After Reform UK, the far-right party fielding the most candidates in the general election is the Heritage Party, a UKIP breakaway heavily involved in promoting conspiracy theories about vaccinations and other strange obsessions. It is putting up 41 candidates. They are standing against Farage in Clacton, and against the English Democrats candidate Steve Laws in Dover & Deal.

The party’s founder and leader, David Kurten (pictured, in earlier times with Nigel Farage), was prominent in the leadership of UKIP and represented it on the London Assembly from 2016 till 2020 but split in 2020 to set up Heritage. He contested the Old Bexley and Sidcup parliamentary election for Heritage in 2021, gaining 1.7% of the vote.

The party is controlled by a limited company which is in turn entirely under the control of Kurten himself: he has 75% control and the right to appoint of sack a majority of the board of directors. Members needn’t expect any significant democratic say in the running of this party.

Kurten has been in trouble a few times when he was caught posting disinformation online. Last November he posted film of a luxury yacht which he claimed had been purchased by Ukrainian President Zelensky with funds from the UK, USA and EU (pictured). It turned out the yacht had not been bought by anyone – it was still listed for sale. In fact, it is still listed for sale today.

Then he posted a picture of a ‘woke’ LGBT sandwich, suggesting he’d bought it that day. In fact, the picture was five years old and had been digitally manipulated to look recent.

Since its launch, Heritage has lurched increasingly rightwards, embracing the full panoply of conspiracy theories which excite the wilder fringes of the far right: it’s against low traffic networks, 15-minute cities, net zero, digital currencies, 5G networks, fluoride in the water supply, comprehensive sex education. It is also strongly pro-Putin.

Its conspiracy obsessions are given free rein in their take on the Covid pandemic, describing the lockdowns of four years ago as “the tyrannical lockdown in the UK imposed by the Tories, Labour and MSM working in lockstep with the WEF, WHO and other globalists”.

At the time Kurten claimed that the infection, at the time killing a thousand people a day, was no worse than flu, and he discouraged people from getting vaccinated.

But Heritage are silent on some things as well – not least of all the fact that Kurten is a fanatical fundamentalist Christian who wants to completely ‘abolish’ abortion rights.

What we also know is that, despite the ostensibly responsible presentation of these issues online and in its election publicity, life at grass roots level in the party is very different. Local branches have become home to some of the most off the wall, conspiracy-obsessed, antisemitic crazies you will come across.