Margaux Francoeur, The University of California – Santa Barbara
Abstract
The nationalist protests that emerged across the U.K. this past summer called into question the consequences of anti-immigration sentiment. The rhetoric employed in the U.K.’s resistance against immigration shares striking similarities with Donald Trump’s radical form of xenophobic populism. Populist rhetoric emphasizes monoculturalism and cultural coherence. Populist leaders call for a strict immigration policy, usually formulated on prejudiced conceptions of race and class. This paper examines political discourse, media, and policy to highlight how the ideologies born out of the Trump administration have influenced U.K. political leaders and the British public. This phenomenon is significant in an era marked by mass migration.
- Introduction
In August 2025, anti-immigration protests sparked around the United Kingdom with protestors waving the St. George’s Cross—England’s national flag—as a symbol of intense nationalism. Organized under the grassroots campaign Operation Raise the Colors, the demonstrations called for stricter border control and framed immigration as a threat to British national identity. This rhetoric reflects a broader global shift toward right-wing populism in which leaders frame immigration as a threat to cultural unity. Across the Global North, governments adopt exclusionary policies that claim to protect the nation from the presumed consequences of immigration. In the United States, Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign promotes an anti-immigration and nationalist political agenda. This movement has reverberated globally. In post-Brexit Britain, political leaders have adopted this rhetoric to frame immigration as a national threat, influencing both policy and public opinion. This paper argues that U.S.-style populism has influenced global political discourse by normalizing exclusionary and nationalist narratives. Understanding how populist frameworks circulate is crucial in an era marked by climate displacement, mass migration, and economic dissatisfaction. As nations grapple with rising immigration, populist ideas continue to normalize xenophobia in political debates. An examination of the ideological ties between the U.S. and the U.K. demonstrates the dissemination of political narratives that influence policy. This paper will first define populism and examine how it is intertwined with anti-immigration sentiment and nationalist ideas. By focusing on rhetoric and policy, it will then analyze how these ideas gained traction in the US under the Trump administration and manifested themselves in post-Brexit Britain. By comparing political discourse, media narratives, and immigration policies, this paper shows the ideological convergence between the two nations. This paper concludes by reflecting on the broader implications of this ideological movement for the future of immigration policy. Through this analysis, it becomes clear that MAGA-style populism has transcended national borders and influenced immigration discourse in other nations such as Britain.
- Literature Review / Context
Pippa Norris defines populism as sharing three core features: anti-establishment, authoritarianism, and nativism. To maintain control and support, populist leaders dramatize existing problems to make it easier to engage with the public through political debate and appeal to a certain conservative audience. Most notably, populism centers the interests of “ordinary people” against a “corrupt establishment.” Emphasis on the “ordinary person” sets the foundation for nativist sentiments as it assumes a homogeneous national identity that excludes individuals from other countries or cultures. Rooted in this worldview, populism tends to emphasize monoculturalism, self-interest, traditionalism, and closed borders. Most right-wing populist parties position immigration control as central to their ideology. Xenophobic populism specifically is associated with far-right groups who view the establishment as prioritizing the interests of immigrants over native people. Despite the U.S. being the world’s largest recipient of immigrants, throughout history, many White Americans have rarely viewed immigration as beneficial to society. MAGA populists claim Western culture is at risk, especially from non-European immigration. The MAGA movement views restrictive immigration policy, which is largely based on biased conceptions of race, class, and gender, as a way to control national sovereignty and cultural integrity. A similar sentiment has emerged in post-Brexit Britain. Alongside an independent trade policy, the U.K.’s departure from the EU was also driven by a desire to regain control of its borders and manage migration. According to the Migration Observatory, immigration was one of the most significant issues prior to the Brexit referendum. In September of 2015, 56 percent of people named it as a top issue. In the second half of 2022, the issue of immigration reemerged, fueled by increased media coverage of small-boat immigration and political debate. In response, populist leaders emphasized a return to traditional values, using the politics of nostalgia to gain constituent support for restricted immigration. While existing scholarship examines populism and anti-immigration in the U.S. and U.K., these studies tend to discuss them separately. This paper examines the parallels or establishes a parallel relationship between American populism and immigration discourse in the U.K.
- Methods /Approach
This paper examines speeches, media coverage, and policies in the U.S. under the Trump administration and in post-Brexit Britain under Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak to demonstrate how both nations emulate populist thinking. Discourse analysis is employed to identify similarities between political rhetorics to show how ideology circulates globally and reshapes political agendas and popular beliefs.
However, this research is limited by its focus on two prominent Western nations: the U.K. and the U.S. Therefore, these conclusions can not be applied globally to nations with different political structures, but can be used to offer important insights into how anti-immigration sentiment circulates to influence public opinion and immigration policy.
- Analysis / Evidence
The rhetorical parallels between U.S. and U.K. right-wing leaders demonstrate how populist discourse travels between nations and is often carried by political figures who adapt American slogans to suit their own audiences. This is reflected in the titles of popular movements, such as “Make America Great Again” and “Take Back Control,” which emphasize a return to a previous imagined era of stability and cultural coherence. Similarly, both the “Build the Wall” in the U.S. and the “Stop the Boats” campaigns in the U.K. transform immigration into a symbol of national defense and a threat to national identity. In Trump’s Oval Office address in 2019, he advocated for a new immigration system that “promotes American values” and “protects American wages.” Rishi Sunak, a member of the U.K.’s parliament, continuously claimed during his term that migration would overwhelm the UK and disturb the public’s view of the government unless radical action was taken. Both Trump’s and Sunak’s rhetoric reduces immigration to a simple binary of either national safety or an external threat, which fuels public anxiety. These rhetorical parallels are not coincidental; rather, political leaders serve as their transport. In Britain, Nigel Farage serves as an example of how U.S.-style populism has transcended borders. Farage has been a long-time ally of President Trump and referred to him as an “inspiration,” which is exemplified by his adoption of Trump’s MAGA tone. In his keynote conference speech this past October, Farage said, “let’s make Britain great again – I’ve heard that phrase somewhere else before – but I agree with it.” Farage adopts Trump’s slogans to forward his own political agenda. This is a demonstration of how political leaders transport ideas and carry narratives across borders, where they are adapted to appeal to a new audience. The result is a political discourse in Britain that shares striking similarities to the right-wing populism led by Trump in the United States.
The influence of U.S. populist ideology on British immigration policy is exemplified through the comparison between the American ‘Remain in Mexico’ program and the British ‘Rwanda Relocation Plan’. Both of these policies rely on externalization, which is a principle that shifts the processing of asylum seekers to a third-party country. The U.S. program, formally known as the Migration Protection Protocols, was introduced under the Trump administration in 2019. This policy required migrants seeking asylum to remain in Mexico until their immigration court date and for the duration of their processing. Similarly, the Rwanda Policy, first introduced under Boris Johnson’s government in 2022, aimed to send “illegal immigrants” to Rwanda for processing. Both policies are rooted in racial assumptions that depict non-white migrants from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East as a threat to national security, while simultaneously disguising these exclusions as an act of humanitarian concern.
The discourse on the implementation of the U.K. Rwanda policy invoked the “populist triad”: people-centrism, anti-elitism, and popular sovereignty. Political leaders emphasized a collective national identity by referring to the “British taxpayer,” “British public,” and “British people” to depict the British people as a political authority with the ability to determine the conditions in which immigration to the U.K. should occur. Additionally, leaders framed British society as inherently good and thus deserving of a better immigration policy that prioritized British citizens’ interests through stricter border control. Therefore, the Rwanda Policy was advanced and justified by the claim that it represented the general will of the people, and thus did not require intermediaries. The MAGA movement in the U.S. furthers divisions between Americans and political leaders, which allows Trump to frame immigration as something that fails to “serve” American interests. In 2016, Trump depicted Hilary Clinton’s immigration policy as “amnesty, open borders, and lower wages,” saying it only served the needs of “others,” instead of Americans. This argument creates an “us versus them” scenario, which others marginalized groups. Trump’s critique draws on nativist sentiment that presents immigration as “unfair” to the nation’s inhabitants. A core tactic of populist leaders is to amplify threats and depict themselves as guardians against those threats. When discussing the Rwanda policy in 2023, U.K. Conservatives correlated the distinct issues of immigration to criminality into a singular collective threat. Similarly, in his inaugural speech this past January, Trump claimed it was his utmost duty as commander in chief to protect Americans against the “disastrous invasion” of “millions of criminal aliens.” The inability of these politicians to acknowledge that immigration and criminality are independent of each other amplifies immigration anxiety among the public. The timing and framing of these two policies reflect a circulation of populist ideology.
The media has played an increasingly important role in shaping populist ideology globally. Trump has repeatedly used Twitter to spread his political agenda. In his tweets, he criticizes democrats for allowing the “weakest immigration laws anywhere in the world” and how politicians must stop “illegals” from entering the U.S. He also victimizes the U.S. by saying Mexico has “taken advantage” of it, which frames the US as a victim of an immigration crisis. It also galvanizes an “us versus them” populist rhetoric, which positions Mexico as an “outgroup” that is responsible for social crises. Similarly, U.K. right-wing movements have used narratives that paint migrants as a dangerous outgroup. After false claims were spread in the media about an asylum seeker killing three children in Southport, violent protests broke out across the U.K. that destroyed several mosques and schools. The U.K. mirrors the U.S. in how simplified, emotional social media posts are disseminated, rather than posts containing nuanced, comprehensive information. This influences real-world violence. In both nations, the media has spread misleading information about immigrants and exemplifies how the accessibility of social media sites facilitates the dissemination of anti-immigration ideologies. U.S. narratives about border insecurity and the threat of immigration are reflected in British media, illustrating how U.S. political strategies are emulated across borders. Taken together, these cases demonstrate how the British media reproduces U.S. media strategies such as hyperbolic headlines and misinformation to portray migrants as a dangerous outgroup, which furthers xenophobic violence.
- Counterarguments
Many argue that populism is a global trend, and thus, the emergence of populist ideas in Britain is not necessarily influenced by the United States. However, the type of right-wing populism discussed in this analysis is most closely associated with Trump’s MAGA movement. Although populism initially emerged from a class struggle between farmers and industrialists, U.S. political leaders have transformed populism to rely on identity-based distinctions, rather than economically driven class-based distinctions. The extreme form of right-wing populism in the United States emerged from White nationalism in an attempt to promote xenophobic and nativist values. This transformed version of populism is observable in the UK today and is driven by political figures such as Nigel Farage.
Others argue that U.K. policy is driven by its own domestic factors. While this is true because policy is a response to a nation’s individual concerns, it is evident that the U.K. is taking part in a broader ideological trend through references to U.S. politics and rhetoric. Populism in the West has been on the rise in response to progressive values that are believed by many to “erod[e] the basic values and customs of Western societies.” Trump’s rejection of “political correctness,” in which Trump fails to use inclusive language to avoid offending marginalized groups, appeals to Americans who are nostalgic for traditionalism and who feel left behind by growing support for issues such as immigration. This has resulted in certain U.S. political tactics, such as Trump’s immigration rhetoric, that share similarities with those in the U.K. Populist ideals have emerged and transformed in response to recent progressive policy, greatly influencing how both the U.S. and U.K. respond to their own domestic challenges.
- Conclusion
The influence of U.S.-style populism in the U.K. shows how political ideologies transcend national borders. Britain has adopted U.S. rhetorical strategies to drive a return to traditionalism and stricter border control. The spread of nativist sentiment appears during a rise in global migration, as economic dissatisfaction, climate catastrophes, and political and social conflict are forcibly displacing people. The circulation of these ideologies further marginalizes vulnerable groups through the reduction of political protections and economic opportunities. This calls into question the ability of international institutions like the United Nations and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in protecting the rights of immigrants in an increasingly inequitable world driven by racialized politics.
A closer analysis of policy would reveal more similarities across these two nations. Although current events in the United States may prompt other global political leaders to distance themselves from Trump’s aggressive politics, his rhetorical strategies and principles that define modern right-wing populism remain. Understanding the transmission of these political strategies is crucial for thinking about the futures of the U.K. and the U.S. and their response to future immigration cases.
The Global Affairs Journal 
Leave a comment