THERE’S a perverse irony in that a notorious hate preacher heading for the Finsbury Park Mosque or Darul Uloom in Bury to pray for the eradication of the Jewish race will have a UK immigration officer stamp his passport with a welcoming smile and wave him merrily on his way.
Arrive at the same desk as a cultured, civilised Christian democrat, hoping to share a message of hope, brotherhood – and perhaps warning – with a vast crowd of British patriots? Prepare yourself for several silent hours in a stark, locked room before being marched by grim-faced British oberleutnants and thrust on to a return flight home.
As if Keir Starmer didn’t already have enough panic-stricken fronts to fight on, Monday saw him find time in his grand ‘reset’ speech to ban ever more overseas speakers from getting to Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally in London on Saturday. Already excluded were the inspirational Dutch activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek, Belgian MP Filip Dewinter, Catalan influencer Ada Lluch and her ex-partner the outspoken American political commentator Joey Mannarino, plus another American in Valentina Gomez. A total of seven would-be overseas attendees have so far had their visas revoked. Another followed yesterday afternoon – the prolific American author and podcaster known for his work on military history (especially WWII submarines), amateur HAM radio, and, more recently, his commentary on the UK and US political landscapes, Don Keith. His crime? To say he s a friend of Tommy Robinson? Here is his bemused reponse.
More may follow.
Starmer and his Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood are literally rubber-stampers of these bans, hypocritically and cynically dressed up in the garb of the individuals ‘not being conducive to the public good’. That’s state rhetoric for ‘these people are too clever, too funny, too well-informed and too inspirational for our comfort’. However don’t labour under the misapprehension that this is solely a scaredy-cat Labour reaction. The Tories had plenty of form in this regard.
Indeed, it would be interesting to get Nigel Farage’s view on this anti-democratic, anti-free-speech cancelling of perfectly legal foreign individuals. They don’t have an actual hateful transgression between them, unlike Islamist radicals the state welcomes with open arms and, as we saw last week, even elects to local government. It’s well established that Farage repeatedly runs scared of the slightest risk of association with Tommy who, in turn, couldn’t care less about him.
One thing Farage has, however, which Starmer and the hotch-potch of successive Tory leaders (Boris apart where Brexit was concerned) never possessed, is the ability to sense the will of the British people. I expect the Reform UK leader, ever a multi-faced opportunist, will now and in future keep shtum on Unite the Kingdom events.
I was at last September’s UTK rally, airily dismissed by the legacy media as attracting around 100,000 upstanding, honest-to-God British men and women (I didn’t see a single chick-with-a-wotsit) of all ages and backgrounds. Counting was clearly not the miserly journalists’ strong point as there must have been well over a million people on our capital’s streets. Probably closer to two million. At the previous October’s event, while Tommy languished in a prison cell, I even had the honour of taking the stage and speaking about the state-contrived conspiracy against him.
At neither event did I witness a moment of unrest or disruption, which is not to say there weren’t any, given the huge number of patriots thronging the city and the often heavy-handed approach of the Met Police. All I can say is that standing by, or on, that stage (so tantalisingly close to Downing Street) and gazing across a sea of waving flags, smiling faces and raised voices of shared hope, was spine-tingling indeed.
The British people spoke loudly at last week’s local elections. A wind of change is in the air and the staging of this event couldn’t be more timely and powerful in reflecting that mood. No number of petty and inconsequential bans imposed on would-be allies will achieve anything other than build upon that shared national and international spirit.
As I write this, Westminster is clearly in a febrile state, sheer panic being stirred into a pot of political opportunism. This corrupt Labour government with its mass of one-term underlings has no regard for our nation and its people, only its own self-interests. As the threshold to challenge Starmer passes, it is increasingly a frenzied circus sideshow, while a disillusioned British people shake their heads in disgust.
A a delectable irony is that when Tommy Robinson stands front and centre on Saturday afternoon, it’s eminently possible that somewhere nearby, a disgraced and fallen enemy of the British people will be packing his bags in dismal but unrepentant shame. No border officers dumping his rejected backside on a plane back to foreign climes, perhaps, but a millions-strong shout of ‘Taxi for Starmer! Taxi for Starmer!’
