Having announced they were going to fight the Rochdale by election, Britain First have now gone strangely quiet on the subject and if you look for news of the campaign on their Telegram feed all you get are broken links.
The reason? The clowns forgot to get their nomination in on time and are now rewriting history, frantically deleting all mention of it from their social media accounts. Not quite quickly enough though and, as always, we are happy to be of service.
First published in Winter 2023/24 issue of Searchlight magazine
With this issue’s deadlines looming – indeed, technically passed – there has still been almost no clarification of the role in government that is going to be played by the conspiracist-adjacent Esther McVey, who was recalled from the backbenches (and from a lucrative gig as a presenter at GB News) in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s November reshuffle, but then largely kept from public view for the next few weeks.
Off the record, but clearly deliberate media briefings following the reshuffle, pushed the line that McVey had been pulled in as the “minister for common sense”. Even more off the record, she’s been referred to as the government’s “anti-woke tsar”. Neither of these is a job title that’s ever going to be set down on paper – officially, she’s a Minister of State without Portfolio in the Cabinet Office.
Before we continue, perhaps a recap is in order. Whatever thin rationale may have been put about, the only reason Sunak needed to reshuffle his team as soon as he did was to kick Home Secretary Suella Braverman to the bench. Not because she was too right wing for his regime – he doesn’t really mind throwing a diet of red meat to the Tory sceptics – but because she was a thoroughly loose cannon prone to publicly busking policy ideas, such as taking away tents from homeless people, without bothering to run them past the Prime Minister first. Her ambition to replace Sunak was simply too blatant.
For his sins of being a bit too visibly addicted to jet-set jaunts around the world, and achieving next to nothing, James Cleverly was shunted into the far less enjoyable Home Office, which must often feel like being appointed UK Ambassador to Mordor. More surprising was the appointment of former PM David Cameron to replace Cleverly at the Foreign Office, although it makes a kind of sense that we needn’t go into.
In terms of ensuring that the “great offices of state” were all occupied, this filled the hole created by Braverman’s departure. The hole it didn’t fill was having a favourite of the hard right at the top table. “Cameron for Braverman” very much had the optics of a drift to the left (we are, of course, talking relatively), and a couple of other shuffles that Sunak didn’t really need to make will have reinforced this perception among the more paranoia-inclined Tory MPs – Laura Trott replacing John Glen as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Victoria Atkins arriving in a double-shuffle that enabled Steve Barclay to replace the much-criticised Truss sidekick (or was it mentor?) Thérèse Coffey at environment.
So, although all of Sunak’s departmental holes were filled, the upshot of Braverman’s ousting was that the regime had suffered a perceived drop in right-wing credibility, and many have speculated that McVey’s appointment to what wasn’t strictly speaking a vacancy (non-portfolio ministers are an intermittent phenomenon) was calculated as a sop to the Tory right.
Baggage
To be fair to McVey, she displays some suitability for a “minister for common sense” role, insofar as she is mostly capable of remaining calm, speaking in measured tones and not blurting out obviously batshit-crazy thoughts in the way that Braverman does. But there is at least a suspicion that she is sometimes not too far removed from the madness, just not the one caught expressing it. A bit like the kid in the gang who is dead keen on (and perhaps even thought up) the idea of leaving a dog turd on the old grouch’s doorstep, but never the one caught brown-handed when the householder whips the door open mid‑crime.
The main piece of baggage that McVey brings to government is how invested she has been, as a backbencher, in all things Covid-sceptical. Until rejoining the front bench, she co-chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Pandemic Response and Recovery, a small group (about 20 MPs and peers) with a few oddballs in its ranks – if oddballs is the right description for people such as Iain Duncan Smith and “Britain needs more babies” enthusiast Miriam Cates and former Revolutionary Communist Party activist, Living Marxism publisher and Brexit Party MEP Claire Fox.
While McVey was still with the APPG, its membership of 21 featured a statistically highly improbable three GB News figures. (And it remains a rather improbable two out of 20.) Remaining in the group are McVey’s co-presenter and husband, Conservative MP Philip Davies, and (as APPG vice-chair) Helena Morrissey. Baroness Morrissey is one of only five board members of the company that owns GB News (All Perspectives Ltd) and was drafted in following the departure of disaffected GBN figurehead Andrew Neil.
The group’s secretariat and sugar daddy (to the tune of tens of thousands, apparently) is Collateral Global, which declares only that it is a charity funded by donations, but is believed to be largely bankrolled by the Koch network.
Her group co-chair (and he’s still in place) was Labour MP Graham Stringer, who doesn’t seem to accept for one minute that humans have caused climate change and is on record as believing that dyslexia is not a real condition but some kind of hoax. Now, this does not mean or even imply that McVey shares Stringer’s weird views, but it does tell us that she was content to be closely associated with him in the same parliamentary clique.
Similarly, it’s instructive to watch (or follow the transcript of) last year’s debate on a petition to require a national referendum before Britain could sign up to a treaty giving the World Health Organization more powers to counter pandemics. In line with her “common sense” persona, McVey was not among those who outright accused the WHO of being controlled by China or Bill Gates (she doesn’t even actually want a referendum, just parliamentary votes), but she did speak of the organisation being mostly privately funded and does not seem to be embarrassed to be on the same side as the accusers in what was a pretty low participation debate.
Not, perhaps, mortifying, but presumably at least embarrassing for her nowadays would be the part of that debate where she and (then) colleague Andrew Bridgen verbally patted one another on the back as fellow sceptics. Since then Bridgen has not only been kicked out of the Conservatives but has joined the Reclaim party, and it might be unwise to seem quite so pally with him these days.
Conspiracist territory
Where we get more heavily into conspiracist territory is with the Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART), where one can find all sorts of complaints about the vaccines – they were not properly tested, or they do not work, or the side-effects are being vastly under-reported, or that it is actually the vaccines and not the viruses that are killing people – if Covid wasn’t killing people in the months before the vaccines were developed, goodness knows what was doing it!
Similarly, the lockdowns were too early (!) or not needed at all, or the effects of them have never been properly evaluated. Schools should never have been closed at all, and so on.
McVey is not listed as a member of HART and, as you can guess from that catalogue of widely varying moans that can be found there, not even its actual members are reading from precisely the same hymn sheet. So it wouldn’t be fair to assume that she agrees with points that she has not explicitly endorsed. There cannot be much doubt, however, that she and HART are at least partly hand in glove. That she and her APPG tend to be lauded there might be considered merely suggestive, but the fact that HART’s head of communications, Jemma Moran, has now decanted herself from that team into McVey’s office as a parliamentary employee hardly looks like a coincidence.
After weeks under wraps, McVey finally surfaced as an official government representative on Any Questions on Radio 4 in December. For the most part it was a stay calm and project ‘common sense’ performance, although in addressing the topic of the Covid inquiry McVey couldn’t restrain herself from saying that it was asking the wrong questions, that she had been against much of what the government did during the pandemic, and that Labour had shamefully been a bunch of lockdown enthusiasts.
We will learn more about McVey’s role in the months ahead – and it may be that more has become clear between me writing this and you reading it. But I have a feeling that we are going to hear more about HART and McVey’s relationship with this team well before the general election rolls around.
International events are creating a four-way split within the far right. When your politics are based on hate, it can be difficult to decide whom you hate most.
Your average British bonehead basically hates Muslims. One reason for this is that the mainstream media has taught him – and, just this once, readers will have to forgive the sexist language, because on this wing of the far right it does tend to be mainly “him”, even in 2024 – that it is possible to get away with racism when it’s cloaked as opposition to “radical Islam”.
Although the years (and lifestyle choices) are catching up with him, Tommy Robinson remains the “leader” of this yob army. In November, he summoned the nation’s football gangs and cokeheads to “defend the Cenotaph” from an invented threat. Then, at the end of the month, he tried to muscle in on a rally against anti-Semitism, but was quickly removed from the scene after organisers took a commendably united stance against his vile Islamophobia.
One of Robinson’s main critics is Mark Collett of Patriotic Alternative, who still sees Robinson as his most obvious rival for the allegiance of young racists, whether online or on the streets. Collett tried to persuade his readers to reject Robinson’s calls to descend on London, and accurately mocked the former EDL boss’s charade of turning up for the demo briefly, then making a quick getaway in a taxi before the arrests began.
This is more than just a macho stand‑off between two middle-aged racists, each seeking leadership of impressionable young men.
It is just one part of a broader set of divisions within the far right over how to respond to Middle East conflicts and to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The ensuing four-way split partly reflects the efforts of old-school nazis to retain relevance in the 2020s, as against contrarians and conspiracy theorists whose ideology is anti-system, and conservative racists who are trying to mobilise populism for both electoral and fundraising strategies.
Pro-Putin Zionist camp
In one corner we have Robinson and his imitators such as Britain First. As an extension of their Islamophobia, they profess devotion to Israel, especially in wartime, and for years they also expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Robinson and a few others have sometimes tried to build connections with the outer right-wing fringe of Zionism, although the former EDL leader was firmly told to stay away from a recent demonstration against anti-Semitism that was backed by a broad range of Jewish community organisations.
Despite Robinson’s insistence that he is a Zionist, he was himself briefly in the anti-Semitic British National Party, and Paul Golding, leader of Britain First, was for years a BNP official working closely with one of Britain’s leading Jew-baiters, Nick Griffin. Golding now tries to play down his support for Russia, but he is on record as expressing his admiration for Putin and has visited Moscow several times.
Overt Zionism, combined with semi-disguised support for Russia, is increasingly common among European far-right parties that Golding hopes to imitate (or at least hopes to convince his donors that he has a chance of emulating). Marine Le Pen in France, Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany and the Austrian Freedom Party are among the leading examples of this tendency, but even they occasionally struggle to disguise their anti-Semitic roots.
Pro-Putin anti-Zionist camp
In the second corner is a pro-Putin but anti-Semitic (or, as they would put it, anti-Zionist) grouping. This is the largest faction among the traditional British far right, including the relics of the old National Front and BNP. Griffin and his business adviser, Jim Dowson, having abandoned their temporary façade of philo-Semitism, are among this faction. Also counted among them is Griffin’s enemy and former comrade in the NF’s “political soldier” faction Colin Todd, who after a spell in prison is back editing Candour.
Another of Griffin’s friends-turned-enemies, PA leader Collett, is also in the club of Moscow-loving Jew-haters, and frequently broadcasts on these topics with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Most of the conspiracy theorist far right (Michèle Renouf, James Thring, Nick Kollerstrom and other such nutters) are in the same club, although they usually talk only to themselves at events such as Keep Talking, which is still held at the Vauxhall Tea House, a stone’s throw from MI6.
Overseas, the leading examples of this tendency include a network of extremist parties organised by Roberto Fiore, leader of the militant Italian fascist party Forza Nuova, who has close links to both Moscow and Putin’s ally, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Germany’s oldest nazi party the NPD was the largest group in Fiore’s network, although it has for years haemorrhaged support in both directions, to the more mainstream AfD and to several more extremist splinters. This year, the NPD renamed itself Heimat.
Pro-Ukraine anti-Semites
The third corner is pro-Ukraine and openly anti-Semitic. This quadrant includes those who would see themselves as national socialist purists. In Britain, its leading proponents include the League of St George, the British Movement, and Heritage and Destiny assistant editor Peter Rushton.
Overseas supporters of the same Putin-hating, Jew-hating tendency include the young Spanish nazi, Isabel Peralta; the NPD’s rivals on the German neo-nazi fringe, Dritte Weg (Third Way); numerous football hooligan gangs, and supposedly intellectual but violent fascists in France and Italy, Group Union Défense (GUD) and CasaPound respectively.
Leading Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf, who has been living in the USA for years, is also in this anti-Putin camp, and the issue is undermining plans for a revived international Holocaust denial network (as revealed by Searchlight two months ago). But those who would have to be the backbone of such a network are vocally committed to opposing sides in the Ukraine war.
Pro-Ukraine, anti-Muslim
The fourth corner represents the most commonly held views within mainstream politics, but the least common among far-right spokesmen. Those expressing pro-Ukraine but pro-Israel views can be found among British Democrats and on parts of the Alt-right, but are more frequently to be heard in parts of the European populist right, including some “ex-fascists”.
The outstanding example is Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and the same line is also pushed by her far-right allies in Spain, the anti-immigration party Vox. Some hardcore Ulster Loyalists with a record of links to paramilitary violence are also on this pro-Ukraine, anti-Muslim wing.
It seems likely that the Gaza and Ukraine questions will remain a source of bitter contention within mainstream politics, as well as dividing the far right in 2024. Genuine campaign groups will need to avoid being exploited by the peddlers of hate.
The Electoral Commission have decided to allow the registration of the fascist Homeland Party as a political party which can now contest elections in the UK.
Homeland has desperately been seeking registration ever since it split from Patriotic Alternative last year.
Led by Scottish ex-BNP activist Kenny Smith (pictured), one of the main reasons it split was PA leader Mark Collett’s reluctance to get involved in electoral politics. HP’s main base is in the Midlands and Smith recently moved there from Scotland to build the organisation.
More background about Homeland in the latest Searchlight: https://searchlightmagazine.com/2024/01/state-of-the-far-right-our-annual-round-up/…
It’s boo-hoo time over at Heritage and Destiny, that vile little neo-Nazi umbrella outfit who have been campaigning more stridently than most on the far right on behalf of French nazi-loving revisionist Vincent Renouard.
Renouard has been banged up in Scotland for over a year facing an extradition request from France so that he can face charges arising from his attempts to whitewash nazi atrocities and war crimes.
Now, having exhausted all his avenues of appeal, he is due to be shipped out to France next week. And H&D, choking back the tears, lament the expulsion of a man they constantly refer to as a mere persecuted “scholar”. They rather give the game away however, by printing a picture of him with the deceased former BNP Deputy Leader Richard Edmunds, as nasty, evil and violent an antisemite as you could wish (or not) to encounter.
You can read more about the extradition cases here: https://www.searchlightmagazine.com/2023/10/nazi-reynouard-faces-extradition/