In 122 UK constituencies in the forthcoming election the ballot paper will include candidates from the cosy-sounding Social Democratic Party.
This outfit, however, is nothing like the party launched back in 1981 by the ex-Labour Gang of Four, David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, and Bill Owen, which merged with the Liberals in 1988 to form what we now know as the Liberal Democrats.
The present reincarnation is a right-wing, socially conservative offering formed by the remnants of the original SDP when it was finally wound up in 1990.
Now led by William Clouston (pictured), one of its candidates in July is the gob-shite right wing columnist, Rod Liddle.
Clouston got himself into a bit of bother back in 2020 when he retweeted a post of a man reading a poem called ‘The Right to Hate’ which railed against the ‘New World Order’ and the Rothschilds.
Clouston also retweeted a comment which said: “This man is absolutely nailed on with this. Some really powerful points in this.”
But more to the point: in South Yorkshire they have entered into a pact with Nigel Farage’s Reform party for this general election. The deal, announced two years ago, declared that:
“…each party stand aside for the other in six key constituencies and will also see over a dozen candidates in the South Yorkshire area standing under the joint branding of ‘Reform UK & The Social Democratic Party (SDP)’.
What has emerged is a hybrid of this arrangement: there are no candidates running under the ‘joint branding’ but in the fourteen South Yorkshire constituencies the parties are standing aside for each other, with only one appearing on each ballot form.
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/
Seems like many more Reform candidates than just Robert Kenyon are Facebook friends with Gary Raikes, leader of New British Union. Good Law Project reports that there are no less than 14… New British Union is dedicated to ‘Restoring Faith in fascism’. Anything to say
We just can’t let this pass: only a few days ago, UKIP said they were withdrawing from 7 seats to help out Nigel Farage and Reform. As we pointed out, this was complete tosh: they didn’t have candidates for these seats, weren’t going to find any, and anyway, two of the seats no longer existed. And now, after almost wetting herself with excitement that ‘my friend’ Nigel Farage was running after all, UKIP Leader Lois Parry has announced that UKIP will be running a candidate, in Clacton, against Farage himself.
Left hand? Right hand? Who knows. But we’re pretty sure her ‘friend’ will be less than impressed.
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