Earlier this year, not long after Tommy Robinson embraced evangelical Christianity while in prison, the then Conservative MP Danny Kruger spoke in parliament about the need for a restoration of Britain through the “recovery of a Christian politics”. Less than two months later, Kruger joined Reform, and shortly after that, James Orr, a vociferously conservative theologian who has been described as JD Vance’s “English philosopher king”, was appointed as one of Reform’s senior advisers. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, now frequently invokes the need for a return to “Judeo-Christian” values.

The British right is increasingly invoking the Christian tradition: the question is what it hopes to gain from doing so.

Until recently, there were no obvious British analogues to political figures on the US right such as Vance, the Catholic-convert for whom religion plays a foundational political role. With Orr and Kruger, both of whom converted to conservative evangelical Christianity as adults and attend church regularly, we have some contenders. Kruger has said he is in agreement with Vance that to solve the “plight of the west” there needs to be a “substantial revival” of “governance and culture”; he believes this can be achieved through a return to Christianity.

Those further to the right prefer their Christianity more pugilistic and watered-down. Robinson has clearly recognised the political value of the Christian faith: there was an abundance of Christian symbolism at the “unite the kingdom” far-right march that he organised in London this September. Pastors on stage gave speeches and led worship songs, aping the style of the evangelical mass politics of the US Christian right.

Robinson’s newfound faith mirrors an important development that is taking place among European far-right groups, which are shifting emphasis in their political messaging from ethnicity to religion. (Rikki Doolan, a British evangelical pastor who was the witness to Robinson’s conversion at HMP Woodhill, has suggested that Robinson first grasped the

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