The scene: Exeter’s Hampton by Hilton hotel, which accommodates asylum seekers: a Saturday afternoon during the second half of 2025. There’s a small gathering of people nearby, some draped in Union Jacks, one waving the flag of the neo-fascist, anti-Muslim Britain First movement. A woman is bawling ‘Stop the Boats’, and a man in a Union Jack suit is performing a kind of taunting dance, waving his arms and chanting a modified football song. Now and again members of this group break off to shout abuse at the much larger crowd of Stand Up to Racism counter-protesters, with their ‘Refugees Welcome’ placards, on the other side of the road.
The scene: Exeter city centre, January 17 this year. A 60-strong procession, mainly men, many holding Union Jacks or crosses, trails behind a huge banner demanding ‘Mass Deportations Now’. At the front is UKIP leader Nick Tenconi, megaphone in hand, yelling an audio version of the banner’s slogan. As they pass a huge crowd of anti-racist, anti-fascist demonstrators in the city’s main square, the marchers chant: “You can never trust a leftie with your kids’, and Tenconi starts bellowing about ‘evil communists, liars and deceivers’. He later posts a video on social media showing his ‘bodyguards’ assaulting a man who interrupted his tirade to call him a racist.
YouTube video: late at night. Two men in black are filming themselves prowling around the dark and deserted grounds of the Exeter ‘asylum hotel’. Judging by their recorded conversation, they’re expecting to find outbuildings crammed with luxury items for use by the residents; in fact these bold vigilantes, who call themselves ‘auditors’, are investigating the storage sheds for rubbish dumped in the recycling bins.
If the far right are trying to mobilise support in Exeter, they’re going about it the wrong way. The anti-migrant protests outside the hotel – staged every Saturday for 19 weeks last year – were always out-numbered, four or five times over, by the counter-protests which were organised by Stand Up to Racism and drew in many other local groups and individuals.
In fact, the anti-migrant numbers at the hotel protests actually fell; the initial gatherings included representatives and supporters of Exeter’s Reform UK party, but the branch distanced itself (officially) from the protests once it accepted that the hotel was mainly accommodating female asylum seekers and their children. After that, the numbers dwindled from a maximum of 40 to a handful of hardcore regulars who d dropped any pretence of being ‘ordinary, concerned citizens’ convinced that male asylum seekers were a threat to their safety. Members of Britain First began openly displaying their flags and regalia at these gatherings.
Even less impressive were the three far-right parades through Exeter, which took place last October, November and in January this year, with none attracting more than 100 people. To counter the October march a ‘celebration of diversity’ was held in the city centre on the same day. To coincide with the November and January demonstrations, Stand Up to Racism organised ‘Exeter is for Everyone’ counter-marches and rallies.
Each of the anti-far-right events attracted around 1,000 people and was supported by local community organisations, trade unions, charities and faith groups, demonstrating a united resistance to hatred and division – in sharp contrast with the sorry band of flag-wavers representing the ‘proud patriot’ movement. (One passer-by, captured on video by a far-right ‘auditor’ who asked for his reaction to November’s far right parade, commented: “To be honest, mate, there’s bigger hen parties than this in Exeter.”)
As for the videos posted on YouTube and social media: well, it would be surprising if those further up the far right pecking order really rated these guys as brand ambassadors.
A minority performance
‘Performative rather than persuasive’ would sum up the marches, protests and videos of the far right in Exeter. They’re not trying to recruit people to their cause – they’re preaching to the converted, mainly their social media audiences. The veneer of ‘patriotism’ is extremely thin, and the use of language such as ‘unity’, ‘community’, ‘respect’ and ‘pride’ is not exactly borne out by their behaviour. Exeter’s fascist fringe are definitely a minority – and they know it.
But that’s not a reason to ignore them and hope they’ll go away. We need to look at the bigger picture.
The UK’s leading anti-fascist organisation, Hope not Hate, says: “The far right poses its most significant threat in Britain for decades, perhaps ever. The threat is at the ballot box, on the streets and in our communities.”
This blunt warning comes in the group’s ‘State of Hate 2026’ report, released in early March. The report examines every aspect of the far right’s current presence in this country, from the very localised “Raise the Colours/Flag Force’ displays of aggressive territorialism under the banner of patriotism, to Tommy Robinson’s so-called Unite the Kingdom march and rally in London last September – the biggest far-right demonstration in British history. The report also profiles all the key figures and influencers in the mishmash of groups and movements criss-crossing the extreme right wing of British politics, and joins the dots to foreign operators in the US, Europe, Russia and China, who are either directly supporting these organisations or using them as tools to destabilise British politics and society.
At the centre of it all is Reform UK, which has become a big political force since its breakthrough at the 2024 general election, and is trying to position itself as the next government-in-waiting. And while the party made an effort to soft-pedal its policies in the run-up to the general election, it has been veering further to the hard-line far right ever since, with the support of the majority of its members. Athough Nigel Farage makes a show of weeding out high-profile representatives who ‘say the quiet part out loud’, many of the party faithful see the extremists as the star attractions. A survey of members carried out for Hope Not Hate earlier this year found that 61 per cent had a favourable view of Tommy Robinson, and two thirds were keen on Rupert Lowe – whose recently-launched Restore Britain party is supported by overt fascists and influential far-right media outlets. Restore Britain is poised to siphon off many Reform voters if they feel that Farage isn’t going far enough.
Also, Hope Not Hate states that, in the run-up to the 2024 general election, ‘a broad sweep of far right and extreme right groups and figures, including Tommy Robinson, Britain First, Patriotic Alternative and the Homeland Party, all urged their supporters to vote for Reform UK’.
These movements all wield influence over the party’s policies, and the wider political landscape.
So although the far right/fascist fringe don’t have much of a following in Exeter, they’re part of a national escalation that shouldn’t be ignored. And they’re also contributing to the normalisation of a very damaging mentality which is very much part of Nigel Farage’s agenda.
An appetite for cruelty
As someone who’s taken part in most of the counter-protests at Exeter’s ‘asylum hotel’, and all the anti-fascism/racism demonstrations in the city centre, I’ve been more disturbed by the mood of the far right brigade than by their actual numbers. It’s shocking to see the level of vicious, vengeful vitriol being expressed towards vulnerable refugees – and, by extension, towards those of us who’ve chosen to stand up for them.
It’s often seemed to me that this isn’t just about racism. Yes, the political scapegoating of migrants and asylum seekers has exploited and inflamed deeply racist attitudes, but the violent hatred being unleashed against them seems disproportionate. Ordinary-looking people are openly demanding persecution, exulting in cruelty and gloating over the suffering of others, and they don’t appear to realise how weird this is.
There’s also something very exhibitionist about it. At the protests and marches, the ‘content creators’ are constantly filming each other on their phones as they howl for mass deportations and harangue the group holding up ‘Refugees Welcome’ signs; they then post videos of the abuse and altercations on YouTube. It’s as if the aggressive confrontation was an end in itself. And of course it’s all good fodder for the sharky algorithms of social media – the equivalent of blood in the water.
Nigel Farage and his political bedfellows knew exactly what they were doing when they incited this kind of behaviour and then rebranded it as a legitimate expression of grievance. By effectively seeking to outlaw compassion for refugees and celebrating displays of callous cruelty, Reform UK and their political offshoots are trying to normalise this behaviour, desensitising and dehumanising us all. And they haven’t only got ‘non British’ races and faiths in their sights – look at their attitudes towards climate activists, the LGBTQ+ community, and anyone they brand as ‘woke’. Given their links with the proponents of a techno-fascism dystopia in the US, it looks as if they’re priming us for the scrapping of human rights legislation, the phasing out of services run for public benefit rather than profit, and the introduction of a ruthless authoritarian regime with heavy tech surveillance and ICE-style enforcement.
Enough is enough
All this is why we need to actively banish the fascists from our streets, rather than dismissing them as a grotesque minority and ignoring them in the hope that they’ll go away. We need a mass rejection of the creeping mindset-change they are propagating. The ‘Exeter Is for Everyone’ counter-protests and rallies are conveying the right message, by drawing in hundreds of people from different groups, faiths and political parties. But we need an even wider spectrum of opposition that truly represents people’s everyday lives: businesses, shops, pubs, cafes, sports clubs and transport operators could all come out in protest against what the far right actually stands for, rather than using ‘political neutrality’ as a get-out clause.
The far right have announced a rally in Exeter city centre on Saturday, April 4 – and another ‘Exeter Is For Everyone event’ will be taking place in response. Let’s make it the biggest yet.
We also need to keep Reform UK out of local government. The existing Reform-led councils have already proved they’re useless at managing public finances and running council services, which is a good enough reason not to give them the job. The party like to present themselves as champions of ‘the people’, promising to fix grassroots problems. (Literally, in the case of some of Exeter’s Reform councillors, who seem obsessed with the issue of weeds growing through pavements). But they haven’t got our interests at heart; winning local council seats is just a tactic for the party to gain political legitimacy and slither closer to Downing Street.
So, even more important than turning out in counter-protest on April 4 is the journey to the polling station on May 7, local election day.
Hope Not Hate’s analysis of the threat posed by the far right may be bleak, but it’s not defeatist. The State of Hate 2026 report emphasises that ‘Reform UK are bringing together a fragile coalition of voters’, and that ‘while the outlook is certainly tough, and our work environment challenging, it should always be remembered that the majority of British people reject the politics of the far right.’
Referencing the by-election result in Gorton & Denton on February 27, when Reform were soundly beaten by the Green Party, the report concludes: “When communities organise, talk to one another, and refuse to be divided, the far right can be stopped.”
