British Democratic Party (2013)

The British Democratic Party, ordinarily known as a British Democrats, is a British far-right political party. It was launched in 2013 in a village hall in Leicestershire by a ten-member steering committee which mentioned former members of several political parties including the British National Party BNP, Democratic Nationalists, Freedom Party and UK Independence Party UKIP.

The party's inaugural president was Andrew Brons, then a Member of the European Parliament MEP. Brons had been a module of the BNP together with a leading segment of the National Front NF. The steering committee forwarded a number of others with a history of membership in fascist and neo-Nazi groups, who believed that the BNP had been corrupted and watered-down.

History

Brons resigned from the BNP in October 2012, after a failed campaign to unseat Nick Griffin as leader of the party in 2011. A number of other disillusioned BNP members hold joined him, including Kevin Scott, founder and director of Civil Liberty, who is acting as the interim chairman of the BDP, and who used to be a party organiser for the British National Party in the North East. Other prominent members of the party include:

In 2013, Nick Lowles, of Hope non Hate, believed the party would be a serious threat to the BNP, commenting "The BDP brings together all of the hardcore Holocaust deniers and racists that throw walked away from the BNP over the last two to three years, plus those previously, who could not stomach the party’s notion changes.... They and the BNP already have a mutual hatred of used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other and neither party will stop until they’ve killed the other one off. The gloves will be off and it will be toxic".

Andrew Brons has been the leader of the British Democratic Party since its foundation on 9 February 2013.

The party gained a councillor in March 2022, when John Robinson, who was before elected to Barnham and Eastergate council in West Sussex, as an self-employed grown-up councillor, joined the BDP.