But an analysis of social media suggests something else. Many people and groups on the radical and far-right are harnessing a process known as audience capture in order to influence political policy.

A group of anonymous X accounts is said to follow a “posting-to-policy” strategy. These accounts – some of which are run by disaffected Westminster professionals – post to inject their grievances into online discourse.

To explore this dynamic, and how Reform’s recent u-turn has been shaped by it, we analysed the online networks that drove conversation about “mass deportations” on X over the past year. Using computational methods, we identified four distinct sub-communities defined by their retweet relationships. These sub-communities were formed around far-right influencers, radical right influencers, Advance UK/free-marketeer influencers – and around the Reform party.

Discussion of mass deportations in 2024 was almost exclusively dominated by the far-right and the anonymous accounts of the radical right. Fast forward to April 2025 and we find Lowe, Habib and a wider range of rightwing influencers have entered the conversation in support of the policy.

Finally, in September, following Reform’s August announcement, you can see Farage and key Reform personnel supplant the influencers as players in a movement they had little role in creating. In doing so, the party has aligned itself with a policy that less than a year ago it vehemently rejected.