How Reform UK Is Importing Conspiracy-Fuelled MAGA Politics to the UK

Although the Reform UK conference was an undeniably British affair, replete with union flag suits, Farage football shirts and at times a strange Christmas panto vibe, there was an unmistakable undercurrent of American, or more accurately MAGA, influence at the Birmingham conference. Turquoise Make Britain Great Again hats were available from the merch stand, multiple attendees sported GOP elephant lapel pins, and another a baseball cap with an eagle and the slogan Guns, God and Trump on the front. But beyond the whacky aesthetics it was clear from the policy discussions on the fringes, as well as the invitees on the main stage, that Trump’s MAGA movement has become a growing source of influence over and inspiration for Reform UK.

While some of the obvious influences from MAGA were confined to events on the conference fringe, Aseem Malhotra, a prominent anti-vaxxer and advisor to Robert F. Kennedy Junior, Trump’s Secretary of State for Health and Human Services spoke on the main stage in a speech titled “Make Britain Healthy Again”, a reference to RFK Jr’s campaign slogan.

Malhotra, a British cardiologist turned conspiracy theorist, used the speech to claim that it was “highly likely that the Covid vaccines have been a significant factor in the cancers in the royal family.” In the same speech Malhotra claimed that MRNA vaccines can alter genes and that “the Covid MRNA jabs have likely killed or seriously harmed millions of people across the world”.  

His views have been condemned by several experts including Brian Ferguson, professor of viral immunology at the University of Cambridge who accused Malholtra of indulging an “outlandish conspiracy theory [which] only serves to undermine the credibility of those spreading it”.  He was also condemned by Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

In several nods to American political culture during the speech, Malhotra shared screenshots of other anti-vaxxers speaking on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast and the Joe Rogan Experience. While anti-vaccine views have historically been relatively marginal in British politics, they are on the rise among the British public with 30% of respondents to a YouGov poll stating that it was “definitely true” that harmful vaccine side effects were being kept from the public, up from 19% in 2019.

Anti-vaccine politics is more common in America. A recent Gallup News poll found that just 40% of Americans saying it is extremely important for parents to have their children vaccinated, down from 58% in 2019. As health secretary RFK JR, who Malhotra advises, has repeatedly sowed distrust in vaccines, including in a recent incident in which he and his department claimed that the MMR vaccine contains “aborted foetus debris”.

Malhotra claimed that Farage was in support of his agenda, the crowd gave him several applause breaks and seemed broadly receptive, however the party distanced themselves from him following backlash to the speech. A party spokesperson told BBC News: “Dr Aseem Malhotra is a guest speaker with his own opinions who has an advisory role in the US Government. Reform UK does not endorse what he said but does believe in free speech.”

As well as health policy, the influence of the MAGA right was also apparent in the discussions around Net Zero at the conference. At a fringe event hosted by the American climate change denial thinktank the Heartland Institute, the UK and European head of the institute, Lois Perry claimed she is an advisor to the party stating: “I’ve been very fortunate to be able to consult and influence the Reform Party at the highest level and my organisation the Heartland Institute has been credited, by our dear leader, with actually being the people that have moulded the policy on net zero”.

During the speech Perry claimed that CO2 is not “a pollutant”, suggesting that carbon emissions were not harmful to the environment, and claimed of the Government’s environmental policies that “this is Marxism and net zero is this government’s Horse of Troy”.

At the event, her American counterpart, James Taylor, claimed that “we are not facing a climate crisis, there is no way we could be facing a climate crisis” and called the concept “baloney”.

Three senior figures at the Heartland Institute were invited to the White House by Trump during his first term, for the announcement that he was pulling America from the Paris climate agreement. The think tank’s influence campaign has expanded beyond the US, as Heartland has started advising Reform in the UK and lobbying far right MEPs in Europe.  

Heartland has historically taken money from fossil fuel firms including Exxon Mobil and Murray energy. Perry’s revelation that they are advising Reform suggests that the climate-change denial aspect of the MAGA program is being copied across the Atlantic.

The influence of Trumpism is evident not only in the American think tanks allied with Reform but in the think tankers associated with their own movement in the UK. Speaking at a panel on whether Britain is ready for Reform UK, Professor James Orr argued that Reform can learn from Trump in various ways.

One of his suggestions was that Britain could copy Trump’s approach to immigration arguing for a British version of I.C.E. the American immigration enforcement agency that is overseeing Trump’s deportation program, and which has been accused of multiple human rights violations in recent months.

Orr also argued that Reform UK could learn from the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind the infamous Project 2025 document which advocated for restrictions on abortion rights as part of a shopping list of radical right policy options which were sent to the Trump administration.

Orr referenced the backlash to the leak of the Project 2025 document. He said that he had been speaking to the president of the Heritage Foundation and that while it was important that there is transparency for the members of Reform UK and the electorate, that “sometimes you want to maybe keep some of your cards close to your chest” to prevent the kind of outcry and preparation from opponents of the Trump administration that the leak of the Project 2025 document caused.