Political Racism has shown how distinctive forms of right-wing agency to which political racism was central helped to produce, in the UK between 2016 and 2021, fundamental – but regressive – constitutional, economic, political and social change. As the Introduction made clear, there is no suggestion that these forces provide a complete explanation of Brexit and its aftermath, but the book has demonstrated that they made important contributions to the emergence of new structures in the UK's relations with the EU, with major effects on its economy, society and wider international relations as well as its party system and electoral patterns. The study's core idea has been used to simultaneously highlight political action as a distinctive component of contemporary racism and distinctive new forms of racism as a key element in the stronger nationalist trend in mainstream right-wing politics. In these ways the book has contributed, the author hopes, to studies of both racism and right-wing politics, as well as to the analysis of Brexit and its aftermath, in ways which I summarize below.

Political racism in global and comparative perspective

This book has shown that in an age where open racism is frowned upon, political actors are more central than ever to its persistence, and that they are more than ever innovative in actively stirring and renewing racist ideas. While ruthlessly exploiting its potentials for immediate goals, they covertly rekindle old hatreds, construct new racialized targets and help to resediment racial sentiments in society. The political actors who mobilize racism are not only organized parties and their leaders (which I have broadly categorized as mainstream, radical and extreme right, while stressing the networking between them and the tendency for mainstream right parties to be transformed in a far-right direction), ad hoc campaigns (like the Leave organizations), networks and movements but also mass media, social media actors (“ordinary” users as well as public figures) and street-level actors (both organized and unorganized). The study has focused on campaigning around electoral contests, in which established actors and media tend to be dominant, but it has also shown how the loci of racist action are transformed as mainstreaming develops, and how political campaigning interacts with popular and policy racism, which also independently affect social relations and especially the lives and experiences of minorities.