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The campaign group replacing Advance UK – a party registered only in December – has refused to rule out foreign funding for its ‘Great British’ efforts.
It comes amid a fiery conflict over the remains of Advance UK, the far-right Reform competitor party that formally deregistered with the Electoral Commission in July.
Advance UK was established by Ben Habib, who was the co-deputy leader of Reform UK from October 2023 until he was removed and replaced by Richard Tice in July 2024.
Habib quit the party in November 2024, after falling out with leader Nigel Farage and then chairman Zia Yusuf – with businessman Habib backing a hardline stance in favour of mass deportations. Habib, who was born in Pakistan, had also called on far-right MP Rupert Lowe to be readmitted to Reform.
On 30 June 2025, Habib took over what was then the Integrity Party, relaunching it as ‘Advance UK’. That same day, former Reform MP Rupert Lowe launched his own project, ‘Restore Britain’ – which soon outflanked the party in every respect. Restore began as a ‘pressure group’ but formally registered as a party this February, and secured 9% of the vote in the recent Greater Manchester Mayoral election.
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It is polling around three per cent across Britain and is seen by Reform as a threat to its chances of securing a majority – with Lowe and Nigel Farage recently engaging in a very public spat over potentially working together.
This July, Ben Habib announced his intention to merge Advance UK with the non-party campaign group ‘Great British PAC’, which he chairs. He launched a ballot of members to certify the move. Around 8,000 members voted from the 38,000 potential voters, with the vast majority eventually backing the transfer.
Advance UK will continue to exist as a company – with, this outlet understands, around £250,000 in funds – but will no longer be regulated by the Electoral Commission. And it will give cash to GB PAC on a case-by-case basis.
Who Are GB PAC?
GBPAC was set up in 2024 as a pressure group, “in the mold of American political action committees”, as Hope Not Hate puts it. The group writes: “GB PAC spends much of its time opposing the government’s Chagos Islands deal with Mauritius. It has also supported Tommy Robinson events and a protest opposing puberty blockers for trans youth.
“Plans to launch an academy to teach future right-wing leaders, host a conference, and publish a list of legislation it wishes to overturn appear to have stalled,” the anti-hate group said in a February briefing. Its advisory group includes far-right activists like Carl Benjamin (AKA YouTuber Sargon of Akkad).
Despite Habib’s stated aversion to ‘ethno-nationalism’, a regional director of GBPAC has previously shared a website containing Hitler’s speeches and pointed his online followers towards a video asserting Hitler “never ordered the extermination of a single Jew”. Another, the group’s England director has also bemoaned the supposed decline of the British “gene pool”, writing on X: “By importing loads of sub Saharan Africans plus Muslims that inter breed the IQ is in severe decline.”
GBPAC’s founder and sole director Claire Bullivant told this outlet Advance UK’s funds were “not being transferred to GBP Corporation Limited or to Claire Bullivant personally, nor is the Great British PAC acquiring that sum [£432,000 outlined in the last accounts] as part of the arrangements between the organisations.”
“We understand that Ben Habib and the Advance UK College will determine how any remaining funds should properly be applied, including potentially supporting causes and legal cases they consider worthy. Should Advance UK independently decide to support a cause or legal action also being undertaken or supported by the Great British PAC, any such arrangement will be dealt with transparently and in accordance with applicable law.”
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Asked whether Great British PAC had received, or might receive, funding from overseas, Bullivant did not deny it.
“The Great British PAC is not a registered political party. The organisation may receive lawful financial support from individuals or organisations outside the United Kingdom where permitted.
“Any such funding will be accepted and used subject to the laws and regulatory requirements applicable to GBP Corporation Limited and to the activities on which those funds are spent.”
She said Great British PAC would “register with the Electoral Commission in any capacity in which registration becomes legally required.” They made need to register as a ‘third party campaigner’ if they do eventually promote another far-right party.
“We will comply with the relevant electoral and campaigning legislation applicable to our activities,” Bullivant told this outlet.
On whether there was a conflict of interest in Ben Habib being chairman of GBPAC while also transferring his party’s members to the non-party group, Bullivant said: “Ben Habib’s roles in the two organisations have been transparent throughout the process.
“GBP Corporation Limited is a separate legal entity and Claire Bullivant has represented its interests as its director. Mr Habib does not own or control GBP Corporation Limited and is not one of its statutory directors.” She claimed the groups had followed legal advice over the transfer, and that transfer of Advance UK’s membership information “has been treated as a data-protection matter from the outset.”
She denied that GBPAC had “controlled the [Advance UK] ballot or its outcome.”
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Money and Mergers
Speaking to Byline Times, Ben Habib said members’ money will not be transferred to GB Corporation Limited – the company name for GBPAC.
“We’ve cut the running costs of the organisation down to close to nil — there are some monthly costs, but they’re cut down mostly to nil.”
However, he later confirmed that the party has spent £157,000 in “expenses” over the past six months. It is not clear what these expenses involved, though there is no evidence of wrongdoing.
“The idea is that if GB PAC, or indeed any other political movement, comes up with a proposition that makes sense and requires funding — wants a donation — then Advance UK will look at that, see whether it meets its aims as a political organisation, and then, subject to agreement with the college, the donation will be made,” Habib said.
“I’ll act as first gatekeeper on any applications for donations, and if I think it’s worthy, it goes to the [party’s] College and they decide whether the donation should be made,” he added.
He noted, though, that Advance UK’s governing body, the College, had dwindled to about a dozen members, from a peak of around 30 earlier in the year.
Asked how Advance would apportion its circa £250,000 now, Habib said: “One of the reasons we didn’t just hand the whole thing over on day one to GBPAC is that it’s owned by one person — it’s got one director.
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“The College and I felt it was important to make sure the funds we’ve got are used genuinely for proper political initiatives. I’m not suggesting for a moment that Claire [Bullivant] wouldn’t do that — I’m sure she would — but it’s much clearer for us if she comes to us and says, ‘I need a donation of £20,000 because I want to fight this case, or run this campaign.’ Then we can look at the merits.”
Habib also pointed to the “bizarre oversight of electoral regulations” that Advance did not have to declare where its existing money came from on registering with the Electoral Commission as a party. “You don’t actually have to say where your funds came from before you register as a party. But I can tell you the vast majority of our funds came from pure membership.”
“[We got] probably over £400,000 just from membership. And I put in £100,000 myself.”
“We ran the party pre-registration as if it were registered — we had three or four donors who put in £25,000 each, and we checked that all of them were on the electoral roll, which is a requirement, and they were.”
When Restore Britain registered with the Electoral Commission, they reported having around £2.6m in the bank – none of which they had to prove came from permissible (i.e non-foreign) sources.
A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission told Byline Times: “Permissibility requirements for donations only apply from the point of registration…
“Given the requirements only apply from registration, parties are not required to provide any further detail on the source of their funds prior to registration,” except a statement of how much money they have in the bank.
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Asked whether he considered merging Advance UK with Lowe’s Restore Britain, Habib said: “I wouldn’t want to merge Advance UK with Restore Britain. There are two fundamental problems with Restore Britain.
“One is that Rupert Lowe has set it up as a company limited by shares, and he owns the only share in issue — which means he is the beneficial owner of all the cash in Restore.
He continued: “That is an untenable position for me as far as a political party is concerned…I fought a six-month campaign, when Farage came back to lead Reform, for the democratisation of Reform, including Farage giving up his majority shareholding in the company. Restore suffers from exactly the same problem.” He also claimed there was “a very thick vein of ethno-nationalism running through Restore, which I denounce.”
“There is a significant number of people who hold views I find repugnant, frankly.”
He had considered a merger with Restore previously. But he said: “The ethno-nationalist material about Restore wasn’t clear to me until late February 2026 — it only really came to the fore after it converted to being a political party.” Outright neo-Nazis have since endorsed the party.
However, Advance’s decline was gathering momentum prior to its wind-up. “By mid-January, Restore was already bubbling as a potential competitor. We started losing members of the College,” Habib says.
For his own part in dismantling Advance, Ben Habib says “I think what we did was the responsible thing for a political party to do, which was effectively out-positioned by Reform to its left and Restore to its right. It doesn’t help to confuse the political landscape.”
“I’m materially financially worse off as a result of having set Advance up. I donated £100,000, never took a penny out of it, didn’t get a single train fare reimbursed, didn’t get any meals reimbursed — nothing. I ran it absolutely in that way, to make sure there could be no reproach whatsoever against me as leader of the party, and I’m the thick end of £150,000 worse off for the experience.”
He hopes GBPAC, which he has chaired from the outset, will fare better. Away from the Electoral Commission’s gaze, it will certainly have a lot more potential funding streams.
This is the second of a two-part investigation into the demise of Advance UK. The first part is available here.
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