New alliances on the British far right are shaping up in advance of polling day.
The Social Democratic Party – not the 1980s “Gang of Four” but anti-immigration populists who have tried to resist the “right-wing” label – has an alliance with Reform UK (though far from a complete one). This is why Reform UK has stood aside in all five Sheffield constituencies and at least two other Yorkshire seats.
It’s difficult to see how this alliance will survive if one or the other party has Westminster seats and has to agree a party line. The SDP claims to adopt some “Old Labour” economic policies, while Reform UK are hardline neo-Thatcherites, and in some cases American-style libertarians.
An even broader alliance involves the English Democrats, UKIP, and Patriotic Alternative. This is complicated by PA also choosing also to work with the other main British fascist party, the British Democrats. Yorkshire PA members have been out leafleting with Brit Dem candidate Frank Calladine in Yorkshire, but they have been conspicuously absent from the campaigns of their English Democrat allies in Barnsley.
Cynics might imagine this is because one of the Barnsley ED candidates is of partly Caribbean origin.
Another complication is that Collett’s bitter enemies in Kenny Smith’s Homeland Party also try to be friendly with the EDs.
The third far right grouping contains two other breakaway factions from PA, the mainly Midlands and East Anglia based “Independent Nationalists”, and Alek Yerbury’s military-style National Rebirth Party, which so far as we can tell has its main strength in Yorkshire.
Whereas PA and Homeland cosy up to the EDs, and debate the pros and cons of voting for Reform in the vast majority of constituencies where there is no ED or Brit Dem candidate, Yerbury takes a more purist line.
He rejects Reform, UKIP and the EDs as multiracialist. For Yerbury, the whole point of racist politics is to stick to your principles.
It remains to be seen whether Mr Yerbury’s principles will stretch to an alliance with Nick Griffin. The former BNP Führer is sniffing around for allies, thinking he can market his last remaining dregs of credibility.
Are we going to see a Griffin-Yerbury alliance competing with the Brit Dem geriatrics, the Homeland opportunists, and those PA activists who can stay out of jail?
And if so, who will recruit the small army of racists and nutters who have been found too extreme (or too candid) for Reform UK.
Such people might not have much ability or credibility, but they do have cheque books, which perhaps explains Nick Griffin’s sudden reappearance with the dramatic allegation yesterday claim that Nigel Farage was once a member of the National Front. Griffin is clearly trying to elbow himself back into relevance. As yet, there has been no response from Farage.
Picture: North West Patriotic Alternative activists campaign for PA member standing as ‘English Democrat’ candidate.