Gorton and Denton candidate backs the BNP

Pity poor voters in Gorton and Denton, who as well as being bothered by trips up north from Reform’s carpet-bagging candidate, former academic Matt Goodwin, also have someone on the ballot to the GB News man’s right.

Advance UK, the party formed by former Reform deputy leader Ben Habib after he inevitably fell out with Nigel Farage, is fielding another ex-Reformer, Nick Buckley, a man who has been on a bit of a political journey.

A charity worker who founded homelessness charity The Mancunian Way and spent 15 years working with those on the streets, Buckley was awarded the MBE in 2020 for services to young people and the community in Greater Manchester.

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Now, though, and after being Reform’s candidate for mayor of Greater Manchester in 2021 (coming fifth with 2.69% of the vote), Buckley is spending his time with political waifs and strays. Not only has he linked up with the fringe Advance, he last month interviewed on his YouTube channel an “amazing guest” – Nick Griffin, the former British National Party leader who had largely disappeared from the face of the Earth after being forced out by an internal coup in 2014.

“We know things have changed this last couple of years because I had no hesitation in inviting you on the channel,” beams Buckley at the start of the fawning interview. “Today we’re all against the establishment.”

Still, Buckley didn’t pull his punches, asking such tough questions as: “If you, or your party, by a fluke, had invented a cure for cancer, the government would have made it illegal, because you created it. That’s how poorly you were treated, wasn’t it?”. Alas, no BNP figure did invent a cure for cancer – not least because the bulk of their representatives were so thick one Stoke-on-Trent councillor only spoke twice in his time on the council and once was to ask what “abstain” meant.

“I’m glad the BNP are being seen now as the people who did the groundwork to the change that hopefully is coming to this country, because one person can’t change the world,” sums up Buckley at the end of his fierce questioning. Where’s that GB News contract?