The far right didn’t rise in Britain by accident. It was cultivated – by a political establishment too craven, too complacent, or too complicit to stop it.
That’s the argument at the heart of Daniel Trilling’s If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable, a forensic dissection of how mainstream politicians, through decades of neoliberal failure, paved the way for Reform’s rise and the largest far-right mobilisations in British history.
Following last year’s wave of disorder – from Bristol to Glasgow, Liverpool to Newcastle, and a 150,000-strong march led by Tommy Robinson through London – Trilling’s book has never felt more urgent.
Now you can hear from the author himself. The Left Lane is delighted to host Daniel Trilling for a live online discussion of the book and the crisis it confronts.
Trilling will unpack how the language and tropes of the far right became mainstream currency – adopted, normalised and at times actively encouraged by politicians from Labour to the Conservatives. He’ll explore how Britain arrived at this dangerous moment and – crucially – what can still be done to change course.
As Trilling writes: “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.”
This is a conversation about resistance as much as diagnosis – and about why the far right’s success was never inevitable.
Andy Walker, senior editor at The Left Lane, will be chairing the discussion and we’ll be opening it up for audience questions.
How the British establishment enabled the far right
Thursday 9 July 2026 at 7pm
Online via Zoom (link below – registration essential)
If you want to understand how we got here – and what it will take to push back – this is unmissable.
Click here to register for the meeting.
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