. We know that the far right is very good at working out which issues are going to work in different territories. So in Poland, it's very much about abortion. In Romania, it's very much LGBT rights,' she said.
Norris described the 24-week abortion limit as 'the wedge' when it comes to anti-abortion campaigning. 'Abortion has mass popular support in this country. The British Attitudes Survey puts it at about 90% support for abortion in some circumstances,' she said. 'But people do get really emotional about the 24-week limit because of foetus viability and the fact that you can technically have a baby below 24 weeks.'
It's a tactic designed to trigger outrage and force a polarising debate, she explained. Supporters of abortion rights are pushed to defend procedures that are already rare and deeply complex. Only about 1% of UK abortions take place after 20 weeks, and these are almost always carried out in exceptional circumstances, such as severe foetal abnormalities or serious risks to the mother's health.
'I think it's going to be a whipping up of cultural values. It will be framed as: are you the mad, woke, pro-abortion side or the traditional, family-centric, anti-abortion side? That really concerns me,' Norris said.
Her reporting has uncovered links between rightwing MPs and US-backed Christian charities funding anti-abortion campaigns in the UK. These groups, she says, are already laying the groundwork ahead of a potential parliamentary debate over legislation that would remove the threat of imprisonment for women who terminate a pregnancy after 24 weeks.
They would be using trialled and tested messaging and tactics, Norris explained, most notably in the US. 'As soon as you start chipping away at abortion rights, it's much easier to chip away at the next one,' she warned. 'We'll go from 24 weeks to 22 weeks, and then, 'well, what about 20 weeks?' And then, 'what about if we add in this extra barrier and say you have an ultrasound, or have to have counselling'?'
The right direction
It's still unclear how successful Farage will be with this new strategy. Over the past decade, the UK has seen a string of major victories for abortion rights: decriminalisation in Northern Ireland, the permanent adoption of telemedicine after the pandemic and the introduction of buffer zones around clinics.
Now, the focus is on the upcoming parliamentary vote to decriminalise abortion. The vote, originally scheduled for last year, was expected to pass, even under a Conservative majority. 'Now I think with a Labour majority there's an even bigger chance of that happening. So I do think politically we are moving in the right direction and the momentum is for the pro-abortion movement,' Norris said.
While she remains concerned about abortion becoming the next front in the UK's culture wars, Norris is confident that public support remains strong. 'The anti-abortion movement is very noisy, but it is pretty small.'
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This is true, she added, even on a global scale. Although Roe v Wade was overturned in America, there were also significant global wins. In 2020, Argentina legalised abortion up to 14 weeks of pregnancy. In Mexico, in 2023, the supreme court decriminalised abortion across the country. Norris points to a report by the Centre for Reproductive Rights, which found that over the past 30 years, more than 60 countries and territories have liberalised their abortion laws. Only four have rolled back access.
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