I find "radical right" a more useful term for parties like Reform (which I know horrifies some of my colleagues!) The issue isn't how far the party is from an imagined "centre" - another concept I find unhelpful - but its "radicalism" (from "radex", or "root") on institutions, norms and obligations

It may be partly because I come at this as a historian, rather than as a political scientist. Terms like "far left" and "far right" don't really make sense before the 20th century, yet lots of the things that we see in Reform UK are very familiar from earlier forms of "radical" politics.

thanks - that's very interesting.

Do you see parallel with the Radical MPs of the mid 19th century?

@richardbaxell.bsky.social