I'm looking to buy my first electric guitar and want to spend around £150 ($233ish) - this is probably going to mean going second hand.
One of my friends is selling an Epiphone Explorer at that price - otherwise I'm going to be looking to auction sites to buy one.

Any recommendations are welcome / please keep flames and spam out of here.

If you are UK, I suggest trying to find a GAK or Coda Music. Coda can be quite expensive, but they do have reasonable electrics for that kind of price. You should be looking at Ibanez really, definately not a Squire as they suck.

If you can up your range to £200 you will find some good Ibanez guitars. You looked at acoustics?

I looked at acoustics but it seemed like all the reasonable ones were a lot more expensive.
I bought an Ibanez Gio in the end

With Squire and Epiphone, you are still paying for the name and design of a big-name guitar company. A lot of decent quality instruments come from Rondo Music, though they often need to be set up (if you have guitarist friends, one can likely help you). Most of the major music sites also have good clearance sections where you can find some good deals, especially with discontinued/older models that are perfectly playable (most of these are owned by the same company too). Finally, every ESP guitar I have played has been impressive for the price range, and I love their guitars in general - Schecter's entry-level models are the same, they tend to be great overall.

My recommendation..... Would be to save your money.

Thanks for the helpful contribution.