Why public servants are both a key target of and a vital defence against the far-right

The American example

For most of my life, America has seen itself as a beacon of democracy, the “leader of the free world.” While the rest of the world may not have quite shared that view, America was both a powerful country and broadly-speaking a functional democracy with a strong constitution.

But since the beginning of Trump’s second term, American democracy has been unwound at frightening speed. Analysis by the V-Dem Institute shows that the rate of democratic backsliding in the US is faster than we saw in Hungary, India, Russia, or Serbia.

Today, in the ‘land of the free,’ if you openly criticise the President or his policies, you may lose your job (if you are a journalist), your licence to broadcast (if you are a broadcaster), your funding (if you are a university), your government contracts (if you are a law firm), or possibly even your liberty (if you are James Comey).

This backsliding harmed the quality of US democracy; it also enabled the largest upwards transfer of wealth in American history: billionaires have seen their wealth accelerate while the most vulnerable have seen their benefits and public services slashed.

The threat to the UK

But could such a thing really happen here in Britain, the mother of parliaments? Unfortunately, yes: America is a country with a written constitution designed to prevent a slide towards tyranny; our constitution, such as it is, is a mixture of legislation, convention and protocols, largely based on what Lord Hennessy described as “the goods chaps theory of politics.” And with our doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, a determined government of bad chaps could easily unwind our democracy as fast as Trump has unwound US democracy.

The US experience is a clear model for how to unwind other democracies – including ours. One of the reasons that Trump was able to act so quickly is the existence of Project 2025, an enormously detailed plan developed by far-right organisations coordinated by the Heritage Foundation in preparation for Trump’s second term. The plan’s 900 pages detailed a systematic approach to unwinding constraints on presidential power; it also contained a database of 10,000 suitably vetted (extreme right wing) candidates for senior positions in virtually every government agency and department. From day one, Trump was able to appoint loyalists not only to his Cabinet but to the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and other key parts of the Civil Service.

Project 2025 and Trump’s campaign for re-election were funded by far-right billionaires (among others). Elon Musk alone spent over $250 million on the Trump campaign, as well as ensuring that his social media channel X (formerly Twitter) was strongly supportive of Trump. Other far-right billionaires also donated and bought-up media outlets which have traditionally been more liberal in outlet.

And we now see that the same forces, with similar ideas, are lining up to secure a far-right victory in the next UK general election. A think tank (originally named Resolute 1850 in reference to the President’s desk in the Oval Office, but now renamed Centre for a Better Britain) was set up in 2025 to do for the UK’s far-right what Heritage did for Trump. In 2024, Elon Musk suggested that he might donate $100 million to the UK’s Reform party; he has since switched his support to the even more extreme Restore party. Russia has already taken steps to meddle in our democracy. And the US government’s new National Security Strategy makes it clear that it will support the election of far-right governments in Europe, including the UK.

We are not facing good chaps: we are facing an unprecedented coalition of hostile states, enormously wealthy far-right individuals and a media and social media ecosystem which they largely control. And we are not ready for that.

Defending UK democracy

Motivated by these concerns, the 99% Organisation set up a project to explore the potential for defensive constitutional reform. The project’s seminal report analysed these risks in detail and set out steps the government should take now to protect UK democracy, while it still has time.

Fortunately, there are many ways in which we can still protect our democracy – too many to explore fully here. In brief, they fall into two categories: steps we could take today to prevent the next general election from being rigged for the benefit of the far right; and steps which would impede the implementation of a UK version of project 2025 (‘Project 2029’) should a far-right government be elected.

In the first category, the government could focus on delivery of the planned national renewal – and they should do this for the benefit of the UK population – but our analysis suggests that, on its own, this will not provide sufficient defence. So, in addition, the government must take much more determined steps than have so far been proposed to take dark money out of politics and to prevent industrial-scale disinformation of the UK population between now and 2029.

In the second, we should take steps now to clarify and entrench constitutional rights and duties, to strengthen the separation of powers, to ensure that – if there is an attempt to replace all those with access to the levers of power on day one – the current incumbents are aware, mutually supportive and vocal from the moment the risk becomes apparent, and to create three lines of defence.

And something we should have done already becomes even more important: introducing proportional representation (PR). Under first-past-the -post, a far-right government with 30% of the votes could wield almost total power. Under PR, its ability to implement Project 2029 would be greatly reduced.

Public servants would be among the first casualties of a UK Project 2029; they can also be instrumental in making sure it does not happen.