HOPE not hate explores the assorted extremists representing the far right at the upcoming elections, including Holocaust deniers, crank conspiracists and Crusader cosplayers
7 May will see elections in the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, as well as more than 5,000 council contests across 136 local authorities in England.
Reform UK continues to dominate the radical right, anti-immigrant sphere and stands to win hundreds of seats.
Nonetheless, as is tradition, a variety of reactionaries, oddballs, fascist microparties and independents are competing for the sliver of support to the right of Reform.
While you can find our investigations into Reform’s candidates in key target seats here, below is an overview of the rest of the far right at the local elections.
Restore Britain, launched by the ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe in February, has galvanised the extreme right. Lowe, who was suspended from Reform last year, has lofty ambitions, claiming he intends to win the next general election.
However, despite the rapid growth of Restore – which purports to be nine times bigger than the BNP at its height – Lowe has put forward just ten official candidates this year. The all-male roster is concentrated in Norfolk and is standing under the banner of Great Yarmouth First, after the constituency Lowe represents in parliament. Going forward, Lowe plans to register hundreds of similar hyperlocal parties under the broader Restore umbrella.
Given the extremely narrow target, anything but a clean sweep come May will be considered disappointing. Excited by the party’s promise to deport “millions”, over 100 activists canvassed the town last weekend, including well-known fascists.
However, a number of other Restore members are running as independents, including 13 in Sheffield, as recently covered by the Byline Times, and others in the Isle of Wight and Newham in London. This has caused some confusion, with the party forced to issue a clarification:
“The only borough we are standing candidates in at the local elections is Great Yarmouth. Anyone claiming to be standing for or endorsed by Restore Britain is not official.”
Nonetheless, any successful “independent” candidates would presumably defect to Restore, thereby effectively disguising their extreme affiliations.
Adding to this messy picture is the candidacy of Craig Houston, who is running as an independent in Glasgow. Houston claims not to be a Restore member, but also to have the backing of many Restore branches in Scotland. Houston co-leads the Spartan Child Protection Team (SPCT), which has embedded itself into a growing scene of vigilante and anti-migrant groups. SCPT is best known for protesting outside a small Glasgow primary school that offered English lessons to migrant parents. The council subsequently blasted the campaign as “misguided and toxic”, continuing:
“We will also not tolerate strangers and vigilante groups coming into our schools claiming to keep children safe when they have a clear hidden agenda to incite fear and alarm by spreading misinformation and inciting violence which is bigotry fuelled and inflamed.”
Advance UK, another Reform splinter headed by Ben Habib, has spent the year so far fighting for relevance against the growing force of Restore. Despite claiming a membership of 37,000 last November, the party has only managed to find 11 Scottish parliamentary candidates and 17 at the English locals (including six in Trafford and five in Walsall).
As expected, several have voiced extreme views, including Reece Lauder in Mid Scotland and Fife, who campaigns to “remove LGBTQ community out of public services” and claims that “Everything that’s wrong with the world is due to feminism. The only thing feminism teaches woman (sic) is how to be a shit wife, a gold digger and how to destroy a man’s life”. Recently, Lauder reposted claims that “Islam is the religion of rape, incest and paedophilia, where they bow down to a stupid rock and a false prophet”.
Former Reformers standing for Advance include Tony Mack in Essex (Clacton West & St Osyth); Craig Thomas Birtwhistle in Salford (Walkden South); Paul Swansborough in Trafford (Bucklow St Martins); and Les Durance for the Scottish Parliamentary elections (Moray), who previously stood for the Brexit Party and UKIP.
Restore and Advance are competing in a crowded field. While Advance is fielding more official candidates, it has had far longer to prepare, and is likely to be overshadowed by Restore in future elections.
UKIP is a far-cry from the populist force it once was under Farage. Leader Nick Tenconi has transformed the group into a one-man street movement governed by Christian nationalism and a crusade against “liberals, woke, communists and Islamo-fascists”. Throughout the anti-migrant protests of 2025, Tenconi repeatedly called for locals to stand as UKIP candidates and pushed crowds to vote for his party.
However, UKIP is standing only nine council candidates this year, none of whom have been promoted by the party in any meaningful sense. The group has 15 Scottish parliamentary candidates (11 of whom live in England), and was forced to cancel its Scottish campaign launch after alleged policing issues (more likely, not enough candidates were willing to show up).
Overall, UKIP has abandoned any pretence of electoral relevancy, and Tenconi’s “Walk with Jesus” events seem to have flattened support even further, with his followers struggling to accept a transition from hyper-aggressive protest to hours of Bible readings.
UKIP has been outstripped by the Heritage Party, a group led by former party official David Kurten that emerged from the anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protest movement in 2020. Heritage retains a distinctly conspiratorial focus, for example claiming that 5G and water-based fluoride are poisoning the country, and has a strongly reactionary agenda that includes a barrage of anti-LGBT+ and anti-immigrant policies. Kurten has also dabbled in antisemitic politics.
Heritage’s candidate count has slowly dwindled in recent years, with just 18 at the council level this year (down from a peak of 60 in 2023). These are concentrated in the East and South East, including five in Southend-on-Sea in Essex and three in Woking in Surrey. The group also has 17 in the Senedd and a further four in the Scottish parliament elections.
Meanwhile, Alistair McConnachie – a former UKIP organiser who was forced out of the party for Holocaust denial – is standing in Glasgow for his own party, Independent Green Voice. The bizarre outfit is fielding a total of eight candidates, including ex-BNP candidate Max Dunbar (South Scotland).
The Scottish Family Party, led by ex-UKIP candidate and former teacher Richard Lucas, is contesting 36 seats in Scotland, primarily on an anti-abortion platform. The group also claims that “schools are corrupting children” through LGBTQ+ education and would reintroduce harsher punishments for “bad behaviour” in school.
Alliance for Democracy and Freedom, led by former UKIP candidate Teck Khong, is contesting seven seats in Scotland and the Vectis Party, an obscure self-described “island party for island people”, is fielding two in the Isle of Wight.
Meanwhile Graham Steele, an extreme 5G conspiracy theorist who heads the one-man-band Save Us Now, is once again running in Gateshead (Dunston Hill & Whickham East ward), where he has polled dead last on his last four attempts.
The fascist fringe has been in electoral disarray since the collapse of the BNP. Restore’s ascendency has stripped precious capacity from the existing fascist microparties; while some have thrown in the towel, others march inexorably towards yet more crushing failure at the polls.
This time last year, the Homeland Party appeared the likeliest successor to the BNP. However, the group has since undergone a remarkable collapse and has failed to stand a single candidate this year. This is despite splitting from the neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative (PA) in 2023 in order to pursue local elections.
Some ex-Homelanders have joined the British Democrats, which has reliably fielded a handful of candidates since it split from the BNP in 2013. These include Kai Stephens, whom Homeland dubbed “a troubled young man who acts on impulse with little regard for others” when he abandoned ship last year.
Stephens is standing in Norwich (Crome ward), with party leader Jim Lewthwaite standing once again in Bradford (Wyke ward), where he was once elected for the BNP. The party is also contesting in Basildon (Castledon and Crouch), where candidate Chris Bateman sits as a parish councillor, as well as Rushmoor (Rowhill) and Wakefield (North), where it has attempted to piggyback on a local anti-migrant campaign.
The English Democrats, meanwhile, has produced nine candidates, up from just one last year; three of these are standing in Barnsley. Party leader and perennial candidate Robin Tilbrook, who has elevated election failure to an artform, is contesting in Epping Forest (Rural East ward).
The National Housing Party UK (NHPUK), a microparty led by former Britain First activist John Lawrence and ex-BNP organiser Pat McGinnis, has managed to find eight candidates this year, a significant increase. Five of these are in Camden, and another in neighbouring Islington. McGinnis previously achieved just a single vote in a Camden by-election in 2022.
Despite having promised to “ignore local politics completely”, the National Rebirth Party (NRP), a PA splinter led by the fascist curiosity Alek Yerbury, is fielding its first ever candidate: Barry McGrath in Kingston-upon-Hull (St Andrew’s & Docklands ward). McGrath previously stood for the defunct anti-Muslim group For Britain three times in the same ward between 2019-2022.
However, a former NRP branch organiser, Perry Barter (AKA Perry Bryan) is also standing in Portsmouth (Milton ward). Barter is known locally for posting poorly-rendered AI art of himself to his “Rise Up Portsmouth” Facebook group.
At present, prospects at the ballot do not appear promising. Restore has by far the greatest momentum, and stands a good chance of gaining ground under the Great Yarmouth First banner, and potentially a few “independents” in other locations. In recent years, the few far-right candidates outside of Reform to win council elections have often stood as independents rather than for national parties that can be more readily discredited by local campaigners.
The prospect of Restore in positions of authority is concerning, given the extremeness of the party. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority are likely to be overshadowed by Reform at this and at foreseeable elections.
We will give a full overview of the results after 7 May.
Prefer to listen? Click the play button to hear the audio version. Harry Shukman Reform UK is staffed by oddballs and enigmas, but none odder…
