THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: Big Tent Politics
2026, Week 44
There are weeks where myself and Tom go looking for an interesting news story to discuss for the week, and there are weeks when the story falls out of the sky right into our laps. And then, of course, there are the times the story crawls out of the sea, develops hind legs, marches across miles of open terrain, grows arms, grabs us, and begins repeatedly slapping us like something out of a Laurel & Hardy sketch.
This was the third type of week.
You can view Al Jazeera’s new documentary, ‘Contract Killers & the UK’s Far Right’, on YouTube. It’s 45 minutes long, and thoroughly worth your time. Presented here are a few of our thoughts.
Former Tory election candidate suspended over contract killing claims
The Guardian – Oct 21, 2026
Reporting by Benn Quinn and Henry Dyer
A former Conservative election candidate has been suspended from the party after he was seemingly filmed discussing the cost of hiring contract killers and offering to “broker” the services of a far-right activist with alleged paramilitary links.
Jack Ross was filmed apparently asking an undercover reporter “What do you want done?” before listing the type of violent options that could be bought.
Ross appeared to tell the Al Jazeera journalist: “They can just kick the fuck out of someone. That’s a certain amount. They can start cutting people’s faces up, that’s another amount. And they can stab someone. They can shoot someone. They can kill someone.”
Police in Scotland say they will be reviewing and assessing the Al Jazeera documentary – Contract Killers and the Far Right – for any criminality.
[...]
Ross was reported by Al Jazeera to have introduced an undercover reporter to a violent criminal from Glasgow with links to the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, who offers to have people killed for money.
Al Jazeera approached Ross with a fictitious family problem where a deceased uncle’s business was at risk of being taken over by a gang, whose members were supposedly warned they would “get fucked” if anything happened.
Ross replied to this: “Yeah, you have to deliver on that as well. You’ve got to explain to me what’s needed … I can then go and broker from there. But I’ve got to say, even to myself … if there’s lashback I’ve got to keep my name out of it.”
The Scottish paramilitary contact was then filmed at a London hotel offering to arrange different types of killings, ranging from a hit-and-run that could be made to look like drink-driving to a stabbing.
The meeting took place after Ross, apparently acting on behalf of the Zimbabwean government, had reportedly paid thousands of pounds to the Glasgow activist to organise a fake political rally in support of lifting UK sanctions imposed on the African country.
Ross said: “I have had a few things and some of the Zims [Zimbabweans] have said to me they want stuff done. They wanted a fucking shooter.”
He said he had asked them to talk to the paramilitary, adding: “I said I was not putting fucking prints on anything.”
Earlier this week, Al Jazeera released an undercover investigative documentary which appears to show Jack Ross, the CEO of Turning Point UK meeting with at least one high-ranking affiliate of the Ulster Volunteer Force to discuss activities including astroturfing organic attendance at a choreographed political event organised in service of the government of Zimbabwe, and the perpetration of violence against their political enemies.
For those unfamiliar, Turning Point UK (TPUK) is a British offshoot of Turning Point USA, a right-wing nonprofit organisation founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk. Initially oriented around advocating for conservative political representation in academia and on college campuses, following the election of Donald Trump in 2016, TPUSA rapidly expanded to become one of the American right’s most prominent political organising operations.
TPUK was founded in 2019, and operates independently from its parent US organisation. That being said, the organisation’s links to both TPUSA and the broader British conservative milieu are many. During the organisation’s early months, its chairman was George Farmer, son of Baron Farmer, a former Conservative Party treasurer and current sitting member of the House of Lords. George Farmer’s wife is Candace Owens, the one-time communications director of TPUSA, now a right-wing streamer and avowed antisemite.
As for the individual who is surely the British right-wing’s current man of the hour, TPUK CEO Jack Ross, he is a (now former) member of the Conservative Party and one-time Conservative Party election candidate. Ross is also a research fellow at conservative think tank the Bow Group, and has been photographed meeting with numerous high-ranking Conservative MPs and even prime ministers, including Boris Johnson and Theresa May.
The hook of the Al Jazeera documentary revolves around a man named Allan Nesbitt, a Scottish Unionist who assists Ross in securing members of the public to attend an event for British Friends of Zimbabwe (BFOZ), an astroturfed pressure group formed to promote Zimbabwe’s interests as they attended the COP21 convention in Glasgow that year.
In exchange for roughly £2000, Nesbitt arranges for a large number of people to attend a BFOZ event. An off-the-cuff remark suggests each attendee was paid £50. During the event, TPUK staff can be seen filming ‘vox pops’ with members of the public, interrogating their support for Zimbabwe. Without missing a beat, one man explains he has reasons for his support, that a TPUK operative had just explained them to him, but he had already forgotten. In another clip, a young woman rolls her eyes as she half-heartedly attempts to remember her lines, then offers to do the take again.
Following on from this event, Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter, through Ross, re-establishes contact with Nesbitt regarding a private business matter. In a later in-person meeting, Nesbitt talks openly about his connection to Ulster loyalist groups—whom both himself and Jack Ross repeatedly refer to as “terrorists”—and boasts about his history arranging (and purportedly carrying out) hits for hire using methods including stabbing, shooting, and hit-and-run car attacks disguised to look like drink driving incidents.
One pillar of our four-part history of Combat 18, the neo-nazi terror cell forged out of the far-right British National Party, was that group’s connections to Ulster Loyalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and the British mainland, and the longstanding strategic and ideological ties between Ulster Loyalism and British far-right and white supremacist politics.
At the conclusion of our series, Gareth Watkins underscored that these links were not simply historical; that they have endured into the present day, if in modified or attenuated forms. The appearance of former C18 affiliates at anti-migrant actions, in the presence of prominent right-wing British politicians, demonstrated the point ably. Evidently, somebody within the movement felt the contemporary link had not been made explicit enough.
Indeed, the Al Jazeera documentary features quite a few cameos that would be interesting to Blood Work listeners. Early on in the documentary, Ross invites the reporter to meet with a man named Greg Smith, leader of a group called the South East Division.
Information on the SED is incredibly scarce, but it appears that either Smith or the group are connected to the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA). One of many groups which budded off of Tommy Robinson’s English Defence League (EDL), officially the DFLA disavows explicit political ideology, presenting itself as a neutral civic action group. Its two primary civic causes, however—opposition to Islamic extremism and support for homeless military veterans—provides an oblique image of the group’s true motivations.
(It’s helpful to think about how the right-wing uses issues as a sort of recruitment motte & bailey, in which a near-universal cause is used to draw people in and then radicalise them further. “Do you oppose child sex trafficking? Join the conservative movement! Now, let’s talk about the illegal immigrants who are responsible.” “Doesn’t it make you sick to see poorly-treated veterans? Same! It’s the fault of Muslim invaders—who they were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, remember.”)
Shortly after, Smith is shown to have attended TPUK-organised protests with two Blood Work alumni. First, he is shown photographed with Phil Curson, whose photograph features in Nick Lowles’ book on the history of Combat 18, and who was recently jailed for two years for assaulting a police officer during the Epping asylum hotel protests in August of last year.
Smith is also linked to Lance Wright, an affiliate of the neo-nazi music network Blood & Honour, which has served as a hub for neo-nazi and white supremacist organisations across Europe since its inception.
Al Jazeera’s documentary makes clear that Jack Ross and TPUK have forged strong operational links with far-right street gangs and so-called protest groups across the UK, and makes deliberate, strategic use of them when organising public demonstrations.
In early 2023, TPUK organised a series of actions outside of a pub in the South East London borough of Honor Oak to picket a drag event that didn’t exist (the flyer that incited the action was out of date).
Despite instructions for far-right and street violence groups not to attend, they were heavily present, alongside TPUK bigwigs such as the bizarre reactionary pseudo-priest Calvin Robinson. Al Jazeera’s footage indicates that not only was Ross aware the groups would be present, but organised their attendance himself.
Combat 18 was originally formed as a pseudo-militant wing of the British National Party tasked with stewarding BNP officials to, and providing security at events such as campaign rallies. Ross makes explicit that he understands modern groups like DFLA, South East Division and Patriots of Britain (POB) as serving a similar function. At one point, he describes SED’s function as “protecting assets”, by which they mean TPUK representatives.
If anything, the exchange demonstrates how over the past few decades, the organisational structure of the British right has only complexified. Certainly, C18 was part of a transcontinental constellation, but it emerged as a direct organ of the BNP before going rogue later. The modern arrangement appears much less rigid, with groups like DFLA and Patriots of Britain operating as quasi-mercenaries, offering their services out to fellow traveller organisations on a freelance basis.
It’s the footage with Alan Nesbitt which has attracted the bulk of the comparatively scant coverage Al Jazeera’s story received. A known associate of the Ulster Volunteer Force, Nesbitt makes a number of careless assertions and disclosures in the documentary’s secretly-recorded footage.
Along with collaborating with TPUK to provide paid attendees for a political event, Nesbitt talks proudly about the longstanding ties between the British far-right and Loyalist extremist groups in Northern Ireland. By his own words, the most active Unionist groups are in Scotland, and the port of Clydeport in the city of Glasgow is now the main hub for the trafficking of firearms and other materiel to Northern Ireland.
There’s not really much to be said about the footage other than that it has to be seen to be believed. Aside from boasting about his UVF ties, Nesbitt talks extensively about the different means by which a hit can be carried out, including a perpetrator running a target over with a car and then downing a bottle of vodka to disguise the killing as a drunk-driving incident.
Nesbitt also brags, openly, about having perpetrated murders himself. If that wasn’t enough, during a later FaceTime video call with the undercover reporter, he brandishes what appear to be a Glock pistol, a loaded sawn-off shotgun, and a plastic carrier bag filled with shotgun shells.
As I said to Thomas earlier in the week, during our series we did stress that the linkages between Ulster Loyalists and the British far-right had endured and continued to evolve. With that being said, even we had not anticipated that modern players in the Ulster connection would make the link quite as explicit as they did.
Of the experts consulted in the documentary, including a former Deputy Director of the National Crime Agency, the opinion is that the relationship is primarily pragmatic and performative.
Following the end of the Troubles, groups like the UVF lost their political raison d’être, and so receded to black market activities and organised crime to sustain themselves. (It’s for this reason that the UVF and other Loyalist gangs are reported as controlling large segments of the drug trafficking business in Northern Ireland.)
As for why groups like TPUK would fraternise with them, Matthew Collins of Hope Not Hate attributes it to ‘fanboyism’; that individuals and groups like Jack Ross and TPUK would like to be affiliated with militant far-right groups of yesteryear, or be so perceived. The other appeal of such associations is in their being able to marshall large numbers of activists for events and street actions.
Without discounting the expertise of individuals who are much closer to the ground on these matters, it would be foolish to downplay the existence of genuine ideological affinities between these groups.
One notable aspect of the documentary is how it captures TPUK’s Chief Operating Officer Nick Tenconi, who is also current leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), speaking openly about a ‘three-pronged’ strategy to reconstitute the ‘New Right’ involving a) electing MPs; b) assembling an ‘army’ of street activists, and c) agitating for policy change via social media.
As leader of UKIP, Tenconi oversaw the rebranding of the party earlier this year, which saw the party’s well-worn logo of a yellow Sterling symbol within a purple circle replaced with a new insignia. The new one, disconcertingly, depicted an Iron Cross intersected by a spear pointing upward and to the right.
In footage of Tenconi then attending marches and political actions, he can be seen participating in agitating behaviour toward the crowd, using rhetoric that is indistinguishable from the language of the street gangs, replete with talk of eradicating communist scum and so on.
It is, nonetheless, true to say that even when the suits and the boots share points of view, the question of ideology is somewhat secondary. Do Ulster Loyalists support the aspirations of far-right Brits on the mainland? Are TPUK’s hearts devoted to Ulster? The question is, in some sense, moot.
As an individual explained in Lowles’ book on the relation back then, C18’s fellow travellers hated Ireland because they were British nationalists who were happy for an excuse to commit violence against perceived enemies—including the Republic, because coterminous with the IRA.
Did the UVF much care what other extracurricular activities C18 were up to? Not really. But they were oriented to the same goal via different routes—British nationalism—and the mainland is where all the political and financial capital is, so you play along.
All this being said, at a time when the prospect of a far-right political movement gaining power through electoral means appears to be waning, it feels naive to downplay the seriousness of revelations that such ties have not only persisted, but been nurtured and operationalised toward political ends.
Certainly, fascism and its far-right siblings have politics and ideology, but fascism is primarily a politics of violence, read both ways. Violence is the means through which fascism expresses and secures its political ends, but the activity—securing one’s political ends through the means of violence—is also, in some sense, the political ends of fascism itself. We use violence to get what we want, and what we want is to use violence to get what we want, and so on, and so on.
Whether Jack Ross and Alan Nesbitt see eye to eye on every hot-button issue of the day is almost irrelevant. As the footage presented in the documentary handily demonstrates, they are entirely in agreement about one thing in particular, and individuals overlook how that affinity functions as a politics of its own, oriented toward its own ends, at their peril.
In 2020, the UK Government appointed a man named Lord Walney, otherwise known as former Labour MP John Woodcock, as its Independent Adviser on Political Extremism. Woodcock served in that role until being removed from the position in February, 2025.
In that role, Walney was central in advocating for the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, which has seen hundreds of British citizens including pensioners, priests and people with disabilities arrested and charged with terrorism for displaying placards at protests. Walney has repeatedly defended this decision, and spends much of his time on social media inveighing against the threat Islamic fundamentalism presents to British society.
As of writing, it has been three days since the release of a documentary in which a former Conservative Party electoral candidate is seen fraternising with an affiliate of a known, proscribed terrorist organisation, discussing the acquisition of illegal weapons to be used for acts of political violence against political enemies.
So far, Lord Walney has not had anything to say about this documentary. He has instead devoted his attention to other, more pressing matters. This morning, he made a post to Twitter calling for the white rapper Macklemore to be banned from the UK because of his statements in support of Palestinian humanity.
Catch you next time.