The establishment’s fingerprints are all over the far right’s rise

Once in a while, a book comes along that takes an issue or a concept that you have been thinking about for a while and explains it in a clear and coherent way while also mapping out some solutions to address them. Daniel Trilling’s If We Tolerate This – How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable is such a book.

Trilling’s key premise is that while politicians around the world are leaning into bullying nationalism, its success is not at all inevitable and, crucially, we don’t have to let it happen here. His book exposes the British establishment and its role in creating the conditions that have led to the rise of the far right. Trilling expertly unpicks the craven actions of mainstream politicians who, by their slavish adherence to neoliberalism, have pandered to racism and xenophobia to make it easier for right-wing parties like Reform to gain support and poison political discourse and national debate.

In 2025, Britain witnessed the biggest far right rally in its history, after a summer of flagwaving protest. Those protests occurred across the country, with disorder in cities including Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle, the largest of which was on 13 September when up to 150,000 people took part in a London march organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson. In Trilling’s short, but brilliant book, he explains how we have arrived at such a perilous moment and what we can do to change course before it’s too late.

Trilling highlights and explains how the language, tropes and formulations of the far right have now become the common currency of mainstream political leaders, from Labour to the Conservatives. In creating and enabling a climate in which the far right has found it easier to gain a hearing for its divisive poison, something really dangerous has been unleashed and yet, as Trilling details, Britain’s political class seems at best indifferent and at worst to welcome it.

As well as charting how we got into this parlous state, If We Tolerate This traces the origins of the moment we now find ourselves in and offers some tools to stop destructive right-wing narratives in their tracks. As Trilling says, the answer is in our own hands. “A central problem is that we have allowed a noisy, bullying minority inside and outside our political class to shout others down and make their views seem the majority. We can push back. But only if we choose to.”

Daniel Trilling’s clear-sighted and informed response to the current situation we face is a must-read for anyone who wants to combat and defeat the far right.

If We Tolerate This – How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable by Daniel Trilling is published by Picador, price £14.

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