Nominations have now closed for local council and mayoral elections in England, as well as the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd elections.
Yet again they show that Britain’s fascists are divided between a handful of very weak registered parties each hoping to be the next BNP, and a much larger number who have either given up their charade of democratic politics, or are pinning their hopes on one of the two Great White Hopes of dog whistle racism, Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe.
Talking a good fight
Searchlight’s initial analysis of this week’s nominations shows that UKIP has shrunk so far that (for the first time) it has been overtaken by two rivals on the racist right’s reactionary wing.
Nick Tenconi talks a good fight at demonstrations across the country, while Ben Walker rakes in the money from those few who remember UKIP’s glory days, but when it comes to real politics, they are now down among the minnows.
We understand that UKIP has just nine candidates for English councils this year, while the English Democrats have nine and the Heritage Party has seventeen. (In an earlier report we said we believed that UKIP was not fielding any candidates in England. Our apologies, this was incorrect).
Party owner
The party’s effective owner Ben Walker heads a UKIP list in the West Scotland region for the Scottish Parliament, and the party is fighting two other Scottish Parliamentary regions (Glasgow, and Central Scotland & Lothians West) though eleven of its fifteen candidates actually live in England.
UKIP has eight council candidates scattered across England: two each in East Sussex and Hillingdon; one each in Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and Tamworth.
Though its leader David Kurten is of part-Jamaican ancestry, the Heritage Party has attracted some of the most extreme and cranky elements of the old UKIP since breaking away in 2020. Those who still rant about Covid conspiracies find a natural home in Kurten’s party, and he seems to have retained the loyalty of a handful of old UKIP branches, notably in Woking and Southend.
UKIP survivor
The only other surviving UKIP splinter party, the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom, is fighting two Scottish Parliamentary regions (South Scotland and West Scotland) and three constituencies, but seems to have disappeared in England.
A former UKIP member of the Greater London Assembly, Kurten will be very happy to see Heritage overtake his old party, but no one seriously imagines there is much potential for further growth.
As well as their seventeen English council candidates (including four in Southend and three in Woking), they have a full slate of sixteen candidates for the Welsh Senedd, where they are the only far right challengers to Reform this year apart from William Jeffreys, an independent candidate in the Pen-y-bont Bro Morgannwg constituency that covers a large part of South Wales including Bridgend.
Jeffreys is a fanatical antisemite whose election website should be examined closely by police and prosecutors.
Single issue obsessives
Most of the English Democrats are single-issue obsessives campaigning for an English Parliament.
Yet ED leader Robin Tilbrook has a long history of recruiting dissident fascists and oddball conspiracy theorists. For several years during the 2010s he formed alliances with two separate groups of ex-BNP refugees.
The larger of these was led by Eddy Butler, who took several prominent BNP organisers including former councillors into Tilbrook’s party.
None of these Butlerite fascists are still in the EDs, but more recently (especially during the pandemic) Tilbrook worked closely with conspiracy theorist circles of the far right. This doesn’t seem to have brought in much new blood.
Familiar names
The nine ED candidates this year are mostly familiar names, including Tilbrook himself standing in both his Ongar & Rural division of Essex, and the equivalent Rural East ward of Epping Forest.
The English Democrats are now part of a grandly titled “Belmont Accord” with even smaller crank parties who share an obsession with anti-vaccination campaigns.
Pandemic-related issues
These include the Freedom Alliance for whom pandemic-related issues are their main raison d’être, and the National Housing Party which has roots in Islamophobic street politics and is backed by some former Tommy Robinson and BNP supporters.
The NHP’s most articulate activist Paul Rimmer, a Cambridge graduate from Liverpool who has passed through several parties including the BNP and EDs, has been very active online and spoke at a Heritage & Destiny conference in Lancashire.
This seems to show that NHP is no longer the fringe of the fringe, and is starting to be taken seriously by people who regard themselves as the “elite” of British fascism, including Rimmer’s fellow speakers from the British Democrats, British Movement, and Patriotic Alternative.
Rimmer often boosts Reform UK online and is part of the faction among some old-school fascists who think that Farage and Lowe will make electoral breakthroughs from which harder line racists can eventually profit.
Surprising growth
But his own party is in the meantime showing
surprising signs of growth and has eight candidates this year.
Six of these are in central London, in Clerkenwell (Islington) and four Camden wards. With London boroughs having all-out elections, the NHP has two candidates in one of these Camden wards, Holborn & Covent Garden.
Rimmer often boosts Reform UK online and is part of the faction among some old-school fascists who think that Farage and Lowe will make electoral breakthroughs from which harder line racists can eventually profit.
Overshadowed
Elsewhere NHP have candidates in Grimsby and Oldham. For years they were overshadowed by factional splits inside Britain’s largest nazi group Patriotic Alternative, and other attempts to create a party out of BNP wreckage, but very surprisingly NHP now has more election candidates than all these BNP successor parties combined.
Patriotic Alternative continues to avoid registering as a political party.
Most of those within Mark Collett’s movement who favoured electoral strategies broke away in 2023 to form the Homeland Party led by Kenny Smith, one of Collett’s old rivals from BNP days who made a show of burying the hatchet inside PA but was soon eager to stick a knife in Collett’s back.
Swanning around
After a couple of years swanning round far right conferences in Europe claiming that Homeland was the natural party for the “sensible right” advocating “remigration” (a new racist buzzword for what used to be called repatriation), Smith and his party have rapidly declined and have no candidates this year in either the English council or devolved Scottish and Welsh elections.
There are rumours among fellow fascists (gleefully encouraged by his main enemy Collett) that Smith might either resign Homeland’s leadership or close down the party.
The only candidate this year from that splintered ex-PA scene is in Hull, where Alek Yerbury’s National Rebirth Party, fresh from the humiliation of their cancelled national conference in Coventry last month, are fighting their first election.
Barry McGrath is Yerbury’s standard bearer in the St Andrew’s & Docklands ward.
Well known defector
Kai Stephens, one of the most well-known defectors who quit first PA and then Homeland, is now with the British Democrats and is among their five candidates this year.
Stephens (standing in Crome, Norwich) is unusual among Brit Dems who are mostly elderly or well into middle-age.
Their other candidates this year include party chairman Jim Lewthwaite (an ex-BNP councillor who is yet again contesting Wyke ward, Bradford), and fellow grey-haired fascists in Wakefield, Aldershot, and Basildon.
As usual there are a handful of hangovers from long dead fascist parties who have caught the election bug and are still standing as independents or one-man parties.
Former BNP branch organiser Andrew Emerson still registers his party Patria and is again its sole candidate in Chichester South, West Sussex.
Dave Durant is a veteran of the Harrington faction of the NF, who followed his master into Third Way and later the National Liberal Party.
He is standing as an independent in Harold Wood, Havering.
Holocaust denier
Holocaust denier Alistair McConnachie is an even stranger political oddball.
He was once in UKIP and was aligned with one of two rival far-right discussion groups calling themselves Swinton Circle. The one he supported and spoke at was run by the now-deceased Monday Clubber Allan Robertson.
McConnachie is founder and leader of “Independent Green Voice”, a party that has no connection to Green issues but has existed since 2003 and whose politics are a form of far-right Unionism. McConnachie is among the six slates of IGV candidates on regional lists for the Scottish Parliament this year.
Most other non-aligned online nazis are now supporting Rupert Lowe’s new party Restore Britain. Lowe has chosen not to fight any of this year’s elections outside his own constituency Great Yarmouth, where Restore will be fighting under the label “Great Yarmouth First” in nine county council divisions and one borough by-election.
Elsewhere there are several known members of Restore standing as independents, including a slate of seven city council candidates in Sheffield.
Strange politics
Post-UKIP politics in South Yorkshire are especially strange. The party now using the name SDP, which combines a version of “big state” economic policies with social authoritarianism and whose members have recently consorted with a range of far right groups, also has a large slate of 21 candidates in Sheffield.
Though there were once hopes on the right that they might unite as fellow anti-Farage Brexiteers, Rupert Lowe and Restore have now made clear they have absolutely no interest in merging with the slightly older ex-Reform splinter party Advance UK, led by Ben Habib.
Journey rightwards
Advance have eighteen candidates this year, with especially strong branches in Trafford and Walsall. They have also recruited an ex-Labour councillor Eva Jedut, in Dalgarno ward, Kensington, who will be standing for re-election this year as an Advance UK candidate.
Well, we say, ex-Labour but in fact her journey rightwards after she was expelled from the Labour Party in 2023 was via George Galloway’s Workers’ Party, whose candidate she was last year, and from which she slid seamlessly into Advance UK.
While Reform is likely to make big gains next month, it will important to observe factional moves after the elections when Lowe will continue his attempts to win over the more openly racist elements from Farage’s party.
He will come under pressure to exclude the most obvious nazis in his ranks, but as we have explained in several recent articles, this is likely to prove difficult because of the grip that young extremists have over Restore’s backroom operations and social media accounts.
Most of Britain’s nazis are standing aside from electoral politics for now: in some cases this is a strategic move though also due to their present weakness and division.
Far right candidates in 2026 (aside from Reform UK who are standing almost everywhere):
Welsh Senedd:
Heritage Party candidates in all sixteen seats.
Far right independent William Jeffreys in Pen-y-bont Bro Morgannwg.
Scottish Parliament:
Advance UK candidates for five regions (Central Scotland & Lothians West; Edinburgh & Lothians East; Highlands & Islands; Mid Scotland & Fife; NE Scotland;) and two constituencies (Caithness, Sutherland & Ross; Inverness & Nairn)UKIP candidates on three regional lists
ADF candidates for two regional lists and three constituencies (Renfrewshire West & Levern Valley; Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse; and Cunninghame North)
“Independent Green Voice” candidates for six regions (Central Scotland & Lothians West; Glasgow; Highlands & Islands; Mid Scotland & Fife; NE Scotland; and West Scotland).
London Boroughs:
Brent: UKIP in Welsh Harp
Camden: National Housing Party in Holborn & St Pancras (x2); King’s Cross; Regent’s Park; and St Pancras & Somers Town
Hillingdon: UKIP in Charville, and Colham & Cowley
Havering: David Durant (ex-NF independent) in Harold Wood
Islington: National Housing Party in Clerkenwell
Kensington & Chelsea: Advance UK in Dalgarno
Kingston upon Thames: Heritage Party in Old Malden
East of England:
Basildon: British Democrats in Castledon & Crouch
Great Yarmouth: Great Yarmouth First [i.e. Restore] in Caister South by-electionEpping Forest: English Democrats in Rural East
Essex: Advance UK in Clacton North, and Clacton West & St Osyth; English Democrats in Ongar & Rural
Norfolk: Heritage Party in Feltwell; Great Yarmouth First [i.e. Restore] in all nine Great Yarmouth divisions
Norwich: British Democrats in CromeRochford: Heritage Party in Hawkwell East
Southend: Heritage Party in Blenheim Park, Kursaal, Milton, and Thorpe
South East England:
East Surrey: Heritage Party in Oxted
East Sussex: UKIP in Langney, and Pevensey & Stone Cross; Heritage Party in Old Town
Milton Keynes: Heritage Party in Broughton & Moulsoe
Portsmouth: Heritage Party in Eastney & Craneswater
Rushmoor: British Democrats in Rowhill
Tunbridge Wells: English Democrats in Southborough & Bidborough
Watford: Heritage Party in Leggatts
Welwyn Hatfield: Heritage Party in Brookman’s Park & Little Heath
West Surrey: Heritage Party in Woking North, Woking South, and Woking South West
West Sussex: English Democrats in Rustington; Patria in Chichester South
South West England:
Cheltenham: Heritage Party in College
West Midlands:
Sandwell: Advance UK in Princes End
Tamworth: UKIP in Stonydelph
Walsall: Advance UK in Brownhills (x2), Pelsall, Pheasey, Streetly
East Midlands:
this region has hardly any elections this timeYorkshire & Humber:
Barnsley: English Democrats (x3) in Dearne North
Bradford: British Democrats in Wyke; Heritage Party in Thornton & Allerton; UKIP in AiredaleHull: National Rebirth Party in St Andrew’s & Docklands
Leeds: UKIP in Gipton & Harehills
NE Lincolnshire: National Housing Party in West Marsh
Sheffield: UKIP in Richmond
Wakefield: British Democrats in Wakefield North
North West England:
Bolton: Advance UK in Kearsley
Bury: English Democrats in Besses, Holyrood
Oldham: National Housing Party in Hollinwood
Rochdale: Advance UK in Hopwood Hall
Salford: Advance UK in Walkden South
Trafford: Advance UK in Bowdon, Bucklow St Martin’s, Davyhulme, Flixton, Timperley North, and Urmston.
North East England seems to be the only region where the far right (who once had big slates of candidates) has rallied solidly behind Reform UK and abandoned all the smaller parties, though how many eventually join the rival Restore Britain remains to be seen.
Reform UK has a full slate of candidates almost everywhere apart from several inner London boroughs. Proportionally their weakest borough seems to be Hackney, but even there they have 24 candidates for the 57 seats.
