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.
Vanity politics: MP defects to ‘Reclaim’ party
This morning we saw a perfect example of this, when the MP for North West Leicestershire, Andrew Bridgen, defected to the Reclaim Party.
Bridgen has been a Tory MP since 2010 but was suspended from the parliamentary Conservative Party in January this year and expelled from the party three months later, after endorsing a series of bizarre conspiracy theories about the CoViD pandemic.
Some readers whose political knowledge depends on a social media echo chamber might be tempted to regard Bridgen as an anti-establishment hero. In fact aspects of his record indicate fairly clearly why Richard Tice and Reform UK (the main civic nationalist party) chose not to welcome him, despite the fact this would have given them an MP, and why he ended up joining a tiny vanity project like Reclaim.
Last year Bridgen was found repeatedly to have broken parliamentary rules on paid lobbying, including failure to declare financial interests. This included payments of £12,000 per year from a company based in Ghana.
Among many other questionable incidents, Bridgen has been involved in a long running financial disputes with his own relatives over his family business, which resulted in a High Court judge stating that the MP had “lied under oath and behaved in an abusive, arrogant and aggressive manner”, was “an unreliable and combative witness who tried to conceal his own misconduct”, and “gave evasive and argumentative answers and tangential speeches that avoided answering the questions”.
Some might think this is the sort of behaviour one should expect from Members of Parliament – but it is tragic that one of the few MPs to have broken with the mainstream should be someone of this sort, and that the defection should have occurred on a fringe, crank issue rather than on one of the many serious issues where the political establishment has betrayed our country.
Reclaim is not even a serious political party. There were over 8,000 local council seats contested at last week’s elections, and Reclaim had precisely zero candidates. It is an online vanity project, not a serious political party. So perhaps it is ideal for Andrew Bridgen.
Reclaim was created during 2020-2021 by the actor Laurence Fox, based on a pro-Brexit party founded during 2019 by Fox’s main donor, billionaire financier Jeremy Hosking.
Reform UK’s ballot box failure continues
Yesterday’s local by-elections offered further confirmation that Reform UK is not making any impact in real contests (as opposed to opinion polls and friendly promotion on GB News).
In Belgrave ward, Tamworth, RefUK’s Ian Cooper polled 40 votes (4.1%), finishing fourth of five candidates. The protest vote seems to have gone instead to an Independent candidate who finished a strong third with 25.8%. On a split vote, the Tory just about held on to the seat with 34.8%.
This is a ward that UKIP contested six times during 2014-2021, on three occasions polling over 20%. It has tended to be a Con-Lab marginal, and the intervention of an Independent cost Labour what would otherwise have been a probable gain in present circumstances.
Further evidence from our movement’s standpoint that there is a substantial public mood of “plague on both your houses”, and that unlike UKIP and the Brexit Party in their day, RefUK is failing to mobilise that mood.
In the Watling South division of Staffordshire, which includes Belgrave ward but is usually a safer Tory seat, RefUK’s Barry Gwilt polled 110 votes (6.0%), finishing 4th of 4. Gwilt is a borough councillor in Lichfield, elected as a Tory, who defected to RefUK last month, so you would expect him to be far better than the average RefUK candidate (his borough council ward is adjacent to this county division). Therefore, although his 6% is in line with national opinion poll scores for RefUK, it actually suggests that RefUK’s true nationwide position is considerably below 6%. (Again the Tory held on, with a sharply reduced majority over Labour.)
Meanwhile the strange case of the Mosleyite who became a Tory county councillor ended in a fairly respectable vote for ex-Cllr Andy Weatherhead in Hythe West, Kent. After being ‘exposed’ a few months ago as a former activist in New British Union (a party inspired by the legacy of Sir Oswald Mosley), Mr Weatherhead resigned from the council and contested this week’s by-election as an independent, which readers might consider either brave, principled or foolish since there was nothing to prevent him serving out his term until May 2025, even after the Tories had thrown him out.
Mr Weatherhead finished bottom of the poll, but was far from disgraced, polling 237 votes (6.6%). Voters were faced with a confusing ballot paper, because there was another Independent – a former UKIP candidate, Ian Meyers, who finished fourth with 306 votes (8.6%).
It’s interesting that Meyers had not chosen to join RefUK or any of the other UKIP splinters but has ploughed a lone furrow, and that both he and Mr Weatherhead achieved votes that RefUK might envy. Again this suggests that the RefUK brand name doesn’t really add much to a dissident/populist campaign.
The big headline in Hythe was that the Greens gained the seat from the Tories, with a 12.5% swing. This has for some years been a Con-Green marginal – the Greens won it in 2017, only for Andy Weatherhead to take it back as a Tory in 2021 – so in present circumstances the result was no great surprise, though for the Green to win it by almost 500 votes was pretty impressive.
This is part of Michael Howard’s old constituency Folkestone & Hythe, presently held by technology minister Damian Collins, and it’s difficult to imagine it being anything other than Tory at the next general election. It’s surprising that the nationalist movement (racial or civic) hasn’t made more impact in these coastal areas, given the migrant crisis. Perhaps locals dislike ‘nationalist’ protesters arriving in their area from London, even more than they dislike immigrants?
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.
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.
Nationalist results at 2022 local elections
Votes have been counted across most of the UK in local council elections, as well as crucial contests for the Northern Ireland Assembly.
As previously explained in H&D, there were much reduced numbers of candidates this year from the UK’s various racial and civic nationalist parties. The once-mighty BNP now seems totally defunct, having no candidates anywhere in the country and no longer even a functioning website.
By far the best result so far was achieved by Ashlea Simon of Britain First, who finished runner-up in Walkden North, Salford with 508 votes (21.6%). H&D has been very critical of Britain First’s leader Paul Golding on both ideological and personal grounds, but we have to admit this is a very good result and a credit to Ms Simon and her campaign team.
The other nationalist party making progress this year is the British Democrats, and even they only had four candidates nationwide. Lawrence Rustem achieved 117 votes (13.7%) in Shepway South ward, Maidstone. Last year Mr Rustem polled 25 votes (2.6%) in the same ward as a For Britain candidate.
British Democrat leader Dr Jim Lewthwaite finished third of six candidates in Wyke ward, Bradford, with 214 votes (7.1%), slightly up from 6.2% in the same ward last year.
Among other Brit Dem candidates, Chris Bateman polled 100 votes (4.6%) in Laindon Park, Basildon. This was the first ever British Democrat campaign in Basildon. Similarly breaking new ground for the Brit Dems was former BNP candidate Michael Jones who polled 253 votes (5.7%) in East Wickham ward, Bexley.
By contrast the For Britain Movement seems to be going backwards: its leader Anne-Marie Waters was heavily defeated in De Bruce ward, Hartlepool. Click here for our analysis of that result.
What had been For Britain’s strongest branch in Epping Forest was marking time this year with token campaigns. Eddy Butler polled just 11 votes (1.3%) in Loughton Alderton, and former BNP councillor Pat Richardson 16 votes (2.0%) in Loughton Broadway.
Former BNP activist Gary Bergin polled 57 votes (1.7%) as For Britain candidate in Claughton ward, Wirral, down from 1.9% last year, while in nearby Shevington ward, Knowsley, Christine Dillon managed only 18 votes (1.0%). One of the party’s few substantial branches is Exeter, where organiser Frankie Rufolo polled 192 votes (7.7%) in Exwick ward. Mr Rufolo’s Exeter colleagues fared a lot worse: Eric Bransden polling 35 votes (1.2%) in Topsham ward, and Chris Stone 25 votes (0.9%) in St Thomas.
Among the other early results was Langley Mill & Aldercar, Amber Valley, where the National Front’s Tim Knowles polled 28 votes (2.6%), a fraction down from 2.7% in 2018. Another veteran NF candidate Chris Jackson (once North West regional organiser for the BNP) yet again contested his home ward of Todmorden, Calderdale, polling 101 votes (3.1%), up from 2.3% last year.
On the civic wing of nationalism, Reform UK – the main faction of the old UKIP, backed by Nigel Farage and led by Richard Tice – is fading badly. In Chipping Ongar, Greensted and Marden Ash ward, Epping Forest, Reform UK’s Peter Bell finished bottom of the poll with 26 votes (2.7%), behind Robin Tilbrook of the English Democrats with 72 votes (7.5%).
Other English Democrat results included 8.3% for Maxine Spencer in Dearne North, Barnsley and 5.5% for her neighbour Janus Polenceusz in Dearne South.
Reform UK seems now to have just one strong branch – Derby, where they held on to the two council seats they were defending – plus one semi-strong branch, Bolton, where as in Derby they had a full slate of candidates, three of whom managed above 10%. In the rest of the country the party barely exists.
The remaining fragment of UKIP – which was the country’s largest party at the 2014 European Parliamentary elections – had only seventeen candidates for English councils plus eleven candidates for Scottish councils. Only Jordan Gaskell in Hindley ward, Wigan with 10.4% achieved a remotely credible vote.
Two UKIP splinter groups still just about function. The Heritage Party, led by half-Jamaican former London Assembly member David Kurten, had fourteen English council candidates and one Welsh, plus one candidate for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Their best vote was 7.9% for Nick Smith in Cippenham Green ward, Slough, while most others polled tiny votes. An even smaller UKIP splinter is the Alliance for Democracy and Freedom, the best of whose five English council results was 7.3% for Phillip Moulson in South ward, NE Lincolnshire.
Gary Butler – who has contested elections during the past twelve years for the National Front, BNP and English Democrats – this year polled 49 votes (3.3%) as an Independent in Heath ward, Maidstone. His wife Melanie Butler polled 94 votes (5.8%) in Shepway North, Maidstone.
Graham Williamson – a leading activist in the National Front during the 1980s – has long since abandoned racial nationalism in favour of ‘community politics’. He was easily re-elected in South Hornchurch ward, Havering, for his ‘Rainham Independent Residents Association’.
Click here to see full breakdown of nationalist / UKIP type candidates and their results.
