The far right are on the march across much of Europe.
In the UK we like to think we're a bit more moderate.
If I said 'the British far right' you might think Oswald Mosley
and his blackshirts or the National Front
or even the BNP.
But what if I told you that Ukip has become Britain's first
'mainstream' far-right party since the war?
You know, Ukip, anti-EU, Nigel Farage, tweed jackets,
a nostalgia for a 1950s Britain.
Yes, they had some off-piste moments,
but their actual policies were mainly about
low taxes and bashing Brussels.
– Just what planet are you on?
But after the Brexit referendum, their reason to exist
more or less disappeared.
When Farage stepped down, they went through
four leaders in two years.
But now they're launching something of a comeback,
with a notable shift to the right.
They've called today the Brexit betrayal rally.
And Ukip said they hoped thousands would turn out
and, just look, thousands indeed have.
To work out how this happened, we need to understand
what we mean by far-right politics.
What these parties have in common
is that they're all nationalist, but it's a specific form of nationalism.
It's a xenophobic or exclusionist form of nationalism.
So that element is basically the core foundation
of the populist radical right, this nativism.
However, it is often combined with authoritarianism
and the final element is populism.
So I think that is the core of the populist radical right
and it's important to distinguish the populist radical right
from the extreme right.
The extreme right is anti-democratic.
The extreme right wants to abolish democracy by means of violence.
But the parties we are talking about
are not extremist, they are radical.
Ukip has long tried to keep a lid on its far right tendencies.
The party even has a rule, still in place,
which bans ex-members of far right groups from joining.
So what has changed?
It's mainly down to one person: Gerard Batten.
So Gerard Batten, I mean, the big element of his
platform, you know, that he's pushed Ukip in the direction of
is around this notion of anti-Muslim prejudice,
anti-Muslim hatred.
All Muslims are followers of the cult of Muhammad.
That cult is an ideology of blood-soaked regressive nonsense.
He openly stood on the streets of London
at a demonstration and called Muhammad a paedophile.
These are things that you would expect to find in the far right
in the really, kind of, international anti-Muslim scene,
that you wouldn't have traditionally heard
from Nigel Farage and Ukip.
I just want to make sure that you still stand by
your statement that Islam is a death cult?
Well, study its history for the last 1,400 years
and if you take an impartial look at it
you might come to that view as well, Gillian.
He's made a conscious decision to shift the party
in an increasingly far right direction.
So they've become a really worrying threat
because you have a platform, which is really far-right
but a public perception, which is often much more moderate.
Batten has also allied Ukip with controversial YouTube personalities,
including a senior editor at the far-right
conspiracy theory website Infowars, Paul Joseph-Watson.
I'll tell you why I joined Ukip,
the only major political party in this country
that supports free speech, that opposes the continued
insanity of mass immigration, that opposes the brutal
practice of Halal slaughter.
That's why I joined Ukip and that's why you should join too.
He's also recruited Carl Benjamin, known as Sargon of Akkad,
and Marcus Meechan, who goes by the name of Count Dankula.
I'll be able to turn a younger audience on to Ukip
and gain them support among the younger people
as well as some other forms of aid.
Here's your shekels. Thanks Israel.
These associations helped Ukip's membership
surge by 15% in just one month.
And this is now being translated into policies.
At the Ukip conference in the autumn,
Batten announced a series of new policies
in the party's interim manifesto.
These included repealing the Equality Act,
introducing special checks for immigrants
from Islamic countries and the possibility
of Muslim-only prisons.
And most recently, he's appointed
Tommy Robinson – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon –
who is the founder of the English Defence League.
He's now a personal advisor to Gerard Batten.
Jailed for assault in 2005, jailed in 2012 for illegally
entering the US on a false passport,
jailed again in 2014 for mortgage fraud,
and also has convictions for drug offences
and public order offences.
I'm not gonna go through all that.
Did he break the law?
Yes, I am sure he did on occasions.
So did the Suffragettes, so did Gandhi,
so did Nelson Mandela.
They are all now looked at as national and international heroes.
This is a big deal.
It's prompting a number of other senior Ukip people,
including Nigel Farage, to quit the party in protest.
Unfortunately, we've gone in this direction
of turning a blind eye to extremist politics,
and so with very great reluctance, I'm no longer a member of Ukip.
By taking Ukip in that direction,
it's a much easier party to attack
it's a much easier party to rightly paint as,
what it is, far right.
He's brought in activists that have got such bad records
such explicit records of racism.
But there is no doubt the party is in
a healthier state than it was a year ago.
Batten has steadied that ship.
And he's seen this mass of angry people
on the streets and he's attempted to
to give them a voice, to bring in those people.
And he'll be relatively successful at that.
But the question is, can he go beyond
that small angry mass of Tommy Robinson supporters
and speak to an anger in wider society?
If recent history teaches us anything,
it's that Ukip's influence is often indirect.
Brexit didn't happen because Ukip had enough clout
in Parliament to force a referendum.
They never had more than two MPs.
Instead, it all happened because of Conservative panic
at Ukip's growing popularity.
Whether to remain in a reformed European Union, or to leave.
The choice is in your hands.
So, does this mean Ukip are about to make
a breakthrough with these ideas, and if so,
what does it actually mean for British politics?
There are some people who would suggest that
the Conservative party has taken a more populist
line on certain issues to do with immigration,
which often overlaps with some of the views on Muslims,
in part to pull the rug from under the feet of Ukip.
And perhaps that might be one of the reasons why you see
Ukip pushing more to the right
because they see that their natural home
has kind of been taken by elements of the Conservative party.
You know, people say: 'Oh, politicians should be
careful what they say and they should watch their words'
and all this sort of mumbo jumbo.
I don't agree, I don't agree.
But I think that when you have mainstream individuals
saying really hostile things to Muslims,
I mean about Muslims, and they are seen as acceptable,
then it kind of gives leeway to a large number of others.
There have been concerns about an increase
in intolerance since the referendum.
Go back to your country, this is our country.
In the past year, 70% of British Muslims
say they've experienced some form of prejudice.
And the number of people flagged to authorities
because of worries about far-right activity,
has risen by more than a third.
And more widely in society, this shift
is becoming much more visible.
You want a war, I'll give you a war.
You want it, it's on!
- I'm not deaf. - Nonce!
- You don't need to shout at me. - You're not even British!
These are ideas which used to be
on the very fringes of political life.
But now, the more they are repeated
by mainstream politicians with access to national media,
the more normalised they become.
You want to repeal hate speech guidelines,
you want to repeal the Equality Act of 2010,
you want to shut down
the Equalities and Human Rights Commission,
and you want to shut down the Government Equalities Office.
That's hardly in keeping with diversity
and a multi-cultural society, is it?
Right.
Thanks for watching.
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