London — From the upper floors of Millbank Tower, a skyscraper overlooking the River Thames in London, the U.K. Houses of Parliament are just a few hundred yards away. For decades, the building housed the headquarters of Britain's Conservative Party, one of the world's oldest political parties.
Today, it is home to Reform UK, the right-wing populist party led by Nigel Farage that is hoping to — and by some measures may already have — replace the Conservatives as the dominant force on the British right. The change of occupants reflects a wider political upheaval sweeping some of Europe's biggest democracies. In France, Marine Le Pen's right-wing National Rally has overtaken much of the traditional right ahead of the next year's presidential election.
In Germany, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has made historic electoral gains, challenging the center-right Christian Democrats. There are similar trends in Italy, Spain, Sweden and other corners of the continent. While the histories and ambitions of the movements in all these countries differ, collectively, their rise is forcing many of Europe's established conservative parties to make a choice: either adopt some of the populist right's increasingly hard-line positions on immigration and national identity and cooperate with them, or risk losing voters to them altogether.
"The larger issue is the general great realignment of politics towards identity and nationalism being the main axis of debate, not the economy," Steve Baker, a former British Conservative government minister, told CBS News. The European Commission forecasts EU economic growth of just 1.1% in 2026, down from 1.5% in 2025. Baker, who pointed to President Trump's election in the United States as evidence of the same wider trend, believes the shift reflects a deeper frustration with political and economic institutions.
"The world does not work for far too many people, and almost no one is able to explain why," he said. "In that environment ... someone gets the blame." Increasingly, he warned, that blame is being directed at ethnic and cultural minorities. In Britain, the Conservative Party is fighting for its political survival after its 14-year hold on power was brought to an end with a crushing electoral defeat in 2024.
Reform UK, led by Farage, has capitalized on and encouraged anger over immigration, accusing successive Conservative governments of breaking promises to reduce immigrant arrivals as net migration reached a record of nearly a million in the party's final years in power. A September poll found that 44% of Britons considered immigration one of the most important issues facing the nation. But the battle for Britain's political right is increasingly about more than immigration numbers.
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