Speaking at the MRS Annual Conference, Lacey said: “It points at the silent hotel on the edge of town, at the faces that do not look familiar… The power of the explanation is precisely that it matches the texture of lived experience. Yes, it’s wrong, but for them, it fits self actualisation.”

Lacey was presenting alongside Pauline McGowan, head of strategy at The Nursery Research & Planning, and Annabelle Phillips, founder at AP Research, in a session focused on understanding what the move to the right means. 

Phillips explained that the attraction of the far-right for many is rooted in the need to fill a societal void.

“Because there do not seem to be solutions that are working, or credible voices in charge, or a government that has a clear message, or a trusted mainstream media, emotional validation has become more important than policy substance and the populist playbook knows this,” she said.

“They don't dilute their comms with mere facts and figures; they speak to emotions.”

McGowan, meanwhile, presented some of the findings from The Nursery’s 2023 and 2025 studies conducted across four generations – Gen Z, millennials, Gen X and boomers.

The research found that while Gen Z leans slightly left, all generations comprise around a third that tend right; while Gen Z women are more left than their male counterparts. The 2025 data showed slightly more of a rightwards shift for Gen Z women and millennial men.

Lacey said the first thing to note was that “right-wing populism is not a monolith”.

“Most people think they’re a block of unified angry men in St George’s cross t-shirts, working class skinheads drinking beer.”

Lacey outlined three of the eight categories he has used to characterise people from the far-right:

• The hard-pressed: “They’re men and women,” he explained. “They're in their 30s and 40s. They're not ideologists. They're just normal people pulled in by frustration, insecurity, they do not call themselves far right”.
• The debaters: Debaters, Lacey said, are “educated young men convinced they are the vanguard for the new right and sexual movement. They dress and talk in the language of reason, free speech, open debate.”
• The conspiracy truthers: Conspiracy truthers “fell into this world through Covid and never climbed out. For them, every institution is corrupt, every event is staged, and the leads call every stream”.

However, McGowan noted, populism does not have to denote right-wing ideology; its tenets can apply to progressive platforms.

She said that when The Nursery conducted its research, Zack Polanski had just become leader of the Green Party. “It’s been very interesting to see him using a very similar playbook for the populist left, with the same urgent tone, and tapping more into current platforms,” said McGowan. “The issues and the problems are the same, but the enemy is different. We now have billionaires being pitted against the boats and hotels.”