Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage and President Donald Trump have been seen as allies since the latter’s campaign in 2016 in the wake of the Brexit referendum. They both lead their respective populist parties on an anti-immigration, anti ‘big government’ stance that sets them distinctly to the right of their countries’ political spectrums and puts them on the far right on the global stage. Both leaders lean into the idea of saving government money through tax cuts: Trump’s are heavily aimed at the ultra-rich and ultimately slash the quality and availability of public services that are used by his voter base; Farage’s tax cuts are somewhat more ambitious and lack the backing of any experts, particularly as his party has only ever held a majority on county-level councils.
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law July 4 and reduced the top marginal income tax rate from 39.6% to 37% through 2034, effectively costing the government about $340 billion. Despite the fact that Trump owes his victory in large part due to working-class Americans, he is not providing them with tax breaks because he has prioritized garnering favour from those that are rich enough to finance the campaigns of those he wants in office and the bills he wants passed. When Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016, he told struggling Americans “I am your voice!” But he has proven not to be the hero of any American on the poverty line. The Republican 199A pass-through business deduction provides business-owning Americans an income tax reduction of slightly more than 20%, meaning that they pay lower taxes than their employees. There is no evidence that this benefits their workers or that owners have or will increase investment in their businesses because of this. We know a large proportion of Trump’s voters are from low income households — more so than in 2020 — and yet by extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which dropped corporate taxes from 35% to 21%, Trump has cut federal tax revenue by $4.5 trillion from 2025 to 2034. This will have to be offset by taking money from areas that help low income families, like refusing to fund SNAP benefits during the government shutdown despite court orders. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act also cuts over $1 trillion in federal spending on programs that provide help for those that are low-income, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating that these households will lose around $1200 a year due to cuts to assistance programs.
Reform UK is also very pro-tax cuts, having promised large tax cuts that it has recently had to roll back some of its more radical tax goals. New Statesman’s George Eaton believes that the “U.S. right and the U.K. right are obviously swapping notes;” this is clear in both party’s penchant for large tax cuts that actually have a negative effect on public services. While Reform UK is talking about some policies that would benefit their working-class voters, such as raising the threshold for income tax from £12,570 (around $16,400) per year to £20,000 (around $26,000) per year among other policies, the funds for £88 billion ($115 billion) worth of cuts have to come from somewhere.
Like his American counterpart, Farage is not a fan of pro-environmental policies. Trump’s plan to cut the Brownfields project by 50% would negatively impact all those that benefit from the 200,000 jobs it has created and the $42 billion in investments that it has attracted since 1995—all for only $2.9 billion in taxpayer money. Reform intends to save £30 billion ($40 billion) every year for the next 25 years by ending subsidies to renewable energy companies and emission reduction. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s Fiscal Risks and Stability Report from July 2025 said that the public sector investment cost to the decarbonisation policy would only be £16.1 billion ($21 billion) in 2035, decreasing to £2.8 billion ($3.7 billion) in 2050. Where the far-right party has got their massively inflated figure from is unclear; they themselves are not a trustworthy source, just as we can no longer trust the White House’s own website to give us unadulterated data and facts. While the Reform’s promised working-class tax cuts would benefit the working class, Trump made and broke similar pledges about the working-class benefits of his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and the cost of reduced climate action would disproportionately fall on low-income families. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit found that the average yearly food bill will increase by over £400 ($523) due to climate impacts and fossil-fuel costs. Low-income households are also amongst the most at risk of flooding due to climate change and are more susceptible to the catastrophic financial impacts; In the U.K., these households are eight times more likely to live in tidal floodplains.Even worse, 61% of low-income renters do not have contents insurance to mitigate this risk.
Reform UK supposedly intends to make savings to offset the cost of tax cuts through cutting waste in government spending, in an ominous shadow of Donald Trump’s similar pledge. Trump’s Department of Governmental Efficiency claimed that it saved $52.8 billion by cancelling government contracts, but POLITICO could only verify $1.4 billion of that.. In 2024, Elon Musk claimed that a Department of Governmental Efficiency could cut $2 trillion in spending, a far cry from the $1.4 billion it actually managed. Since then, DOGE has fallen, with its former head calling Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill a “disgusting abomination” that makes federal finances far worse. Waste is not the main factor driving fiscal crises, according to the Foundation for Economic Education and most federal spending goes out without the need for Congress’ approval anyway. Discretionary spending accounts for less than a third of spending. While the U.K. does not operate on the same principles or mechanisms with regard to governmental spending as the U.S., and despite the American DOGE’s catastrophic failure, Farage’s party has adopted a DOGE of their own, headed by their deputy leader Richard Tice. However, DOGE UK has been equally unsuccessful for much the same reasons as its cousin across the pond. For example, the department has been unable to access data not readily available to the public in the party’s flagship council of Kent. As of Oct. 24, the party’s DOGE unit had not yet carried out any audit work in a single Reform-controlled council, as reported by The Financial Times. The lack of success in both countries’ right wing money-saving schemes tells us that their economic dreams are unrealistic. Lost tax combined with complete inability to offset those losses, mean that it is the most vulnerable in society who will pay the price for the lies of the far-right and their desperate power grabs.
Although Trump and Farage appear to differ in where they implement their tax cuts and their prioritisation — or lack thereof — of their working-class constituents, they are both choosing to ignore the enormous fiscal infeasibility of their economic plans, which rely on cutting waste that does not exist; evidently, they hope that voters are too ignorant to notice. Both far-right leaders cut environmental spending, insignificant compared to either country’s defence budget, at the risk of not just their population’s quality of life, but their actual lives. Their cost-cutting departments are both complete failures. Clearly, we need a far different approach to conserving government funds and setting tax rates than what the Anglo-American right is providing.
