Pecksniff can reveal exclusively that the Epping riots are the result of organised far-right thuggery. While the news media pretend to take seriously explanations by Nigel Farage, they provide a fig leaf for his malignant purposes and for the orcs arraigned behind him.
There is always rivalry between factions of the far right, and a Facebook post from the Norwich organiser of the Homeland Party spills the beans. It is from Homeland’s Kai Stephens to the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nick Tenconi. The somewhat rococo Mr Stephens makes clear his outrage at his rivals trying to blag their way into the riots resulting from the protest he has so painstakingly organised. In a wonderfully indiscreet flounce, he writes:
“You were denied entry to the Epping Says No Facebook page because it’s us who have been organising it all… Don’t turn up to Homeland organised protests if you’re going to cry when we’re there.”
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Nigel Farage has claimed that the protests are by “genuinely concerned families”: local people making genuine protests. But in fact, as he would have known, they are nothing of the kind. The news media know it too but won’t tell.
The media also know perfectly well that Essex Police have not been bussing in counter-protestors, and the chief constable has demanded that they “Be responsible”. That is another of Mr Farage’s assertions which readers will be shocked to learn lacks the somewhat essential merit of being true. When the police furiously dismiss it, he is interviewed again, not to confess but to claim he was more-or-less right, just “slightly inaccurate in the details”, which is to say he made it up. What the police were actually doing was their job, accompanying counter-protestors on foot for their protection from the Farage-inspired thugs.
Now the spies and intelligencers in the Pecksniff team would have been the envy of Francis Walsingham or Toby Esterhaze. But since they can find the evidence that this is merely organised right-wing thuggery, how is it the rest of the media haven’t done so? (With a hat tip to the Indie.) Dear reader, whatever contempt you hold for the hacks (and the BBC in particular), it is not nearly enough. Try to do better.
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Last week we spoke of the grotesque naïvety of the BBC in offering fawning and uncritical commentary on the Reform Party. This week we have to ask where was the judgement of news editors, across the TV spectrum, in deciding to cover this week’s Nigel Farage news conference live and in full. Did he just shout “Fag!”, and they came running? Fagging for Farage: that seems what they have come to. The Tories, Liberal Democrats or Greens rarely get a mention. Only Keir Starmer is worthy of live TV, and then only when he’s given them a few days’ notice and promises to pay their bus fare.
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Nigel Farage makes outrageous and clearly untrue allegation. TV invites him to repeat it on air. TV then investigates and finds it to be untrue, so invites Mr Farage back to apologise. He doesn’t, just re-works his words a bit. Repeat.
Dear reader, does this scenario ring any bells?
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After the mob violence in Epping, the thugs moved on to Diss, where they are demonstrating against the town announcing itself a ‘town of sanctuary’ for refugees. There are children inside the hotel who are scared. Then tomorrow (Saturday) in Bowthorpe in west Norwich, there are reports the protestors will besiege another immigrant hotel. This is expected to be attended by Tommy Robinson, though there is also the annual Norwich Pride march. If he and his cohorts are deciding to fight against gays now, one would say they have rather missed the bus.
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To the alarm of Nigel Farage, we hear that Tommy Robinson has his eyes on Clacton. For Mr Farage, that might be catastrophic. Never forget, dear reader, that the revolution always eats its children. Mr Farage has problems on two fronts.
First, he has been at pains not to associate himself with Mr Robinson’s thuggery, since that would mean an end to his wider political ambitions. Chris Mason would not feel able to provide his usual admiration.
The second reason is that Mr Farage has awoken a sleeping monster and feeds it regularly to keep the hacks alert. But the monster is ravenous and will devour whatever is put in front of it. Yet while Mr Farage has to attempt the appearance of respectability, others on the far right need have no scruples. They will feed the monster the raw red meat of racism and hate without compunction, and the monster will follow whoever will most tempt its appetite.
With Mr Robinson loose in Clacton, Mr Farage is in danger of being eaten.
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Meanwhile, in their funk, the government are only too pleased to play Reform’s racist card. Their hapless and grotesque response to all this recreational hate is to…anybody? You at the back? That’s correct. It’s to pick on the immigrants.
The government have just published a poster which shows a sinister and shadowy figure on a bike, boasting: “We’re taking action to stop migrants working illegally as food delivery riders”.
Since when has demonising the poor and the desperate been part of the Labour Party’s founding principles? This cyclist has arrived in the country illegally because legal routes are closed. The worst crime he has committed is trying to get a job.
The government is doing the racists’ work for them. So what does that make the government?
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Last week, Pecksniff drew readers’ attention to ‘Auschwitz’ Gerry Oxford, the Colchester alderman who wanted illegal immigrants sent to a version of Auschwitz.
Pecksniff suggested it was a slur on the good name of the city that he should remain an alderman. Well, he is no longer, though it is not clear whether Mr Oxford (as he is now) resigned voluntarily or he was pushed. However, we must acknowledge that Colchester comes out of this rather well. A joint statement by “Colchester council’s political party leaders” reported in the Gazette declares:
“The recent comments made by former mayor and current Honorary Alderman Gerard Oxford were offensive, unacceptable, and do not reflect the values of Colchester Council or our community. Referencing the Holocaust in this way is deeply wrong and distressing. The language used was dehumanising. Seeking asylum is a legal right, and Colchester rejects language that spreads hate or fear.”
“Unacceptable. The language used was dehumanising. Seeking asylum is a legal right.” Colchester Council is to be congratulated on a well-judged and humane joint response. A pint of foaming Old Unprintable awaits you all on the bar at the Muckrakers. (Only the one, mind. You’ll have to share that round.)
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Now we come to what had been planned as the lead entry in this week’s diary, back in those innocent days of last Wednesday before the Epping nonsense blew up. It concerns the forthcoming Green Party leadership election. The outcome may prove crucial to any renaissance of the left and progressive wings of the country’s politics.
The Greens have become organised. Mid Suffolk is the first green-run council in the northern hemisphere. They became the largest party in both East Suffolk and Babergh. Then biggest of all of course: they won the new Waveney Valley constituency with party leader Adrian Ramsay as their MP. They have become plausible partners in any future progressive coalition government.
Since that momentum seems to have begun about the time Adrian Ramsay became leader, it would seem graceless not to give him the credit. He is being challenged in the election by the present deputy leader, Zack Polanski. Pecksniff knows both Messrs Ramsay and Polanski slightly, and both are shrewd and capable candidates. But their approach to the election is quite different, and it is that which troubles your diarist. If the Greens were to lose their relevance now, that failure might adversely affect our whole political landscape.
Mr Polanski’s appeal seems to be to excitement, not discipline and hard work. The leak this week of a boost in membership figures is aimed at suggesting Mr Polanski is the exciting option, and the source of that leak is a news outlet which once supported Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum. Mr Corbyn makes clear his support for Mr Polanski, which may be a clue. Whereas Caroline Lucas backs Adrian Ramsay.
It is understood that new members joining the party before the end of the month will be eligible to vote for the leader.
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On Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Ed Davey declared that the Liberal Democrats want Britain to join an EU customs union. “Which the EU might not give you, and is not what the public wants”, retorted his host. Not for the first time, Ms Kuenssberg betrays an extraordinary ignorance of public opinion on anything EU-related. In fact – as no doubt many readers are aware – according to YouGov, more than twice as many voters support the idea as oppose it.
So where does Ms Kuenssberg get her ‘facts’? Since they in no way resemble the truth, it is difficult not to conclude that she finds them in the same place Nigel Farage finds his.
But those who expected Mr Davey’s pronouncement to mean the opening of a grand new assault on Brexit are, it seems, to be disappointed. Once again after a single statement, there has been nothing more from his party. Bizarrely, it seems to come down to this. Mr Davey is the only one allowed to mention getting closer to the EU, because if too many members do it then somebody might hear them, and take offence.
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GK Chesterton observed that “journalism largely consists in saying ‘Lord Jones Dead’ to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive. But then the hacks solved that problem. Instead, they began with names the public knew were alive and came to the reckless assumption that this meant they would always have something interesting to say.
A few minutes of Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg will put the kybosh on that idea. The show’s vulgarity relies on what has become the fashionable indifference among journalists towards facts. If the first priority is impact and to be talked about, serious politics is never going to be on the agenda. So it’s showbiz, and it is much more conducive to good audience figures to interview charlatans and colourful mountebanks who make things up, or blithely lie as they go, knowing Ms Kuenssberg is unlikely to challenge them.
Hence La Kuenssberg’s abrupt dismissal of Ed Davey, when he tried to introduce a few ideas and so tried to ambush her carefully choreographed disdain of his party and his European credentials. That such a thing should happen on her show, she seemed to suggest, was a singular act of disloyalty on his part to the greater glory of her and her coterie.
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This week’s murmur of approval goes (not for the first time) to Chris Hinchliff (NE Herts). Pecksniff has applauded him in the past for his determination to support his constituency rather than follow the diktat of the whips, and sympathised when those whips suspended him from the Labour Party.
His crime was to have tried to amend the government’s planning bill to enshrine protection of rare chalk streams in law. (He has two or three in his constituency, and like others, they are being choked and killed by sewage.) His behaviour was described as “knobheadery” by one party manager, and “hedgehog Hezbollah” by others.
He tells the Guardian yesterday: “That is the sort of language we persistently see from a certain set of people involved in politics for whom it’s all a personality thing, it’s all a game… There seems to be a certain set of people who behave in here more like a private schoolboy drinking club than serious professional people thinking about how to improve the country.”
The irony is that, the day after he was stripped of the party whip, they inserted amendments much like his own.
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Before we go, Tom Hunt the former Tory MP for Ipswich has been expelled from the party. It is all rather a mystery. His flirting with Reform was well known, so hardly seems likely to have been the subject of the kind of confidential investigations we are led to believe have taken place. There was something that allegedly took place before Mr Hunt became an MP… but no doubt all will eventually be revealed.
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Thanks this week to Mark Chadbourn, Liz Crosbie, Karl Whiteman, Celina Błędowska, Malcolm Lynn, James Porter, Jess Knopp and Yasmin Gregory.
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