BEN Habib is another disaffected Reform UK politician, fallen out of love with Nigel Farage whom he describes as a ‘cunning fox’. A lead member of the Brexit Party, in 2019 Habib won a seat for them as a Member of the European Parliament, where he served on the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. While he supported the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement in 2020, he later challenged the Northern Ireland Protocol in court, calling it a constitutional threat to the United Kingdom. The UK Supreme Court scuppered his case, ruling that Parliament had lawfully given effect to the Protocol, even though it conflicted with the 1800 Acts of Union.
In March 2023, he joined Reform UK as co-deputy leader. As internal tensions grew over lack of democratic structure and immigration policy, Farage sacked him in 2024, replacing him with Richard Tice, Reform MP for Boston and Skegness. Tice and Habib are both former Conservative Party members.
Habib is not finished with politics; in fact he is only just getting started. Last month he launched a new party, Advance UK, to attract disillusioned Reform UK members. He was keen to work with former Reform, now Independent MP for Great Yarmouth Rupert Lowe, (whose exclusive interview appeared last Friday) but Lowe wanted his own organisation and launched Restore Britain.
Advance UK is anti-globalisation, and broadly stands for free speech and sovereignty, which Habib thinks we have lost. He says this means ‘we can no longer consider ourselves a democracy’. And, heads up, he cannot bear Keir Starmer and thinks Tony Blair ruined the country. We just did not notice at the time.
Aged 60, a married father of two, here he sets out his political vision to advance the United Kingdom.
‘I think Keir Starmer is anti-British. I think he has a contempt for this country, and he absolutely subscribes to the global order. He doesn’t think we’re worthy as a country. He probably comes from that hijacked, extreme-left view that the United Kingdom should be ashamed of itself because of its history and Empire. When I was growing up, I was always aware that there were some dickheads around who hate the country, but I never thought they’d get into position of power.
‘President Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr have the right idea. Everything they say they wish to achieve for the United States is what I would like to achieve for the United Kingdom. I hope they are true to what they say. I hope they are able to deliver because it will change the way western civilisation is governed. If they can do it for America, then they create the ability for the UK to do it for themselves.
‘It absolutely feels like there’s a globalist agenda, and that we are living in a hostile environment. Immigration is just one symptom of a greater move by those that wish to govern through global principles and are spreading their tentacles. Whether or not Klaus Schwab (former founder and head of the World Economic Forum) is some kind of Blofeld figure pulling everyone’s strings, or whether this is coincidental getting-together of the most powerful people in the world with the richest people in the world, and creating bad results, is kind of academic.
‘The end result is the same. You’re getting policies made for the apparent global betterment which are clearly detrimental to democracy and the national interest of countries. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is just another mechanism to control us, as would be ID cards – the Brit Card.
‘Immigration is part of the same thing. It’s helpful to have immigrants going everywhere because it denudes a country of its identity, and it’s probably helpful if you want to extend the tentacles of the state and control. It’s probably helpful to have discord in your society because it gives you justification for more draconian policing and more interference in people’s lives.
‘I don’t see CBDC, ID cards, 15-minute cities, Agenda 2030 and the World Economic Forum standing alone creating some kind of some kind of malign environment in which to exist. I think the malignancy is at a design level as opposed to a symptom level.
‘The innocent explanation for it is that after World War II, people recognised, particularly western nation states, the need for co-operation amongst themselves, for fear of another conflagration. International institutions were set up for global co-operation such as the United Nations (UN), the nascent European Union (EU), with the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) at its core. We also have the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Health Organization (WHO), probably set up with good intentions to start with.
‘When you set up any organisation it has a natural propensity to wish to empower itself and further its own existence. Each of these entities have, since WW2, got ever more powerful, sought to get ever more control of the various portfolios for which they’re responsible and that has resulted in the pendulum swinging too far in favour of globalisation and away from nation states. We’ve got to correct that balance. It’s one thing co-operating on the international stage as an independent country; it’s an entirely different thing ceasing to be a country because you get absorbed into the international order. That’s where we’re at.
‘There is a more malign force at play because, as these organisations get more powerful, it’s also a mechanism by which the people who work in these organisations and the people who have relationships with these organisations can be significantly enriched.
‘You can’t have a prosperous country until you have a country that’s constitutionally and culturally settled. It’s multifaceted; the cause of damage to our economy requires a holistic solution rather than cherry picking this, that, and the other. But essentially what’s required is for the nation state to be re-established, British citizens’ interests to be put first because they’re not at the moment, and for that to become a central tenet. That does involve, in my view, immigration being dramatically reduced and illegal migrants being detained and deported.
‘We must allow wages to rise. We must lower the tax burden on the working and middle classes so that there is aspiration built back into the system. People recognise that when they earn a wage, they’re not allowed to keep it because the taxes both direct and indirect are absolutely vast at the moment. There’s a lot of indirect taxation. Net Zero being effectively another form of indirect taxation, which is damaging the ability of people to earn a fair wage and keep it.
‘I give no thought whatsoever to what’s happening to the global climate. I’m not a scientist; I’m not a meteorologist; I’m not going to get involved in that debate. But what I do know for sure is that if the globe is warming, Net Zero is not the answer. It’s certainly not the answer as far as the United Kingdom is concerned as we produce less than one per cent of emissions in the world and in the pursuit of ticking boxes we’ve deindustrialised the country. We’ve created a geopolitical risk to the United Kingdom because critical things we should be making here are now made abroad and we have to import them at vast carbon footprint. We have made our energy incredibly expensive so that our domestic businesses are suffering right across the board. Our working class can’t afford to heat their homes. Whatever the question is, Net Zero is not the answer.
‘I want an era of peace. The only way to move into peace is to be absolutely ready for war. We are sadly not ready for war. Two words I think have hijacked western security over the last 40 years are “peace dividend”. The notion that we are at peace and therefore don’t need to spend money on our armaments has been a fundamentally flawed notion.
‘It’s undermined our preparedness. We’re all for poking the Russian bear. The day (President) Zelensky (Ukraine) was given permission to fire British made Storm Shadow (long-range cruise) missiles into Russian territory, Starmer announced £500million cuts in our armed forces. The contrast was vast. We were poking the Russian bear at the same time as cutting back our own defences. We’re going to have to build up our military.’
Ben Habib’s core message is: ‘Our constitution has been steadily eroded by supranational institutions, creeping international law and unaccountable domestic quangos. Our elected representatives act against the people.’
Find out more about Advance UK’s policies here.
