BRIAN READE: UKIP IS RIDING WAVE OF FAR-RIGHT FEVER..
THE first question that UKIP’s leader needs to answer about his appointment of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon as an adviser on rape gangs and prisons is, why stop there?
The lesser-spotted Gerard Batten says the English Defence League founder, who changed his name to Tommy Robinson to sound more like a football hooligan, has “great knowledge” on those subjects.
So why doesn’t the king of UKIP get his modern-day Tommy Cromwell to share his expertise on other subjects like assault, drugs, public order offences, mortgage fraud and using someone else’s passport to travel to the USA, all of which he has convictions for?
Also, Gerard, can you be more specific about his advisory remit? It’s Asian rapists only, isn’t it? Because Robinson has never condemned the string of white paedophiles with links to the EDL, such as Peter Gillett, jailed last month for 18 years for raping children as young as eight.
And can you ensure the remit doesn’t involve caring about the child rape victims? Because if Robinson did care about them, why has he constantly attempted to do the one thing that could have stopped them getting justice: risked causing the trials of their accused to crash due to his behaviour? Oh, and while you’re at it, why not bring Katie Hopkins in to advise on how to sink the boats of the ‘refugee cockroaches’ heading from Africa to Europe?
It’s not hard to see what Batten, who has openly called Islam a “death cult”, is up to. Swelling his diminished party ranks by targeting lies and bigotry at white working-class people who feel dispossessed by immigration, while wrapping it up in conspiracy theories about liberal elites. And riding the wave of far-right fervour that pollutes the global political narrative through hate preachers like Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.
The one funny aspect of this disturbing story is Farage being “appalled” at his “non-racist” party hiring Robinson. That’s the same Farage who spoke at a neo-Nazi AfD rally in Germany and who unveiled his blatantly racist “breaking point” poster showing crowds of queuing migrants during the EU referendum. Maybe he’s jealous there’s a younger kid on the block getting all the fascist love.
But that’s where the humour stops. Because there’s nothing funny about giving a mainstream voice to a neo-Nazi. That leads to another voice yelling “Britain First” as an MP like Jo Cox is murdered in broad daylight.
Or the number of far-right terrorists jailed in Britain more than tripling in the past year. Or to a rally in support of Robinson drawing the largest fascist gathering Britain had seen since Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts.
And don’t for a minute think we’ll never return to those dark days of the 1930s because, as the Germans found out, when you start with a grievance against an Establishment which you believe has stolen your birthright, when you scapegoat a religion, talk up your own race as being superior, have a largely non-challenging media, expound a belief that breaking the law to protect the defence of the motherland is fine, and a jailed martyr, you can soon find your country in a very dark place.
Maybe that’s what Gerard Batten really needs advising on.
Why not ask Katie Hopkins to advise on sinking boats of refugees?