The UK Independence Party, as it’s formally known, switched from its famous purple pound to a strikingly ominous Iron Cross-like symbol.
UKIP has moved to the right in the hope of remaining relevant. Its current leader, Nick Tenconi, has taken the party to the streets in a way no leader has before him, consolidating its transformation into a far-right group. Now, its new logo provides an aesthetic rebranding to match.
But UKIP is still a shadow of its former self.
Ever since the Leave camp won the 2016 referendum, the Eurosceptic party has struggled to define itself. It’s been even more difficult since former leader Nigel Farage returned to the political fray, heading a different party, Reform.
The irony is that UKIP was once the party that helped destroy the British National Party (BNP), arguably the far right’s most successful electoral party, after its big gains in 2009.
Farage still brags about having killed off the BNP. He’s not wrong, having brought the BNP vote into a wider coalition of disillusioned Tories and ex-Labour voters.
But there are still plenty of groups vying for the “right of Farage” position, including UKIP, racing to build one big tent party for British nativists.
The collapse of the BNP in the early 2010s paved the way for the return of right-wing street movements. First came the English Defence League (EDL) and Tommy Robinson, then came Britain First with its mosque invasions. UKIP is following that trend.
Right-Wing Identity Politics
Tenconi needs to strike a tricky balance, maintaining a position sufficiently radical to divert fascists from other groups while making his demands respectable enough to attract broader support.
Although Tenconi, a personal trainer by trade, insists that he’s just a strong conservative who wants to defend traditional values, his statements calling for the deportation of millions of people, the ones he calls “invaders” and “communists,” suggest otherwise.
The irony, of course, is that his last name betrays an immigration background. Italian, to be precise.
Nick Tenconi’s pitch fuses anti-communism, Christian nationalism and reactionary masculinism, opposing three targets: Islam, feminism and the left.
Unsurprisingly, Tenconi was radicalised by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. This period was a massive shock for many who believed that the British government would never encroach on their everyday lives.
Around this time, fascist group Patriotic Alternative imported the Drag Queen Story Time protests from the US. These protests were mainstreamed with the help of GB News and the astro-turfed student group Turning Point UK by the likes of Calvin Robinson, now a UKIP spokesman.
Tenconi built his reputation on the right through these protests. He’s also on the board of Turning Point UK despite being 41, while the president of the youth group is Tory politician Marco Longhi, age 58.
By the time Tenconi became UKIP’s de facto leader, Patriotic Alternative had lost its top position to a breakaway faction. The Homeland Party, launched on Hitler’s birthday in 2023, left PA with a chunk of its members and a new mission.
Former BNP organiser Kenny Smith set out to make the case for “sensible nationalism” through community organising in the Midlands and the North of England, where deindustrialisation has created a well of rage.
This combo of triangulation and grassroots work gave the Homeland Party an edge for a while.
Although Homeland was positioned to become the preeminent force on the British far right, it soon suffered a destructive schism of its own, imploding in 2025 over a Northern Irish candidate’s homosexuality and past sympathy for Irish nationalism.
This schism was a long time in the making, though. Tensions between “moderates” and “purists” had been building for several months over the minutiae of nativist demands for remigration.
Former UKIP member Pete North had been arguing that Homeland should focus on winning over Tories and Reform voters. Yet even though his X account is brimming with animus against Muslims and non-whites, it still wasn’t enough for some people in Homeland.
His opponents included the likes of Steve Laws, who made his name as a “migrant hunter” in Dover. Laws demands “total remigration”, meaning the removal of all people with foreign ancestry, not just foreign-born people, from the country. Naturally, Tommy Robinson is too much of a Zionist for Laws.
Like Robinson, Tenconi is seen as another “shill for Israel” by many on the extreme right. His support for the Iranian protests, particularly the monarchist elements, has also drawn criticism from rival groups.
The fragmentation of the far right continues. This type of split is almost inevitable because extremist voluntarism is at odds with electoralism.
Some ex-Homeland members have joined the British Democrats, the moribund party founded by former BNP politician Andrew Brons, who spent his youth dressing up as a Nazi stormtrooper. Others have shifted their allegiance to Reform or even the Tories.
The border between the mainstream right and the radical right barely exists at this point, with mass deportations now the common ground.
UKIP is on the radical end of the remigration spectrum. Under Tenconi, the party has called for the deportation of up to 10 million people at a minimum, including British left-wingers, who should apparently be sent to North Korea.
All these far-right groups want to use state power to crush the left and round up non-whites for deportation. What they disagree on is the extent of mass deportations necessary and sufficient to save “white Britain” from extinction.
This demand for remigration has only become mainstream because of Reform UK. The party maintains a convenient distance from overtly fascist groups. Yet Farage’s concessions to the radical right have normalised mass deportations as policy.
The far right has managed to shift Overton’s Window by focusing on grooming gangs and the small boats of asylum seekers arriving at the shores of Kent, thereby managing to conflate legal migration with widespread criminality.
The removal of rapists, paedophiles and terror suspects would be popular with many British voters. But this is just the thin end of the wedge for members of the far right to get what they really want.
Homeland and UKIP need the spectacle of the small boats and grooming gangs to mainstream what they really support: wholesale ethnic cleansing.
The Limits of British Racism
UKIP and its competitors to the right of Farage’s Reform still face an obvious obstacle. Most British voters don’t see themselves as racists, even those who hold racist views. This is why Reform UK must walk a fine line.
The new British nationalism is divided between those who take the “civic” position and those who insist on an “ethnic” one.
Far-right Tories have long maintained a civic position that the British are people born in the UK, regardless of their family history. By contrast, the ethno-nationalist position is that the only “true Brits” are white.
The fact that “ethnicity” includes attributes such as language and culture rather than just racial reductionism is lost.
Whiteness is the defining characteristic for these self-proclaimed nativists. Ethno-nationalism is just white nationalism with euphemisms.
For the “ethnats” of the extreme right who would deport Jews and Muslims, gypsies and black people, Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe are mere “civnats”.
There is also disagreement among ethno-nationalists about who should be deported beyond asylum seekers and criminals. They all claim to want to “save” the British people, but they disagree on who is fully British.
Mass deportations are easy to talk about when it’s not someone you know being shoved onto a plane. Nevertheless, this realisation might only dawn on some people when it’s too late.
While the radicals fighting over the support of the right-of-Farage demographic aren’t likely to secure meaningful electoral power, by making Reform seem reasonable by comparison, they are doing serious damage.
It remains to be seen whether Tenconi’s rebranded UKIP will be the long-term beneficiary of this radicalisation. But one thing is clear: we will all lose if this kind of politics gets into power.
Photograph courtesy of Tim Sheerman-Chase. Published under a Creative Commons license.
