Two Tory peers remain in far-right pressure group despite widespread extremism in its ranks

Two Conservative peers, Lord Daniel Hannan and Lord Stephen Greenhalgh, have decided to remain in the Great British PAC (GB PAC) pressure group, despite several members of its team having promoted extreme views online. 

Last month, HOPE not hate revealed that thirteen people holding formal roles in the pressure group have shared or voiced far-right views and conspiracy theories on social media, including one who promoted antisemitic and pro-Hitler content and another who made racist comments about the IQ of ethnic minorities. 

Both Hannan and Greenhalgh are members of GB PAC’s advisory board, where they sit alongside Carl Benjamin (AKA “Sargon of Akkad”), a misogynistic online influencer who has a history of using racist and homophobic slurs. 

In 2016, Benjamin provoked widespread outrage when he said he “wouldn’t even rape” the Labour MP Jess Phillips, about which he initially refused to apologise.

The two peers are still listed as advisory board members on GB PAC’s website and neither responded when HOPE not hate asked whether they had reconsidered their position in the pressure group. 

Hannan became a Tory peer in 2021, before which he was one of the party’s MEPs, from 1999 to 2020, and a prominent pro-Brexit voice. 

In February, Hannan spoke at a roundtable discussion event in the House of Lords alongside far-right activists Charlie Downes and Jake Scott, as HOPE not hate reported. 

Greenhalgh served under Boris Johnson as deputy mayor of London for policing and crime, from 2012 to 2016, before he was conferred a peerage in 2020 and made a government minister, from 2020 to 2022, again under Johnson. 

Hannan and Greenhalgh aren’t the only parliamentarians involved in GB PAC.

Jim Allister – the leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice party who has been North Antrim’s MP since last July – also sits on the GB PAC advisory board and is the group’s Northern Ireland envoy. Allister is still listed on the GB PAC website and he didn’t respond to HOPE not hate when asked whether he is remaining in the pressure group. 

GB PAC’s questionable characters

GB PAC’s questionable characters include its Northamptonshire director Antony Antoniou who promoted material on X (formerly Twitter) which defended Adolf Hitler and propagated antisemitic conspiracy theories and its East Midlands director Edward Oakenfull who wrote in June 2023: 

“The gene pool decline is another interesting area. By importing loads of sub Saharan Africans plus Muslims that inter breed the IQ is in severe decline.”

Other members of the pressure group’s team have voiced anti-Muslim views on social media.

In May 2024, for instance, GB PAC’s Dorset director Peter Storms wrote: “London is lost. Another 4 years of islamification under Sadiq Khan will make it the new califate [sic].” 

On 29 April this year, the group’s South Wales director Scott Lewis claimed on social media: “Islam as a political system [wants] to dominate the West… Traitors in Westminster yawn while Britain is dismantled sermon by sermon. This is not immigration. This is infiltration… We don’t need more ‘dialogue.’ We need defence. Wake up. Or be ruled. There is no third option.”

In June, Lewis also responded to the far-right American activist Charlie Kirk saying, “Islam is not compatible with western civilization,” by commenting: “Britain, you shouldn’t be afraid to say this.” 

GB PAC’s Hampshire director Catriona Flear, meanwhile, responded to a post, which called the King a “traitor” and claimed he is “nothing but another puppet for the WEF [World Economic Forum],” by declaring on 14 June: “If these idiots think they can replace us with Muslims, good luck with that one if they think they will be compliant and pay taxes. The monarch will be the first [sic] to go!” 

The full list of GB PAC’s team members who have promoted far-right views and conspiracy theories online can be found here.

“We don’t care what our members have said in the past”

Taking the matter very seriously, GB PAC’s chair Ben Habib – the former deputy Reform leader who has now set up his own party, Advance UK – said, “We don’t care what our members have said in the past,” adding: “We will stand by our people without hesitation.”

Given the widespread extremism in the pressure group’s ranks and its chair’s dismissive attitude, should two Conservative peers and a sitting MP really be involved?