UK Local Elections 2023
Posted by admin978 on April 6, 2023 · Leave a Comment
Nominations have closed for more than 8,000 contests at this year’s local elections in England and Wales. (Northern Ireland’s council elections have a slightly different timescale, and there are no elections in Scotland this year.)
The nationalist and broadly patriotic cause in the UK is still going through its post-Brexit transition, and this is reflected in the small numbers of candidates from racial nationalist parties. You can find a comprehensive list of candidates and parties by clicking this link, but these are the main headlines.
- The British Democrats are the main electorally focused racial nationalist movement, and have five candidates this year, including Julian Leppert who will be defending the seat he won four years ago in Waltham Abbey Paternoster ward, Epping Forest. Mr Leppert won that seat as a candidate of the now defunct For Britain Movement, but he joined the Brit Dems after FBM leader Anne-Marie Waters closed down her party.
- Britain First, led by former BNP official Paul Golding, is the main electoral voice of the anti-Islam movement. It is in principle a non-racial, anti-Islam party, though it includes several veteran racial nationalists. They have eight candidates this year, and their main campaign is likely to be in Walkden North, Salford, where Ashlea Simon will seek to build on the 21.6% she won last year.
- Another anti-Islamist party which has grown slightly during the past year is the National Housing Party, which has three candidates this year, including former BNP and FBM activist Gary Bergin in Claughton ward, Wirral.
- Patriotic Alternative (the country’s most active racial nationalist movement) is still not registered as a political party and therefore unable to contest elections.
- The British National Party, which during the 2000s won many council seats and elected two Members of the European Parliament, has effectively ceased to exist: once again this year there are no BNP candidates anywhere in the UK, and in all likelihood there never will be again.
- The National Front, which during the 1970s was one of Europe’s largest racial nationalist parties, still ticks over as a guardian of racial nationalist ideals, but has only one candidate this year: Tim Knowles in Codnor, Langley Mill & Aldercar ward, Amber Valley.
- Former BNP organiser Dr Andrew Emerson is again standing in his home city of Chichester for his small party Patria.
- Two nationalist independents are standing this year: former councillor Graham Partner in Coalville, NW Leicestershire, and Gary Butler in Shepway, Maidstone.
- The English Democrats, who are a non-racial party but who campaign for an English Parliament as well as immigration restrictions and other issues of interest to H&D readers, have five candidates this year, including party leader Robin Tilbrook in Shelley ward, Epping Forest, and husband and wife team Steve and Val Morris in Bury. Two former ED activists have defected to the rival English Constitution Party and will stand in Barnsley.
- Various civic nationalist parties that grew out of UKIP remain bitterly divided and ideologically confused. Reform UK (by far the largest and best funded) have 480 candidates this year, but unless they can make a serious impact this might be their last serious campaign. UKIP itself has only 48 candidates this year, while rival splinter groups include the Heritage Party with 64 (plus a mayoral candidate) and the Alliance for Freedom & Democracy with 23.
(Please note that election reports and statistics on the H&D site do not usually include parish/town council elections. We only focus on the borough/district council level and above.)
Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (which was the main vehicle for the pro-Brexit cause) split in 2018 with Farage founding the Brexit Party, which eventually evolved into today’s Reform UK, led by Farage’s close associate Richard Tice.
Reform UK remains by far the largest vehicle for the broadly civic nationalist cause in the UK, but it is ideologically poles apart from most H&D readers. Tice’s party is blatantly non-racist, and economically liberal. H&D has long argued that the slow death of Reform UK (and of Farageist politics in general) is necessary before the British racial nationalist tradition can revive.
After at least two years of generally dismal election results, Reform UK has (on paper) done well to field 480 candidates at this year’s council elections. But it has very few serious functioning branches. Tice’s best branch by far is in Derby, where the entire council is up for re-election, including the six seats presently held by Reform UK who have a full slate of 51 candidates for the new council.
In addition to Derby, Reform UK has three other really substantial slates of candidates: Bolton (34), Amber Valley (28), and Sunderland (24).
