Exclusive: Homeland defector exposes ugly truth behind ‘sensible nationalism’

Alex Bramham has always been on the right of politics. Last year he stood in the General Election for the right-wing Social Democratic Party. Before that he had been active in the Conservative Party in Manchester where he ran several times as a council candidate.

He has also been a prominent activist in gay politics, though taking a particularly vocal line against trans rights.

End in tears

Last year he joined Kenny Smith’s Homeland Party, attracted by their rhetoric about ‘modernising nationalism’ and encouraged by an apparent welcoming approach to gay people.

We said at the time it would end in tears. And it has. He has now left Homeland and rejoined the Conservative Party.

So what made the scales fall from his eyes?

Here, writing exclusively for Searchlight, he describes the ugly reality he discovered behind Homeland’s ‘sensible nationalism’…

“The votes have been cast, you have been banished from the castle. Before you leave us forever… were you a faithful or a traitor?”

The past few months in the Homeland Party have certainly felt like the hit BBC series Traitors. Surprises and betrayals, but politics is no gameshow and the time for talk is not over.

As the traitors return to a castle in ruins, did they banish a faithful, or one of their own? Did I join as a traitor? Was I recruited?

The story begins last year, with Searchlight already on the case:

“Bramham might be in for a surprise once fellow Homelanders react to having a gay activist in their ranks.”

Searchlight was proven right when Homeland’s election candidate and keynote conference speaker Steve Laws showed his true colours:

Neither Searchlight readers nor devoted nationalists would have been surprised, with the memory of Homeland’s Northern Ireland organiser appointment fresh in their minds.

For some reason, a femme-boy emo with a penchant for dressing as a cat and cow was not warmly welcomed as leader by hardened neo-Nazis. Who could have predicted that?

Homophobia was rife in the party: in the average conversation with members, everything was gay. Vaping? Gay. Elections? Gay. Asking why everything was gay? “You sound gay”.

Except, ironically, actual gay men. We were always branded “homosexuals”. Why, then, did a party saturated with supporters of the infamously homophobic Mark Collett and Steve Laws appoint two loud and proud gay men in the first place?

The answer, as so often is the case in politics: money.

An order was issued from Kenny Smith that Homeland would promote a policy of “lesbian and gay spaces to entice the “rich, powerful homosexual men who are opening doors, who are controlling things…” and who you find “wherever you go in right-wing politics, in this country or abroad.”

You can hear the Telegram audio recording of this here:

The problem with far-right ultra-nationalists is they have a tendency to drop their mask at the pub. The problem with hiding behind a so-called ‘sensible nationalism’, is when the sensible conservatives you deceive see it for what it is.

Across hundreds of conversations with Homeland members, I never met anyone with one iota of interest in the party’s official policy.

The reason there has been no sign of the long-promised safeguarding or health policies – nobody left in the party cares. The truth is, they never cared.

Pete North was a useful idiot to deceive the Electoral Commission. When he left, policy work ground to a halt.

I was a useful idiot to entice other members of the moderate, sensible Social Democratic Party. In Northern Ireland, Carter McAfee was a useful idiot to make nationalism ‘fabulous’.

None of it worked, because we saw the grift for what it was and walked away.

Nationalism is not fabulous.

If that makes me a traitor, it is a badge I wear with pride.