Has Ukip gone full Nazi?

The party’s new logo is less about fascism and more about the civil war within the British far right

Ukip is not what it once was. In 2015, a year before the Brexit referendum, they secured 3.9 million votes, about 200,000 fewer than Reform in 2024. In 2024 it ran 26 candidates and only one saw their deposit returned. They received 6,530 votes in total, coming in behind electoral powerhouses like Independent Network, Traditional Unionist Voice and the Newham Independents Party (which ran a single candidate). Party leader Nick Tenconi clearly thinks that a rebrand will turn things around. He has applied to the Electoral Commission to update the party’s logo. I’d recommend taking a look.

Now, to be fairer to Ukip than it deserves, your likely first reaction was not strictly correct. That is not a Nazi symbol – the cross pattée or Templar cross is a much older symbol used by the Knights Templar and Teutonic Knights as well as in heraldry and medals around the world. It appears several times in the Imperial State Crown and in the Victoria Cross. Yes, it is the basis of the Iron Cross, but this too should not be regarded as a Nazi symbol, at least out of context. Its use predates the formation of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party by decades (Hitler won two Iron Crosses in the First World War). And it continued to be used after the war, with the swastika at its centre replaced with oak leaves. It is the current logo of the Bundeswehr and the basis for their various medals for bravery.

In a post on X responding to the fictional news reporter Jonathan Pie, the ever-dignified Ukip account clarified this, and added that the circle at its new logo’s centre (which appears to be the Celtic cross, popular in white nationalist circles and the symbol of the Christian Identity movement) represents the Eucharist and the spear the Holy Lance, or Spear of Destiny. And there is far more going on here than unfortunate semiotic choices (though having worked in graphic design, I can see several design elements that are just plain misaligned or incorrectly sized). The new logo points to truths about the state of Britain’s right wing that are both more complex and far simpler than those laughing at the ham-fistedness of the change on X and Bluesky would assume.

There is a civil war on the extremes of the British right, one that began when Nigel Farage left Ukip in 2015 and which reflects long-standing tensions between the electoral and activist wings of the movement. Post-Brexit, Ukip was unmoored – the party had got what it wanted and needed a new tentpole issue. It also had a structural problem in its reliance on Farage. He was a Dulwich-educated former banker who – as the Conservative Party became more hospitable to the Euroscepticism which eventually became its official policy – might have been better fit with the Tories than the more pints-and-football Ukip. He was happy to go, no longer having to deal with “low-grade people” who relied on his celebrity or live on the paltry £85,000 per year he was paid to lead the party. Behind the scenes, a large part of the schism came from post-Brexit Ukip leader Gerard Batten’s pivot to anti-Islam sentiments and closer ties to Tommy Robinson. Just as the BNP came undone partly through links to the Neo-Nazi skinhead group Combat 18, Ukip was split on whether it was a mass electoral party – what Reform would become – or a street organisation that would hold rallies and marches and, inevitably, get into fights.

The two sides went their separate ways, and we see the results of that today. Farage would be prime minister if the election were held today and the more street-oriented right are, honestly, very weird. Tommy Robinson claims to have had a prison conversion to Christianity. Calvin Robinson, a lay priest who is now on his sixth denomination, is Ukip’s spokesperson and intends to march with Tenconi at Whitechapel to “show the world Britain is a Christian nation” (British church attendance is at around 5 per cent). It is not hard to see the grift here: any sensible UK right-winger would back Reform, but there is still money to be made from largely US-based Christian groups (and in Tommy Robinson’s case, speaking invitations to be had from a minister in the Israeli government) that aren’t too clued in to UK politics but can be swung by professions of faith and the possibility of ministering to the largely godless British population. The new logo is part of that.

There is another, baser explanation. The new logo is an act of semiotic vice-signalling, cartoonishly evil despite its ostensible Christian roots. People simply do not see the sharp lines and cruel curves of this logo and think of Britain, Christianity, or even a political party that would be anywhere but the far right. The great majority of the UK population will see this logo and be instantly repelled, and that is largely the point. Now that it has no viable path to power, Ukip is doubling down on attracting and retaining the kind of people who want to be repellent, who find meaning in triggering the normies.

This isn’t something restricted to the fringes: it’s now the modus operandi of the most powerful nation on Earth and its richest man. Cheap shock value that can be easily denied (“It’s a Christian symbol,” “It’s a Roman salute”) is one of the right’s most effective and, to them, libidinally satisfying techniques. Ukip’s logo change may be cosmetic, but it is symptomatic of trends driving the much more mainstream parts of the right. And while the party is irrelevant, it points to where the rest of its movement is headed.