The appearance of Charlie Downes, a frequent GB News commentator, and Jake Scott, a think tank researcher, on the parliamentary estate raises questions about the increasing acceptance that far-right activists have in public life.
By Harry Shukman
A Conservative peer hosted far-right activists in parliament, HOPE not hate can reveal.
Lord Moylan, a former advisor to Boris Johnson, sponsored a discussion event in a House of Lords committee room this week. Sat on the panel with him were two far-right activists.
One was Charlie Downes, a political commentator who has praised Enoch Powell and spoken at anti-migrant demonstrations. Downes has written: “Remigration is a political and demographic necessity.” Remigration is a euphemism for mass deportations of migrants both illegal and legal.
L-R: Lord Moylan, Lord Hannan, Thomas Hogg, Jake Scott, Charlie Downes
Also at the House of Lords event was Jake Scott, a former campaigner in Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party. Scott co-founded The Mallard, a far-right commentary website, and has similarly endorsed Enoch Powell. In group chats leaked to HOPE not hate, Scott joked with Mallard colleagues about adding swastikas into articles and said that a gay commentator should be “castrated”.
Committee rooms in the House of Lords can only be booked by peers, and we can reveal that Lord Moylan was the sponsor of the Tuesday-night event. It was organised by Touchpoint Strategy, a political consulting firm where Downes is employed as an account manager. They joined Lord Hannan — another Tory peer — and a writer called Thomas Hogg, to discuss the latter’s A Place To Call Home, a book arguing for lower taxes. The text has been promoted by Touchpoint as “a powerful new book… on the bright new future awaiting Britain”.
Charlie Downes is an increasingly popular activist in the British far right. At a fringe event for Reform UK last year, he called for the party to enforce “a robust policy of remigration”. In an official Reform video, he was shown shaking hands with leader Nigel Farage. He has also written of attending a far-right conference with Morgoth, the pseudonymous fascist influencer, whose writing he has admiringly cited in podcast appearances.
Downes has frequently reposted social media material by Traditional Britain Group, a far-right organisation that advocates for remigration, as well as content by the extremist activists Neema Parvini and Carl Benjamin. Snapping a photo of a Pride flag over a council building, Downes said it was “occupied territory”.
In 2023, Downes spoke at an event in Llanelli with Dan Morgan, co-founder of Voice of Wales, a far-right media group. Telling the audience that their community was under threat from “invaders” and “marauders from the continent”, Downes said: “Thousands of men of fighting age have arrived — forced themselves — onto the shores of my homeland.” Downes’s anti-migrant activism has even earned him the praise of the Homeland Party, a fascist political party, for using the word “homeland” in his GB News appearances.
Jake Scott, joking with a colleague at The Mallard about adding swastikas onto articles
Jake Scott, as co-founder and chairman of The Mallard, has published articles about “the preservation of the White British” and, as revealed by HOPE not hate, a screed by Beau Dade, a former Reform UK candidate, who called for Britain to “rid itself of the foreign plague we have been diseased with”. Scott, according to a 2021 leak of The Mallard’s editorial staff chat, used the antisemitic “echoes” meme, adding three brackets around a word to denote Jewish influence. He now works as research director at the Prosperity Institute, the rebranded Legatum Institute, a free-market, pro-Brexit think tank funded by Legatum Ltd which owns GB News.
This is not the first time that far-right activists have sought to make connections in the House of Lords. HOPE not hate uncovered the New Issues Group, an anti-Muslim organisation including Lord Pearson and Baroness Cox who consulted with far-right activists to draft questions for them.
The appearance of Charlie Downes, a frequent GB News commentator, and Jake Scott, a think tank researcher, on the parliamentary estate raises questions about the increasing acceptance that far-right activists have in public life.
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