Tilbrook was a member of the Conservative Student Association and a member of the
Conservative Party, at one time a Conservative candidate for
Ongar Town council. He co-founded the English National Party in 1997, He is also the leader and nominating officer. He has stood as a candidate for the English Democrats in local, parliamentary 18.2% in the
2007 Epping Forest District Council election, and 11.3% in the
2009 County Council election. He gained 2.01% of the vote as the lead candidate for the
East of England region in the
2009 European election. By 2006, the English Democrats, based in
Norwich and chaired by Tilbrook, had adopted the policies of campaigning for a devolved English parliament, opposing membership of the European Union, opposing further immigration, and wishing to make
St George's Day a national holiday. Tilbrook said of the English Democrats in 2006 that the party "agitates for anyone living in England" and that
Englishness was "akin to American notions of "Americanness": that you can be from any ethnic background and still wrap yourself in the flag." In 2009, he said, "We're hoping to do what the
Scottish National Party managed to do in the 1970s and break through to being able to influence what happens in Parliament about England". He argues that the money given by the UK to the EU is given to other parts of the country at the expense of England, which makes his party
Eurosceptic. Tilbrook has reportedly had associations with the
far-right. In 2013, he confirmed that a tenth of the English Democrats membership was former BNP members and stood by comments at the party's 10th annual conference in 2011 that BNP supporters will "help us become an electorally credible party". In a 2015 interview with the BBC, Tilbrook confirmed that he had had meetings with groups on the far-right and far-left. This meeting was reportedly organised by the then leader of Britain First, Jim Dowson, and attended by members of the
English Defence League. In 2023, it was reported that activists from
Patriotic Alternative, a
neo-Nazi party, had canvassed for him in the Epping Forest District Council elections. Tilbrook has adopted a pro-Brexit stance, claiming that the United Kingdom had left the European Union on 29 March 2019. He reasoned that Theresa May had the authority to begin Britain's two-year withdrawal process from the European Union, but did not have the power to amend it, meaning that the extension granted by Brussels until 31 October 2019 was unlawful. The case, however, was rejected for a hearing on the grounds of lack of legal merit and cannot lead to a conclusion that the UK left the EU on 29 March 2019, but has been appealed to the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. ==Personal life==