‘The party of workers’? The class politics of Reform UK candidates

Far-right populist parties’ claim to be on the side of ‘the people’ sits at the core of their appeal. Yet, this claim has seen surprisingly little empirical scrutiny. This paper examines Reform UK’s claim to be ‘the party of workers’ by unpacking the classed self-presentations, actual class locations and economic orientations of Reform candidates in the 2024 general election. Based on quantitative and qualitative text analysis, the paper finds a discrepancy across all three levels. First , to position themselves as credible alternatives to established elites, candidates emphasise their upward mobility rather than working-classness. Second , their actual class profiles reveal a high share of people from professional-managerial and petty bourgeois backgrounds. Third , their economic positions are more consistently pro-business than pro-worker. Together, these findings cast doubt on Reform’s claim to represent workers and highlight the need for scholars of far-right populism to focus more on the class politics of party elites.