Why White Working-Class Rage Is Surging in Britain

What a difference a year makes.

Compare the Labour Government’s approach to disorder outside migrant hotels last summer, following the Southport murders, with how they are handling protests and disorder now.

The serious violence around last year’s protests demanded a tougher response from the state (which the public supported) than this summer’s events.

On August 4 last year, Sir Keir Starmer, the newly elected Prime Minister, began his statement on the riots by saying, “I utterly condemn the far-Right thuggery we have seen this weekend.” In conclusion, he added, “I won’t shy away from calling this what it is: far-Right thuggery.”

That there was far-Right thuggery involved in some of the protests was clear to see. But what Starmer failed to do was acknowledge the genuine concerns held by ordinary people who were neither thugs nor members of the far-Right.

This summer, as protests spread across the country, Labour politicians are going out of their way to show they understand protesters’ concerns about mass immigration.

An official summary of a recent Cabinet meeting quoted Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, saying that “economic insecurity, the rapid pace of de-industrialisation, immigration and the impacts on local communities and public services […] are having a profound impact on society.”

Starmer’s spokesman reinforced her comments, saying that “high levels of immigration over the last 10 years, including illegal immigration […] have had an impact on our social fabric and social cohesion.”

Rayner’s intervention was particularly striking given that six years ago she described the Brexit Party, the predecessor of Reform, as a “racist party”.

What is behind the shift?

Outlet for working-class voters

On the surface, the emergence of Reform has transformed politics.

Recent election results and polls show they represent a significant portion of the public; the Government knows Reform is currently heading into government.

But more than that, what has changed is the rise of politically organised white working-class rage. While this rage has been a feature of British politics for 25 years, it was fractured and its power diluted.

Although working-class voters dealt many shocks to mainstream parties over the last two decades, in referendums as well as local and European elections, they continued to support mainstream parties at General Elections. Their anger often seemed to have dissipated or even died away.

This was never true; rather, their rage had no real outlet. Ukip and the Brexit Party were niche parties focused on the side issue of the EU. Reform is different: their primary focus is immigration, but they are developing a policy platform designed to tap into public discontent about other key issues too, especially crime, as well as public service failures and economics.

When it comes to public service failures, there is more than enough to fuel frustration. Working-class people with no chance of going private even occasionally are struggling desperately to access the NHS. Many are genuinely fearful about how they will cope with sustained illness or the daily challenges of old age.

The Office for National Statistics data this week showed the British population rose by more than 700,000 in the year to June 2024, the second largest increase since records began in 1949, which will have added to these concerns.

These sentiments are what could change politics and power in Britain.

Resentment towards Tories and Labour

It is hard to overstate the anger white working-class voters feel towards the main parties and their senior politicians.

Earlier this week, Public First, the opinion research firm I ran until earlier this year, hosted a focus group in the Midlands where one working-class participant described Britain as “a tinderbox; there’s a lot of pent-up emotion and frustration at the moment.”

On the protests themselves, which have taken place outside migrant hotels across the country, another participant said, “It’s where they live and they’re getting loads of unknown people being skipped in. It’s not racist, you’re just concerned about your safety.”

Another added, “There’s got to be a reset and they’ve got to get to grips with it. People need to feel safe in their communities.”

Elsewhere, during a recent project in the north of England, a researcher started a conversation with a young man in a pub by asking what he thought were the top issues facing the public. The instant response was, “Labour, because they’re a–holes; they don’t give a f— about us; Starmer is a w—–.”

Football fans have begun to chant similarly graphic insults about Starmer. At a recent England game, hundreds of fans were singing, “Starmer is a c—.” While hardly scientific research, the fact that Starmer and politics were even on fans’ minds during a national game is extraordinary.

And the polls paint a dismal picture for Starmer’s Labour.

Public First’s polling reveals a third of white working-class voters hold an unfavourable view of both the Conservatives and Labour, compared to a quarter of professional voters. More than half of this disaffected working-class group is planning to vote Reform. Asked if Sir Keir represents people like them, 45 per cent of white working-class voters say “not at all”, compared to 35 per cent of professional voters.

Research suggests anger is intensifying. On YouGov’s tracker, the proportion of working-class people who agree that none of the main parties represent their priorities and values has risen from 42 per cent in 2019 to 56 per cent in June 2025. Over the same period, those saying at least one party represents their priorities and values fell from 35 per cent to 24 per cent.

(”Working-class” respondents fall into the C2, D and E social grades, which include manual workers, state pensioners, casual workers and the unemployed.)

YouGov’s general tracker on Government approval shows working-class voters disapprove rather than approve of their record by 68 per cent to 10 per cent; working-class disapproval hit 73 per cent in May 2025, which was only topped in recent times by the fallout from the Truss mini-Budget in 2022.

People gave the Government some slack on most issues after last summer’s election, and hostility levels fell as the new administration settled in. But on immigration and crime, among other issues, public hostility towards Labour is now nearing the peaks last seen in the final days of Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives.

Clueless ministers

The main parties are flailing badly in response. Given how strongly the Conservatives are seen to have betrayed working-class voters, they will not begin to shift public opinion until they present specific policy plans to address their mistakes in power. Until then, all their breathless rhetoric and social media videos are a waste of time.

From their earliest days in government, Labour strategists were said to view Reform as their primary medium-term opponent and Reform voters as their main targets. Yet this is hard to reconcile with their approach to almost every issue. From cutting fuel payments for older people to releasing serious criminals early, and dragging their feet on investigating grooming gangs, it is as if Labour set out to alienate working-class voters.

Over time, it has become clear that Labour has no idea how to handle this growing anger. In recent weeks, Labour politicians have pointed to everything from social media to school truancy to explain working-class frustration. Immigration is mentioned only in passing, as though it sits alongside a dozen other concerns.

The main parties’ inability to come up with an appealing policy response reflects two key misunderstandings. First, they do not seem to grasp who makes up the bulk of angry working-class voters. Second, they refuse to accept that these voters mean what they say when asked about their policy priorities.

On the first issue, there is a tendency to view angry working-class voters as very poor. After these voters helped power Vote Leave to victory in the EU referendum, politics was awash with analysis describing them as “left behind” or “at the bottom of the pile.”

Politicians often see working-class people as helpless victims, almost like children who will change their minds once properly educated.

But the working-class voters who delivered Brexit and who now plan to vote Reform are, by most measures, fairly ordinary working-class people. In my experience as a political strategist, those genuinely living in poverty tend to be completely disengaged from politics. They do not vote, rarely express political views and never turn up at protests.

This is clear from the pictures of the hotel protests this summer, where most of the protesters appear to be relatively well-off, working-class people with stable lives.

In reality, while these angry voters usually self-identify as “working-class”, they are more accurately a mix of working-class and lower-middle-class people, mostly from provincial England. Although the highest-profile protests against migrant hotels have taken place in Epping, in Essex, working-class anger is strongest along the coast and across the English Midlands and the North.

Unsurprisingly, these are Reform’s heartlands.

Politicians in denial

Politicians’ misunderstanding of these voters’ priorities is particularly odd, given the wealth of opinion research and actual election results that reveal their policy preferences.

Left-leaning politicians and commentators especially tend to emphasise the broad, complex causes of white working-class anger because they find it hard to accept that so many people simply want to cut immigration drastically and reject most asylum seekers, especially those arriving in small boats.

By stressing multiple, complex causes, they also avoid having to act in the short term. They can claim to be working on long-term solutions that will get to the root of the problem, rather than looking for a “quick fix.”

The reality is that white working-class anger has, on and off for 25 years, been driven by hostility to large-scale immigration.

This cannot be avoided: many voters will remain angry as long as legal immigration runs into the hundreds of thousands, and many others will stay angry if they feel politicians do not have control of the borders.

This is not new, although the intensity of opposition to large-scale immigration has grown alongside the scale of rising numbers. This pattern has been evident since the 1970s; Ipsos-Mori’s historic polling shows that the number of British people who considered immigration an important issue broadly tracked the rise in immigration levels, which surged under Tony Blair’s “open door” approach to arrivals from the EU.

Unless and until politicians stop the boats, reduce legal immigration, and reject most of those caught in the asylum system, they will make no progress in easing white working-class anger. This is not to suggest that immigration is the sole cause of white working-class frustration. It is simply to recognise that their hostility to large-scale immigration exists and cannot be explained away.

Fairness and control

Angry working-class people have always talked about immigration and asylum in terms of fairness and control – almost never race, religion or culture. When you look at how opposition to large-scale immigration has evolved, from concerns about pressure on public services to lower wages or welfare claims, it almost always comes back to these two core issues.

In the recent wave of hostility to asylum seekers being housed in hotels, for many working-class voters it is the very idea of hotels being used. For many, hotels are a luxury they could never afford. In numerous communities, hotels are where life’s biggest moments are celebrated: weddings, christenings, anniversaries and so on. The idea of people receiving long-term stays in such places for free creates a deep sense of injustice.

It isn’t limited to housing. Other stories about immigration have touched the same fairness nerve. In January, The Telegraph revealed that asylum seekers could receive quicker treatment in a major London hospital. While those who designed the system may see this as the decent thing to do for people with particular needs, it is hard to think of a single idea more likely to drive struggling working-class voters into Reform’s camp.

In Epping, and increasingly elsewhere in Britain and Ireland, there are also concerns about the safety of local communities, especially the safety of young women. There have been several high-profile reports of crimes committed by young men from abroad staying in these hotels.

This links to the second major theme: control. This has always been the other main driver of hostility to government immigration and asylum policies, repeatedly raised over the past 25 years. Many feel the state is unable or unwilling to exercise proper control over Britain’s borders, and, more broadly, over laws that shape immigration and multiculturalism.

These are the themes Reform is tapping into so successfully.

Sense of unfairness

Think about Reform’s recent pivot to crime and Farage’s claim that the country is lawless. This could prove so fruitful for them because it speaks to a broader feeling that Britain, while barely governed, always seems to make decisions that help other people – not just recent arrivals, but also the rich, big businesses and others. This sense of unfairness has intensified dramatically since Brexit.

Look at almost any policy area and the same story appears. Sometimes immigration deepens feelings of injustice, as with the NHS and housing, but the theme stands on its own.

The NHS is in crisis and most people struggle to get timely GP or hospital appointments. Meanwhile, the wealthy can simply pay to skip the queue. Wages remain stagnant and people have to work harder for the same pay, yet millions are seen to exploit the welfare system. Crime and anti-social behaviour are widespread, but serious criminals get only a slap on the wrist.

Working-class people face rising living costs, yet believe businesses are profiteering during tough times. Young people can’t afford to live in the areas where their families have been rooted for generations, while others receive help to do so.

In short, working-class voters feel the country is failing and lacks any real sense of natural justice.

Farage recently faced criticism for saying he would like to explore deporting serious criminals to harsh prisons in places like El Salvador. Critics dismissed this as unrealistic and said it showed he was all talk. But, as ever, Farage was tapping into something real. At a time when anger runs so deep, driven by these emotional themes of fairness and control, working-class voters want someone who sounds like them, who is as angry as they are and speaks in the same blunt terms.

Why?

Because only someone like that, they believe, would ever come up with the right policies in the first place. And in any case, someone prepared to talk about sending hardened criminals abroad might at least settle for building a few new prisons here in Britain. For many, that would feel like a fair and reasonable result.

Cultural concerns

The Left has long assumed that white working-class anger is ultimately driven by nationalism and a desire to protect British or English “culture”. Over the last 25 years, I can honestly say these themes have barely featured in the many focus groups and polls I have run.

Even when I interviewed British National Party (BNP) voters in the late 2000s for an anti-BNP campaign, the working-class men I spoke to talked almost entirely about their wages being undercut and the strain on local services. They rarely mentioned culture at all.

However, the sheer scale of recent arrivals is starting to shift this slightly. It isn’t that people now talk about Britain being historically white; you certainly never hear them discuss threats to Christianity or the monarchy.

Instead, you hear complaints about protests over foreign wars, where people who were not born in Britain take to the streets as though everyone shares their views. The recent protests over the Middle East are a prime example; most people simply find them baffling. You also hear frustration that ordinary displays of patriotism are treated as suspect or offensive, while everyone else is encouraged to express their own identities freely.

Until now, national and cultural concerns have barely featured among most working-class voters, but they are growing quickly. This is what risks giving rise to a movement that drifts in more troubling directions. Reform is a mainstream party and will keep a lid on this sentiment for the majority, but around the edges we could see some of the extreme behaviour that Starmer claimed was widespread last year.

Either way, Britain now has a fully-fledged working-class movement born of anger.

In the short term, Reform will benefit most. If the mainstream parties cannot find a way to respond to at least some of this, they risk being swept aside.

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