17 February- 3 March 2026

There is no equivalence between racism and anti-racism, between politicians who fuel Islamophobic narratives and those who counter them. In Manchester’s Gorton and Denton by-election, Reform UK’s campaign was explicitly nativist and Islamophobic, while the Greens, as underlined by Hannah Spencer’s victory speech, countered Islamophobia and highlighted migrant rights. That is why it was so disappointing that the prime minister, doubling down on his ‘thuggery across the ideological spectrum’ policy response to the racist riots of summer 2024, blamed Labour’s electoral humiliation (it finished third) on the politics of extremism, even going so far as to insinuate that the Greens are an extreme leftwing equivalent of Reform UK.

For the record, Reform UK, in the run-up to the by-election, promised to create an ICE-style agency to deport 288,000 people a year on five flights a day, ban the conversion of churches into mosques, and redraw the Prevent mandate to focus on Islamist extremism. Its candidate Matt Goodwin (a GB News presenter) refused to disown a previous statement that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not necessarily British. As Goodwin railed against the ‘coalition of Islamists and woke progressives’ who brought about his defeat, Nigel Farage once again resorted to stigmatising Muslims. On the basis of allegations of ‘family voting’ made by Democracy Volunteers (contested by Labour-controlled Manchester City Council and the electoral returning officer), Farage claimed that ‘sectarian politics and cheating’ were a threat to the democratic process in predominantly Muslim areas. Reform’s latest response to its Gorton and Denton by-election defeat is to seek electoral reform to strip Commonwealth citizens resident in the UK of voting rights.

This week, in our regular calendar of racism and resistance, we also document how the French government is giving succour to the far Right and allowing the far-right National Rally (RN) to define what constitutes fascism. The context for RN National Assembly member Laurent Jacobelli’s assertion that the ‘far Left is the new fascism’ was the killing of 23-year-old Quentin Deranque, a far-right activist who died after suffering head injuries in a street battle between neo-fascists and anti-fascists in Lyon, now the epicentre of far-right vigilantism and violence from ultra-right gangs.

Left-wing defence groups have grown up to meet that threat, with one, Jeune Garde, dissolved by the government in 2025 for ‘violent activism’. Eleven people allegedly connected to Jeune Garde have now been arrested in connection with the death, and seven face charges of involuntary homicide. But instead of allowing justice to take its course, French politicians are turning the young far-right activist’s death into France’s ‘Charlie Kirk’ moment, holding a minute’s silence in parliament. No such tribute has ever been paid to the many victims of far-right violence. And a far-right march in his memory, where demonstrators gave neo-Nazi salutes and chanted ‘White people, wake up’, was allowed to go ahead despite an attempt by the mayor to have it banned.

Could France, where Marine le Pen is seeking to capitalise on the situation in Lyon, follow the US lead in designating ‘antifa’ a ‘domestic terrorist organisation’ – a catch-all phrase used expansively by the Trump administration, including to stigmatise anti-ICE legal observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti after their fatal shooting by US federal agents in Minneapolis.

And could the cold banning winds from the US, Hungary and now potentially France, blow to the UK? If Reform UK came to power, a concerted attack on any form of anti-racism and anti-fascism would certainly be on the cards.

IRR News team