We explore the assorted extremists representing the far right at the local elections on 1 May.
1,750 English council seats and six mayoral positions are up for grabs on 1 May. The electoral landscape has shifted dramatically over the past year, with Reform UK dominating the radical right and now contesting over 1,700 seats — up from 330 in 2024 and more than any of the major parties.
Nigel Farage’s party looks set to hoover the anti-immigrant vote and could win hundreds of seats. This partly explains the dearth of candidates across the rest of the far right; the anti-Muslim group Britain First, for example, told supporters earlier this month that it is “skipping elections this year because the media are in overdrive promoting ‘Reform UK’”, breaking its previous promise to field 30-40 candidates.
Nonetheless, as is tradition, a variety of far-right and fascist micro parties and independents are competing for the anti-immigrant, anti-establishment vote. While you can find our investigations into Reform UK’s candidates in key target seats here (with more to come), below is an overview of the rest of the far right at the local elections.
This includes religious zealots, Holocaust deniers and fascist uniform-wearing ex-Tories.
The group with the largest slate of candidates is the Heritage Party, a fringe UKIP offshoot founded by David Kurten. Heritage is standing 23 candidates, including seven in Devon, five in Kent and three in Hertfordshire. This is down from 40 candidates nationally in 2024 and 63 in 2023.
Heritage was born out of the anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protest movement and has retained a distinctly conspiratorial focus, for example claiming that 5G and water-based fluoride are poisoning the country. However, Kurten has shifted the party’s focus to anti-immigration rhetoric, calling for an end to “replacement migration” while also dabbling in antisemitic politics.
Candidates include the party’s General Secretary, Madeleine Hunt, in Teignmouth division of Devon, as well as in the Teignmouth West by-election. Hunt has claimed that “anti-Christianity [and] anti white race” agendas were “Talmudic principles”.
The group’s candidates routinely perform poorly and are unlikely to fare better this year.
UKIP, a ghost of its former self, is standing just 13 candidates. These are mostly concentrated in the Midlands, including five in Staffordshire.
Under the leadership of Nick Tenconi, who has a conviction for violence, the group now operates more as an aggressive street protest outfit than a political party.
UKIP has organised a series of small protests for “mass deportations” along the south coast and established tight links with Stephen Lennon (AKA Tommy Robinson). The party has duly received an influx of Lennon supporters, especially after Reform UK refused to support the serial criminal during his latest legal troubles. Several of Lennon’s associates now sit on UKIP’s executive.
The party has also adopted a more overtly religious dimension, as seen by the candidacy of Rikki Doolan in Lincolnshire (Nettleham & Saxilby). Doolan is a pastor at the Spirit Embassy church in London and an ardent supporter of Lennon, performing his brand of Christian rock music at his demonstrations. In 2023, he was exposed by Al Jazeera for being part of a money-laundering scheme involving Zimbabwean gold.
The group’s Christian nationalism has also brought it into competition with Britain First. For example, former Britain First activist John Lathan, who has visited asylum accommodation sites, is now representing UKIP in County Durham (Ferryhill).
Tenconi’s confrontational politics and religious zealotry has raised UKIP’s profile among the far right, but seems sure to alienate any residual pockets of support among the electorate.
The largest fascist political party in the UK is the Homeland Party, which splintered from the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative (PA) in 2023 in order to pursue elections. Homeland has spent much of the last year portraying itself as a more hardline but legitimate alternative to Reform UK. However, despite its rapid recent growth — now with over 1,200 members — it is standing just four candidates this year, 0.2% of Reform UK’s slate.
Homeland is attempting to emulate the strategy of the BNP’s most successful branches, using localised “community politics” to build towards its election runs. The group’s anodyne local messaging is a world away from the online activity of its activists, who have photographed themselves performing Hitler salutes, praised the Third Reich and much more.
The group’s best known candidate is Steve Laws in Kent (Folkestone East), a notorious “migrant hunter” turned fascist online influencer. Homeland is just the latest vehicle for Laws, who has already cycled through For Britain, UKIP, Reform UK, PA and the English Democrats, the latter of which he represented in Dover & Deal at the general election last year, gaining just 185 votes (0.4%).
Laws spends much of his time broadcasting a stream of base racial hatred to his following on X, including during the countrywide racist riots last summer. Nonetheless, he somehow seems to have evaded prosecution.
Tom Batten (AKA Tom Beighton), Homeland’s East Midlands Regional Organiser and formerly a PA Media Officer, is also standing in Derbyshire (Bolsover). Anthony Burrows, Homeland’s National Nominating Officer, has declined to stand in Bolsover himself, despite being a parish councillor in the area. This perhaps owes to the slew of negative attention Burrows has inflicted on his party, for example being described by a judge in 2023 as having:
demonstrated views that were sympathetic towards violence aimed at non-white ethnic or religious groups, and his reckless provision of links to potential terrorist manifestos and literature were such that he was a danger to the peace.
Andrew Piper, an electrician turned self-styled “mindset coach”, is standing in Lincolnshire (Deepings West & Rural). The activist was co-opted onto Market Deeping Town council last June.
As we have previously written, Piper had spent years embedded in the conspiracy theory-driven anti-lockdown movement, claiming that the vaccine is a “bio weapon” used to “kill and severely injure millions, if not billions”. He has more recently spread lies about Jewish control and the deliberate replacement of white populations via immigration, as well as questioning elements of the Holocaust.
Lastly, Simon Bennett is standing in Kent (Maidstone Rural East). The self-described “Christian Nationalist” is fond of using the anti-Asian racial slur “jeets”, has written of his desire to see “traitors” “put to death” and warned of a upcoming “civil war” against “invaders”. He also claimed that “Blacks, browns, yellows, Jews […] cannot remain in England” and that “The Jews won World War 2”.
1 May is a big test for Homeland and its much-vaunted “ladder strategy”, and the group hopes to improve on the failure of its sole candidate, Roger Robertson, to come close to winning his seat last year. Now, each of Homeland’s candidates are directly competing with Reform UK, a fact that will not improve the fascist group’s chances.
Meanwhile, the British Democrats, a geriatric BNP splinter, is standing just three candidates: the former BNP councillor Lawrence Rustem in the Maidstone South East ward of Kent; former BNP candidate Ian Seeby in Hertfordshire (Flamstead End & Turnford); and Frank Calladine, a former UKIP and English Democrats candidate, in Doncaster (Conisbrough).
Despite the considerable political experience of the group, the British Democrats’ electoral record is dismal. Calladine, who is also standing in the Doncaster mayoral race, was the sole party figure to receive anything approaching a respectable result in the general election last year, placing fifth with 1,160 votes (3.7%) in Doncaster North.
Three far-right parties have managed to stump up one candidate apiece.
The National Housing Party UK, a band of far-right incompetents, is fielding the former Britain First activist Lloyd Morgan in Warwickshire (Hillmorton).
Timothy Knowles in Derbyshire (Codnor, Aldercar, Langley Mill and Loscoe) has the dubious distinction of being the sole candidate of the decrepit National Front once again.
Finally, David Dickason is the only candidate for the English Democrats in Lincolnshire (Boston Coastal ward), despite the group having fielded 15 in the 2024 general election (including four members of the neo-Nazi group Patriotic Alternative). The English Democrats and its crankish offshoot, the English Constitution Party, are both pointlessly contesting the Runcorn and Helsby by-election also taking place on 1 May.
Meanwhile, Andy Weatherhead, a former Conservative councillor, is standing as an independent in Kent (Hythe West). Weatherhead was forced out of his seat in 2022 after HOPE not hate revealed that he was previously a senior officer for the New British Union (NBU), an attempted revival of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Weatherhead helped to formulate the policies of the NBU and was also photographed by HOPE not hate attending a rally in support of the violent neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn.
Pete Molloy is also standing for re-election in County Durham (Spennymoor). Molloy was once a prominent figure in the BNP, heading the BNP Veterans Group for ex-servicemen. Molloy won a Spennymoor Town seat in 2019, going on to gain Durham County Council in 2021 with 930 votes, a victory celebrated on the front page of the neo-Nazi magazine Heritage and Destiny.
At present, the far right’s prospects at the ballot do not appear promising. Homeland is the most energetic operation with the clearest strategy. Nonetheless, all are likely to be overshadowed by Reform UK.
It is notable that, in the past five years, the few fascists to have won council elections have stood as independents rather than for national parties that can be more readily discredited by local campaigners. Anti-fascists must work to undermine support for the far right at the local level before it metastasizes.
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