Tony Peters takes the pulse of the terminally ill UKIP, which barely scraped together 40 delegates for its annual conference and has since continued to haemorrhage members

This article appears in the Autumn 2024 issue of Searchlight, and pulls together our recent online coverage of UKIP.

UKIP’s annual conference, held in Nottingham at the beginning of October, marked a new departure for Britain’s fastest shrinking political party. For the first time it was held jointly with Robin Tilbrook’s far-right English Democrats.

Proceedings kicked off, so to speak, with UKIP’s unelected leader Nick “The Kick” Tenconi steaming across the conference hotel car park towards an anti-racist demonstration gathered there, barking into his megaphone: “Who invited you to my conference?”

That’s right, “… my conference”. Now, that would be a bit presumptuous at the best of times, but when you are the completely unelected leader of a political party and have not even yet had to attend an NEC meeting to introduce yourself, it really is a bit rich.

Of course, Tenconi made sure that he was filmed doing this and a video duly posted on YouTube was titled “Nick Tenconi storms through far-left blockade”. What it appeared to show, however, was more like Tenconi “storming” towards the demo, hoping to provoke a confrontation and being rather disappointed when the smiling, chanting anti-racists politely stood aside to let him pass.

The event itself was very poorly attended. As you can see from the photo, the conference room – which at times accommodated both UKIP and ED contingents – had seating set out for only around 80 and, according to Searchlight sources, fewer than half of these were occupied even at peak times.

The majority appeared to be from the ED. And things must have felt a bit odd to participants in a session on “UKIP branding”, considering that pretty much all the “branding” in the room belonged to the ED.

Criminal conviction

But the thin attendance was probably a relief for Tenconi, who might otherwise have had to answer some serious questions about his suitability to lead the party. He had recently faced a damaging revelation that he had a criminal conviction for kicking someone in the head in a night-club brawl.

Then some incendiary material appeared online casting doubts about the sexual morality of the man who turns up at Speakers’ Corner chanting “Christ is King”. It was posted on a Twitter account set up by UKIP dissidents in 2019 and included screen grabs of a number of sex-related posts featuring accounts that, the posts alleged, involve Tenconi.

 One was the Only Fans site of Australian Elle Knox who describes herself as “Australia’s Unforgettable Sweetheart & Mens Sacred Sexuality Mentor”, who offers various graphically described online sexual services and pornographic videos. In one exchange, an account named Tenco™ Training Ltd messaged, calling her “Dream girl” and saying “marry me”.

The Tenco Training post incorporates a picture that appears to be of Tenconi. Tenco Training is a company over which he is registered as having significant control and of which he became a director when it was set up in 2014.

Also reproduced was a post supposedly from a contact site for “swinger” couples, in which “Stacey & Nick” state that they are “happy and horny and love exploring sexually!” and seek to make contact with like-minded couples, in various permutations. The accompanying picture also appears to be of Tenconi.

The third appeared to be from a “Nick Marcel Tenconi” Twitter/X account. An existing account in this name was set up by Tenconi in 2011. This alleged post contains Andrew Tate-style advice to young men on how they should treat women.

It says: “Lads – once you‘ve pulled her and/or slept with her and she starts ‘playing the game’ recognise that this is NOT the same as playing games.

“Play back, have fun.

“If she does the latter, dump the bitch. Her emotional instability is tip of the iceberg.”

We cannot be sure whether all – or indeed any – of this material is genuine. We think that it would be pretty easy to fake such images. But it arrived at a time when it seemed intended to figure dramatically in the annual conference, where Tenconi was due to explain his proposed new direction for UKIP as the party of the “new right”, fighting for the restoration of Christian values. And, as Searchlight went to press, Tenconi had not publicly denied responsibility for any of the posts.

Formal pact

ED leader Tilbrook seems pretty relaxed about the allegations. UKIP and the ED are already locked into a formal election pact known as the Patriots Alliance, which is officially registered with the Electoral Commission. However, only two Patriots Alliance candidates featured in the July general election, both are ED members with one standing in a constituency where UKIP had promised not to run against Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and did not want to be seen to be too obviously breaching that commitment.

But, at the same time, the ED ran no fewer than four candidates jointly with the neo-nazi Patriotic Alternative. Tilbrook, who is not short of a few bob, was said to have put up the funding for this curious tie-up – one organisation considerably to the right of the EDs and one that has historically been to its left. However, as the dust settled after the election there were reports that at least some of the money – possibly all of it – had not been forthcoming after all.

Alliances such as this have contributed significantly to increasing the number of disillusioned members deserting UKIP. More traditional anti-European Union, anti-immigration members have not taken kindly to such a dramatic drift to the right, even if it was heralded last year when the party NEC lifted its long-standing ban on former members of nazi groups joining up. Chairman Ben Walker (above, right) said at the time it was to open the door to more “like-minded” people.

Leaving in droves

Although the small and largely compliant conference audience might have suited Tenconi and “Rogue Builder” Walker on this occasion, participation in UKIP has plummeted to catastrophically low levels and is beginning to cause them serious problems. One particular difficulty was reflected in the question being raised by some members (at least) who were asking why they never received their e-ballots for the election of NEC members.

It turned out later that the number of applications to stand (11 – some apparently whipped up very late in the day) exactly matched the number of vacancies, so the lucky candidates could be appointed by chairman Ben Walker without the need for a tiresome election. The lucky 11 included a number of very recent recruits to the party and Tommy Robinson’s right-hand man and event organiser, Richard Inman.

This turned out to be highly significant: there had been a number of clues that UKIP and Robinson might effect some sort of link-up, although this sounded far fetched. However, events in the weeks after the conference were to confirm this remarkable development might be going ahead (see pages 12-13).

The absence of a functioning NEC over the last 6 months or so helps explain how Walker and Tenconi have been able to reposition UKIP as a party of the extreme Christian right without as much as a whisper of formal opposition. Well, almost none. There was at least one dissident voice at the gathering, and the proceedings were livened up when a gentleman ventured that convicted criminal Walker, sacked as a magistrate this year for deceiving the Ministry of Justice about his convictions, should either be expelled forthwith or handed over to the police.

Walker could barely contain his fury. A few lapdogs leapt to his defence, saying he was doing his best in difficult circumstances, but it kind of summed up where UKIP is at the present time: a pathetic, shrinking shell of its former self, terminally ill and barely breathing, kept on life support by convicted criminals Walker and Tenconi.

And, no sooner was the conference over than the resignations continued, with the departure of Wales regional officer Paul Campbell, who also resigned his party membership. In a message on the leadership WhatsApp group Campbell said that he was “disappointed at recent events in particular the leadership election fiasco. I was supporting Bill Etheridge and expected him to win easily”.

In this, Campbell was not alone. Virtually the entire membership expected UKIP veteran Etheridge, a former MEP, to be elected leader in May, and were astonished when newly recruited Lois Perry swept the board with almost 80% of the vote. Perry, of course, did not last long, resigning suddenly during the general election, citing health reasons. Of note is that the actual voting numbers in the leader election have never been published by UKIP chairman Walker, the party’s Returning Officer.