Pro-Brexit populists march
Protesters call Prime Minister May a traitor as Parliament is scheduled for historic vote.
LONDON — Just three days before the British Parliament is scheduled for a historic vote on Brexit, several thousand marchers — edgy, suspicious, aloud with conspiracy theories — massed near Prime Minister Theresa May’s official residence at 10 Downing St. on Sunday to condemn her as a traitor to their cause.
The march was called by the U.K. Independence Party, a once-ascendant movement now in decline, dominated by “Euroskeptics” and right-wing populists. They were at the forefront of the winning Brexit campaign two years ago, when they were led by radio show personality and Fox News contributor Nigel Farage, who was one of the first British politicians to meet with President Donald Trump after his election.
Now UKIP members and their allies at the rally say they are being doublecrossed by “the establishment,” aided by a “seditious BBC” and a deep state of pro-Europe civil servants and global capitalists led by May.
In the crowd, one man held aloft a gallows with a hangman’s noose. Others shouted that May should be “taken to the Tower,” the medieval palace-prison where Henry VIII had his wives killed.
At the rally, the current leader of UKIP, Gerard Batten, called May’s Brexit plans “a betrayal” that had created “the biggest crisis since the English civil war” in the 1640s — which saw Charles I beheaded, he reminded the crowd.
The demonstrators said May’s deal to leave the European Union, which she has called an “honorable compromise,” was actually a ruse designed to produce no Brexit at all.
“It’s going to be voted down. That was her plan all along, wasn’t it?” said Paul Oakley, general secretary of UKIP, referring to Tuesday’s vote in Parliament, where many members of May’s own Conservative party have said they will vote against her Brexit deal.
Oakley reminded the crowd that in the June 2016 referendum, May voted to remain in the European Union. “This woman is not stupid,” he said. “You simply do not become prime minister unless you possess deep cunning. She always intended to betray Brexit.”
The UKIP lineup of speakers included Tommy Robinson, a felon and founder of the English Defence League, a far-right movement, who said he was jailed recently for campaigning against “the Islamization of this country.” He was jailed after photographing defendants in a sex ring run by Pakistani men, against a judge’s orders not to reveal their identities while their trial was underway.
Robinson, who is now a paid adviser to UKIP, told the audience, “To be honest, up until this point, I didn’t believe in democracy. I never thought they would let us leave. I’m still not sure they’ll let us leave.”
As the UKIP “Brexit Betrayal” march was underway, larger numbers of counterprotesters came out in central London, some to oppose the Robinson crowd and others to support a second referendum, dubbed a People’s Vote, to allow citizens another chance to decide whether to go forward with May’s Brexit.
In the placards and speeches at the UKIP rally, May was condemned as an enemy of the people. The atmosphere showed how Brexit is rubbing the usually staid Brits raw.