Author Archives: Searchlight Team

2024 European elections – a paradigm shift for the far right

This article originally appeared here on 14 June. It has been updated to include the far right realignments in the European Parliament following the elections. It also appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight,

Shock gains for far-right parties right across Europe saw France face a snap election and Belgium’s PM resign. Although the right fell short of its hoped-for majority, the centre is in trouble – and that is bad news for all of us.

By Martin Smith

The evening the European Parliamentary election results for France were announced, Marine Le Pen held a party at a swanky nightclub in the woodlands of the Bois de Vincennes, east of Paris. It was a select gathering of dignitaries from the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). In attendance was the party’s poster boy, Jordan Bardella.

They had cause to celebrate. Le Pen’s RN had won 31 per cent of the vote, gaining 30 European Parliamentary seats (a 12-seat increase on the previous European election), whereas President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party lost more than half its previous seats and votes.

The results were a crushing blow for Macron. A jubilant Le Pen declared at her celebration: “We are ready for power if the French people put their trust in us.” Bardella pushed even harder: “The President of the Republic cannot remain deaf to the message sent this evening by the people of France.” He went on to demand that Macron call an early election.

Macron’s response to the gauntlet thrown down by Bardella was quick, unambivalent and risky. Announcing a snap election, he said: “I’ve heard your message and I will not let it go without a response. France needs a clear majority in serenity and harmony, I cannot resign myself to the far right’s progress in France and everywhere in the continent.”

His statement is revealing, both acknowledging the scale of the vote for the RN and the rise of the far right across Europe. The RN’s results should not be downplayed, they were a huge blow for the centre parties of Europe. It is with some justification that Macron thinks that France is the powerhouse of the European Union (EU) and he is the driving force of the centre parties.

Far-right gains

The French results were the high point for the far right in Europe, but there were many other significant results (see tables). Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s fascist Brothers of Italy more than doubled its seats in the EU parliament, coming first with 24 seats, securing 29 per cent of the national vote.

An overjoyed Meloni stated that she was “emboldened by the results” and vowed to play a fundamental role in Europe. Despite a strong challenge, Viktor Orbán’s populist far-right party Fidesz topped the Hungarian polls, winning 11 seats and gaining 45 per cent of the vote. In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) came first, winning six seats and gaining over 25 per cent of the vote. Finally, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang (VB) came joint first with three seats.

In Poland, although Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO) came first with 37 per cent, the total vote for the far right was significantly larger. The right-wing populist PiS (Law and Justice) ran Tusk close, winning 20 seats (36 per cent), and the fascist far-right multi-party alliance Confederation (Konfederacja) came third, winning six seats and taking 12 per cent of the vote.

Several far-right parties also came second or third. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was rocked by scandals involving its candidates’ support for the Nazis in the run-up to the election. Despite this, it still managed to beat German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party to second place.

The AfD won 15 seats, gaining 16 per cent of the vote. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilder’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) came second, winning six seats.

Other important votes for the far right included third places for Spain’s Vox and the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). In Bulgaria, the ultranationalist Revival Party came fourth in both the EU elections and the parliamentary elections, which were held on the same day.

Shock waves

The levels of support for the far right have sent shock waves throughout Europe. Not only did it force Macron to call a snap election, but Belgium’s Prime Minister Alexander De Croo also resigned after his Flemish Liberals and Democracy Party (Open VLD) suffered a heavy defeat in the European and general elections, both held on the same day. A new government will be formed, and it is unlikely that the far-right populist party VB will be invited to join it, but the new government may coalesce around the separatist right‑wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA).

Finally, in Austria a general election is set to be held on 29 September, with the far-right FPÖ currently topping the polls. By September the political map of Europe could be redrawn again.

There were some setbacks for the far right, most notably the decline in support for Fidesz, the Czech Civic Democratic Party and Matteo Salvini’s Lega per Salvini Premier (LSP) in Italy. Despite these setbacks across much of Europe, the far right is in the ascendancy.

Media response

When the results were announced the mainstream media gave a collective sigh of relief focusing on the fact that the centrist parties still hold the majority of seats in the European Parliament (Table 1). This is true: the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is the biggest bloc, gaining 9 more seats to total 188 compared to the 2019 elections. While the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) vote remained relatively stable, with only four seats lost, the liberal Renew group was decimated, losing 21 seats, and the Green bloc lost 17 seats.

The idea promoted by the media, that the centre is holding, ignores the far right’s paradigm shift across Europe; its overall vote has increased by 5 per cent. This is part of a long-term trend that has seen the far right making similar size gains in the European elections of 2014 and 2019.

Another area the media has focused on during the 2024 election are the sharp differences between the far-right parties, arguing that it makes it impossible for them to unite. The respected political scientist Cas Mudde reinforced this view, stating in The Guardian: “Although polls predict huge gains for the far right, its deep divisions mean that the victory may prove to be a pyrrhic one.”

Currently, the far right in the European Parliament is found in three formal groupings and among the non-attached odds and sods. The first group is the Le Pen-led Patriots for Europe (PfE), an enlarged rehash of the last parliament’s Identity and Democracy (ID) group; the PfE includes Le Pen’s RN, Vox and PVV plus Fidesz, Chega!, VB and Lega. It has 84 seats.

The second is the Meloni-led European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); founded by the UK Conservative Party. This is now dominated by the Brothers of Italy, PiS and Sweden Democrats. It holds 78 seats.

The third group is the new Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), which largely exists to provide a home for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) members shunned by the ID group over alleged Nazi sympathies (yes, we know, don’t get us started!). With 14 members, AfD is by far the biggest party in this 25-seat group. (A 15th AfD man, the SS apologist and rumoured Chinese intelligence asset Maximilian Krah, has been cold-shouldered and sits among the non-attached radical left and right MEPs).

The three far-right groups might be regarded as the second-biggest bloc in the parliament. Added together, they hold 187 seats, only just short of the European People’s Party’s 188.

There are deep divisions within the ranks of Europe’s far right. Both Orbán and Le Pen have close ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and their support for Ukraine and NATO is at best lukewarm. On the other hand, the PiS and Meloni back NATO and are solidly behind Ukraine. It would be in their interests to try to overcome these existing political hurdles and create a powerful far-right bloc in the European Parliament.

These differences should not be downplayed; it is a truism to say that the far right is a band of warring brothers. Yet much unites them: all campaigned on an anti-immigration ticket, in defence of the family and against “gender ideology”.

The growth of the Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC) demonstrates the developing links between global extremists and the possibilities of building a right-wing parliamentary block.

Only a decade ago it was widely argued in academic circles that right‑wing electoral parties were strongest in eastern Europe because of the economic and social dislocation produced by the transition from communism to free‑market capitalism. The growth of the far right across western and northern Europe clearly demonstrates that this no longer the case. One of the most worrying developments is the embedding of the far right in the “big three” European powers – France, Italy and Germany.

Wider implications

Far-right parties are shaped by national historical and social issues, but there are also factors that cut across national boundaries. One important factor is the “normalisation” of the far right. The electoral success of all of the far-right groupings has been due to their ability to put forward simple solutions and populist slogans to complex problems.

The key mobilising issue for the far right is its anti-migrant and anti-Islam message. But, instead of challenging the lie that migrants and refugees are responsible for poverty and the decline in services, mainstream parties are copying and introducing their own anti‑migrant/refugee policies.

This is creating a toxic vortex. Thus, we see a legitimisation of the far right, which in turn reinforces the idea that immigration is the problem, which in turn encourages the far right to be even more emboldened in its anti-migrant and racist rhetoric.

During the election, all the main far‑right parties used anti-Semitic tropes (Soros conspiracy theories and talk of global elites) and brazen Islamophobia. They are not, as some claim, diluting their hard-line anti-immigration message, instead they are attempting to popularise it.

Since the end of the Second World War and right up to the late 1990s, mainstream European parties placed a “cordon sanitaire” around the far right. Most politicians refused to debate with their representatives and, with the exception of Italy, parties would not countenance entering into coalition with the far right. This was an important stance; it was a clear demonstration that fascism and right-wing populism were toxic and shared much of the ideological world view of Mussolini and, in some cases, Hitler.

This “cordon sanitaire” is rapidly breaking down. The electoral success of many far-right parties means that many mainstream politicians of the centre right have accepted them into their electoral coalitions.

In the Netherlands, Wilders and the PVV now lead a coalition government, which includes the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the centrist New Social Contract and the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB).

In the Swedish Riksdag, the Sweden Democrats have a “confidence and supply” agreement with the centrist government, and in Czechia the right-wing populist Civic Democratic Party (ODS) heads up a coalition with an assortment of Christian Democratic and liberal conservative parties.

With success in the European Parliament elections come massive financial rewards. Every MEP receives a monthly pre-tax salary of €10,075, as well as a general monthly expenditure allowance of €4,950. MEPs also get a monthly budget of €28,696 to cover all costs involved in recruiting personal assistants, and they are reimbursed for their travel and accommodation.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Buried in the European Parliament’s website is the annual budget awarded to each European grouping. So, for example, in 2021 the ECR was allocated €4.1 million and the ID €4.6 million. These eye-watering amounts of money will enable the far right to further professionalise their electoral machines, pay full-time organisers, provide access to research and fund their publications.

Traditionally, young people have tended to vote for left-of-centre parties. However, a worrying trend, which was also present in the 2024 European Parliamentary elections, is the growing support among young people for the far right. In France, a poll conducted just before the election revealed that 32 per cent of 18- to 25-year-olds said they would vote for the RN.

Likewise in Poland, exit polls showed the far-right Confederation was the most popular choice with voters aged 18-29 years, polling 31 per cent of the vote. A similar picture can be seen in Belgium where the Flemish far-right VB party is winning support among young men (aged 18-27), nearly 32 per cent of whom said they would vote VB.

Defining the far right

During the election, BBC reporters described far-right parties as either “hard right” or “extreme right”. This does not provide an adequate explanation of their historical roots, ideology or political practice.

We now find ourselves in the bizarre position where the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, only labels the ID grouping as far right. In her view, the ECR can be described as a conservative grouping, despite the fact that it is headed by the Brothers of Italy and contains PiS and Vox MEPs.

The danger of von der Leyen ignoring the political make-up of the group is that it downplays the size of the far right in the parliament and also mainstreams them. In this article, we have used the term far right, but if we are going to better understand these parties, we need to be more precise with our terminology.

The first far-right formations in the European Parliament are the right-wing populists, who include Fidesz and the PiS. Outside of the European Parliament you could include Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.

Then there are those that could be described as post-classical fascist parties, such as the Brothers of Italy, RN and the SD. These formations have similar political features to the populist parties: both campaign against migrants, Muslims and elites, and both formations are ultra-nationalistic to their core. Also, when in power they are authoritarian and promote the idea of the strong leader.

However, there are important differences. Mudde has played a key role in developing a conceptual framework to define right-wing populism. He argues that it combines nativism, authoritarianism and populism.

Academics Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin focus primarily on a demand-side explanation to define right-wing populism, which they call the “Four Ds”. These are: (1) “Distrust” of liberal democracy and elites; (2) “Destruction”, the loss of national identity; (3) “Deprivation”, the belief that inequality is growing, and the indigenous population is being left behind; and (4) “De-alignment”, the weakening of the bonds between people and the traditional parties.

Post-classical fascist parties differ from their populist friends in several ways. They have ideological/historical links with previous fascist parties.

Second, in a search for electoral success, they have undergone a process of “modernisation”. Le Pen and her father were the architects of this strategy. It involved cleaning up the party’s public image, dropping aggressive anti-capitalist rhetoric, and toning down its racism and anti-Semitism and instead promoting the ideas of nation rather than race.

Finally, powerful electoral machines have replaced the street thugs. Two things are worth noting: the modernisation strategy undertaken by all post-classical fascist parties has both created internal tensions and splits, and their past adherence to fascism haunts their electoral campaigns.

It is important not to treat these formations as static entities. They are in a constant state of flux and there is a growing cross-fertilisation of ideas between the two traditions. Increasingly, they are prepared to adopt one another’s strategies and policies. Understanding the nature of these parties and the political strategies they develop is not solely an academic exercise, it enables anti-fascists to recalibrate their campaigns and better understand how to undermine them.

For instance, in Britain, when the British National Party (BNP) shifted away from street fighting in the early 1990s and instead made a turn towards winning elections, anti-fascist groups had to change their approach and focus on local issue-based campaigns against the BNP.

Conclusion

The campaign against the far right in Europe has reached a critical phase. Macron’s gamble of calling an early election was relatively successful in the short term. Le Pen’s project was set back, coming third, yet it has 142 seats – something unimaginable a decade ago. The tin can has just been kicked down the road – Le Pen’s sights are clearly set on the French Presidential elections in 2027.

In the UK, the Conservative Party was decimated in the general election; it now has just 121 seats (losing 252 MPs). But it is deeply divided between its traditional “one-nation conservative” grouping and those that include Suella Braverman who want to take the party in a more right-wing populist direction.

These tensions inside the Conservative Party are exacerbated by the rise of Farage and his Reform UK. It won five seats in the July general elections, with 14% of the vote; nationally 4 million people voted for this right-wing populist party.

Since the 1960s, Britain’s far right has made its most significant electoral gains when Labour was in office. That was true in the 1970s when the fascist National Front began to grow and in the first decade of this century when the BNP reached its electoral zenith.

As far as any revival of the far right goes, Britain may only be a few years behind Europe. The emergence of Reform UK and the revival of Tommy Robinson and his street thugs could be a pivot point for the far right in Britain.

Photos from left: Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni who were jubilant when the polls results came in; Viktor Orbán whose Fidezs topped the polls in Hungary; Geert Wilders whose far-right PVV secured the second highest number of votes in the Netherlands.

Credit: Wilders photo, Prachatai

CAR26: the puzzle that is former UKIP Leader Lois Perry’s company

When Lois Perry video-thanked UKIP members for somewhat unexpectedly electing her as their new leader, she revealed that her focus would be on “future, family, food”. In fact, a fourth “F” would dominate her immediate plans – fleeing for the hills.

What spooked her into quitting after mere days at the helm remains unclear. It can’t have been the shoddy state of UKIP’s finances, because that is common knowledge from its published accounts. And, in any case, Lois is no stranger to iffy-looking balance sheets.

Perry swam into the ken of UKIP’s movers and shakers because of her business, CAR26, a primarily website-based anti-net zero and anti-ULEZ campaign, periodically pumped up by appearances on any nutter-friendly platform, especially GB News.

But, in pure business terms, what kind of set-up is it? A glance at the company’s micro-accounts raises more questions than answers. CAR26’s first accounts statement, covering the period to 30 September 2022, showed little signs of the business having clocked up any day-to-day earnings. What it did show was that someone had pumped about £100,000 into the company. A listing of £108,500 under “Bank loans and overdrafts” implies “no real mystery here”. Well, beyond the puzzle of why a bank would lend that much money to an enterprise with no obvious earning capacity.

With the whole sum marked as “Falling due within one year”, anyone reading these accounts was merely left on tenterhooks regarding how CAR26 was going to suddenly generate the kind of turnover required to repay these loans.

In the event, watchers were on those tenterhooks for longer than they might have anticipated. The accounts to September 2022 were filed on 4 April 2023. Early April 2024 came and went with no fresh accounts, as did late April, and May. Finally, on 7 June, after a 14-month hiatus, we got the answers. Kind of.

Far from showing the £100K as having been repaid, the accounts made up to 30 September 2023 declare that bank loans and overdrafts had more than doubled, to £219,221. Which bank, you have to wonder, is allowing this apparently almost turnover-free business not only to extend a £100K loan into a second year, but doubling down with another £100K loan on top of it?

Also of interest among the sparse details in the two years’ worth of accounts is that Perry has felt free to lend herself chunks of the company’s money. Well, really chunks of the bank’s money, we suppose, since the company barely seems to have any. During 2022, CAR26 generously allowed Lois an interest-free loan of about £40,000, the majority (but far from all) of which was repaid. In 2023, she borrowed another £47,000, and again most of this was repaid. She is shown as of 30 September 2023 as owing the company just under £15K.

We are not, of course, suggesting that there is anything untoward going on in CAR26’s operations, but we do think that, one way and another, it is a rather odd kind of company.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight

Down in the UKIP snake pit …

If chopping and changing leaders were a competition, UKIP would be running the Tories a close second, though the calibre of its candidates is even less savoury. Tony Peters charily inspects the vipers slithering in and out of the pit.

This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight

When the previous issue of Searchlight went to press, we were confidently predicting the victory of veteran UKIP member and ex-MEP Bill Etheridge in the party leadership election that had just taken place. So were most of the membership.

So it was dropped jaws all round, then, when it was announced that his only-recently-joined election rival Lois Perry had won. And not just won – but stormed it by taking not much short of 80% of the vote. It is fair to say that the bulk of the members, including Etheridge, were stunned.

Among the very few who appeared not to be surprised was UKIP chairman and returning officer, Ben “Rogue Builder” Walker, who has yet to publish the numbers of actual votes cast. This may be to conceal the parlous state of the party membership figures – but, whatever the turnout, Perry pulled off a bit of a coup. Etheridge was favoured by most other senior party veterans. Perry, on the other hand, is an anti‑net zero campaigner who presents as, well, a bit witless.

She may have shown other qualities, however, which would have endeared her to Walker, who was probably missing a female touch around the office. A number of charming, vivacious young females parachuted into HQ as the chairman’s appointments in the past couple of years have not lasted long.

Patrons Co-ordinator (and clairvoyant) Joanna Grzesiak and general secretary Treasure Okwu each survived only a few months before packing up and slipping quietly away. And, of course, there was Rebecca Jane, the former deputy leader, also appointed by Walker, and the most prominent departure, who used the election announcement as an opportunity to fire off a salvo of allegations about Walker’s alleged libidinousness and his less-than-honourable intentions towards her when he appointed her. She even suggested that Walker held a bit of a candle, so to speak, for Lois.

Politically, Perry’s election promised to drag UKIP further and faster down the conspiracy rabbit hole. Whereas Etheridge was an old school anti‑immigration, anti-Europe traditionalist, Perry is right up there with the climate-denying, anti-ULEZ, anti-15-minute cities, anti-net zero conspiracy-obsessed nut jobs. Up until now she has been running the pro-car lobby group Car26 and has said she is not that bothered by immigration.

In a previous incarnation, she was the South East representative of Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party and appeared regularly on GB News. She also claimed that she “had a moment” with Boris Johnson – “something could have happened, but it didn’t …”

Barnacles galore

Only a few days after Perry’s enthronement, Walker was discovered not to have been a Royal Navy Petty Officer, as has oft been reported. Searchlight revealed that “Barnacle” Ben’s Royal Navy discharge paperwork shows him as having left the service not as a PO, but at the (lower) rank of LSA.

Now, to be fair, we have yet to see any evidence that Walker has publicly described himself as a PO. But other people have made the inflated claim on his behalf. It was first spotted in September 2017 in “Team UKIP United” (TUU) press releases, where he was described as “Former Royal Navy Petty Officer Ben Walker”.

Team UKIP United was a “slate” of four UKIP members in the Autumn 2017 internal party elections. Although he was the slate’s putative UKIP chairman, Walker was very much the junior man in TUU. Jane Collins and David Coburn (the other half of the leader-deputy ticket) were both Members of the European Parliament.

So it is possible that the two officer grade candidates ran the whole show, while the other-ranks Walker was kept in the dark about matters such as press releases and did not know how he was being described. In the end, it probably did not matter very much. The slate picked up a little over 4% of the vote.

But just a week or so after that election, Barnacle Ben was quoted extensively by RT UK (often referred to as Russia Today) about his thoughts on the Royal Navy, which he compared unfavourably to “the fishing and rowing boats during our retreat from Dunkirk.” The Putin mouthpiece described Walker as “a petty officer who served in Afghanistan”.

This seemed, to us, to be pushing the envelope too far on two fronts. Walker was not a petty officer. He was also not in Afghanistan. While he was aboard (counting potatoes or whatever) his ship, the destroyer HMS Southampton, it was deployed in the Gulf screening the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious.

This certainly counts as being part of the Afghanistan Campaign – and probably entitles him to the Campaign Medal – but in Afghanistan kind of implies coming face to face with the Taliban, and he certainly did not do that. He cannot even claim to have been in Afghan territorial waters. Afghanistan is landlocked.

But while we have seen no evidence that Walker has actively claimed to have been a petty officer or to have been in Afghanistan, nor have we seen any evidence that he has ever tried to correct any of the references to him that he knows as well as we do to be utter … er … barnacles. Perhaps it is time for him to at least set the record straight.

Pointless posturing

Then came the general election. UKIP’s first intervention, under the new leadership of Perry, was to announce that it was withdrawing from seven seats to help out Nigel Farage and Reform. This was complete tosh: UKIP did not have candidates for most of these seats, was not going to find any candidates, and two of the seats no longer existed anyway.

But even the spirit of the undertaking lasted no longer than close of nominations four days later.

When the candidate lists were announced, it turned out that UKIP was now not only running against Farage himself in Clacton – where, to be fair, no undertaking had actually been given – but also in Barnsley North and Barnsley South, which last year replaced Barnsley Central and Barnsley East following boundary changes.

The latter two were on the UKIP withdrawal list, but UKIP pulled the crafty trick of outsourcing the successor seats to their allies in the English Democrats, with whom it was bound in an officially registered electoral partnership called the Patriots Alliance. And in both cases the opponents included Reform UK.

Then, bursting with excitement that “my friend” Nigel Farage was running after all, Perry announced that UKIP would be standing a candidate, in Clacton, against Farage himself.

Perry’s election and the controversy surrounding it then sparked a series of high-profile resignations and departures from senior posts in the party, the most notable, at that stage, being (retired) Squadron Leader Peter Richardson and Julie Carter, who both resigned as UKIP “spokespeople” and then from the party itself.

Carter, from a longstanding UKIP-supporting family and until November an NEC member and the party’s Education Spokesperson, was previously the UKIP election candidate in Ealing Central and Acton. Richardson was the party’s Defence and Veterans Spokesperson, and only last year its candidate in the Somerset and Frome by-election.

There are rumours that both were troubled by recent coverage of UKIP’s internal affairs, most notably in Searchlight, and that, when some dissident elements started circulating a dossier of revelatory articles, their thoughts and intentions crystallised and they decided to call it a day.

Gone so soon …

On 15 July, came the first bombshell: Perry, in a small-hours tweet, announced that she was resigning as Leader, citing health issues.

Although the timing was dramatic, in the middle of the election campaign, it was not altogether surprising. Recent events had betrayed a possible division of loyalties: only two days earlier Perry had a “lovely lunch” with Reform UK leader Farage, for whom she made no secret of her drooling admiration and whom she endorsed in the election, even though UKIP was standing in the same Clacton seat. Then she publicly endorsed renegade Tory MP Lee Anderson, also running for Reform UK.

It was also never clear, when she stood for the party leadership, that she fully understood the snake pit she was jumping into, not least of all:

The increasing financial and organisational opacity of the party
The allegations of libidinous behaviour swirling around Walker
Walker’s sacking as a magistrate for misleading the Ministry of Justice about his previous convictions, and
The criminal convictions of other party members such as Dan Morgan, convicted in a major fraud case for robbing vulnerable people of their savings, but still allowed to play a prominent role in the party in south Wales.

Then, the second bombshell: only days after Perry resigned, former deputy leader Rebecca Jane used the good offices of Searchlight to publish an open letter to the UKIP membership. It was an excoriating attack on Walker and the direction in which the party was heading. “UKIP is over” she said, “its members are simply lining one man’s pocket.

Anyone left?

For Etheridge, Perry’s defeated leadership election rival, it was also time to speak out. Having kept his counsel and remained loyally silent since the result was announced, he now let rip. Interviewed on the right-wing online Freeman Report, he poured scorn on the idea that Perry had been elected fairly.

“I’m prepared to believe that a large number of activists and people involved in the party appeared to have voted for me, yet the vote turned out to be about 80% to 20% to Lois …

“So I’m prepared to believe that a lot of people who aren’t actually active members must have voted, and all voted for Lois. I’m prepared to believe that …

“I believe, actually, that Father Christmas sometimes delivers my Xmas presents and that when kids lose a tooth, the tooth fairy puts a little penny under them …”

And when it was put to him by host James Freeman: “… it looks like Farage and Lee Anderson have managed to convince Lois that UKIP don’t stand a chance and so she should collapse the party and put the party into disarray, right before the general election”, Etheridge went full Francis Urquhart. “What an interesting theory. I couldn’t possibly comment on that theory, other than to say I find it fascinating …”

As the election results were counted, it became clear that UKIP had polled miserably: some 6,000 votes nationwide divided among 26 candidates.

The resignations continued: Pat Mountain, UKIP’s party director, resigned her party positions, then from the party, and then as a director of UKIP Ltd. Of all the recent departures, this was one of the most significant. Mountain had been a member of UKIP for more than a decade. She was interim leader during the 2019 general election and deputy leader for a period after that, and was a party candidate in local council, parliamentary and European elections on numerous occasions. Mountain was also one of the group of “plotters” who delivered the chairmanship to Walker in 2020.

Most recently UKIP has lost Home Affairs Spokesman Steve Unwin, who quit saying he does not have the time or the inclination to be involved any more, and Agriculture Spokesperson Pat Bryant, who died of lung cancer in July and whom they are struggling to replace.

These are significant losses. Bryant was a longstanding senior member, and for the most part blindly loyal. There were signs, however, that before she died the scales had fallen from her eyes and she made no secret of her loathing for Chairman Ben Walker.

Unwin was also a veteran of the party and is believed to have quit because, like so many others, he lost faith entirely in the leadership vote which led to the election of Perry.

Down in the gutter

So, as we approach the deadline for this issue, the party is shrivelling on the vine and members continue to leave in droves – some reports suggest they are now in the low hundreds.

Perry has been replaced by Nick Tenconi, brought over from Turning Point UK, who joined the party only weeks before his appointment first as deputy leader, then leader. That itself is a subject of much discontent among the remaining members.

A cunning and nasty piece of work by all accounts, Tenconi tweeted two years ago, describing himself as a “huge fan” of Kyle Rittenhouse, the US right-winger who shot dead two people at a demonstration, and who was acquitted of murder in 2021, and has been a darling of the extreme right ever since.

As leader, Tenconi lost no time in sitting down with Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox, Katie Hopkins and their ilk to discuss working together, in the process dragging UKIP even further down into the gutter.

It’s all such a far cry from forcing David Cameron to hold a referendum.

Caption

‘A lovely bunch’ Lois Perry (top) reigned over UKIP for even less time than Liz Truss was Conservative leader, to be replaced by blow‑in Nick Tenconi (right), but Ben Walker (bottom left) is the man with his hand on the tiller (and the bank accounts)

Settle back and enjoy the sideshow

This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight

The 2024 UK election saw far-right candidates bomb spectacularly but, warns PAUL GALE, even as we delight at the squabbling and scrapping among the factions, we must not get too comfortable and must stay alert to the gains made by Reform UK

The British far right is struggling to work out its response to the July 4 general election, but confusion and bitter splits among our enemies should not blind anti-fascists to the dangers behind the headlines.

Both the National Front (NF) and the British National Party (BNP), the two main groups on the racist and fascist right since the late 1960s, have practically disappeared. The NF fought its first general election in 1970 and its last in 2015, with a peak of 303 candidates and a tally of almost 200,000 votes in 1979. The BNP (which began as a breakaway faction under former NF führer John Tyndall) fought its first general election in 1983 and its last in 2019, with a peak of 338 candidates and gaining more than 500,000 votes in 2010.

Today’s racist right is divided among four factions, three of which are now registered as political parties. Its leaders are mainly veterans of either the BNP, NF, or both – but their forces are a pale shadow of those earlier movements, and seem especially pathetic when compared to equivalent parties in Europe.

Old duds

Several of the old guard congregate in the British Democratic Party (BDP), a party that slowly developed out of the BNP’s collapse in the early 2010s. Some of its leading figures, such as former BNP councillor Jim Lewthwaite (below, right) and former NF chairman and BNP MEP Andrew Brons (below, top), have roots in “old school” fascism and are friendly with the nazi “intellectual” journal Heritage & Destiny, while others try to position the BDP as the populist voice of “white van man” in Kent and Essex.

Only four BDP candidates contested the general election: three of them polled below 1%, and two of these below 0.5%. On social media the party highlighted the only one of its candidates who achieved anything like a respectable vote, Frank Calladine (below, left) in Doncaster North, a defector from English Democrats (ED), whose 3.7% was mainly due to having no Reform UK opposition.

The lack of success has not stopped the British Democrats advertising themselves as the voice of “sensible” nationalism. What this means is that the party advocates fighting elections (even though it is not very good at it), rather than marches, stunts, incessant video streams, and physical training sessions preparing for the nationalist revolution.

The BDP’s “moderate” approach is undermined by the background of its co-founder and deputy chairman Brons, a veteran of Colin Jordan’s National Socialist Movement who wrote to Jordan’s wife and fellow nazi fanatic Françoise Dior discussing a new recruit who spoke about “bombing synagogues”, and whom Brons regarded as “well-intentioned”.

But its strategy after July 4 seems to amount to carrying on as before, fighting elections as and when it has financial resources and suitable candidates, and waiting for something to turn up.

In particular, the BDP anticipates the decline of Reform UK, and in this respect it might not be wrong. Lewthwaite and Brons have spent years pointing out that Nigel Farage uses radical rhetoric, while his actual policies and his close personal connections are with neo-Thatcherites.

In contrast to most of the far-right, which tends towards conspiracy theory and pessimism, the British Democrats think that time is on their side. Perhaps their biggest problem is that in a personal sense this is obviously untrue, with their leading figures either well into middle age or distinctly elderly.

Unkind rivals have pointed out that one reason the British Democrats largely eschew online streaming and social media is because neither Lewthwaite nor Brons have worked out how to use those new-fangled inventions called computers.

New duds

The second-oldest active force on the far right is Patriotic Alternative. PA’s leaders would like you to think they are a new and exciting arrival, but in fact they recently celebrated their fifth birthday. During those five years they have not managed to register as a political party, and several leading PA officials became so exasperated that last year they broke away to form what they call a more serious, electorally focused group called the Homeland Party.

A third faction within PA also broke away and (like Homeland, but strangely unlike its parent) quickly managed to register with the Electoral Commission as the National Rebirth Party (NRP), which is led by Alek Yerbury.

It is within what was once PA that the most intense arguments have exploded in the weeks after the general election.

Soon after the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a general election in the Downing Street rain, PA leader Mark Collett became embarrassed by his failure to register as a party, and was obviously worried that his rivals would score points against him (most importantly among donors) by fielding parliamentary candidates and perhaps achieving one or two decent results.

This was at the very start of the election campaign, when it certainly was not obvious that Farage was going to return to Reform UK, and when some far-right strategists thought that Reform’s election campaign might fizzle out. There was also a strong possibility that some of the online “influencers” (who inhabit a world that Collett is obsessed with), who were forced out of Reform UK during the months before the general election, might look for a new political home.

Unable to achieve credibility by himself (even after five years of spending donors’ money and broadcasting online several times a week), Collett cut a deal with Robin Tilbrook, the Essex solicitor who leads the English Democrats.

Flop, flop, flop

Tilbrook is no stranger to such deals. Although his own party is avowedly non‑racial and promotes “civic nationalism”, he has agreed several pacts with notorious racists during the past 20 years, ranging from Mark Cotterill (then of the England First Party) to Eddy Butler (the former BNP election strategist and East End thug).

This time, the deal involved Tilbrook endorsing four of Collett’s members as ED parliamentary candidates, but all four failed badly. Craig Buckley, a former UKIP candidate, managed 0.9% in Leigh and Atherton, Thomas Bryer 0.9% in Makerfield, Patrick McGrath 0.5% in Bolton West, and Matthew Darrington 0.3% in Newark.

A fifth openly racist ED candidate, prolific video streamer Steve Laws who has links both to PA and other factions, was another dismal failure at the ballot box, polling 0.4% in Dover and Deal.

These terrible results seem to have pushed Collett back into his previous bunker mentality. He now repeats his earlier pessimistic line that large parts of the UK are “finished”. Rather than wasting time with elections, PA should concentrate on building “patriotic communities”, withdrawing into their own little world.

This is an update for the streaming generation of ideas that have been around for decades, especially on the radical wing of American racism, where they often developed into terrorism and other criminality in groups such as Aryan Nations, White Aryan Resistance, the National Alliance, and The Order or Silent Brotherhood (Brüder Schweigen).

So it is no surprise that PA – the main British vehicle for such ideas in the 2020s – has also seen several of its leading activists jailed for terrorist offences or other criminal racism.

What was a surprise was to see Collett accept the challenge of an online “debate” in mid-July with his bitterest rival Yerbury, of PA breakaway NRP. It did not end well. Collett repeatedly lost his temper and, if his aim was to appear the more “statesmanlike” leader against the upstart Yerbury, he failed.

Worse still, within days of this debate, the feud between Collett’s and Yerbury’s supporters spiralled out of control, becoming so acrimonious that the owners of the Traditional Britain Group’s account at Telegram, where the feuding erupted, had to close down all access to comments.

The strategic political difference between Collett and Yerbury mainly involves whether to retreat or advance. Although his rivals see him as a fantasist, Yerbury maintains (not unreasonably) that any revolutionary movement must have high aspirations and ideological clarity, even if it bides its time.

Whether or not his NRP is strong enough to fight elections, Yerbury thinks that he and his colleagues need to be out there putting their case for a “pure”, hard-line racial nationalism. From one look at Yerbury it is pretty obvious who his political model is, although his storm troopers are not quite up to turning Leeds or Manchester into a 21st century Munich.

Yerbury’s biggest liability is his girlfriend Katie Fanning, a former official of UKIP’s youth wing, who specialises in winding up trouble on every online forum that will admit her. “Sanity’, as Ms Fanning is now known to both anti-fascists and her factional rivals, was the main culprit in the recent explosion of insults and threats on social media.

Claiming that she and her child had been threatened, she threatened to call the police and report some of her PA opponents, which led Collett to accuse her of being a “grass”.

Staying home

It is never a good look when a political party leader is reduced to using terminology associated with the criminal classes, and the biggest winner from the Collett-Yerbury feud might be Homeland Party leader Kenny Smith (below, left) who kept clear of the general election.

Perhaps Smith was prescient and perceived – even before Farage’s return – that Reform UK would collect almost the entire far-right vote. Or perhaps he was so embarrassed by Homeland’s own failure at the council elections in May that he was licking his wounds.

But, whatever the reason, Smith’s strategy is now looking to be the most rational of all Britain’s racist factions. Unlike Collett, Smith believes in electoral politics rather than building an online cult or remote white enclaves. Unlike Yerbury, he believes in building credibility through local elections rather than waiting for an opportunity to launch a march on Westminster without any local bases. But, unlike the British Democrats, he does not throw his efforts indiscriminately into any election where he can find a candidate.

Smith is targeting the right of the Tory Party and the strange underworld of racist streamers, former academics, and bloggers who operate slightly outside party politics, but who – until now – have thought themselves too grand for the type of racists who meet in scruffy pubs and leaflet council estates.

In September, Smith hopes to bring some of these characters together at a Homeland Party conference. Like others on the racist right, he hopes that Reform UK’s success has done enough to discredit the old party system, without building Reform itself into a long-term vehicle for protest voters.

What is already obvious is that Reform’s challengers within civic nationalism have drifted into conspiracy theory or have been taken over by “leaders” who are interested only in lining their own pockets. Searchlight has already documented UKIP’s terminal decline: as with the British Democrats, only one of their candidates polled respectably, and this was due to having no Reform UK opponent.

While David Kurten (above, right), leader of the Heritage Party, appears to be personally honest, he is useless as a political leader. He polled 1.5% on 4 July in Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, while his party’s other 40 candidates took between 0.1% and 0.7%.

Even presented with this open goal, the question is whether Farage has any serious ambition to turn Reform UK into a genuine political party, rather than a business under his and Richard Tice’s personal control. Smith’s gamble is that Farage has no such intention, and that Reform has neither the political will nor the ideological focus to build on the many strong results it achieved on 4 July.

For anti-fascists the task is to prevent either Farage’s Powellism or the semi-open Hitlerism of PA, Homeland and NRP from exploiting the inevitable difficulties and disappointments that will be felt in some communities during the next five years.

Right now, it is tempting simply to sit back and enjoy the ludicrous sideshow of British fascists kicking lumps out of each other. But we cannot assume that such self-defeating chaos will continue indefinitely.

Photos: main picture, PA candidates Craig Buckley and Thomas Bryer. Others clockwise from top left: Patrick McGrath (PA), Robin Tilbrook (EDs), Mark Collett (PA), Matthew Darrington (PA)

National Rebirth Party attacks ‘nazi nonces’

National Rebirth Party leader Alek Yerbury and his partner Katie Fanning have ramped up their bitter public dispute with rival nazi outfit Patriotic Alternative, of which Yerbury was once himself a member.

Yerbury has already seriously cheesed off Patriotic Alternative leader Mark Collett by ridiculing PA’s strategy of building white homeland communities, and then successfully challenging him (below) to an online debate about the future of the nazi movement where Collett came a clear second.

Now Yerbury has become a regular target of abuse online from more lumpen and conspiracy obsessed fascist elements who see any criticism of far right comrades as something akin to treason, and find in Yerbury’s military background sufficient cause to suspect him of being a ‘state actor’.

Things got heated a few weeks ago when Yerbury’s partner, Katie ‘Sanity’ Fanning reported an apparent PA member to the police for threatening her child, prompting Collett to describe both her and Yerbury, who defended her actions, as “grasses”.

And Fanning has since done little to repair relations, with her constant snipy attacks at PA Deputy leader Laura Towler, for whom she has a peculiar loathing and whom she has taken to calling ‘Fatty Towler’.

Yerbury’s latest move is to launch a moral crusade, denouncing general standards of behaviour in the nazi movement. Of course, we all know that this has always been a movement populated largely by grifters, thugs, and criminals; indeed, this is something to which we have been calling attention since, well, since Searchlight was launched close on 50 years ago. But Yerbury has plainly has PA in his sights and is not pulling any punches:

“The culture in nationalism for the last decade has been one of, ‘Anything goes, as long as the person says the right things,’ and it’s how the movement has ended up with problems like paedophilia, thievery and fraud…”

Let’s just stop and run that again: “paedophilia, thievery and fraud…”

These are serious charges, and historically true, but this is new coming from an aspiring leader of the nazi movement, and there’s little doubt that the current target is PA, one of whose members has for years been the subject of stories – which he denied – that he tried to entice a 15-year-old girl to his hotel room for sex at a conference.

*Happier times: Yerbury (left) with PA leaders before they split. Now it’s open warfare*

The charge was echoed even more clearly by Fanning only this week, when she posted about the case of the nazi rioter in Manchester who was revealed to be a serial child sex offender.

“I hate peadophiles (sic)” she wrote, “National Socialists should not tolerate nonces of any kind.

“Including those who take underage girls back to their hotel rooms”

As for the “thievery and fraud” – we need look no further than Fanning’s recent rant about Laura Towler’s crowd funder for ‘political prisoners’ jailed for their part in the riots, which Towler claims has already raised £10000.

Fanning wrote: “If it wasn’t bad enough that certain peoples like to pretend they’re the most persecuted peoples in the world as a means of grift.

“They now want to exploit the fact that other peoples are being persecuted to increase their own grift fund…

“How despicable is that?

“An absolutely disgusting display by fatty Towler once again

“It’s not going to go to what you think it’s going to go towards or the people you think it’s going to help”

Fanning, incidentally, announced last weekend “A rare livestream appearance from myself” on far-right channel The Writers Block, hosted by white nationalist Nicholas Jeelvy. She was to discuss “the UK protests, their aftermath and the legal fallout that’ll inevitably follow”.

Now this would be an especially appealing gig for Fanning who fancies herself as a bit of a legal whizz, though in truth she’s more akin to the barrack room variety. So it’s sad to report that such pearls of jurisprudential wisdom as she may have spent the weekend polishing up were rather lost on the national socialist masses. An audience of only 6 was recorded watching her performance and, as two of these were from Searchlight and another was in all likelihood her partner and party boss Yerbury, we can deduce that the real audience was, well, bugger all, m’lud.