Patriotic Alternative, one of Britain’s most overt nazi organisations, has secretly registered as a political party with the Electoral Commission under another name.

EC records show that in November, the Identity Party, with an address in Poole, Dorset, was registered with the Commission. However, the Leader of the party, and its Nominating |Officer, is recorded as Craig Buckley, a leading PA member in the Northwest and close to PA leader Mark Collett.

Collett has for a long time resisted registering PA as a party, as it would mean filing financial records and disclosing matters such as the organisations’ income and just how much he and deputy leader Laura Towler have been taking out of it. However, this failure has met with growing criticism from party members and derision from its far-right rivals.

Money not forthcoming

In the last election Collett got round the problem by cutting a deal with Robin Tilbrook’s English Democrats, in whose name four PA candidates contested seats. Tilbrook was supposed to finance all four campaigns, but it appears that not all of the money was forthcoming.

One of those candidates was Craig Buckley who contested the Leigh and Atherton constituency.

Setting up a proxy party under another name solves a number of those problems. Now they will be able to fight elections under their own steam (if not their own name) without any embarrassing consequences such as having to make public the state of PA’s finances.