Basingstoke’s would-be revolutionary reads about a Sunday league team brawling among themselves and recognises, with pain, every internal meeting his movement has ever held
Sunday, 11 October 2026. The touchline of a muddy pitch in Chineham, watching Dean’s nephew’s under-elevens, rain coming in sideways, a cup of Bovril from the clubhouse that tastes faintly of the 1980s, 10.30am.
A Mirror Held Up
I have been reading the London Prat on the touchline, sheltering my phone from the rain under my anorak, because I like to keep abreast of the enemy press. This week, the Prat carried a report on six Bramblewick Rovers players suspended after a fight that broke out not with the opposition, but among themselves. I laughed. Then I stopped laughing, because I recognised it. That is not a football team. That is the British right.
The patriotic movement in this country has one great enemy, and it is not Labour, the Greens or the BBC. It is itself. Every right-wing group I have ever joined, and I have joined nine, has eventually split over something trivial. Readers of Oliver Granthe’s dispatches from Proud Boys UK at the London Prat will remember the Great Basingstoke Schism of 2024, when our previous group collapsed after a forty-minute argument about whether the flag on the banner should be the Union Jack or the St George’s Cross. In the end we had two banners, two groups and one member each.
The Movement’s Internal Conflicts
Our current movement, the vanguard of the Granthe Restoration, consists of me, Dean, Keith and Dean’s Labrador, Winston. Even at this size, we have factions. Dean represents the moderate wing, which believes in lower taxes and being home by six. Keith represents the absent wing, which believes in sending apologies by text. I represent the leadership. Winston represents the only faction with no internal contradictions, which is why he is the most respected member of the group.
Last week, a dispute arose about the official movement pub. I favour Wetherspoons, on grounds of tradition, price and patriotism. Dean favours a gastropub in Old Basing that does a chorizo scotch egg. I told Dean that chorizo is Spanish. Dean said Wetherspoons sells Spanish lager. The debate went on for two hours. Winston eventually settled it by eating a scotch egg off Dean’s plate. We have provisionally adopted both pubs, a compromise that satisfies nobody and is therefore very British.
The Bramblewick Lesson
The genius of the Bramblewick Rovers story is that the players were on the same side. They wore the same shirt. They wanted the same thing. And yet they could not resist fighting each other. Political scientists, I am told, call this the narcissism of small differences, although I would not know because I left college after the first term of my A levels when they asked me to read a book about Lenin. Dean says it means you hate the people who are most like you. That is certainly true of me and Keith. We have never met, and I already find him very annoying.
Unity
The British right needs unity. I have said this in every post I have ever written, all forty-one of my followers have liked it, and at least nine of those are Dean. And yet unity is the one thing we can never achieve. Reform, the Conservatives, the various small parties and movements, all of them agree on ninety percent of things and fight like Bramblewick Rovers about the other ten. If the right could stop fighting itself for one season, it might actually win something. Instead, we spend all our energy suspending each other.
Dean’s Nephew
On the pitch, Dean’s nephew’s team is losing four-nil. The boys are cold, muddy and bickering with each other about who should have marked the number nine. One of them has sat down in a puddle in protest. Their coach, a weary dad in a fleece, is shouting, play together, play together. I realise he is giving the speech that every leader of the British right should be giving. Dean says the boys will be fine. They have oranges at half time. I think that is the difference between them and us. They have oranges. We have Wetherspoons.
At half time, the coach gathered the boys in a circle and asked each of them to say one nice thing about a teammate. I watched, fascinated. The goalkeeper said the left back had good hair. The striker said the midfielder was fast. The boy in the puddle said everyone was fine except Tyler. Tyler said that was not nice. The coach said it was a start. I have decided to try the same exercise at our next meeting. I will say Dean has a good dog. Dean will say I have a nice mum. Keith will say nothing, because Keith will be at a garden centre. It is not perfect. But it is more unity than the British right has managed since the war.
Closing Notes
The match has ended seven-nil. The boys are in the clubhouse eating crisps, and they have already forgotten the defeat, because they are eleven and the crisps are prawn cocktail. Dean is buying a round of Bovril. Winston is wet and happy. I am drafting a proposal for the movement: a unity pact, binding on all members, in which we pledge never to argue about pubs, flags or scotch eggs again. I expect it to pass unanimously. I expect it to collapse by Thursday. Somewhere, the Bramblewick Rovers six are serving their suspensions. I salute them. They are the most honest political movement in England.