Reform UK and the "Far Right"

 

It came as a surprise to learn that the BBC had apologised for referring to the Reform UK party, led by Richard Tice, seen above, as being "far right". It was even more of a surprise to learn that this "far right" description was only mentioned in passing, in a report about the LibDems' Spring conference. As The Guardian says: 

"The apology related to coverage of the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference by the broadcaster, which said it had removed a sentence from an article that did not adhere to its editorial standards".

The right-wing Express, in a nauseatingly gloating article, said; 

"The article, published without a byline, reported: “It has been suggested by some polls that far-Right Reform UK has overtaken the Lib Dems in terms of popularity."

The main reason why the Reform Party demanded an apology was expressed thus by Tice, again quoted in The Guardian:

"Tice said the label of being “far right” would have “huge implications”, if other media outlets used it and suggested that he and others could lose their bank accounts or the ability to get a mortgage. He said his lawyers had also been in touch with other organisations".

Of itself. this is an interesting statement. Tice offers no evidence that any right-wing extremists have ever suffered financial consequences because of their views. The only right-wing "personality" I have ever known to have problems with his bank account is Nigel Farage, honorary president of the Reform Party, who must be delighted at having seen the BBC forced into eating humble pie yet again. The BBC had to apologise to Farage last year for wrongfully reporting why Coutts Bank had closed his account.  Lee Anderson, the ex-Labour councillor, ex-Tory and now Reform MP is even more pleased. As the Express says:

"Lee Anderson says the incident proves that the BBC is seen as anti-Britain and proves the licence fee must be scrapped".

 A two-word epithet in a single sentence is thus hyped up into an exaggerated issue, based upon a complete absence of evidence and weaponised into an attack on the integrity and independence of the BBC. We have been warned. Tice, Farage and 30p Lee will use this incident as a stick to beat the BBC in the forthcoming general election.

But Tice's statement is interesting in another way. He is concerned about the financial implications of being branded "far right", but appears to have no worries about any similarities of Reform UK policies to far right/ neo-Nazi policies. The neo-Nazis want net zero immigration; so do the Reform Party. Reform UK haven't yet called for repatriation of ethnic minorities officially, but...

  ...while the party itself might not advocate repatriation, some Reform UK members, like the neo-Nazis, certainly do. As The Mirror reported yesterday:

"Reform UK has ditched an election candidate after claims emerged he fantasised about deporting “millions” of British citizens to “rid itself of the foreign plague we have been diseased with. Benjamin “Beau” Dade was sacked as Reform UK’s candidate for Swindon South after campaign group HOPE not hate revealed he published an extreme “policy roadmap” for The Mallard website, which the campaign group described as "a little-read far-right outlet". The publication, which was published online in late 2022, called for “millions of foreigners and their dependents” to be expelled from the country".

Mr Dade also wants to purge the Civil Service and ban a number of organisations he detests, such as Hope not Hate and The Guardian. The neo-Nazi groups would surely give him a warm welcome. Please note: Reform UK only ditched this man after Hope not Hate exposed his antics. They seem to have not noticed them previously - and has he been expelled from the party? Hope not Hate has said: 

 

“It is right that Reform UK have dropped Benjamin Dade as their candidate. However, if Reform UK wants to avoid being labelled as far right, they should perhaps work harder at keeping the likes of Dade from their list of candidates".

I think it highly unlikely that Dade is an isolated case. I have no doubt that there are many more like him in Reform UK, UKIP, English Democrats and the Reclaim Party. All these groups, while seeking to avoid being branded "far right", understand very well how important it is for them to appeal to the racist voter. As Reform UK is gathering support from disaffected Tory voters, it is important that they are challenged vigorously about their views during the coming election campaign. 

Rochdale, Gaza and a Fact not Noticed

 

It was quite a deflating experience, returning to the UK last Friday, only to read the news next morning and learning that George Galloway had been elected MP for Rochdale. Mr Galloway is not a person that I admire greatly, and I could only wonder how he had succeeded. But not for long. It has been pointed out to me that the deselection of the Labour candidate left the field open for Galloway's victory. That alone did not bring him victory. Galloway was able to tap into the concerns of the local Muslim population over the Gaza war. As Al-Jazeera commented: 

"Galloway, who has now been a British MP seven times, has been critical of Labour, a party he once belonged to before being ejected for criticising then-Prime Minister Tony Blair over the Iraq war.
His victory underlines the divisions in Britain over Israel’s war on Gaza, which has brought protesters onto British streets in support of both sides".

And that illustrates Galloway's agenda now he has been elected. As has been said, he was expelled from the Labour Party during the tenure of Tony Blair as leader; his sights are now trained on Sir Keir Starmer. And he makes no bones about it. 

“I want to tell Mr Starmer above all, that the plates have shifted tonight...This is going to spark a movement, a landslide, a shifting of the tectonic plates."

He bragged to the BBC that he has 60 candidates from his Workers' Party ready to stand in the next General Election, saying: 

"It's true that every Muslim is bitterly angry at Keir Starmer and his misnamed Labour party - but you would be very foolish if you didn't realise that millions of other citizens of our country are too," he said... Labour is on notice that they have lost the confidence of millions of their voters who loyally and traditionally voted for them, generation after generation."

Relating to the latter part of his statement, Mr Galloway has made similar claims before, when he was a Respect MP. Personally speaking, I do not take these claims too seriously. When Rochdale Labour Party solve their internal problems and stand an approved candidate at the next election, I think that Galloway will lose his seat, as he has done before.

However, there is a section of angry Muslim opinion that will be delighted at Mr Galloway being elected to Parliament, and this tranche of Muslim opinion is that of Hamas.

As I have said previously, it is my belief that Hamas had a well-thought out strategy before launching their murderous onslaught on October 7th last year. Furthermore, I maintain that Hamas must have known that Israel would react with massive force to their provocation, as indeed they had before. If so, then Hamas strategy has succeeded brilliantly. Wikipedia reports that 30, 228 Palestinians have died in the conflict. This slaughter has brought worldwide condemnation of Israel, leading to accusations of genocide. The Palestinian casualties have living relatives who will nurture a hatred of Israel that will provide recruits for Hamas and other terrorist groups for generations. On the wider front, even countries previously friendly to Israel are beginning to become critical - witness the mass demonstrations in the UK. The conflict has widened, with Houthi rebels in Yemen firing rockets at  shipping owned and operated by countries they see as pro-Israeli. Significantly, the Houthis see George Galloway as a future player in the crisis. As Politco says: 

" A senior Houthi leader pitched Britain’s newest member of parliament, George Galloway, as an unlikely mediator in the current Middle East conflict. Assigning blame for the sinking of a British vessel in the Red Sea this weekend, Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi — a representative of the Iran-backed militant group — hit out at British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. And he floated the new pro-Palestinian MP for Rochdale as a potential player in easing tensions".
Mr Galloway has yet to comment.

Besides all this, there is a chance for the conflict to spill over into South Lebanon, perhaps triggering a wider war. There is the added dimension of social conflict in countries like Britain, with an increase in anti-Semitic attacks and Islamophobia, creating a possible breakdown in social cohesion. And, as I have said before and I truly believe: Hamas wanted this.

Further reflection, however, causes me to think that there might be other parties who saw benefits in Hamas launching their attacks on October 7, 2023. It is worth our while examining the network of alliances of which Hamas is a player. Hamas is an ally of Hezbollah. Hezbollah, like the Houthi rebels, has strong links with Iran. Iran has an "understanding" with Russia. And Russia has an ongoing war with Ukraine, which has drawn worldwide condemnation very similar to that of Israeli actions in Gaza. An Israeli incursion into Gaza could draw attention from Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Remarkably, no-one in the media has commented upon the fact that October 7th is Vladimir Putin's birthday.

All a coincidence, surely? 

Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, assassinated October 7th, 2006, Vladimir Putin's 57th birthday.

Yet another coincidence?

A Familiar Theme and a Personal Experience

Followers of this blog will have noticed that there has been no activity here since just before Christmas. This is because I have been abroad for two months, enjoying the weather in the Philippines. We all go on holiday supposedly to "get away from it all". My experience is that sometimes "it" comes looking for you. While away, I read press reports on the horrific triple murder in Nottingham last year, and the subsequent trial. The murderer, one Valdo Calocane (32), was reported as having mental health problems. This raised a red flag for me, as this is symptomatic of an issue in which I have taken an interest for a number of years. Now that I have returned to the UK, I can give this terrible case my full attention.

 As is well known to regular readers of this blog, I have written about the murders carried out by mental health patients of innocent members of the public for a number of years. All the cases that I have featured have been shocking and horrific, but this incident has surpassed them by dint of the number of innocent victims' deaths. All previous cases have followed a pattern: a mental health patient has randomly attacked and killed a single member of the public. In this horrible event, three innocent people have died and three others injured in one day by a single offender, in this case, Calocane. Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar, 19 year-old students, were fatally stabbed on 13 June last year along with Ian Coates, 65, who was a school caretaker approaching retirement. All three were stabbed to death in the street. Calocane took Mr Coates' van and drove into the city centre where he mowed down three pedestrians: Wayne Birkett, Marcin Gawronski and Sharon Miller, injuring them all. Calocane is clearly in a different league from previous attackers, despite sharing similar mental health issues.

Valdo Calocane, seen above, aka Adam Mendes, was born in Guinea-Bissau in 1991.His family moved to Madeira when he was three, and then to Lisbon, Portugal when he was eight. He and his family came to the UK in 2007 when he was 16. According to his defence lawyer and his family, his mental health problems began in 2019.  According to the BBC:

"Elias Calocane told police he first became aware his brother was suffering from mental health problems while he was studying for his degree. He apparently believed he was being spied on by his housemates and by MI6, and that his family was under threat. He was prescribed anti-psychotic medication but stopped taking it, which the prosecution said led to a further decline in his mental health".

Apparently, Calocane even visited MI5 HQ in London to ask them to stop spying on him. 

One aspect of this case shared with previous killings is that Calocane was held by the mental health authorities on several occasions; he also had a habit of not taking his medication - like so many murderers of this type. He had assaulted two workplace colleagues six weeks before murdering the three victims above but, strangely, had not been arrested. He was alleged to have assaulted a police officer, but had failed to attend court for this charge in September, 2022, nine months before his triple murder. Again, he was not arrested.

Another familiar feature is that Calocane has been found guilty of manslaughter, which outraged the families of the victims. Lee Coates, son of Ian, said: 

"The way this case has gone shows the flaws in the justice system because the evidence is there that it was calculated, pre-meditated and therefore should it be murder. I think it is disgusting. He has to spend the rest of his life behind bars, otherwise we have been let down by this country and the judicial system."

As if the families had not suffered enough, they have now been faced with the fact that some police officers have been disciplined for viewing film footage of the incidents. Sky News reports:

"A special constable has been sacked for viewing body-worn camera footage of two students in their final moments after they had been stabbed in the street after a night out... Almost 180 police staff were found to have viewed material relating to the case, with 11 of them having no "legitimate reason" to do so... the special constable was dealt with at an "accelerated misconduct hearing" chaired by the chief constable of Nottinghamshire Police, Kate Meynell, and held in private".

Insult piled upon the injury of grief, in other words. On Tuesday, Barnaby Webber's mother, Emma Webber, described this matter as being "sickening", condemning it as "abhorrent voyeurism and it's inexcusable".

I am, as I have said so many times before, fervently hoping that the perpetrator, in this case Calocane, will never be released. If he is, like so many others of this type, he might well kill again. His sentence is up for review.

Once again, I find myself hoping that this terrible event will lead to a review of how violent mental health patients are being allowed to live in the community. There is no doubt that there are many more potential Valdo Calocanes out there, as I have experienced for myself.

Several months ago, my wife and I were on a bus, heading to a meeting in West London. A dishevelled-looking individual got on, sat alone, and began talking to himself. For no apparent reason, he began cursing the bus driver, eventually leaving his seat and attempting to break through the driver's protective glass in order to attack him. Failing in this, he let himself off the bus, crossed the dual carriageway and threw a traffic cone at the bus. It missed, but lay in the middle of the road, a hazard to traffic. When we reached our destination, I spoke to the driver and offered to provide a witness statement. The driver's reply shocked me. Laughing, he said "No point - things like that happen every day!". 

I am sure that I will be writing about this topic again...