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UKIP leader Nick Tenconi, who has publicly urged Reform UK and Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain to unite, is due to speak at the inaugural Rome conference of a far right think tank founded and run by the chair of New York’s Metropolitan Republican Club.
The think tank is led by pro-Trump Republicans and European far right officials, and has ties to Reform UK, UKIP and Turning Point UK (TPUK). Its communications director was pardoned over the 6 January 2021 Capitol insurrection. It appears to be integral to an effort by pro-Trump political activists to extend their transatlantic influence on Europe’s far-right.
The think tank, Progetto Rinascita Italiana (PRI), which means “An Italian Rebirth”, has announced that its inaugural conference will take place in Rome next month.
PRI’s founder is also the chair of New York’s Metropolitan Republican Club and the US co-ordinator of the Patriots Network, a global far right collective whose English co-ordinator ran as a Reform UK candidate in this year’s local elections.
Speakers at the event include Tenconi, who is also chief operating officer of TPUK and who in October offered to broker a deal between Reform and Restore Britain.
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Tenconi’s Push to Unite Reform and Restore
Tenconi has dedicated himself to creating a “new right”, a plan he discussed with Jack Ross, TPUK’s chief executive, in the recent Al Jazeera documentary, but appears confused about what (and whom) that should involve.
Tenconi initially welcomed the call by Restore Britain to “unite the Right”, but later disavowed the party over its “morally and politically disgusting” plan for “total remigration”. Despite this, in early October he shared a reel on Facebook in which he implored Reform and Restore to work together to “take the country back, [instigate] mass deportations and reinstate Christianity back into the heart of government”.
Tenconi previously criticised Reform as “controlled opposition” but later supported Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s election bid in Clacton.
Tenconi has repeatedly denied any connection to the far right. Earlier this year, however, he and Ross were pictured alongside the populist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party at the ReARM Europe conference in Berlin. At the same conference, Reform Party candidate and English co-ordinator of global far right group The Patriots Network, Kenneth Morris was photographed with the AUR, Tenconi and Ross, and separately with Reform’s head of office, Ethan Thoburn.
In December 2024, Tenconi led a group of activists including Ross into a church in Aldershot that was hosting a meeting of the anti-racism campaign group Stand Up To Racism, as Byline Times previously reported. Four members of the group, including Ross, were convicted of assault by beating. Tenconi was not charged. Later that month, one of the convicted men, Stephen Lynch, joined Farage “for Christmas drinks” in a meeting whose purpose Reform will still not explain.
Members of this group were also part of the Rushmoor People First collective, one of many so-called patriot groups that have taken part in far right protests over the past three years. These protests rely on the anger of ordinary people radicalised into action via social media, and their impact has been felt across multiple communities, with hundreds of arrests made. According to the recent Al Jazeera documentary, Tenconi and Ross have no qualms about using their supporters to instigate such action, safe in the knowledge it will never affect them personally.
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Progetto Rinascita Italiana
PRI was founded earlier this year and is dedicated to “uniting Italians worldwide…around a global vision for the renewal and future of the global Italian community”. It is run by Brooklyn-based lawyer Luca Di Giacomo, who is also chair of the Metropolitan Republican Club. The patrons of the club include pro-Trump journalists, influencers and high-ranking pro-Trump figures such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, as well as Alan Dershowitz, who represented Jeffrey Epstein.
Of the 12 PRI officers shown on its social media accounts, three are based in the US, including its director of communications, Isabella DeLuca. A former ambassador for the far right student group Turning Point USA (TPUSA), DeLuca was arrested then pardoned for her role in the 6 January 2021 Capitol insurrection. Likewise, its youth outreach coordinator, Lorenzo Camilli, also works as a correspondent for Campus Reform, a conservative group which operates in line with TPUSA’s Education Watch initiative, and is part of the Leadership Institute which was on the advisory board for Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s authoritarian blueprint for a second Trump administration.
PRI’s other officers are a smorgasbord of European far right figures. Its senior political advisor, Jacopo Gargano, was youth co-ordinator for Italy’s Lega Party before joining Futuro Nazionale earlier this year. Its advisor for EU affairs, Davide Quadri, is a policy advisor at the Viktor Orbán-founded Patriots For Europe network. Its policy advisor, Enzo Alias, is a former youth delegate for the French far right party Rassemblement National and the current president of The Patriots Network for which Di Giacomo is US co-ordinator.
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Patriots Network
Operating since at least 2023, the Patriots Network has held annual conferences which bring together far-right leaders, thinkers and others to “organize on a global scale around a common project”.
As with PRI, it is careful to couch its political ambitions in vague descriptions of community and identity, labelling itself “an international organization of patriotic politicians who share political actuality in the world”. Previous conference guests have included far right agitator and convicted criminal Steven Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) and Yan Mac Oireachtaigh, leader of the Irish National Party’s youth wing.
The global far-right is combining forces, and its links to the Republican Party are growing. In 2024, the Metropolitan Republican Club shared social media posts announcing its joy at becoming an official partner of the Patriots Network. In September this year, Farage signed a deal to “stop the boats” with Jordan Bardella, the president of the French far right party Rassemblement National, whom he invited to speak at a Reform conference.
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Imperial Independent Media
Reform has also worked with other pro-Trump Republicans. Last year, Byline Times revealed that Imperial Independent Media (IIM) had paid Reform UK leader Nigel Farage £25,972 to speak at an event held by the Florida Republican Party. The event, organised by IIM, introduced Farage as “the man who delivered Brexit”. IIM is run by Zach Freeman, a lobbyist for Project 2025. Its marketing manager, Sofia Balk, previously held the same role at the Centre for the Union (CFU), a think tank set up in 2022 by Reform’s current head of office, Ethan Thoburn.
Thoburn is a fixture in right-wing political circles. He started his career as an ambassador for TPUK before joining the Orthodox Conservative Group (OCG), becoming a parliamentary aide to Andrew Rosindell (then a member of the Conservative Party) and eventually defecting to Reform.
CFU was designed to “preserve and strengthen the constitutional ties of the United Kingdom across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland” but it dissolved last year having achieved nothing of note. Its membership included Balk, who was privately educated in the UK, was a regular fixture in Russian Tatler with her former partner Sasha Fridman, the son of the Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, and former DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr, for whom Balk was a parliamentary intern.
Paisley met Zach Freeman in London and Belfast last year for the launch of “Liberty University UK”. He has also been reported to be backing a plan, linked to Erika Kirk, widow of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, to establish a branch of TPUSA in Northern Ireland.
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Turning Point UK and UKIP
TPUK has been active on UK university campuses since 2016. Its current chief operating officer, Tenconi, runs his own fitness business, and had little involvement with politics before the pandemic.
Tenconi became involved with TPUK in 2021 and offered his skills to its young members, which included boxing lessons with Joseph Robertson. Robertson is a former member of TPUK and the OCG, and is now a director of Touchpoint Strategy. Touchpoint, which organised the recent CPAC GB conference, was also paid £72,000 by Reform for “market research/canvassing” around the 2024 elections.
By 2023, Tenconi was working with Jack Ross. Together they took over the anti-Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) protests, which had been instigated the year before by white nationalist groups. Making a show of disinviting these groups from their rallies, Tenconi and Ross continued promoting their baseless message that DQSH was part of a nefarious plan to indoctrinate toddlers into the LGBT community.
The following year, Tenconi became leader of UKIP and dedicated both himself and TPUK to Christian nationalism. This time latching onto the far right “stop the boats” movement, he appeared at multiple rallies across the country, throwing Nazi salutes for the cameras, loudly praising Jesus and claiming to be protecting the country from immigrants and Marxists. More recently, his activities have involved manning discussion tables on university campuses a la Kirk. These have mostly been met with ridicule.
Byline Times approached Tenconi for clarification on his beliefs and involvement with the global far-right, but has not received a reply.