Subscriptions
Read our Monthly Magazine
And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
A deliberate strategy to push the British right – from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – into a radicalising auction over the mass deportations of ethnic minority British citizens is being underwritten by Reform donor Richard Smith, an aerospace tycoon who owns 55 Tufton Street, the Westminster townhouse that houses a cluster of opaquely funded right-wing lobby groups.
For two decades the Tufton Street network has been central to free-market lobbying, the campaign for a hard Brexit and the rejection of climate science, its influence trained on the Conservative Party.
It is now central to something broader: an alarming convergence of the British right – from the Conservatives, through Reform, to the far-right Restore Britain – driven by what the strategy’s own architects call a “right-wing arms race”, an escalating competition to outbid one another over the removal of Britain’s ethnic-minority population.
Smith, the Herefordshire businessman behind the aerospace manufacturer HR Smith Group, bankrolls and houses the New Culture Forum, the think tank that platforms the strategy’s architects. His company’s money reached Reform UK two days after Farage’s return as leader, and the same firm sold restricted technology to the main trading partner of a sanctioned Russian arms agency, a New York Times investigation found.
‘A Spirit of Competition’
In August 2025, as Reform embraced mass deportations, the New Culture Forum’s flagship podcast Deprogrammed convened to assess the new policy. The hosts were Harrison Pitt – a fellow of the think tank and now policy chief of Restore Britain, where his formal title is senior policy fellow – and Charlie Downes, Restore Britain’s campaigns director and spokesperson since June 2025. Their guest was the disgraced broadcaster Dan Wootton.
“What I think we should be encouraging is more of a spirit of competition,” Pitt said.
“What Charlie and I and Connor have been calling a sort of right-wing arms race in which people like Rupert at Restore Britain, and indeed Farage, and indeed Robert Jenrick to some extent, and [Advance UK leader] Ben Habib indeed, feel a great deal of motivation to try and outbid one another from the right in order to win the sympathies of an increasingly radicalising electorate.”
Downes told viewers Britain needs a political force “prepared to go into territory that is largely, especially in the eyes of the mainstream, viewed as being beyond the pale”. He went further:
“A lot of the people who have come here legally, especially over the last 30 years, and those who have been born here, they don’t belong here. And they do need to go back to the… countries of their ancestors. And that is the righteous and moral thing. And I think we are going to see that idea enter mainstream discourse in literally the next couple of years.”
Wootton cast Farage as the vehicle. Recalling the Reform leader’s praise for Enoch Powell, he said: “That guy who views Enoch Powell as his political hero, who when he was still a very young politician was writing to Powell, begging to receive his endorsement, that must be how he really feels. So part of what we need to do is lay the groundwork, prove that the country is ready for that Farage again.”
Enoch Powell was a Conservative minister who in 1968 warned of “rivers of blood” due to mass immigration. In 1993, Farage personally chauffeured him to speak at a UKIP campaign rally.
What Downes described is know on the far-right as remigration. Coined by former neo-Nazi Martin Sellner, the term covers the forced removal of non-white citizens and people born in Britain, alongside recent migrants, sent to what Downes called “the countries of their ancestors”. The forced removal of a population defined by ancestry matches the recognised definition of ethnic cleansing – the use of force to make a territory ethnically homogeneous.
ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE
Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.
We’re not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.
The Think Tank at 55 Tufton Street
The New Culture Forum was founded in 2006 by the late Peter Whittle, a former UKIP deputy leader and close ally of Farage, and operates from 55 Tufton Street – home to a cluster of think tanks that refuse to disclose their funders. Tufton Street organisations, central to the campaigns for a hard Brexit and against climate science, have been linked to fossil fuel interests and anonymous US foundations.
The New Culture Forum’s neighbours include the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), which supplied the intellectual engine of Thatcherism, and the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s principal climate science denial group.
A 2009 presentation by the conservative organisers Tim Montgomerie and Matthew Elliott – whose Political and Economic Research Trust (PERT) is funded by Richard Smith – described the forum as a key part of the “infrastructure of the conservative movement in Britain”. The Tufton Street network was instrumental in campaigning for a hard Brexit, widely recognised now as crashing Britain’s GDP by as much as 8%.
The ‘dark money’ behind the network is hidden by design. A joint investigation by DeSmog and Democracy for Sale found Conservative donors channelled almost £7 million into Tufton Street think tanks since 2019, while anonymous American foundations have put more than $14 million into the groups since 2012.
Smith’s role in building the network predates his Reform funding: the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s 2010 move to Tufton Street was described by its founder Matthew Elliott as Smith’s “brainchild”.
Don’t miss a story
A Disability Charity and Aerospace Fortune
Smith sustains the New Culture Forum through at least three channels. He owns its premises, has served on its advisory committee, and sponsors it through his aerospace group’s funding of the Street Foundation – a registered charity, the stated purpose of which is to make grants to individuals and organisations involved with children and young people with a disability or special needs.
It is unclear why a registered charity dedicated to children is funnelling money to a think-tank which platforms members of a far-right political party calling for a “right-wing arms race” to facilitate ethnic cleansing. The Charity Commission was contacted for comment.
The Good Law Project found in 2024 that the foundation had given the New Culture Forum £250,000 – part of £749,000 channelled to right-wing pressure groups over five years, more than 40% of its grants in that period. The charity receives the majority of its funding from HR Smith Group and its subsidiary Techtest; its trustee board, which includes Smith and members of his immediate family, administers it from Street Court, Kingsland – the same Herefordshire address as the company.
Byline Times contacted the New Culture Forum and Richard Smith, via the HR Smith Group for comment.
A spokesperson for HR Smith Group told Byline Times: “We donate to a number of organisations and always comply with UK law. As a charity the Streets Foundation makes donations to a range of organisations in line with its charitable aims, details of which are available on the Charity Commission website.”
Farage was announced as Reform UK’s leader on 3 June 2024. Within 48 hours, Smith’s company donated £100,000 – accepted by the party on 5 June 2024. Techtest has given £890,000 to Reform, UKIP, the Conservatives and campaigns to leave the EU over time, the Good Law Project found, while Smith has donated £31,500 to the Conservatives personally.
‘Grassroots’ Pressure Group Opposing Equality Act Is Bankrolled by Tufton Street-Linked Funder
EXCLUSIVE: Supposedly independent campaign group Don’t Divide Us, is funded by body that has anonymously funnelled millions to right-wing groups
From Podcast to Party
The “right-wing arms race” Harrison Pitt described in August 2025 has since moved from the podcast studio to the ballot paper. Pitt was appointed senior policy fellow at Restore Britain in October 2025. In January 2026, Robert Jenrick, the former shadow justice secretary named by Pitt in the broadcast, joined Reform UK after being expelled by the Conservatives, days after the former Conservative Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi defected.
Restore Britain, registered as a political party in February 2026, continues to be run by individuals involved in the Deprogrammed and New Culture Forum network: Pitt as the party’s policy chief, Downes as its campaigns director.
Rupert Lowe’s 133-page mass deportation programme, co-authored with Pitt, proposes 150,000–200,000 forced removals per year and “austere tent camps” for those awaiting removal. Downes has said the desirable outcome is “an ethnically homogenous Christian Britain”. At the party’s launch, Lowe said of those facing deportation: “Millions will have to go.”
The party has been embraced by Britain’s organised neo-Nazi movement – and Lowe has welcomed its members in personally. As Byline Times reported in February, Chris Mitchell – a former East of England organiser for Patriotic Alternative, convicted of hate crime offences in 2023, who has described himself as a “Nazi-Buddhist” – has been recruiting fellow ethno-nationalists into Restore Britain through Lowe’s flagship Great Yarmouth First organisation. When Mitchell signed up, Lowe replied to him directly: “Welcome to the team mate!” The pair posed for a selfie at a party conference in February.
Sam Melia, a leading Patriotic Alternative figure recently released from prison, has joined Restore and declared his wish to stand for Parliament for it, Searchlight reported. HOPE not hate has documented members of the British National Party, the National Front, the fascist Homeland Party and Blood & Honour active within Restore Britain – and found Patriotic Alternative members campaigning for the party in Makerfield itself.
When the anti-fascist group exposed one extremist, Restore Britain’s leadership blocked a local attempt to expel him. Lowe told The Spectator he “can’t and won’t audit who supports us”. A party spokesman put it more plainly: members “endorse our position”.
In the Makerfield by-election, Restore Britain stood its first parliamentary candidate to the right of Reform.
Restore Britain did not respond to request for comment.
The campaigning for the Makerfield byelection has become a microcosm of a new “right-wing arms race” strategy that is now being supported by the same dark money lobby groups which had previously pushed for a hard Brexit.
The network around 55 Tufton Street that built the infrastructure of Thatcherism is now platforming open advocates of far-right ‘remigration’. The stated goal is not simply to outflank the party funded by its landlord, but to pave the ground for Reform UK’s leader, Nigel Farage, to reclaim his status as Enoch Powell’s successor.