Reform UK’s surge puts millions of British Muslims under councils run by a party built on anti-Muslim hostility

LONDON (MNTV) — The scale of Reform UK’s breakthrough in last week’s local elections has turned what was a hypothetical concern into a lived reality for millions of British Muslims. The party gained 1,451 councillors and took control of 14 councils, having held none of the seats contested before the vote. 

Labour shed 1,496 councillors and lost 38 councils, while the Conservatives lost 563 councillors and six councils.

In a comprehensive analysis published before the election, Hyphen, a prominent local magazine, had examined exactly what Reform’s rise would mean for British Muslims — a community that the party’s leader Nigel Farage has repeatedly singled out as a threat to the national fabric. That analysis has now acquired a new urgency.

Reform’s gains were concentrated in areas across England where it had polled strongly throughout the spring. 

The Greens also made significant advances, picking up 441 councillors and winning mayoral contests in Hackney and Lewisham. Sixty-four councils now sit under no overall control — up 23 from the previous results.

With Reform now exercising authority over schools, housing, waste collection, libraries, and other local services in 14 areas, the question Hyphen had posed before the vote — what happens when large numbers of British Muslims find themselves governed by a party whose leadership has called them a “fifth column” — is no longer theoretical.

Immigration: the party’s defining policy

Reform built its electoral success on a platform that places immigration at the centre of everything it promises to fix. The party has pledged to establish a “UK Deportation Command” for mass removals of people who entered through irregular routes, abolish the right to permanent settlement, and deport over half a million people who crossed the Channel on small boats.

Hyphen’s pre-election analysis highlighted how disproportionately these policies would affect Muslim communities. 

Census data shows that nationals of Muslim-majority countries made up at least 12.4 per cent of the U.K. migrant population as of 2021. Roughly a quarter of British Muslims do not hold a U.K. passport. 

And the vast majority of Channel boat crossings since 2018 — around 85 per cent — have involved people from Muslim-majority countries.

Tahir Abbas, a criminology professor at Aston University, told Hyphen that Reform’s narrow focus on immigration and criminal justice appealed to voters who had abandoned mainstream parties in search of harder-edged policies. 

But he argued that beneath the combative rhetoric, the party’s economic programme remained rooted in the same deregulation and neoliberalism that underpins both Labour and the Conservatives.

Islamophobia baked into brand

The party’s relationship with anti-Muslim hostility extends well beyond individual candidates. 

Farage has claimed that nearly half of British Muslims support Hamas, said they reject British values, and described public Eid prayers in Trafalgar Square as an attempt to dominate British life. During the 2024 riots, when mosques were attacked, his name was chanted by participants.

Successive vetting failures have exposed candidates and councillors sharing content from far-right groups like Britain First and describing Islam as a cancer. 

The party proposed banning the conversion of disused churches into mosques — a policy Hyphen found to be based on a problem that essentially does not exist, with no confirmed records of any Anglican church being converted into a mosque since the late 1960s.

Abbas noted that Farage operates carefully within certain rhetorical limits but does so in a political landscape where anti-Muslim hostility has already been deeply normalised. 

The party leadership, he suggested, may not view Islamophobia as a priority concern in either direction — it is simply part of the political furniture they inhabit.

Diversity shield

Reform has placed several Muslims and people of colour in visible positions, including Zia Yusuf, a millionaire businessman of Sri Lankan Muslim heritage who served as party chair and was credited with professionalising its operations, and Laila Cunningham, announced as the party’s London mayoral candidate for 2028. The party has also absorbed high-profile Conservative defectors including former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi.

Abbas and co-author Parveen Akhtar of Aston University argued that these appointments help Farage deflect accusations of racism while broadening the party’s appeal. More than eight per cent of Reform’s 2024 voters did not identify as white British.

But the strategy has generated friction. Yusuf briefly resigned in 2025 after criticising a Reform MP who called for a burqa ban — a departure Farage attributed to racist attacks against his own chairman. 

His original appointment had provoked denunciations from far-right figures who said a Muslim should not lead a British-focused party.

What comes next

Reform’s 14 newly controlled councils, combined with its status as the largest party in numerous others, means the party is now responsible for public services affecting communities it has spent years demonising. 

How its overwhelmingly inexperienced councillor base — many of whom, by Farage’s own admission after the 2025 elections, were surprised to win — handles the reality of governance will be the next test.

Abbas counselled caution about reading too much into electoral success. He told Hyphen that ideology and ambition have so far outstripped capability and competence across Reform’s existing councils. Whether last week’s gains translate into effective local governance remains deeply uncertain.

For British Muslims, the uncertainty is not abstract. It concerns the councils that run their children’s schools, collect their rubbish, administer their housing, and shape the character of their neighbourhoods. 

The party now governing those services is one whose leader has called their community a fifth column, whose candidates have called their faith a cancer, and whose flagship policy is a mass deportation apparatus that would disproportionately affect people who share their religion. 

That is no longer a campaign promise. It is the political reality in which millions of British Muslims now live.