Nigel Farage represents the latest populist spectre to haunt an established democracy: the United Kingdom (UK). He serves as a primary case study in how a populist can be manufactured to disrupt the status quo.
Originally a member of the centre-right Conservative Party, Farage broke away in 1992 to co-found the UK Independence Party (UKIP). He steered the movement toward a staunchly Eurosceptic and anti-immigration platform. By 2014, he had successfully pressured the government into holding a referendum on UK’s membership of the European Union (EU). UKIP campaigned for the ‘Leave’ option. To the shock of the country’s establishment parties, 51.89 percent of the electorate voted for the UK to exit the EU (referred to as “Brexit”), catapulting Farage from the far-right fringes into the national mainstream.
His political evolution continued with the formation of Reform UK. In the 2024 general election, Farage finally entered the British Parliament, despite Reform UK securing just 14.3 percent of the total vote. However, in the recent 2026 local elections, the party won a large number of council seats, sending shockwaves through Westminster.
Some analysts now suggest that Reform UK could challenge for a majority in the 2029 general elections. Others argue that a coalition of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens could keep Reform UK from power, even if the party secures a plurality of seats. This tactic was famously used to sideline Geert Wilders in the Netherlands after his far-right populist party won a majority in 2023.
The rise of Nigel Farage and Reform UK demonstrates how modern populists are constructed through strategic narratives of decline, grievance and cultural anxiety
The making of a populist is rarely an organic occurrence. After closely studying the dynamics of populism for years, I posit that populists are largely manufactured. They are forged during crises, some genuine, others strategically engineered. The architects of populists utilise mainstream and social media to proliferate perceptions of institutional decay, convincing the polity that their voices have been erased from the national discourse.
According to the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde, this process does not require a coherent ideology. Instead, it relies on identifying societal cracks where the vulnerable have fallen. The populist-in-waiting is encouraged to offer these citizens empathy rather than policy and targets to blame rather than solutions. The objective is to drive a wedge between the ‘forgotten’ and the ‘elite’, and applying enough pressure to social and economic fissures to shatter the status quo and allow a ‘charismatic outsider’ to breach the mainstream.
While the emergence of such figures is often framed as an outpouring of simmering anger, it is mostly a calculated political strategy. Even in the absence of a genuine crisis, manufacturers engineer one, prompting their populist-to-be to amplify grievances into ‘existential’ threats.
The populist is provided with a script designed to keep the public’s nervous system in a state of high anxiety, which is then ‘cured’ by utopian promises and the demonisation of the ‘evil other.’ Once the public loses faith in established arbiters and parties, the populist becomes the sole remaining source of ‘truth’. The project is then complete.
The manufacturers of populists vary by region. In countries such as Pakistan, Brazil and Thailand, military establishments have been known to activate populist projects to undermine the electoral traction of established parties that threaten the military’s orbit of influence. However, these projects often collapse when the populist becomes too volatile to control, as seen with the military’s eventual distancing from Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Imran Khan in Pakistan.
In the West, though, while populism may find sympathisers within the ranks, military institutions have largely refused to intervene when populists face electoral defeat or legal challenges. This was evidenced during the turbulent transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden following the 2020 US election, which Trump lost.
The most consistent factor in manufacturing populists is the backing of wealthy elites. This is the great irony of modern populism: while its primary constituencies are the rural and working classes in the global North and the urban middle-class in the global South, these movements are bankrolled by ‘counter-elites.’
These are wealthy individuals who fund the weaponisation of a populist to counter a rival section of the elite perceived as too deeply embedded in the established order. UK-based historian Hugo Drochon identifies this as a struggle between old elites and emergent counter-elites.
Farage fits this template. While his rhetoric regarding British nationalism, immigration and “Christian heritage” appeals to white working-class and rural voters, his ascent was financed by multimillion-pound donations from wealthy financiers. His role at GB News, which is backed by hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall and the Dubai-based Legatum Group, cements his status as a key player among the UK’s counter-elites. He receives substantial support from these interests, proving that the modern populist is not a voice emerging from the bottom but a tool wielded from the top.
The entry of Nigel Farage into Parliament marks his transition from a pressure-group leader to a legislative force. With Reform UK capturing a significant share of the vote in the recent council elections, mainstream parties face a dilemma: do they co-opt his rhetoric, or form a united front to marginalise him? History suggests that co-option rarely works. It merely legitimises the populist’s narrative. Brazil eventually returned to an established party to rescue the country from a leader seen by his supporters as a ‘messiah’.
Pakistan has recalibrated its ‘hybrid system’, which was once used to manufacture a populist but is now remodelled to undo the damage that the populist left behind. Here as well, mainstream parties are back in power alongside a military establishment that has reset its goals, tightening the constitution to curb populism in both the political and judicial spheres.
Meanwhile, India’s middle-income groups continue to vote for a populist who is being bolstered by powerful business interests, and an American populist has dragged his country into a polarising conflict that is negatively impacting America’s global influence and economics.
Farage is no longer just a spectre. He is a permanent fixture of a troubled democracy. He is a product of a global trend, wherein the elite exploit the grievances of the many to secure the interests of the few through manufactured populists.
Published in Dawn, EOS, May 17th, 2026
Dawn – Homenone@none.com (Nadeem F. Paracha)Read More