Paul Weston (politician)

Paul Martin Laurence Weston (born 1965) is a British far-right politician and was a member of the Pegida UK leadership team. An activist and blogger, Weston joined the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in 2010 and stood as a Parliamentary candidate for Cities of London and Westminster. In 2011, Weston left UKIP and joined the now-defunct British Freedom Party with members of the English Defence League (EDL) and former members of the British National Party (BNP). From 2013, he was the chairman of Liberty GB before the party was dissolved in December 2017, recommending its members to join For Britain.

For Liberty GB, he was a candidate for South East England in the 2014 European election and for Luton South in the 2015 general election. He obtained 158 votes (0.4%).''BBC News Election 2015''
Luton South
Accessed 12 May 2015

Weston’s wife is Romanian; they met in Romania. Weston is the former President of the English branch of the International Free Press Society, which was founded in 2009.

First partisan forays

When interviewed in 2010 as a member of UKIP, Weston described himself as a "natural Conservative" and described immigration as the " ethnic cleansing of the English". At the time Weston was standing as the UKIP candidate for Cities of London and Westminster in the UK general election of 2010. With a 1.8% share of the vote Weston finished in fifth place. The Conservative candidate, Mark Field, won the seat with 19,264 votes.

Soon after leaving UKIP, in 2011 Weston became the chairman of the British Freedom Party (BFP) the same year after he had been asked to do so by the activists who had broken away from the BNP in October 2010 to found a new party. Over the years, Weston has attended and addressed numerous gatherings and rallies for such groups as Bloc Identitaire in France, Die Freiheit in Germany and the Jewish Defence League in Canada. As chairman of the BFP, Weston attended an international conference of counter-jihadists in September 2011. Yet in an interview, Weston cited a poll conducted by ''Searchlight'', which had found that 48% of the British public would support an anti-immigrant party, so long as the party did not take on explicitly fascist regalia and was non-violent, as evidence for an electoral basis for the BFP. This was in the midst of a crisis within the BNP and Weston held meetings with Andrew Brons, an MEP, and longstanding figure on the far-right, who was vying for the leadership of the party. Ultimately, Weston left the BFP saying, "I joined the British Freedom Party in late 2011, but became disillusioned with the direction it was taking, over which I had little control."

In November 2012, the BFP officially announced that it had agreed to enter into a formal political alliance with the English Defence League. In October 2012, the party failed to hand-in its annual registration form and pay the fee of £25 and, in December of the same year, was deregistered by the Electoral Commission. The deregistration was statutory rather than voluntary.Sonia Gable
"British Freedom Party deregistration: the truth"
, ''Searchlight'' ''Searchlight'' speculated that Weston let the party's registration lapse because Jim Dowson of Britain First had initiated legal action against the BFP for defamation over claims made against Britain First's leadership on the BFP website.

Liberty GB

Early on, the group was criticised as "old fascist rubbish" in an article by Sonia Gable published in ''Searchlight''. Gable ranked the group alongside the British Democratic Party, Britain First and the National Front. Weston responded and accused his critics at ''Searchlight'' of being "a communist front operation disguised as an anti-fascist organisation". Weston has characterized himself as an "Islamo-realist" and is against Muslim people being able to hold public office in the United Kingdom. He has made a video in which he says "I am a racist". In an interview, the BBC
...