The Anti-British Coalition Is Winning

By Graham Vanbergen – Britain has not been conquered from outside. It has been weakened from within – by a loose coalition of interests that wraps itself in the Union Jack while helping to make the country poorer, angrier and less governable.

Brexit is the central exhibit. The Office for Budget Responsibility still assumes that Brexit will reduce the UK’s long-run productivity by around 4 per cent (£125billion), with imports and exports both around 15 per cent lower than if Britain had remained in the EU. The Centre for Economic Performance found that as many as 20,000 small British firms stopped exporting to the EU after new post-Brexit trade rules, with smaller businesses hit hardest. The BBC published a long report, 10 years after Brexit to the month – “Among economists there is not much debate, but there still is among policy folks. The experts were right. Brexit was, if anything, worse than we thought, but it’s taken longer to get there,” says Nick Bloom, a British Stanford University professor and author of one of the most prominent recent major studies using Bank of England data.”

That is not sovereignty. That is self-harm sold as patriotism.

The campaign succeeded partly because Britain’s ageing electorate was repeatedly told that decline could be reversed by rupture. Research has consistently shown a large age divide in Brexit support, with older voters much more likely to support leaving the EU. The right-wing press did not create every grievance, but it converted grievance into a political weapon: Europe, migrants, judges, civil servants, “woke” institutions – all became convenient enemies, while the harder truths about investment, productivity, housing, skills and tax were pushed aside.

The same pattern is now visible with the rise of Nigel Farage and Reform UK. Their local election gains and more recent polling figures have been presented as a revolt against the “establishment”, yet markets do not see political instability as cost-free. After Labour’s local election losses and leadership pressure, UK gilt yields rose sharply before easing when Keir Starmer said he would stay on (since reversed). In plain English: political chaos makes borrowing more expensive. That means higher debt costs, less room for public services, higher basic interest rates and therefore more pressure on households.

Then comes the money. Farage is under investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over a reported £5 million gift from Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, who has also been a major Reform UK donor. Farage denies wrongdoing and says the money was personal and for security and now says it’s no-ones business. Whatever the outcome, the episode exposes a deeper problem: British politics is increasingly vulnerable to huge private fortunes, opaque funding networks and wealthy individuals whose lives are often insulated from the consequences of the policies they promote.

This is not limited to one party. Transparency International UK has warned that the influence of “mega-donors” in British politics has risen dramatically over the past decade. Investigations by DeSmog and Democracy for Sale have reported millions flowing from Conservative-linked donors into Tufton Street think tanks, many of which promoted a hard Brexit, deregulation and climate delay. These groups are not mass movements. They are influence machines.

Foreign influence adds another layer. The Guardian reported in 2019 that wealthy US donors had given millions to right-wing UK groups active in debates over Brexit and Britain’s future direction. Humanists UK has warned about American religious conservative funding affecting UK debates on abortion, LGBT rights, assisted dying and faith schools. This is not automatically illegal; nor is every transatlantic link sinister. But it raises an obvious question: why should American ideological money help shape Britain’s social and political future?

Meanwhile, the economic model promoted by many of these voices is brutally selective. Ordinary workers are told to tighten their belts, while small firms drown in paperwork. Public services are starved. Yet multinational tax planning and weak enforcement remain part of the landscape. HMRC estimated the UK corporation tax gap at £18.6 billion in 2023–24, including £2.3 billion for large businesses. Critics also argue that official figures do not fully capture multinational profit-shifting. Just today, the FT reported that – “The gap between what UK businesses and individuals owed in tax and what they actually paid widened to £59bn last year in spite of government efforts to improve tax collection and crack down on non-compliance.”  Tax Watch UK reports that “the HMRC figures explicitly do not count tax avoidance by multinational companies through profit shifting, which is a major source of tax avoidance.”

Social media has made all of this worse. The UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee warned in its Russia report that ministers had not properly assessed possible Russian interference around the Brexit referendum. Parliament’s work on disinformation has repeatedly highlighted foreign information operations and the use of digital platforms to sow division. The government itself has sanctioned Russian-linked information operations accused of interfering in democratic processes abroad.

It is important to note that flags do not rebuild exports, slogans do not lower borrowing costs and culture wars do not reopen factories

 

The phrase “anti-British coalition” should therefore be understood carefully. It is not a formal alliance. It is a convergence of interests: right-wing media outlets like the Daily Mail that profit from rage; politicians who thrive on grievance; donors who purchase influence; foreign actors who benefit from British weakness; global firms that enjoy British markets while minimising obligations; and online networks that turn confusion into fury. For all of it, Britain is becoming weaker, less influential, more unstable and seemingly lost its way.

The tragedy is that many voters who backed Brexit or Reform are not anti-British at all. They are often deeply patriotic people who feel ignored, poorer, insecure and culturally displaced. The scandal is that their loyalty has been harvested by people like Farage, social media like Elon Musk’s X, Putin and others who offer nothing but symbolism instead of solutions. It is important to note that flags do not rebuild exports, slogans do not lower borrowing costs, and culture wars do not reopen factories.

Real patriotism would mean defending Britain’s productive capacity, tax base, public institutions and democratic integrity. It would mean asking who gains when Britain is divided, poorer and permanently angry. And it would mean recognising that the loudest patriots are not always the people serving the national interest. Sometimes they are simply the best-funded vandals in the room.

 

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