“Well, we’re not Tylenol experts”. That was Richard Tice’s unusually tepid attempt to squirm his way out of a controversy sparked in the United States by President Donald Trump and fanned all the way across the Atlantic by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. In September, Trump attempted to make the link between a ‘meteoric rise’ in cases of autism and the use of Tylenol during pregnancy; Farage refused to condemn the claims steeped in pseudoscience by his presidential ‘friend’. Reform MP for Boston and Skegness Tice, so often combative in discussions with mainstream media outlets, struck a noticeably half-hearted tone as he sought to defend Trump in an interview with ITV News. “Science is always changing” was, in this instance, code for “I am not at liberty to disagree with the President of the United States”.
Unsurprisingly, as with so many of Trump’s contentions, his claims about Tylenol do not stand up to scrutiny. Yet, focusing on this fact distracts from a more subtle, perhaps more alarming issue: Tylenol does not exist in Britain at all. It is an American-brand of paracetamol not widely-available in the UK, where off-brand paracetamol itself, alongside Panadol and Calpol, reigns supreme. Although perhaps just a passing remark from Tice, a mere drop in the boundless pond of news generated by Reform’s own ‘meteoric rise’, it points to something far more profound: the Americanisation – or, more pejoratively, ‘Yankification’ – of British politics.
The Murdoch Mirror
In recent years, the UK’s political landscape has become a mirror to that of the United States, albeit with a slight delay. Despite being rather slow to the party, broadcast media has developed a particularly ‘American sheen’, thanks to the growing prominence of GB News, launched by former Spectator editor and conservative broadcaster Andrew Neil in 2020. Although Neil’s resignation just a year later, as he derided the channel for becoming “an outlet for bizarre conspiracy theories” at the “nutty end of politics”, may have been a setback, GB News has since gone from strength to strength. It now challenges, and often beats, BBC News and Sky News in average viewing figures nationwide by a margin of thousands.
Upon watching a GB News segment, often hosted by former Conservative MP Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg or ex-ITV breakfast show host Eamonn Holmes, you would be forgiven for mistaking this ostensibly British institution for a quintessentially American import, such are the uncanny similarities between it and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.
In the United States, Fox News sets the right-wing news agenda with Sean Hannity’s ‘Hannity’, Laura Ingraham’s ‘The Ingraham Angle’ and, before 2023, Tucker Carlson’s ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ all providing ample political commentary on the events of the day, always with a pro-MAGA twist. GB News and the often controversial personalities that dominate its programming are beginning to attain that level of influence here, having imported so many of its bread-and-butter ‘culture war’ issues directly from America. It is thanks to GB News that abortion policy is now back on the discussion table for many on the right, having seemingly been consigned to consensus in this country many decades ago. Likewise, efforts to decarbonise and achieve ‘net zero’, pursued all-guns-blazing by Boris Johnson’s Conservative government with cross-party support during and after the pandemic, have been thrown head-first into disrepute. Having appointed investor and notorious climate sceptic Alan McCormick as chairman, it is no surprise that GB News presenters have been so keen to cast doubt on climate science in truly ‘Trumpian’ fashion. That the network has been able to relitigate the climate debate on distinctly American, rather than British, lines is proof of their success.
An Imported Politics
The true legitimiser of MAGA-style politics in Britain has come from beyond the Fourth Estate through Nigel Farage. This is a man who, without a stable political home for so long, ultimately decided to build one from scratch. Much like Trump’s MAGA Republicans, Farage chiselled it exquisitely in his own image. His previous iterations, the Brexit Party and UKIP, were peripheral, policy-limited and, to use Andrew Neil’s terminology: “nutty”. Reform, meanwhile, is box office. Initially established as a limited company, it might have been more aptly named the Farage Party. Indeed, the party leader was its only personality of note, as well as the majority shareholder, enjoying the exclusive right to appoint or remove directors at whim. It was not until February this year that Farage loosened his grip on this control, becoming a director with a minority stake and ostensibly handing over ownership to Reform’s members.
Yet discussion of Reform’s organisational structure is deceptive. Farage had ceded influence to authoritarian foreign powers long before he chose to limit his power on paper. This was perhaps revealed most shockingly by the case of Nathan Gill, former Mormon bishop and leader of Welsh Reform, who accepted Russian cash on ‘at least eight occasions’ to further Vladimir Putin’s interests in both the party and the Senedd. But the vice-like grip of Russian cash on right-wing politics in Britain is nothing new, and has still continued discreetly since Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Instead, it is the increasingly powerful influence of Trump and the MAGA right on ‘Farage Ltd’ that really ought to be placed under the microscope.
When it comes to Reform’s communications, Trumpian fingerprints are ubiquitous. Like the President during his first few months back in office, Reform’s politicians are obsessed with the apparent scourge that is ‘DEI’. Intended to support diversity, equity and inclusion in public institutions, DEI initiatives were the first victim of the ideological chainsaw that Trump took to the American state in the first quarter of 2025. Likewise, according to Richard Tice and former party chairman Zia Yusuf, such initiatives would also be the first victim of a Reform government because they bloat council budgets, and thus prove highly costly to the taxpayer. However, DEI, like Tylenol, does not actually exist in the UK; it is known as EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) and is considered far less pervasive than its transatlantic equivalent. Weaponising grievance in symbolic form – via the use of acronyms, household items, or otherwise – has always been a powerful political tool. But by importing those symbols from the United States and clumsily attempting to shoehorn them into a British context, Reform’s politicians squander so much of its potential.
Nevertheless, in an identical fashion to Trump, Reform’s flagship solution to the ghost of DEI is the establishment of a British ‘DOGE’ unit, which would of course share a name with the Department of Government Efficiency, formerly led by billionaire Elon Musk across the pond. Considering that American DOGE had already been deemed a ‘colossal failure’ by the time Farage proposed to imitate it, it is unsurprising that the limited roll-out of its British equivalent has struggled for impact thus far. In Kent, whose county council Reform won outright in elections in May, efforts to cut spending have been a cataclysmic failure. That council taxes will almost definitely be raised next year is highly revealing. After fifteen years of austerity, now brought to breaking point by the crushing financial burden of social care, Britain’s councils can hardly be considered wasteful. In fact, much like the British state, they are wasting away. But by making such an admission, Farage would be departing from the party line, not of Reform itself, but of the White House; it is evident that, even rhetorically, that is not something that he feels free to do.
Deference for Dollars
All this leaves us with a number of questions. Why is Farage so hellbent on Trumpification, especially when so much of the MAGA platform is patently America-specific? What does he actually stand to gain from imitating Trump word-for-word?
The answer to that question is certainly not increased popularity at home. Mr. Trump is widely disliked by the British electorate; 80% of all Brits reported having an unfavourable opinion of the American President in March this year, a perspective even shared by a majority of Reform voters. Trump’s favourability may have taken a further hit in recent days as a result of his threat to sue the BBC for $1 billion in damages after the public broadcaster admitted to manipulating a video of his speech from 6 January 2021. If Trump wins, it is worth remembering that it will be taxpayers, rather than incompetent BBC executives, who would be forced to foot the bill. It is unlikely that Farage will be making that point.
The Yankification of Britain, therefore, has an even more typical cause than populism: money. Reform conveniently shares an office with the Centre for a Better Britain (CFABB), a new UK-based “MAGA-style” think tank. Ideologically spearheaded by Dr James Orr, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge and unfortunately my namesake, the CFABB claims to be “ruthlessly honest”, “courageous” and “unequivocally, politically independent”. Orr himself is, unfortunately, far from those descriptors. He has been referred to as American Vice-President J.D. Vance’s “philosopher king” and “British sherpa” on many occasions. Regardless of his party affiliations, Orr’s brand of religious conservatism and Christian nationalism has clearly struck a chord with some of the world’s most powerful politicians. One such zealot, former Conservative-turned-Reform MP Danny Kruger, advocates for a “recovery of a Christian politics” at the heart of British government, posing a serious threat to the rights of religious minorities, women and the LGBTQ+ community. We should expect to hear much more of such evangelical-style messaging in the coming months from Reform politicians who will be well-aware that it chimes with American audiences.
Farage himself, like Trump, will struggle to present himself as a God-fearing apostle to the general public. But that’s a secondary concern. The President’s moneyed donors are his real priority. Last year’s presidential election in the United States saw presidential candidates spend a total of $1.8 billion over the course of the race; meanwhile, the UK’s General Election five months prior, despite reaching record highs, saw spending of just £94.5 million by all parties involved. For Reform to win, Farage will have to close that gap. And by tightly binding his party’s rhetoric, policy platform and ideological foundation to that of MAGA, alongside denigrating the current Starmer government to Congress, British politics’ former nearly-man has presented himself with a golden opportunity.
Nevertheless, it remains deeply ironic that Farage, having spent so much of the 2010s advocating for “sovereignty” during the Brexit Referendum campaign, is so eager to let Trump and the MAGA right dominate British life. Backed by a pliant media apparatus in GB News, the leader of Reform would be happy to see the UK become America’s 51st State if it meant that he could finally take the keys to No. 10 Downing Street.
In many ways, Britain’s transformation into an American outpost is already complete. It remains to be seen whether anyone will ever turn those tides, perhaps by borrowing one final Trumpian technique and ‘making British politics British again’. One thing is for certain, however: it will not be the former leader of the UK Independence Party who helps us do so.
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