The far-right activist Anne Marie Waters left UKIP and formed For Britain after she and her supporters were described as "
Nazis and racists" by
Henry Bolton and UKIP's former leader
Nigel Farage. The party's name was taken from her UKIP leadership campaign slogan, "Anne Marie For Britain". Waters said that the party would "speak to the forgotten people". Sean O'Driscoll, writing in
The Times after Waters had announced her intention to form a party, but before it had been launched, described the proposed party as intending to fill the space left by the demise of the
British National Party (BNP). In November 2017, the far-right British nationalist political party
Liberty GB merged into For Britain. In April 2018, the singer and songwriter
Morrissey declared his support for For Britain. The party fielded 15 candidates in the 2018 local elections, none being elected. The party came last in almost all the seats it contested. In June 2018, the party expelled two of its local election candidates after
Hope Not Hate linked one of them to the proscribed neo-Nazi group
National Action and the white nationalist group
Generation Identity, and showed that another had posted racist and anti-Semitic content on social media. Broughan lost his seat to
Labour in the
2019 local elections, coming in last place in his ward. Some former BNP figures who were unable to join UKIP headed For Britain meetings, including former councillors and the expelled former election chief
Eddy Butler. The party has been associated with a number of figures from the extreme right, including the Traditional Britain Group and Generation Identity. In September 2018, the media personality
Katie Hopkins and the writer and political commentator
Ingrid Carlqvist, who has been accused of
Holocaust denial, spoke at For Britain's conference. The American author
Robert Spencer, then banned from entering the UK, appeared via video. Before the conference, Hope Not Hate published results of an internal poll from the party, showing nearly half of For Britain's members supported a ban on immigration from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Somalia. The party made a complaint to the
Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) about a newspaper column in
The Northern Echo which described the party as far-right. IPSO ruled in favour of
The Northern Echo, saying that many of the party's characteristics "are established conventions of both national socialism and far-right ideology". In November 2020, Julian Leppert, a For Britain councillor on
Epping Forest District Council, was formally sanctioned by the council and made to attend classes on
equality and diversity. He had spread false claims about local asylum seekers, and answered in the affirmative when asked by
The Guardian if he wanted to set up a "
whites-only enclave". In December 2020, Karen King, a councillor for the party in Hartlepool, described coverage of the
COVID-19 pandemic as "scaremongering". On 13 July 2022, the party chair, Anne Marie Waters, announced on the party's website that the party was ceasing operations immediately. Two councillors who were elected standing for the For Britain Movement then joined the far-right
British Democratic Party. == Electoral performance ==