The English Democrats, a nominally multiracial party that campaigns for an English Parliament, have made an unprecedented electoral pact with some of Britain’s most hardline nazis and, as Searchlight predicted a few days ago, emerged as an election stalking horse around behind which various extremist  factions are gathering.

ED founder and chairman Robin Tilbrook (above) is a 66-year-old who once served in the Coldstream Guards and is wealthy enough to finance his own party. And he is increasingly less picky about who he works with.

Last night when election nominations were published, we confirmed that the fifteen ED candidates include Thomas Bryer, a prominent current activist with Mark Collett’s neo-nazi gang Patriotic Alternative. Several leading figures in PA are in jail, some for terrorist offences. And Bryer is making no secret of the electoral tie-up, boasting that he is running as an ED candidate ‘promoted by Patriotic Alternative”.

Bryer is standing in Makerfield, a Lancashire constituency on the borders of Wigan and St Helens, where PA has been trying for years to stir up hatred against asylum seekers. His account name on X/Twitter refers to the “14 words”, a slogan coined by the American nazi terrorist David Lane.

During the 1980s Lane and fellow members of The Order, a criminal gang that aimed to overthrow the US government, murdered a Jewish radio presenter and stole millions of dollars in armed robberies. Lane died in prison in 2007, while serving sentences totalling 190 years.

When Tilbrook ran as a candidate in a recent Police & Crime Commissioner elections, his campaign  leaflets  were produced by PA leader, Mark Collett.

Henry Curteis, the ED Crime Commissioner candidate in West Mercia, was helped in his campaign by Homeland Party members, including its leader Kenny Smith. Homeland is now also expected to rally behind ED in the general election.

Another ED candidate is Steve Laws, standing in Dover & Deal. A former UKIP candidate who (like several of the far-right candidates at this election) passed through Anne Marie Waters’ Islamophobic party For Britain, Laws is a notoriously militant racist, who has become even more extreme in recent months.

He began to build his reputation about four years ago by uploading films of migrant arrivals in Dover, but at first was seen by more experienced British fascists as an ideological lightweight.

Laws has since moved much closer to the nazi old guard. Just a few days ago he stated on X/Twitter that all non-Whites should be removed from the UK, “regardless of their birthplace or the legality of their arrival”.

Laws has been involved with both PA and the Homeland Party, a rival faction that split from Collett last year. He is one of the most prolific social media posters on the British far right, and has tried to reconcile competing factions.

It’s not clear how far Tilbrook has explained his strategy to more ‘moderate’ ED candidates, or whether they will be happy to be on the same electoral ticket as blatant nazis and poisonous racists.

The ED’s other alliance is with the pathetic remains of UKIP, with whom EDs are in an officially registered election pact, the Patriots Alliance. Searchlight has been charting UKIP’s rightwards shift over the last year, and its leadership no longer seems to care about political coherence.

As we recently reported, UKIP leaders this week told their members that they were standing down some candidates so as not to obstruct Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

This was nonsense from the start, a transparent ruse to excuse their paltry number of candidates. Two of the seats they claimed to be withdrawing from were Barnsley constituencies abolished in the last round of boundary changes. And now, the two successor seats are actually being contested by UKIP’s formal ED allies running as Patriots Alliance.

There appear now to be 24 UKIP candidates, plus the two English Democrats who are standing on a joint Patriots Alliance ticket.

How they can dare to submit nomination papers – on the 80th anniversary of D-Day – describing themselves as patriots, while consciously allying themselves to Britain’s leading nazi organisation, is something that Tilbrook might care to explain.

Read Searchlight’s original  reporting here: https://searchlightmagazine.com/2024/06/unlikely-candidate-emerges-to-dominate-far-rights-election-campaigns/