80 years ago today, the Nazis surrendered. So why exactly are we electing fascists?
Eighty years ago today Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally to Allied forces. The guns fell silent across Europe, and Britain erupted in relief and joy.
Britain was broke. It was in debt to the USA up to its eyeballs and it had suffered. Between 1939 and August 15th 1945 (VJ Day) approximately 383,700 British soliders, sailors and airmen lost their lives. Over 580,000 enlisted men from the empire lost thier lives too. On top of this 67,100 civilians lost their lives too. Barely a family wasn't touched by death. Many lived on with the physical and mental scars of the war until the day they died.
VE Day marked the defeat of fascism on the battlefield, the end of Hitler’s reign of terror, and the moment millions believed tyranny had been defeated for good. But victory in war doesn't guarantee victory in peace. Today, as wreaths are laid and bunting flutters, something rotten lingers beneath the surface.
Britain in the 1930s and early 1940s didn’t just have fascist, it bred them. Swanning around in black shirts, giving stiff-armed salutes, and peddling hatred under the guise of patriotism, British fascists were real, vocal, and growing. They called themselves the British Union of Fascists (BUF). But when war broke out and Hitler stopped being a distant threat and became a direct one, the country had to face an inconvenient truth: some of its own were cheering for the enemy. So what did the British state do? It banged them up. Thousands of suspected fifth columnists, sympathizers, agitators, and outright Nazi apologists were arrested under Defence Regulation 18B, a draconian but effective move. Most notably, Sir Oswald Mosley, the country’s leading fascist, was thrown into prison without trial, along with his wife Diana Mitford, herself fresh from schmoozing Goebbels at their wedding, which Hitler attended. Interned in Holloway and then held in house arrest at their luxurious London home, it was as close to justice as Britain dared to get for its pampered class traitors. While ordinary people were dying in the Blitz, Mosleyites were whining about 'civil liberties.'
These were not principled objectors, they were enablers of fascism, dreaming of a Britain not resisting Hitler, but joining him. If Britain had fallen, they’d have been collaborators. They weren’t jailed for their opinions, they were jailed because they were a threat to national survival. Let’s not romanticise that chapter. Britain didn’t just win the war against fascism, it had to fight it within too.
The TV Drama Peaky Blinders incorporated Oswald Mosley into its fictional plot. They portrayed him as a slimy, womanising, hate filled POS who people flocked to. To be fair that paints him in a good light. He was a proper cunt. Oswald Mosley was born into aristocracy and privilege, served as a Conservative MP, switched to Labour, then veered so far right he looped past democracy and into outright fascism. In 1932, he founded the British Union of Fascists, inspired by Mussolini and funded in part by the British elite. He had charisma, vanity, and a raging contempt for democracy. His rallies drew thousands, and his private militia, the Blackshirts, weren’t shy about violence. Mosley pitched his movement as patriotic and 'anti-corruption,' claiming he stood for Britain. But his admiration for Nazi Germany, his anti-Semitic rants, and his disdain for the working class revealed the truth: he was a would-be dictator, using nationalism as camouflage. After the war, Mosley tried and failed to revive his movement. History rightly remembered him not as a misunderstood patriot, but as a fascist ideologue who wanted to turn Britain into a soft echo of the Third Reich.
Fascism doesn’t always come goose-stepping down the street. Sometimes it strolls into the pub, orders a pint, and tells you it’s just 'saying what everyone’s thinking'. Britain has a long, toxic tradition of upper-class men dressing up their ambitions as patriotism and selling bigotry as common sense. Oswald Mosley and Nigel Farage never led identical movements, but their playbooks share more than a few of the same grubby fingerprints. Each exploited fear during times of crisis, each styled themselves as an outsider while thriving on elite privilege, and each knew the power of a well-timed scapegoat. The faces change, but the machinery stays chillingly familiar.
Mosley came from wealth, a baronet who spent his life expecting obedience and status. Farage came from the City, more pub than palace, but still steeped in the privilege of the white English elite. Both men turned personal ambition into national platforms by claiming to 'speak for the ordinary man' while being anything but ordinary. and holding the ordinary man in contempt as nothing but a useful idiot to give them power.
There were comparisions: Mosley built a street-level movement around uniforms, marches, and direct confrontation. Farage swapped jackboots for blazers and pints, turning the same politics of xenophobia and division into something acceptable at dinner tables and ballot boxes. Where Mosley idolized Mussolini and Hitler, Farage gushes over Trump and Putin. Both played populist tunes while dancing to oligarchic rhythms. Each man operated in a time of crisis: Mosley during economic collapse and rising global fascism, Farage during the chaos of austerity and post-Brexit Britain. But the song sheet barely changed: nationalism, scapegoats, a loathing of the 'liberal elite', and a barely concealed desire for authoritarianism masquerading as 'freedom'.
When the war ended, Britain didn’t reward Winston Churchill with another term, it voted him out. In a landslide victory in 1945, the British people chose Clement Attlee’s Labour Party. Why? Because they knew what they’d fought for,and it wasn’t just the defeat of Hitler - it was the promise of a better, fairer society. The welfare state, the NHS, public housing, free education, these were not charity. They were reparations to the British people, compensation for the blood, sacrifice, and hardship they endured. Working-class men and women had laid down their lives and carried the nation through its darkest hours. In return, they demanded dignity.
Today, the NHS is on life support, inequality is deepening, and the welfare state has been hollowed out by decades of austerity and privatisation. If we really want to honour those who fought and fell, not just in uniform but in the bombed-out streets of Coventry and the mills of Yorkshire, we should stop clapping for heroes and start funding the future they died to build.
Victory in Europe was followed by victory at the ballot box. Maybe it’s time we remembered that part of the story, too.
With stabbing irony, across Britain, in this same anniversary week, far-right candidates have been elected to councils and mayoral posts. It seems we have celebrated beating fascism in 1945 while voting it back into town halls in 2025.
So today marks 80 years since VE Day. Victory in Europe: it would be three more months before the Japanese were defeated and the war finally came to a close. It is 80 years to the day that fascism was finally crushed on the continent. The country celebrated the anniversary by remembering the fallen and honouring those still alive. The streets were decked with bunting, old soldiers remembered fallen comrades, and politicians laid wreaths. But behind the photo ops and speeches, a darker truth emerged. What the hell have we done? in the same week in local elections across the UK, far-right candidates made serious gains, from mayoral platforms to council seats. In Runcorn, a candidate openly connected to fascist ideology walked into power, thanks to voter apathy, misinformation, and rage channelled in the wrong direction.
Islamophic Reform UK Ltd should also be reminded that there were approximately a million Muslims served in the forces, mainly from pre-Partition India (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) but also from Aden, Uganda and Kenya. When Farage is waving a flag today someone should point this out to him.
So yes, we lit beacons and waved flags. But we also watched a new generation of bigots and race-baiters sneak through the cracks of a broken political system. Fascism doesn’t always wear jackboots anymore. In the US we have Trump and in autharitarianism is on the rise around the world. When we look at history it is often asked why did no one do something about the Fascists when Hitler came into power in 1933? This is no longer a hypothetical question - because we are at the very same point again. And it is terrifying.
