On March 10, the British far-right party Homeland announced on X that its delegates had traveled to Germany: “After a full-on day of travelling, the team finally arrived in Germany; finishing their day with food and drink in a traditional German beer hall.”

Supporters responded with swastikas in the comments, highlighting the party’s extremist following. While Homeland did not disclose who they were meeting in Germany, their past affiliations and ideological alignment strongly suggest ties to the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Following the February elections, the AfD doubled its vote share to 20.8 percent, making it Germany’s second-largest party. Under German law, this electoral success grants the far-right party access to federal funding for its affiliated political foundation, the Desiderius Erasmus Stiftung. The British far-right likely seeks to benefit from these funds.

What is the Homeland Party?

Britain’s Homeland Party is the latest political group to emerge from the country’s fascist tradition. It has recently been building links with far-right parties and influencers across Europe. Many of these, particularly those who try to distance themselves from overt neo-Nazism, may be unaware of Homeland’s fascist and neo-Nazi roots.

Homeland was founded in April 2023 after a split from Britain’s then-largest fascist group, Patriotic Alternative (PA). The split saw a majority of PA’s young regional organisers and officers leave to launch Homeland.

PA’s national administration officer Kenny Smith led the split, a former British National Party (BNP) administrator who twice stood for election as a BNP candidate. Homeland’s inaugural meeting coincided with Hitler’s birthday. Smith has previously marked Hitler’s birthday by flying a swastika flag. Another founding member, Anthony Burrows, had his shotguns seized by police after it was discovered he had been sharing links to neo-Nazi terrorist literature and manifestos.

In August 2021, an entire episode of a neo-Nazi podcast, which described itself as “Britain’s most racist podcast,” was dedicated to interviewing Smith, then a national officer for PA. During the interview, Smith described himself as a “racial nationalist” and detailed his role in founding PA’s fitness clubs with Kristofer Kearney, known online as “Charlie Big Potatoes.” Smith said: “We have created the whole fitness club thing. We started that in January in Scotland, and now we’ve rolled it out nationally with [Kearney] taking the lead on it.” Kearney is currently in prison for neo-Nazi terrorism offences. 

Homeland’s Political Activity and Growth

In its first year, Homeland appeared to do little beyond encouraging a handful of young neo-Nazis to become parish councillors—the lowest level of local government in the UK, where positions are often filled by volunteers as there are not enough people interested in doing it that elections are necessary. The party’s only attempt to elect a district councillor—a higher level of local government—resulted in failure, with their candidate (a former BNP member) halving his previous vote total compared to when he stood as an independent.

However, Homeland has recently been growing rapidly, attracting far-right influencers to its ranks.

At the end of September, Homeland held its annual conference in the Derbyshire Dales, attended by approximately 80 supporters. Speakers included figures from the British far-right and invited guests from Europe. The conference featured discussions on local council power and anti-immigration policies.

Manuel Schreiber, from the youth wing of the AfD, gave a speech on “the resurgence of national identity in Germany and how this success could be replicated elsewhere.” Robert Grajny, from Poland’s far-right Konfederacja alliance, spoke about the decade of groundwork his party put in before becoming Poland’s third-largest political force. Both men participated in panel discussions and were interviewed by Homeland’s international relations officer, Martin Kuziel. Kuziel is a former West Midlands regional organiser for PA and a founding member of Homeland.

One of the domestic speakers at the conference was the far-right anti-migrant activist Steve Laws from Kent. Laws has gained notoriety from hanging around the docks in Dover and filming migrants arriving in small boats. Laws had previously been associated with PA without ever joining. Laws appeared on PA leader Mark Collett’s weekly livestream twice, spoke at PA’s conference in 2022 and stood as a candidate in an electoral pact between PA and the English Democrats in the general election in June 2024. 

The day after the conference, Laws posted on X: “Yesterday, I attended the Homeland conference. The party is serious and well organised. I joined as a member, and I encourage every single one of you following me to do the same.” The post has since had over 70,000 views. A month later, Laws announced he was Homeland’s branch organiser for Kent. Laws has become the party’s most prominent advocate, frequently posting about the party to his 90,000+ followers on X.

He has since become the party’s most prominent advocate and has represented Homeland at far-right events in Europe. On 2 November, Laws spoke at a conference the far-right Reconquista group organised in Lisbon, Portugal. The speaker after Laws was the Irish far-right social media influencer Keith O’Brien (aka. Keith Woods) from Roscommon.

Following the conference, Homeland chairman Kenny Smith claimed they had been “contacted by another top party in Europe who are looking to speak with us.”

Homeland’s Expanding European Ties

At the start of October, four leading Homeland members attended the far-right Traditional Britain Group (TBG) conference in London. Attendees included party chairman Kenny Smith, nominating officer Anthony Burrows, spokesman Alec Cave, and activist Callum Barker. One of the speakers at the event was Gerold Otten, an AfD member of the German Bundestag. Otten, a former colonel in the German Air Force and current member of the Bundestag’s defence committee, told The Guardian that his speech covered topics such as rebuilding Germany’s defence capacities and addressing the war in Ukraine.

In the following month, Homeland members met again with an AfD Bundestag member. A Homeland delegation, including Cave and Kuziel, traveled to Warsaw for a conference organised by far-right publisher Arkos ahead of attending the Polish independence day parade. Kuziel later posted a photograph on X of himself sitting next to Bundestag member Gunnar Lindemann in a Warsaw pub, to which Lindemann responded: “Thank you very much. It was a great time. And I hope to meet again, too.”

Homeland’s growing links with the AfD coincide with the party’s successful efforts to woo the Identitarian movement. On October 22, Homeland announced that Identity England (IE)—a successor to the now defunct Generation Identity UK—was dissolving to merge into Homeland. While IE was a small group, this move carries weight in British far-right circles. Homeland chairman Smith compared it to when John Tyndall’s Greater Britain Movement merged into the National Front in 1967.

Homeland has also gained the attention of leading European Identitarians. In a social media post endorsing Donald Trump in early November, Austrian Identitarian leader Martin Sellner praised Homeland as an example of how a radical, nationalist movement could be built: “You need to amass and accumulate metapolitical power, and you don’t do this by just passively not voting. Yes, not voting for the main right-wing party can be an option. It’s sometimes necessary to create a party. The Homeland Party in the UK shows us, at the moment, how a radical, identitarian, patriotic flank could look like.”

A Growing Threat

The growth Homeland has experienced since its conference at the end of September has also seen Peter North, former UKIP parliamentary candidate and founder of the Brexit-supporting Leave Alliance, join the party. Like Laws, North spoke at the conference and has since been using his social media accounts to promote the fascist party to his followers. North has fewer than half the followers Laws has, but he still becomes a prominent voice for the party within the broader British far-right. 

The party also claims to have attracted Miles Routledge, a self-styled “danger tourist” known for visiting Kabul during the Taliban takeover. On November 3, Routledge posted a photograph of himself with Homeland leaders, stating: “Met with the [Homeland Party] to see what they were all about! Lovely chaps, great minds, great pub choice. Simple as”. The post has had over 120,000 views. Routledge has not posted much about the party on his social media accounts; instead, he devotes more time to what he describes as an effort to “normalize diplomatic and economic relations between the Taliban and the British.”

French New Right philosopher Renaud Camus, who developed the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory, is set to speak at a Homeland conference in April 2025. Also speaking will be Lena Kotré who is the AfD’s Interior and Remigration policy spokesperson.

Homeland’s former treasurer, Jerome O’Reilly, disclosed that the party had just 250 members at the end of August, but this figure has nearly quadrupled in the past six months. Homeland’s recent growth and increasing ties to European far-right movements underscore the dangers of its agenda. Despite its modest size, the party’s ability to attract prominent far-right influencers and cultivate international connections reflects a troubling resurgence of organised fascism in Britain. With roots in neo-Nazi ideology and ambitions to deport millions of Britons, Homeland’s attempts to legitimise itself pose a significant threat.