Hindu tribal vote saves Tories in Uxbridge: civic nationalists fail again

On a generally disastrous night for Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, the Prime Minister was saved by his fellow Hindus from what would otherwise have been a historic hat-trick of defeats.

Two safe Tory seats were lost on massive swings – the rural West Country constituency Somerton & Frome falling to the Liberal Democrats, and the previously ultra-Tory North Yorkshire constituency of Selby & Ainsty electing a Labour MP.

But Uxbridge & South Ruislip in North West London – which should have been a much easier target for Labour – narrowly stayed Tory with a wafer-thin majority of 495 votes.

With good reason, most of the media will focus on the London Mayor’s unpopular ‘Ulez’ policy – the extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone that imposes a fee on drivers of the most polluting vehicles. The Conservative campaign in Uxbridge focused almost entirely on this issue, even though in principle Ulez was first agreed by the Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson in 2015. No doubt the Tories were also helped by their candidate being a local, middle-aged family man; whereas Labour brought in a young homosexual candidate from Camden (a very different part of London). However we should also note that another young homosexual candidate won a historic victory for Labour on the same day in Selby & Ainsty.

But the media will ignore another vital factor. Uxbridge & South Ruislip is 8.6% Hindu (almost five times the national average of 1.8%). Evidence from local elections since Sunak became leader has shown that Hindus have swung heavily to the Tories (evidently for tribal reasons), and many Tories have close ties to the Hindu fundamentalist government of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. The problem for Sunak and his party is that there are not that many constituencies in the UK where Hindus are a significant electoral force. England is 6.7% Muslim but only 1.8% Hindu.

This week’s by-elections were yet another predictable disaster for civic nationalism. UKIP (now a moribund shadow of the party that won 24 European parliamentary seats and forced David Cameron to promise a Brexit referendum) fought two of the three, and polled joke votes even by their standards. UKIP deputy leader Rebecca Jane took only 61 votes (0.2%) in Uxbridge, and might be wishing she was back in one of her old roles as ‘reality TV’ contestant and Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Peter Richardson in Somerton & Frome fared only slightly better with 0.7%.

By far the biggest name in civic nationalism, actor Laurence Fox, stood in Uxbridge for his Reclaim party which is little more than a one-man band, but well-financed. His 714 votes (2.3%) were an improvement on the 1% taken by his former deputy Martin Daubney in Reclaim’s previous by-election effort (North Shropshire in December 2021), but Fox’s donors must be starting to wonder whether this is the best use of their cash.

The anti-vaccination campaigner Piers Corbyn (brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn) also stood in Uxbridge but polled only 101 votes (0.3%): perhaps even his strongest supporters will now wake up to the fact that there is absolutely no electoral potential in peddling conspiracy theories about the pandemic.

In Somerton & Frome, Reform UK (which is clearly the largest successor party to UKIP on the civic nationalist scene, but equally clearly is failing to make any serious headway) lost yet another deposit, polling 1,303 votes (3.4%).

Similarly in Selby & Ainsty, Reform UK took only 1,332 votes (3.7%), beaten not only by the Greens but by the regionalist Yorkshire Party. Another ex-UKIP splinter party, the Heritage Party (founded by half-Jamaican anti-vaccination campaigner David Kurten) managed just 162 votes (0.5%).

These were the ninth and tenth successive Reform UK lost deposits in parliamentary by-elections: a stark contrast to some national opinion polls and the regular hyping of the party by Nigel Farage and his friends at GB News.

The truth is that the ‘free market’ capitalist ideology that underpins both Reform UK and the Tories offers no solution to the UK’s immigration crisis and related crises in housing and transport policy.

The challenge for any racial nationalist party that gets its act together to fill the UK’s political vacuum will be to link London’s chronic overcrowding to the transport issue. Crude populist gestures against the ‘Ulez’ policy won’t suffice. Nationalists have to reclaim the green agenda as our own, not reject it – but we need to explain that a green agenda means ending the mass immigration, multiculti madness.

July by-elections confirm civic nationalist chaos

Three parliamentary by-elections being held on 20th July confirm the chaotic state of civic nationalism in the post-Brexit era, but also reflect the absence of racial nationalism from the electoral arena.

Selby & Ainsty has thirteen candidates, including two parties that emerged from the wreck of UKIP (Reform UK and Heritage) and the SDP (who nowadays are a pro-Brexit, socially conservative, but economically left-wing party). There are also two independents and two ‘no description’.

Unusually the environmentalist vote is also split, with a Green Party candidate but also someone from the Climate Party, which was founded last year as a conservative green party.  They are ‘right-wing’ in the sense of being pro-business and focused on the single issue of fighting climate change, rather than all the other trendy leftist policies that the Green Party now stand for.

But of course neither the Climate Party nor the Green Party recognises that mass immigration and unchecked population growth in the Third World is part of the threat to our planet’s future. Neither of these parties recognises that ecological politics, the organic food movement etc. were pioneered by German national socialists such as the Third Reich’s Minister of Food and Agriculture, Walther Darré, and British fascists such as Henry Williamson and Rolf Gardiner.

(The latter’s son – eminent Bach scholar and conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who as a personal friend of King Charles III conducted some of the music at the recent Coronation – inherited his father’s interest in organic farming but not other aspects of his fascism.)

The Climate Party are also fighting the Uxbridge by-election, where their candidate is the party leader Ed Gemmell who is also a councillor in Buckinghamshire.

In Uxbridge & South Ruislip there are seventeen candidates. The interesting thing is that Reform UK are not contesting this one, and have presumably done a deal with Reclaim’s Laurence Fox – his party’s second parliamentary candidate after a disastrous debut by Fox’s then deputy Martin Daubney, who polled less than 1% at North Shropshire in 2021.

As well as Fox, the Uxbridge ballot paper includes the anti-vaxxer Piers Corbyn (brother of the former Labour leader), and UKIP’s deputy leader Rebecca Jane (aka Rebecca Jane Sutton) who has an eccentric background even by her party’s standards. She was born in Barrowford (near Pendle, Lancashire) and used to live in Burnley, where her jobs included working as a Marilyn Monroe lookalike and running a private detective agency. She has also ‘starred’ in a couple of reality TV series including Big Brother.

There are four independents, two of whom are single-issue campaigners who have changed their names to include the words ‘Anti-Ulez’ and ‘No-Ulez’ (referring to the controversial ‘Ultra Low Emission Zone’ that imposes charges on the most polluting vehicles. This was originally a Boris Johnson policy, approved in theory when he was Mayor, but Sadiq Khan was Mayor by the time it was implemented.
Others on the Uxbridge ballot paper include the SDP, Christian Peoples Alliance (whose candidate is, as usual, an African) and Rejoin EU, as well as the Climate Party mentioned above.

By comparison to the other two 20th July by-elections, Somerton & Frome has a conventional ballot paper with just eight candidates, including Reform UK and UKIP. This is the only one of the three by-elections where Nigel Farage’s new party and his old party are fighting each other.

The Mid Bedfordshire by-election date hasn’t yet been set, but I’d guess will be September or October.
And it seems possible there will be a by-election in Tamworth, because there’s a report due to be published on the homosexual Tory Chris Pincher who had to resign as deputy chief whip after a scandal that helped bring down Boris.  Pincher lost the Tory whip in July last year but has remained as an independent MP for the last 12 months while the investigation continued.

The bad news for failing Prime Minister Rishi Sunk is that both Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth are very safe Tory seats. If his party loses either or both of these, in addition to the pretty certain defeat at Uxbridge, and the fairly likely defeats at Selby & Ainsty and Somerton & Frome, then it’s not impossible the Tories might seek another very late change of leader before next year’s General Election.

And the bad news for H&D readers is that despite the Tory collapse, Reform UK’s continuing failure, and widespread distrust of Labour – there is no sign whatsoever of even a vaguely credible movement party. In 1972 the Uxbridge by-election proved that the National Front was a serious party, and ignited that party’s most successful period during the mid-1970s. More than half a century later, this year’s Uxbridge contest is likely to prove both that civic nationalism and single issue obsessions are electorally bankrupt, and that there is a political vacuum waiting to be filled by any racial nationalist party that can get its act together on a national scale.

Political change in Britain: 40 years after Bermondsey

Political journalists have been looking back forty years on the anniversary of the Bermondsey by-election, a famous gain on 24th February 1983 for the Liberal / SDP ‘Alliance’, whose candidate Simon Hughes achieved what is still the largest swing in by-election history: 44.2%, turning a Labour majority of 11,756 into an Alliance majority of almost 10,000.

Most of the publicity (including several interviews with the defeated Labour candidate Peter Tatchell) has focused on the question of ‘gay rights’, an agenda that has moved on considerably in the intervening decades. Tatchell made no secret of his homosexuality, though at the time he was not so closely identified with the ‘gay rights’ cause as he later became.

Tatchell was vilified by the tabloid press, who gleefully picked up the ‘homophobic’ abuse that was thrown at him, mainly by his rivals on the decaying and often corrupt old ‘right-wing’ of the Labour Party. These included retiring MP Bob Mellish and his ally John O’Grady, long-serving leader (1968-82) of the local Southwark Council.

O’Grady had been ousted as Labour candidate for the Dockyard ward that he had represented since Southwark council’s creation in 1964, while Mellish decided to retire as an MP so as to take a well-paid position as vice-chairman of the London Dockyard Development Corporation. (He eventually became Lord Mellish of Bermondsey.)

Looking back on the by-election, Tatchell’s views don’t seem especially ‘far left’ even by the standards of the time, let alone by today’s standards. The real issues affecting Londoners (then as now) included housing. Tatchell and the Labour left had (justifiably) campaigned against the record of their own party, who took local voters for granted and did far too little for council tenants.

Totally ignored by all of the mainstream parties was the ethnic transformation of London which had already begun: parts of the Southwark and Bermondsey area now regularly see gun and knife crime that would once have been rare. And today’s viewers of the 1983 by-election coverage will be astonished to see that forty years ago White working-class voters were still a very large percentage of the electorate.

Sadly the racial nationalist challenge in these areas had already declined by 1983. There were at least four rival candidates from our broad movement. Jim Sneath from the National Front polled 426 votes (1.4%) and finished fifth of what was then a record sixteen candidates. Anti-immigration campaigner Lady Birdwood (standing as an ‘Independent Patriot’) polled 69 votes (0.2%), slightly ahead of Michael Keulemans from the New Britain Party with 62 votes (0.2%), while Ann King of the National Labour Party (a tiny splinter from the NF, formed in 1981) took just 25 votes (0.1%).

This was the sad outcome from several years of decline for the NF in this area. Less than six years earlier at the Greater London Council elections, Sneath had polled 1,515 votes (8.8%) in this constituency, despite the rival National Party even then splitting the nationalist vote and taking 239 votes (1.4%). In other words a combined nationalist vote of 10.2% in 1977 had fallen to 1.9% in 1983.

It’s understandable that voters were confused and disillusioned by the factionalism that had overtaken the NF during those six years.

Many White working-class voters in 1983 backed ousted council leader O’Grady, who stood as ‘Real Bermondsey Labour’ (even though in many ways he represented the worst of the ‘Old Labour’ establishment partly responsible for the area’s decline). He took third place in the by-election with 2,243 votes (7.6%). John O’Grady died in April 2009, having witnessed the total extinction (for better and worse) of the ‘Old Labour Party’ that he knew.

But the main beneficiary of local voters’ disgust with Labour (both left and right), was the Liberal-SDP Alliance candidate Simon Hughes. Despite his own (secret) bisexuality, Hughes also benefited from the ‘homophobic’ reaction against Tatchell.

(There is still controversy over the extent to which some Alliance activists, though not Hughes himself, deliberately encouraged this ‘homophobia’.)

It’s ironic that two of the three mainstream politicians on the panel in the ITV by-election programme (see video link above) had their own ‘scandals’ in their private lives. Liberal MP Sir Clement Freud was later accused of predatory abuse of underage girls, while Tory chairman Cecil Parkinson had to resign at the end of 1983 after fathering a child with his secretary. Robert Hughes (the Tory candidate at this by-election) also had to resign as a minister twelve years later after admitting an affair with a constituent.

On most issues today Tatchell would probably fit into the mainstream of Labour, while Mellish and O’Grady would be a London version of ‘Red Wall’ Tories. The Southwark and Bermondsey area is now unrecognisable, with most of the White working-class having left, and replaced by an assortment of ethnic minorities (including many Africans) and trendy young middle-class Whites.

Yet the local Labour party remains mired in controversy. Neil Coyle – the Labour MP who eventually ousted Hughes in 2015 – has been suspended from Labour for more than a year and was recently suspended by the parliamentary standards commissioner after an incident of alcohol-fuelled ‘racist’ abuse against a journalist.

Coyle seems likely to be replaced at the next election, but sadly the days when racial nationalists could expect strong votes in Bermondsey are long gone. There are many parts of the UK where a reunited and reinvigorated racial nationalist movement has great potential, but Bermondsey is not among them. The proud history of its White working-class has long since ebbed away with the tide of the River Thames, and is now history.

Another Reform UK lost deposit: when will the Farage-Tice party achieve anything?

Within the past hour the result of yesterday’s parliamentary by-election in West Lancashire was declared.

Predictably it was an easy victory for Labour, and the swing between the two main parties was broadly in line with trends in other recent by-elections and national opinion polls, confirming that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Conservative Party are on a path to defeat at the next General Election, which must be held within the next two years.

But for H&D readers a lot of attention will have focused on Reform UK, the rebranded version of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, led by Farage’s close ally Richard Tice.

Reform UK’s candidate Jonathan Kay polled 994 votes (4.4%): the party’s seventh successive lost deposit in parliamentary by-elections, despite months of hype from their allies at GB News and from academics such as Dr Matthew Goodwin, who continue to insist that the party’s brand of post-Thatcherite populism will achieve significant support from British voters.

On this occasion (unlike many of those earlier by-elections) Reform UK had no competition from any other candidate to the ‘right’ of the Tories. There was no candidate from UKIP or any of its many splinters, other than Reform UK.

This West Lancashire constituency is very divided socially, including some very poor areas in Skelmersdale but also some affluent and traditionally Tory-voting villages. In 2015 UKIP candidate Jack Sen (who became a very controversial figure within nationalism and has since disappeared from politics) polled 12.2% here (6,058 votes), despite having been expelled and denounced by his own party before polling day for ‘anti-semitism’!

Yet this week UKIP’s successor party Reform UK polled only 994 votes (4.4%), despite the Tory vote having collapsed to a record low for this area. Most of the previous Tory voters (and pro-Brexit voters) stayed at home rather than backing Reform UK, even at a by-election. This suggests that the party needs a fundamental rethink if it is to pose any significant challenge at the next general election.

The truth is that Farage, Tice and Reform UK have little of any relevance or interest to offer to the voters of West Lancashire, or to other Britons (especially those in impoverished areas).

The Farage-Tice agenda of a US-style largely privatised economy, with ‘free markets’ (i.e. global capitalism) very much dominant, is a recipe for internationalism, mass immigration and continued impoverishment for the White British working class.

Farage and his fellow City spivs always intended Brexit to turn London into Singapore-on-Thames, with other British towns and cities as its satellites in a small-state, low tax, low spending, ultra-capitalist, Disunited Kingdom.

The only serious challenge to that vision will come when racial nationalists abandon their recent cranky obsessions and factionalism, and unite with a clear and credible vision for national and racial renaissance. There are some signs that such a renaissance will not be too long delayed, and H&D looks forward to reporting more positive news later this year.

Sunak’s Tories start 2023 in deep trouble – but Reform UK’s challenge is weaker than it looks

Five opinion polls have been taken since Christmas, and all show Rishi Sunak’s government in deep trouble with British voters. Traditionally the Tories might expect to benefit from industrial unrest: strikes famously helped Margaret Thatcher win her first general election in 1979 and weakened Labour in the run-up to her third victory in 1987. But Sunak seems to be failing in his main (political) task of restoring the Conservative Party’s reputation for economic competence.

From H&D readers’ point of view, the big question is whether a civic nationalist party is capable of making the sort of breakthrough that Nigel Farage’s parties achieved during the 2010s: first UKIP, and then the Brexit Party – making such an impact that the Tories were forced to allow British voters a referendum on EU membership in 2016, then forced to deliver Brexit against the wishes of most Tory grandees.

For reasons we have examined repeatedly in the magazine (and which we re-examine in the January-February 2023 edition that has just gone to press) Farage’s latest (and probably last) party, Reform UK, does not seem capable of achieving similar results.

Reform UK (presently led by Farage’s right-hand man Richard Tice) has failed badly at six successive parliamentary by-elections (most recently polling 2.7% in Chester and 3.5% in Stretford & Urmston). None of these lost deposits suggest that its nationwide opinion poll scores (much hyped by some academics and by the GB News channel where Farage has a regular show) are anywhere near accurate.

The most recent polls differ widely in this respect: for example the new company People Polling (commissioned by GB News) gave Reform UK 8%, and showed Sunak’s Tories falling to just 19%, 26 points behind the Labour Party; while a rival firm Redfield Wilton gave Reform UK 5%, but again showed the Tories losing heavily, this time 20 points behind Labour. Three other polls taken during the first week of 2023 show Labour leads of 21% or 22%, with Reform UK scoring anywhere between 4% and 8%.

Part of the explanation for this disparity might be straightforward, involving: (a) prompting of voters with the name of Reform UK included in the initial question, rather than held back for a supplementary question; and (b) a different method of adjusting the raw figures, taking less account of previous voting preference. Most pollsters use this method in an attempt to tease out ‘shy Tories’; if People Polling do not, or use it less radically, it could account for their lower Tory and higher Reform and Green vote shares.

Whatever the technical reason, H&D would be very surprised to see Reform UK poll higher than 2% of the nationwide vote at a general election. For ideological and other reasons, Faragism is finished as a serious political force. If Farage himself stands, then he along with Tice and a handful of others might manage 10% or more and (most crucially) help push the Tories to defeat in a small number of marginal seats, but in most of the country Reform UK will remain an irrelevance.

Which leaves the big question – if not Farage and Reform UK, then who and what will present the badly needed challenge to the UK’s failing political mainstream.

Recent polls suggest that 20% or more of those who voted Conservative at the last general election three years ago are now answering “Don’t Know”. Even the People Polling survey that seems to exaggerate Reform UK’s strength suggests that it is taking 12% of that previous Conservative vote, and little or nothing from the other parties; while 17% of those Tory voters have switched to Labour.

Sunak might yet win back some of those ‘Don’t Knows’, but many of them ought to be persuadable by a credible racial nationalist party (if and when such a party gets off the ground).

The British Democrats presently seem to be the best organised and most realistic option for those seeking a racial nationalist challenge at the ballot box, but even they are only just getting started in most of the country. 2023 will be an important transitional year for our movement, as Faragism is finally buried and the Brit Dems gradually build up a nationwide branch structure. Meanwhile Patriotic Alternative is building a broader political challenge away from the electoral arena (PA is not yet a registered political party and shows no sign of becoming one); the British Movement continues to maintain the core ideology that exposes the roots of British and European decline since 1945; and the National Front keeps the flame alive for the first UK party to present a serious electoral challenge to multiracialism during the 1970s.

Whatever nationalist party or group you belong to, or if for the time being you are working independently for our cause, H&D wishes you an active and successful New Year!

Stretford & Urmston by-election: another episode in the slow death of Faragism

The result of the Stretford & Urmston parliamentary by-election was declared a few minutes ago. Predictably it resulted in a massive majority for Labour, but for H&D readers the more interesting aspect was another shockingly poor result for Reform UK, the latest vehicle for the political ideas of Nigel Farage, who was once among Europe’s most successful populist leaders.

Farage was most famous for his decade as leader of UKIP. He had a year out of office from 2009-2010, but was otherwise leader from 2006 until the Brexit referendum victory of 2016. Having made a huge contribution to the UK voting to leave the EU, Farage returned to electoral politics from 2019-2021 as leader of the Brexit Party, so as to ensure that the political establishment was unable to frustrate the referendum result.

In 2021 the Brexit Party was rebranded as Reform UK and Farage retired in favour of his close political ally Richard Tice, but he has remained a powerful voice in support of the party and has hinted that he might return to the arena at the next general election.

The problem is that Reform UK (despite being hyped recently by academics and journalists) seems to have very little public support and little ideological coherence.

At yesterday’s by-election in Stretford & Urmston (a socially and racially divided constituency west of Manchester), Reform UK’s candidate Paul Swansborough polled only 3.5% (650 votes), an equivalent percentage but far lower numerical vote than the Brexit Party achieved in the same constituency in 2019: 3.5% (1,768 votes).

At its peak in 2015, UKIP polled 5,068 votes (10.9%) here.

This is the sixth successive parliamentary by-election at which Reform UK have lost their deposit, despite in this instance spending lavishly on their campaign and busing in activists from elsewhere in the region.

What makes it far worse is that the Tory vote predictably collapsed at this by-election, but disillusioned Tories stayed at home, unpersuaded by Reform UK even as a protest vote option.

One insuperable problem is that UKIP and the Brexit Party had a clear message that attracted large numbers of otherwise politically diverse voters: i.e. leaving the European Union.

That battle has been won – not even the most diehard pro-European nor the most paranoid Brexiteer believes that the UK will re-enter the EU in the foreseeable future. The issue is now settled, and the issues on which Reform UK is choosing to fight are mostly ones that cannot possibly enthuse the White working class who delivered the Brexit victory.

Reform UK are essentially a post-Thatcherite, right-wing version of the Tories – tax cuts, shrink the state, free market capitalism, ‘Singapore on Thames’.

They talk a good fight about immigration, but their devotion to international capitalism means that at root their ideological commitment is to the very force that drives migration and ‘One Worldism’.

In short, they have nothing to offer to White working-class voters, and unlike the Brexit Party are unable to disguise that fact. Moreover many voters are waking up to the reality that Brexit is failing to deliver the changes that were once expected, especially regarding immigration.

Civic nationalism, Brexitism, Faragism – all these populist forces are now dead or dying. It remains to be seen whether racial nationalism, which unlike Faragism is a coherent programme for national renewal, can revive and unite behind a serious political party. The British Democrats are on the way to achieving that, just as Patriotic Alternative are on the way to creating a broader challenge outside electoral politics, but there is a very long way to go before we can say that racial nationalism in the UK is back on its feet.

Civic nationalism fails again in Chester by-election

Last night’s by-election result in the City of Chester constituency gave further proof that the Farage era is over – a fact that will not surprise regular H&D readers but might be news to others.

During recent weeks there had yet again been media hype (encouraged by some academic observers) suggesting that civic nationalism of the Nigel Farage variety might again be on the rise in the UK.

Farage is no longer a party leader, but is closely associated with Reform UK, led by his close associate Richard Tice and backed by some of the same donors who financed Farage’s previous ventures, the Brexit Party and UKIP.

Pollsters and academics have recently argued that Reform UK might be the beneficiary of public disgust with the Conservative governments of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, and Farage has hinted he might make a comeback to assist Tice.

Yet as regular H&D readers will know from our detailed analyses of local elections across the UK, the truth is that Reform UK barely exists at grassroots level. It hardly ever contests local elections, and when it does the results have been dismal.

Parliamentary by-elections are a different matter, because Reform UK is lavishly funded by Eurosceptic tycoons, so its lack of activists can be masked by throwing money at glossy leaflet and poster campaigns.

Even so, the ballot box is pitiless in revealing the truth about a dying party. Reform UK’s candidate Jeanie Barton polled only 773 votes (2.7%), losing her deposit and finishing a distant fifth.

In Chester yesterday the circumstances should have been ideal for a ‘right-wing’ protest party. Everyone knew the Tories couldn’t win this by-election, so the ‘wasted vote’ argument that often damages smaller parties did not apply. Moreover, Sunak’s Conservative Party is unpopular in any case. We are facing an economic crisis with many households struggling to make ends meet. And in the very week of the by-election, UK census figures were released that should have alarmed every racially-conscious voter. Nigel Farage did his best to make immigration an election issue, but voters simply aren’t interested in Reform UK.

And there’s a good reason for that lack of interest. You can’t fool the voters for ever, and it’s now obvious to even the uneducated that Farageism is simply a form of ultra-Toryism. Reform UK is dedicated to the values of global capitalism: the very values that have driven mass immigration for decades. Its ‘free market’ ideology would (as Liz Truss showed when she attempted a milder version) be disastrous for most Britons.

Since last December when Tice himself spent a fortune in the Old Bexley & Sidcup by-election and polled 6.6%, his party has contested a further five parliamentary by-elections and lost its deposit each time, with its highest vote being 3.8% in North Shropshire almost a year ago.

Reform UK’s latest lost deposit reflected its utter irrelevance in the eyes of almost all Chester’s electorate, and similarly dire results can be expected at the next parliamentary by-elections, again in North-West constituencies, at Stretford & Urmston on December 15th, and West Lancashire on a date yet to be fixed in January or February.

The only good news for Tice and Farage is that their party finished well ahead of its two populist rivals (which is scarcely surprising since they are equally irrelevant to the concerns of most voters, and have far less money than Reform UK to spend on their campaigns).

UKIP – the party Farage led in its heyday – now barely exists. Its candidate Cain Griffiths finished seventh with 179 votes (0.6%).

And the anti-lockdown, anti-vaccination party Freedom Alliance finished bottom of the poll with only 91 votes (0.3%) for its candidate Chris Quartermaine. There are many H&D readers who sympathise with Mr Quartermaine’s interest in what might politely be termed fringe science and contrarian attitudes to the CoVID pandemic. These things are of course open to debate, but frankly only a fool would now believe there is any electoral potential in CoVID conspiracy theories.

It’s time for nationalists to cut the crankism and return to the basics of racial nationalist politics. While there is a long hard road ahead to achieve either an ideologically credible movement or an electorally credible party (or ideally both), the recent Census results have emphasised that only racial nationalists – not civic nationalists or conspiracist cranks – have answers to the UK’s long-term crisis.

By-election voters reject entire nationalist movement: time for a reboot

Two dramatic parliamentary by-election results tonight delivered a potentially fatal blow to the authority of Boris Johnson. But they also showed that voters even in strongly pro-Brexit constituencies have rejected the entire nationalist movement as presently constituted.

A wide range of different nationalist parties and independents were on the ballot papers in the West Yorkshire constituency of Wakefield, and the Devon constituency of Tiverton & Honiton, offering various combinations of UKIP-style politics; criticism of immigration; rejection of ‘woke’; traditional patriotism; opposition to Islam; racial or semi-racial nationalism; and/or conspiracy theories about the pandemic. Yet the voters were decidedly unimpressed.

On the issues listed above (with the likely exception of CoVID conspiracism which has niche appeal at best) there are undoubtedly many thousands of voters across the two constituencies (as elsewhere in the UK) who agree with civic or racial nationalist policies.

As recently as 2010, the BNP (which of course no longer even pretends to function as a proper political party) polled 2,581 votes in Wakefield (5.8%).

Yet this week all six of the nationalist or anti-lockdown parties in Wakefield added together polled only half this total: just 1,293 votes!!

In Wakefield the most active nationalist campaign was fought by Ashlea Simon of Britain First, who had achieved the country’s best nationalist result at last month’s local elections, polling 21.6% in Walkden North ward, Salford.

Wakefield is of course on the other side of the Pennines, but this West Yorkshire city has many of the same racial problems that led to strong BNP votes in the 2000s. And the fact that the by-election was caused by a homosexual Muslim Conservative MP being jailed for sexual abuse of a 15-year-old boy, ought to have been a gift for even a semi-racial nationalist party.

Ms Simon and her team (including Britain First leader Paul Golding) put in a serious effort, but polled only 311 votes (1.1%), finishing 8th of 15 candidates.

This wasn’t a great result, but the outcome for other nationalist contenders in Wakefield was truly dire. Jayda Fransen of the British Freedom Party was bottom of the poll with only 24 votes (less than 0.1%).

Ms Fransen had to stand as an independent because her party isn’t yet registered. She and the two men who pull the strings in her ‘party’ – Ulster ‘businessman’ Jim Dowson and former MEP Nick Griffin – talk a good fight online, but are effectively seeking to con potential donors that they are running a serious political force (rather than the farce that it truly is).

In a rational world, Fransen, Dowson and Griffin would never show their face again in any political forum, online or in person. But doubtless they are shameless enough to keep the con going.

The best of a feeble bunch of civic nationalist results in Wakefield was Reform UK – successor to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party – finishing sixth with 513 votes (1.9%). But given the comparatively vast resources expended by Richard Tice’s party, this is another shockingly meagre return. Tice’s donors must be running out of patience.

The rump of UKIP polled 124 votes (0.5%), beaten by the English Democrats with 135 votes (0.5%).

And while the anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination movement continues to make a lot of noise both online and in occasional demonstrations, their standard bearer in Wakefield – the Freedom Alliance – barely registered with 187 votes (0.7%).

Meanwhile in Tiverton & Honiton – a traditionally safe Conservative and strongly pro-Brexit seat in Devon – nationalist results were equally dismal.

Reform UK’s total here was even worse than in Wakefield: 481 votes (1.1%). UKIP again failed miserably with 241 votes (0.6%), just ahead of one of the splinter groups from UKIP, the Heritage Party (led by a half-Jamaican and focusing heavily on CoVID-scepticism) who took only 167 votes (0.4%).

The wooden spoon went to Frankie Rufolo of the anti-Islam party For Britain Movement, who polled 146 votes (0.3%). For Britain is led by a former UKIP leadership candidate Anne-Marie Waters, who is now allied to EDL founder ‘Tommy Robinson’ and claims that she is building towards winning a seat in Parliament at the next general election. On present trends she wouldn’t win a parliamentary seat if she lived for another millennium.

Ever since the collapse of the BNP a decade ago there has been nothing even resembling a large-scale, successful racial nationalist party. The BNP no longer even pretends to function as a proper political party. Patriotic Alternative (the fastest growing racial nationalist force in the UK) is not registered as a party and so is unable to contest elections. And various smaller parties ranging from the British Democratic Party to the National Front are not yet a substantial presence in parliamentary elections.

Both of the constituencies that had by-elections yesterday were strongly pro-Brexit, and were won by Boris Johnson’s pro-Brexit Conservative Party in 2019. Yet the by-elections were caused by personal scandals forcing the resignation of Conservative MPs. So there ought to have been potential for various types of nationalist to attract voters who had previously backed the Tories.

In this context the Wakefield and Tiverton & Honiton results were frankly an embarrassment not just for the parties concerned, but for everyone who calls himself a British nationalist.

Many of those who were active in these campaigns are decent patriots. Yet their political strategies and in most cases their entire party structures should be consigned to the scrapheap.

If we cannot now escape from crank ideas and personal bitterness; if we cannot now agree some form of realistic yet principled agenda and create a serious political movement (whether that movement is electorally focused, or at least for now concentrates on non-electoral politics) – then we deserve the contempt of our fellow Britons and we are unworthy of our ancestors.

Post-Brexit civic nationalists face High Noon in Yorkshire and Devon by-elections

Nominations closed this afternoon for two parliamentary by-elections to be held on 23rd June in the West Yorkshire constituency of Wakefield and the Devon constituency of Tiverton & Honiton.

Each of these by-elections follows scandals that disgraced the previous Conservative MP. In Wakefield a homosexual Muslim Conservative – overseas readers might think we are making this up but it’s absolutely true – resigned after being convicted for sexually assaulting a teenage boy. He has since been imprisoned.

In Tiverton & Honiton, the local Conservative MP resigned after he admitted viewing pornography on his phone while at work in the chamber of the House of Commons. Readers will appreciate that parliamentary proceedings can be boring, but this was probably not the best way to relieve the tedium.

Each by-election has attracted a range of civic nationalist, populist and/or anti-Islam candidates.

In Wakefield voters can choose between:
Ashlea Simon of Britain First, an anti-Islamist party backed by former BNP official Paul Golding – as reported in the current edition of H&D, Miss Simon achieved the best nationalist vote at the recent local council elections, polling 21.6% in Walkden North, Salford;

Jayda Fransen, Mr Golding’s former partner both in Britain First and in private life, who is now based in Northern Ireland where she works for Christian businessman Jim Dowson and his political frontman Nick Griffin – they call their outfit the British Freedom Party but it is not in fact a registered political party, so Ms Fransen is listed as Independent on the ballot paper;

Chris Walsh, a Wakefield gym owner and the most local of the civic nationalist candidates, representing the Reform UK party backed by former Brexit Party and UKIP leader Nigel Farage;

Therese Hirst, a frequent candidate in Yorkshire elections for the English Democrats, a party led by Essex solicitor Robin Tilbrook which campaigns for an English Parliament – Ms Hirst (a Theology graduate of Durham University) finished runner-up at the Batley & Spen parliamentary by-election in 2016, polling 4.8%;

Jordan Gaskell, who at the age of 19 received UKIP’s best vote at the recent local government elections: 10.4% in Hindley ward, Wigan – like Ashlea Simon he has what might prove a big disadvantage of coming from the wrong side of the Pennines, though unlike Jayda Fransen he is at least based in England.

Other anti-establishment parties contesting Wakefield include the CoVID-sceptic ‘Freedom Alliance’, the Christian Peoples Alliance, the Yorkshire Party, and the left-populist Northern Independence Party.

Wakefield’s Conservatives have (perhaps surprisingly) selected another Asian candidate. There is also an Asian independent standing, as well as the ‘Monster Raving Loony Party’, and the usual Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green parties.

The by-election is almost certain to be won either by Labour or the Conservatives, but an unusually poor or good result might either finish off one of the crowded field of nationalist or semi-nationalist parties, or give one of them the boost required to raise their profile.

At present none of these parties has anything like the profile achieved by the National Front in the 1970s, the BNP in the 1990s and 2000s, or UKIP and the Brexit Party in the 2010s.

Tiverton & Honiton in contrast to Wakefield is almost certain to be a battle between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

Here there is a slightly different range of civic nationalist candidates:
Frankie Rufolo is Exeter organiser of the For Britain Movement, the anti-Islamist party founded by former UKIP leadership candidate Anne-Marie Waters. Mr Rufolo has stood several times in Exeter City Council elections, most recently polling 7.7%.
Andy Foan, a former Royal Navy and RAF pilot, is standing for Reform UK.
Ben Walker, also a Royal Navy veteran, is standing for UKIP, for whom he was once a councillor in South Gloucestershire. In 2019 he was fined more than £11,000 for breaking building regulations.
Jordan Donoghue-Morgan is standing for the Heritage Party, which has absolutely no connection to H&D and is a splinter from UKIP.

Since UKIP were runners-up with 16.5% in this constituency in 2015, there is a fairly substantial civic nationalist or populist right-wing vote to share between these candidates, especially given the Conservative Party’s recent problems.

As in Wakefield, an especially good or bad result for any of the above four candidates could propel their party either into significance or into extinction.

Other candidates in Tiverton & Honiton are the usual ‘big four’: Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green.

Neither of the two fastest-growing nationalist organisations in Britain is contesting either of these by-elections. Patriotic Alternative is not yet a registered political party so cannot yet appear on ballot papers. The British Democratic Party has decided (probably wisely) not to enter a crowded field that is likely to turn into a media circus.

Civic nationalism wiped off the map

For at least twenty years we have grown used to being told that racial nationalism is ‘unrealistic’ and that the only ‘electable’ alternative to the political establishment is ‘civic nationalism’. We should forget about race, forget awkward aspects of British or European history, forget all essential principles, and focus on a vague form of protest vote combined with strictly non-racial ‘patriotism’: so the argument has traditionally gone.

The high tide of civic nationalism was the Brexit referendum victory in 2016. Before and after that result, parties led by Nigel Farage (first UKIP, then the Brexit Party) seriously challenged the party system, but once Brexit had been achieved, Farage’s politics (essentially an ultra-reactionary version of Thatcherism) lost all relevance.

Several different parties and independents have competed for the same political territory: waffling about immigration while determined not to be ‘racist’; still fighting the Brexit war long after it ended; and obsessed by some version or other of anti-vaccination conspiracy theory. What has been entirely lacking has been any serious political ideology or vision.

There are only two good reasons to be in politics: either to win, obtaining at least some portion of power over the fate of our nations and peoples; or to set out a clear and consistent ideology capable of rallying and inspiring our people if future political circumstances afford any chances to do so.

Civic nationalism does neither: it is the politics both of defeat and of ideological vacuity.

Just before 1.30 this morning, the credibility of civic nationalism ended for good, finally burying the era when Brexit dominated British politics.

At yesterday’s Southend West by-election, none of the major parties stood against the Conservatives, out of respect for the by-election having been caused by the murder of the late MP David Amess.

This meant that from the start of the campaign, there was an open goal for any ‘minor’ party or candidate who could demonstrate the slightest shred of credibility: none of them could do so.

By polling day the government had discredited itself to a barely imaginable extent, so there was obvious potential for a ‘protest vote’. Not one of the various civic nationalist candidates was able to mobilise such a protest.

The once mighty UKIP had furthest to fall, and duly did so, polling a mere 400 votes (2.7%) across the entire constituency and pushed into third place behind the unlikely runner-up on 3.4%, Jason Pilley of the Psychedelic Movement, whose main policy seems to be legalising cannabis but in other respects is yet another cut taxes, cut government spending, neo-Thatcherite libertarian.

The obvious political space in Britain today is for a credible form of radical racial nationalism, but no such party of any size has existed since Nick Griffin turned the BNP into his personal retirement fund.

Griffin’s latest scam – the British Freedom Party – was not able to put its name on the ballot paper due to not being officially registered, so its leader Jayda Fransen stood as an independent. She polled 299 votes (2.0%), finishing fifth of the nine candidates, and most of these votes were probably due to her being the only candidate described on the ballot paper as an independent. In reality her campaign was just another fundraising stunt by the men who really run her party – Nick Griffin and his ‘business adviser’ Jim Dowson.

Griffin and Dowson weren’t even prepared to spend money on a leaflet to take advantage of the free mailshot to voters that candidates are given in return for their £500 deposit. Any donors to ‘British Freedom’ who expected a serious campaign have (yet again) been conned.

By far the most creditable performance among the civic nationalist fringe candidates was by English Democrat candidate Catherine Blaiklock, who finished fourth with 320 votes (2.2%) despite competing for many of the same voters as UKIP (a far better known and publicised party). Many H&D readers will dislike Ms Blaiklock for having twice married non-Whites, but she has never pretended to be a racial nationalist and cannot be accused of hypocrisy. Moreover her party leader Robin Tilbrook is a thoroughly honest and able spokesman for his cause. Sadly that cause – primarily focused on an English Parliament though also commendably drawing attention to failures of immigration policy – is too limited to rally much support from racial nationalists.

The Heritage Party – a UKIP splinter led by a half-Jamaican and obsessed by anti-vaccination issues, polled only 1.6%, and other versions of the same message received even less support – just 1.1% for the ‘Freedom Alliance’ and 0.6% for the most conspiracist version of the anti-vaccination cause, offered by Graham Moore of the English Constitution Party.

With the exception of Mr Tilbrook who is a good spokesman for a limited cause, the rest of the civic nationalist candidates and leaders should take a long hard look at themselves after this latest debacle. Their only honest conclusion must be that they are simply not good enough: not of serious calibre as parliamentary candidates, not serious as parties, and offering no serious ideological challenge to the system they profess to oppose.

Our own movement also needs to take a good look at itself. First we need to sort out what are the essentials of our ideology and put in place a proper system of ideological and political training for our recruits. Second we need to sort out our attitude to the electoral process: when and where do we fight elections, and what will be our vehicle for doing so?

There’s no need for defeatism; there is need for realism – and the death of civic nationalism leaves us with no excuses for our own failures.

H&D will seek to play its part during 2022 in the long overdue relaunch of a serious racial nationalist challenge to Britain’s morally and ideologically bankrupt politics.

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