Introduction: Youth Policy and the Spectre of the Far Right

Far-right politicians manufacture resentment. They speak to the emotions…love for the homeland, fear of the foreigner and anger against corrupt elites… They create “anxious citizens”… (De Schutter, 2025)

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on poverty and rights, De Schutter (2025), recently documented how austerity’s ‘deep cuts’ have cultivated a ‘fertile ground’ for the populist far right. For De Schutter, ‘universal public services and social protections are crucial’ to fight poverty and to serve as a ‘dam against far right populism’. He also drew attention to the need to ‘strengthen social links across communities’ – with networks of solidarity – to help inoculate against the populist far right’s polarising and divisive narratives.

De Schutter’s UN report is taken as a point of departure for this article. Adopting a youth policy lens, this article argues that youth service rebuilding and regeneration of youth work practice – after the demolition job of austerity – will also help strengthen the ‘bulwark’ and ‘solidarity networks’ that resist and challenge a rising far right. It does so with a focus on youth policy in England and Wales. The article proceeds as follows. Firstly, it outlines its research background and the wider socio-political context that it addresses. Secondly, it foregrounds the inclusionary and egalitarian characteristics of youth work’s social practices and its policy envisioning. This progressive approach is situated within a broader public agenda, one that challenges – and provides constructive alternatives to – far right discourse and its neoliberal conditions.

Research Background: ‘Rebuilding after the Demolition’

This article emerges out of a wider – and ongoing – research programme into youth policy in England and Wales. National youth strategy developments are the current focus of its case-based comparative research. It builds upon – and extends – an earlier phase of research into austerity, marketisation and agency, including within governance (Turner, 2024). From this wider research, this article draws on: autoethnographic reflections on policy contexts (Turner, 2026); case-relevant public policy and media documents; and, a specific set of transcripts of semi-structured interviews (on policy contexts, held during early-mid 2020s, with a dozen practitioners, managers and policy advocates).

After close synonymity of their youth policies in late 20th century (Williamson, 2010), the delimitation to England and Wales facilitates analysis of: points of divergence and concurrence to youth policy following Welsh devolution; and, similarities and differences to respective case conditions and outcomes. A notable recent convergence is that both nations now have their own national youth strategy frameworks. There has been the youth strategy approach of successive Welsh Labour-led governments (Welsh Government, 2007, 2014, 2019; IYWB, 2021; Neagle, 2025), and – so far, since the 2026 Senedd election – plans for a national youth work body are continuing under the new Plaid Cymru government (Welsh Government, 2026). In England the return of a national youth strategy has followed the 2024 Westminster change from a Conservative to a Labour government (DCMS, 2025). While such developments are broadly welcomed in the youth work fields of both England and Wales, there is ongoing scrutiny and advocacy regarding levels of investment, qualified staffing and statutory frameworks (IYWB, 2021; Unite the Union, 2025; NYA, 2025a). Nonetheless, the necessary rebuilding of youth services and youth work is positioned as an urgent and vital area of youth policy for these two countries. The current wave of the far right, however, further intensifies this situation.

The Current Wave of the Far Right

Following the 2024 Westminster and 2026 Senedd elections, a notable similarity to the socio-political context for youth policy in both nations – and youth work practice – can also be discerned: the spectre of the far right. Reform is now a serious contender in elections for local, national and devolved governments (Heath et al., 2024; Senedd Cymru, 2026; Jennings, 2026). As well as Reform’s electoral significance, the far right’s social movement organising and subcultures are widespread too, this is evident in: anti-asylum protests and sites of violence (Newburn, 2024; Kleiderman & Symonds, 2025), Patriot Platform’s vigilante network (Hope Not Hate, 2026), Unite the Kingdom rallies (Mudde, 2025), Operation Raise the Colours (Mulhall, 2025b), social media content (Duncan et al., 2025; Harrison & Brown, 2025), and Extreme Right Wing (ERW) referral rates to Prevent (Home Office, 2026). This context is an explicit concern of the youth sector, especially the ‘racism, Islamophobia and all forms of divisive rhetoric’ that is rooted in the current wave of far right politics (UK Youth et al., 2026).

To help grasp this context, the far right is used as an umbrella term that encompasses the radical right and extreme right (Mudde, 2019; Pirro, 2023; Mulhall, 2025a). The contemporary far right can be characterised as holding an ultranationalist, nativist, authoritarian and exclusionary outlook; this runs across both the illiberal-democratic radical right as well as the anti-democratic extreme right (Pirro, 2023). Thus, currently in the UK’s nations, example sub-parts of the far right include those more radical (e.g. Reform), and those more extreme (e.g. Patriotic Alternative). While there are internal divisions and differences, Pirro (2023) addresses ‘fluidity’ and ‘porous borders’ within the sub-parts of the far right. Mudde (2019), Fekete et al. (2024) and Winter (2026) analyse the mainstreaming and normalisation of the far right’s ideas into wider society, politics and culture. Such recent developments are framed – by Mudde (2019) – as a ‘fourth wave of the post-war far right’. Meanwhile Mulhall (2025a) characterises this as a ‘wave of really dangerous global far right politics’ that is on the rise, and one that requires a ‘Popular Front sort of policy’ to be ‘beaten back’.

The ‘Fertile Conditions’ of Neoliberal Austerity

Echoing De Schutter’s (2025) report on the ‘fertile conditions’ conducive to the populist far right’s rise, Mulhall (2025a) draws attention to the significance of austerity at a local community level:

In an age where we’re all, I think, feeling uprooted…the funding has disappeared, there’s no youth clubs, there’s no libraries, there’s no communal spaces in most of our communities now… That sense of dislocation is something that the far right can really prey on.

The backdrop of austerity – while providing ‘fertile conditions’ for the far right – is also a serious condition for youth policy frameworks to navigate in both England and Wales. Across these nations the youth service and youth work have been massively cut back, or even completely demolished in places (Nicholls, 2012; Davies, 2019; YMCA, 2020; Unite the Union, 2025). A research conversation (held in 2022 with a senior youth worker) helped illustrate the level of austerity’s cutbacks within a Welsh local authority’s county youth service:

[Prior to 2010] there were 20 plus full-time workers who went down to 4… [There are now] 11 centres that are, most are, only open 1 evening a week. It used to be that we had over 20 centres most were open 2 nights a week [or more]… So you know you’ve got a quarter of what used to happen happening now in the clubs that are still open, and they’re really struggling. I haven’t got any spare staff.

The picture was similar – arguably worse – in England. In a research conversation (in 2022) with a service manager from an English city, it was expressed that, ‘since austerity’, they felt ‘very lucky’ to still retain a fraction of an earlier budget – that was previously much larger – for a now much ‘diminished’ service. This was ‘lucky’ because they had seen other cities, in that region and elsewhere, have ‘their youth services smashed to pieces’ – this person added: ‘it’s devastating what’s happened to youth work’.

Documentation of far right protests during mid-2020s – at an accommodation site for dispersed asylum-seeking families – provides further insights into how the far right manipulate the consequences of neoliberal austerity (Turner, 2026). At this site, an amalgam of radical and extreme elements of the far right were advancing a narrative together that pitched the unmet demands and grievances of a local ‘native’ population, against a government ‘elite’ and ‘migrant outsiders’. In a street interview, for a far right auditor’s online content, an anti-asylum protest organiser sought to juxtapose the ‘extra accommodation’ for ‘asylum seekers’ against the axed services and limited provision for ‘locals’, including the loss of youth clubs.

For De Schutter (2025), it is within such ‘fertile conditions’ that the populist far right ‘claim to represent the “ordinary people” against the “elites”’, and they do so ‘by combining anti-elite sentiment with an “us” against “them” mentality’. The radical right’s populism, for example, uses a populist reason to construct the people in opposition to an elite, outsiders and minorities; however, such a populism is articulated in combination with nativism (Laclau, 2007; De Cleen et al., 2018; Mouffe, 2019). For Mudde (2017), the radical right’s ‘populism comes secondary to nativism’, and it ‘functions at best as a fuzzy blanket to camouflage the nastier nativism.’ It is an exclusionary form of populism that fuses racism and nativism (ECPS, n.d.).

Alternatives, however, are available. In her broader discussion of political strategy, for instance, Mouffe (2019) states a ‘different vocabulary’ is needed to that of the populist radical right. Additionally, social movement mobilisation (Stand up to Racism, 2024), labour movement organising (Morgan, 2026; TUC, 2026), and wider civil society responses (Churches Together in England, 2025; End Violence Against Women, 2025; Asylum Housing Alliance, 2026; UK Youth et al., 2026) are all contributing to a broader alternative public agenda. Youth policy visions and youth work practice also feed into an alternative agenda and vocabulary to that of the populist far right, as recognised by Lowles (2025).

Youth Work Visions & Practices: An Inclusionary and Egalitarian Framework

On the very specific matter of youth service cuts, youth work’s community of practice has been acutely aware that the post-2010 neoliberal policy choice of austerity was the culprit (Nicholls, 2012; Davies, 2019; YMCA, 2020), not migration or asylum-seeking. In this situation, the field’s youth policy demands for ‘rebuilding youth services’ – with national strategies, supportive legislation, sufficient investment, qualified staffing and the ‘political will’ to do so (Nicholls, 2018; IDYW, 2018; IYWB, 2021; Davies, 2024; UK Youth, 2024; YMCA, 2024, 2025) – speaks to genuine grievances about the loss of community provision. These visions also resonate with wider calls (De Schutter, 2025) to address the ‘fertile conditions’ of austerity in which the far right mobilises. In this instance, the youth work field communicates its democratic demands constructively and without, for example, resorting to the anti-asylum ‘scapegoating’ of the contemporary far right. Rather than the exclusionary and nativist features of far right populist discourse, such youth policy visions can be characterised as inclusionary and egalitarian.

The youth work field’s social practices (actual and envisioned) also have key rules, features and traits that are inclusionary and egalitarian. For instance, the ethical framework of youth work practice includes: the UNCRC’s right to non-discrimination; National Occupational Standards (NOS) with core values of inclusion, equity and diversity; the ‘inclusive’ and ‘empowering’ principles of Youth Work in Wales; and anti-oppressive traditions (YWWRG, 2022; NYA, 2025b; UK Youth et al., 2026). From such core ethical components contemporary youth work’s practice also presents a challenge, and difference, to the exclusionary and nativist features of far right discourse.

Accounts of an inclusionary and egalitarian youth work practice – whether open-access, targeted or project-based – were shared in research interviews. For example, a Welsh voluntary sector manager (in 2022) revealed an egalitarian envisioning for ‘equality of access to youth work’, and for this access ‘to be a right and entitlement… accessible for all and every single young person… so that it doesn’t matter’ where you live.  They continued, ‘we have to give those safe spaces to young people and treat young people with respect and equality’. Thus, this is inclusive work with young people, regardless of background or location – though with room for strengthening practice with ‘underrepresented’ groups. The ‘we’ in youth work discourse is thus inclusionary, it includes work with young people in all their heterogeneity (and the practice of youth workers in all their heterogeneity too), e.g. whether UK-born or a sanctuary seeker or of another migratory background.

A Welsh local authority officer (in 2025) provided a concise summary – and common understanding – of such practice: ‘it’s inclusive, educative, expressive, empowering, participative. As long as colleagues are doing that. And it’s on a voluntary [association] principle… To me, that’s youth work.’ Additionally, an English youth policy campaigner (in 2022) insisted the wide and varied contributions of youth work should be highly valued – not ‘underestimated’ – including its ‘political contribution to a more collective consciousness and a more egalitarian approach to social issues.’ Emphasis was drawn to the professional practice of those ‘very skilled in the face-to-face work of empowering young people through seizing educational moments… and developing exciting stimulating informal education programmes.’

A range of more specific practice examples were shared as well. A Welsh local authority officer (in 2025) drew attention to ‘open access youth work’ programmes, and how their ‘huge benefits’ also extended into ‘community safety and community coherence’. Such provision immerses ‘young people with different types of young people with different backgrounds… so that they can learn about each other, and with that the fear drops and the possibility of flashpoints reduce.’  An English youth work advocate (in 2022) highlighted examples of really ‘inspiring youth work at the moment’ from ‘Black-led organisations’, in cities such as Manchester and London, that are ‘coming from an anti-racist perspective’. A qualified youth worker, who had worked across the UK’s nations, shared experiences (in 2025) of intercultural project work within ‘contested cultural spaces’. In such projects, youth workers were creating spaces and opportunities for ‘intercultural engagement’, so ‘young people growing up in different cultural environments’ would recognise their ‘similarities’, not simply ‘differences’.  From such practice examples, the potential and capability of youth work to ‘strengthen social links across communities’ (De Schutter, 2025) – with networks of solidarity – is evident.

Conclusion: For An Inclusionary and Egalitarian Agenda

The public task of rebuilding youth services and revitalising youth work is – after the demolition job of austerity and in the present context of a rising far right – an urgent and vital area of youth policy in England and Wales. This article has contributed with a focus on grassroots social practices and policy visions from the youth work field, and the contributions these make within a broader public agenda that challenges – and provides alternatives to – the political framing and demands of the far right. The rebuilding of youth services will help strengthen the ‘dam’ (De Schutter, 2025) needed to resist the far right and its neoliberal conditions. Revitalised youth work practice will contribute to stronger ‘social links’ and ‘solidarity networks’ (De Schutter, 2025), not least though its informal, intercultural and anti-oppressive educational opportunities. However, such an inclusionary and egalitarian agenda is facing significant threats and challenges. It is an incomplete task and a collective endeavour to be taken forward.