We need to talk about Britain First
TetleysTLDR: The summary
Britain First isn’t a movement, it’s a travelling pantomime of fascist cosplay and officially it doesn't exist anymore. Born from the rotting carcass of the BNP, led by Paul Golding (a man whose CV is mostly court dates) and formerly Jayda Fransen (queen of the martyr selfie), their main achievement has been flooding Facebook with lies until Zuckerberg finally pulled the plug. Electorally, they’re a joke, in 2024 their mayoral candidate polled worse than Count Binface.
Where they’re dangerous is chaos-mongering and they excel at this. In 2025 they latched onto hotel protests against asylum seekers, turning local anger into violent set-pieces and marching under the banner of 'remigration': code for deport ’em all. It’s the same Britain First business model: show up, shout nonsense, film the carnage, beg for donations. A feeble fascist racket that can’t win votes but can still poison the air, a circus act of hate, disruption and division.
TetleysTLDR: The article
Britain First isn’t a movement so much as a racket: an anti-Muslim, far-right flag-shagging outfit that crawled out of the wreckage of the BNP and EDL and learned how to weaponise Facebook shares and street theatrics into attention, donations and notoriety. It was founded by Jim Dowson, an anti-abortion agitator and longtime BNP fixer, and fronted by Paul Golding (ex-BNP councillor), with Jayda Fransen as his megaphone before they fell out in a haze of court cases and martyr selfies.
From the start, the business model was simple: provoke, film, fundraise, repeat. Wikipedia Hope Not Hate The Guardian
The shtick was always the same: 'Christian patrols' through Muslim neighbourhoods and 'mosque invasions' designed to bait a reaction and cut a viral clip. East London Mosque had to publicly denounce their 'patrols' as a neo-Nazi provocation back in 2014, and local communities, clergy and police repeatedly warned that the stunts were a deliberate attempt to inflame tensions. This wasn’t community safety; it was a travelling circus of intimidation with a camera crew. East London Mosque The Guardian The Independent
Even the state’s most buttoned-up bureaucrats had to intervene in the theatrics. When Britain First slapped a royal crown on its merch to imply official sanction, the Cabinet Office and Advertising Standards Authority told them to knock it off. Golding’s public response, calling the ASA 'toothless' sums up the act: swaggering contempt for rules, followed by a grift-friendly martyr routine when challenged. The Guardian
The Fash do like their flags ... especially the pretend ones.
On social media, they were pioneers of the poison. Wired and Time documented how Dowson and Co built a meme factory pushing inflammatory, misleading content to millions: the kind of sewage designed to get your nan clicking 'share' on a lie before Sunday lunch. And it worked, well for a while it did. Then the platforms finally stirred: Twitter suspended the leadership in December 2017, Facebook banned the lot in March 2018 for content 'designed to incite animosity and hatred'. Cue more martyrdom, fresh mailing lists, same business model. WIRED TIME The Guardian
Their relationship to real-world violence is the usual far-right two-step: We only ask questions, followed by a trail of wreckage. After the Finsbury Park terror attack, evidence at trial showed the attacker had searched for Golding and Fransen and received a Twitter direct message from Fransen while binging far-right propaganda. The point isn’t legal blame; it’s moral rot. Britain First built its brand by pumping bile into people’s feeds and then pretending shock when a man in a van makes the bile real. The Independent The Guardian
The courts have had to do the heavy lifting that the platforms ducked. In 2018, Golding and Fransen were jailed for religiously aggravated harassment after a campaign in Kent that included screaming 'paedophile' and 'foreigner' at people and doxxing the wrong address. In 2020, Golding was convicted under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act for refusing to give police his phone PIN after flying back from a political jaunt to Moscow. These are not 'free speech' cases. They’re a rap sheet. The Guardian
Electorally, Britain First is all mouth and no mandate. They were deregistered as a party in 2017 after not bothering to renew, fined £44,200 by the Electoral Commission in 2019 for donation and accounting breaches, and then re-registered in September 2021, proof that paperwork can be as performative as politics. When they actually face voters, it’s a belly-flop. In the 2024 London mayoral election, their man Nick Scanlon took 20,519 votes, just 0.8%, finishing behind the parody candidate Count Binface. It’s pantomime fascism that can’t even beat the panto. UK Parliament election results Wikipedia The Independent Enfield Council
And yet they slither towards power through other routes. In 2019, Britain First urged supporters to join the Conservative Party en masse, boasting that 5,000 had done so to back Boris Johnson. Whether or not that figure was puffery, the tactic was clear: don’t win elections; infiltrate the bloodstream. The Conservative leadership publicly kept them at arm’s length, as they had to, but the whole episode showed what Britain First really hopes for: to launder its ideas through a bigger, cleaner brand. The Independent The Guardian
Very cross people: Paul and Jayda pretending to be Christians before their public hissy-fit fall-out
Their high-water mark of international attention came courtesy of Donald Trump, who in November 2017 retweeted anti-Muslim videos posted by Fransen. It provoked a diplomatic incident; Theresa May’s office publicly rebuked the US president. Britain First basked in the oxygen while claiming innocence of any intent beyond 'truth-telling'. It was the perfect encapsulation of their method: harvest global attention via a lie-laden spectacle, cry censorship when challenged, cash in the notoriety. The Guardian TIME
The government’s 2024 refresh of its 'extremism' definition has tightened rules on engagement, signalling that Whitehall wants nothing to do with groups that push ideologies of violence, hatred or intolerance. Britain First isn’t a proscribed terrorist organisation, and shouldn’t be falsely labelled as such, but it lives precisely in the grey zone this policy targets: lawful-ish provocation wrapped around an unlawful track record, calibrated to push the boundary and profit from the outrage. GOV.UK
Strip away the flags-and-Facebook veneer and what remains is old-school authoritarian identity politics: a promise to restore order by demeaning neighbours, a fantasy of 'Christian Britain' policed by lads in matching jackets, and a politics that has nothing to offer working-class people beyond the thrill of yelling at the mosque. Even conservative Christian denominations in the UK have denounced their antics; they’re not defending faith, they’re defacing it. East London Mosque
The media has sometimes been too coy about naming what’s in front of them. When GQ called them feeble fascist criminals, it wasn’t pearl-clutching hyperbole, it was a plain description of a group whose leaders keep ending up in the dock, whose ideology is authoritarian ethno-nationalism in a Union Jack tea cosy, and whose method is to turn harassment into content. HOPE not hate’s research stretching back a decade confirms the pattern: a dysfunctional, dangerous outfit that cycles between stunts, splits and courtrooms. British GQ Hope Not Hate
Most recently their paws have been all over the 'raising the colours' protest. Their role was far from passive, or for that matter patriotic. In reality, the group actively supported the stunt of plastering England’s St George’s Cross and the Union Jack on roundabouts, roadsides, and streetlamps, even contributing substantial flag donations. Campaign records and watchdogs confirm Britain First reportedly donated hundreds of flags, 75 percent of one batch, and that one of the co-founders, Andrew Currien (aka Andy Saxon), has deep ties to both Britain First and former key players from what was the English Defence League Politics UK Hope Not Hate Wikipedia TRT World.
Extremists? Us? Whatever gave you that idea?
Critics, including anti-racist organisations, view the entire campaign not as a grassroots patriotism drive but as a deliberate act of intimidation, using nationalist imagery to stir anti-immigration sentiment, intimidate minorities, and rebrand far-right messaging as civic pride. And that, of course is right up Britain First's street. Wikipedia The Guardian TRT World.
If there’s a dark genius here, it’s in the marketing. Britain First proved you don’t need numbers to toxify a discourse; you only need the right image in the right feed at the right moment. Time and Wired showed how the operation professionalised rage-bait long before others clocked the trick. That matters because the audience doesn’t have to join a party or attend a march to be moved by it; they simply have to marinate in the narrative until the world looks as cruel as the memes. TIME WIRED
So what’s the antidote? Not bans alone, though enforcement of the law and platform rules plainly curtails the worst of it, but derision paired with daylight. Treat the uniform cosplay with the contempt it deserves. Keep pointing to the results sheet: when they actually ask the public for power, the public (thankfully) tells them to jog on. When they posture as guardians of British values, recall the convictions for harassment and a Terrorism Act breach and the endless trail of lies. Law and order from people who can’t obey either is just another grift. Enfield Council The Guardian
And keep perspective: Britain First thrives in the cracks, in media frenzies, algorithmic loops and a political culture that prefers rowdy distraction to material answers. The best answer to their snake-oil nationalism is boring, grown-up politics that delivers: jobs, housing, services, safety for everyone, without fear. That’s the kryptonite to their culture-war cosplay: a country that works well enough that fewer people go looking for scapegoats and street theatre. They shout Britain First; the rest of us can do one better and put living, breathing Britons first, whatever religion they are and wherever they originated.
Key sources for the factual claims above:
HOPE not hate profiles and reports on Britain First’s origins and record; BBC/Guardian/Reuters/Independent reporting on court cases, platform bans and the Trump retweets; official Electoral Commission and London Returning Officer documents on registration, fines and election results; and platform statements documenting suspensions and bans. Hope Not Hate The Guardian UK Parliament election results Enfield Council
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