Cavan Medlock – the Nazi terrorist sentenced a week ago to an ‘indefinite hospital order’ (in other words psychiatric facility detention) for an attempted knifepoint hostage-taking at a solicitors’ office – was, it can now be revealed, at one stage being groomed to join the leadership stream of the UK Independence Party.

In September 2020, Medlock (above, left) entered the offices of a law firm in Harrow, north-west London, and asked to see a solicitor by name. When told that the lawyer was unavailable, he attacked the office receptionist with a six-inch knife.

Fortunately, the receptionist managed to disarm his assailant and restrain him for long enough for other members of staff to help secure Medlock. As well as a sheath for the knife, Medlock’s bag was found to contain handcuffs, gaffer tape and two flags – one a Third Reich swastika and the other a US Confederacy standard.

Medlock’s plan appears to have been to take the solicitor hostage and then, probably, to murder him. The intent to kill was clearly expressed to those restraining Medlock pending the arrival of the police. The solicitor’s ‘crime’, as Medlock perceived it, was that he had at times acted for immigrants and asylum seekers.

The case took so long to come to trial in part because Medlock had, while detained for psychiatric assessment, been examined by at least four expert professionals, and while all of them agreed that he had serious – indeed dangerous – personality disorders, they struggled to give these a tidy diagnostic label (such as ‘paranoid schizophrenia’). There was also considerable doubt whether he was capable of standing trial.

Medlock was, in the end, tried in his absence for two counts he had indicated he would plead not guilty to, as well as others that were not seriously in dispute. His conviction on the two contested counts, on 10 December, enabled the judge to pass a formal sentence that same day – which was, in effect, to detain him indefinitely at the same facility where he was already being held for assessment.

Media coverage of the trial and sentencing led to one of Searchlight’s regular UKIP informants getting in touch with us. Our contact said they recognised both Medlock’s name and photograph from an encounter some nine years ago, at a UKIP set-piece social event.

Our informant identifies Cavan Medlock as having been introduced to them and several others by then London area UKIP chairman John Hellings (above, right) at the area’s 2015 Christmas party, held on 17 December at the Civil Service Club in Great Scotland Yard. Although Medlock was not yet even a member of UKIP, our contact says Hellings was touting him as a desirable figure to take over as chairman of a one of the party’s west or north-west London branches.

Hellings seems to have circulated his new protégé (or ‘stooge’ as our contact puts it) pretty widely at the Christmas bash, because our informant reports that “From brief conversations with Medlock, several of us concluded that he was ‘cracked’ and should certainly not be in UKIP, whatever Hellings might wish.”

That the adoption of Medlock did not turn into the kerfuffle that it promised to be is down to Hellings hoisting himself on his own petard that very same evening. Upon the arrival at the party of UKIP 2015 General Election candidate Nigel Sussman, Hellings called out loudly enough for there to be numerous witnesses to the incident “You north London Jewish c*nt!”

(At least that’s how some eventually reported it. According to our informant, the full remark was “You f•cking north London debt-collecting Jewish c*nt!’)

Attendees were sufficiently shocked that a UKIP disciplinary hearing was rushed into being just two days later, and Hellings was summarily expelled from the party. The incident was hushed up for a while, and only became public knowledge in April 2016, when it was leaked to the press – some say by Sussman himself.

In a way, this was quite useful for UKIP. When asked to comment in April, Sussman told the Jewish Chronicle “It shows that UKIP is not a racist party – unlike Labour, who have not acted against all the antisemitism that has gone on in their party.”  Whether UKIP will remain Judeo-tolerant in their current, rapidly developing evangelical Christian phase is yet to be seen. Indeed, the party’s lead spokesman on everything, the ‘reverend’ Calvin Robinson, has recently been hotly disputing the use of the phrase ‘Judeo-Christian’, claiming that Christianity has nothing to do with Judaism.

With Hellings out of the picture, the bromancing Medlock was, says our informant, never seen or heard from again in UKIP circles, which they probably now consider a very lucky let-off. The idea that it might easily have been a man from the party’s leadership stream who was this month banged up for being, in layman’s terms, a batshit-crazy, knife-wielding terrorist should be giving a few Kippers the shivers.

”We came a close second. The Conservatives got 1,304 votes. We got 977. Nearly a thousand votes in 4 weeks. We now have 5 months until the next one.”

Thus trumpeted Reform candidate Tom Allison (above, centre, with Nigel Farage), proud of his losing bid to become an Essex County Councillor on Thursday. It was a by-election for the Chelmsford-adjacent ward of Stock, to fill a vacancy caused by the death of a popular Conservative councillor.

If the council had their way, we don’t think there would have been an election at all. The ’5 months’ referred to in Allison’s sad little tweet is the length of time before the ward is next contested in a regular election. The poll was only held because someone thought it would benefit them to call one on a technicality. We wonder who that might have been…

Unsurprisingly, the Stock electorate were not as keen as mustard on plodding down to the polling station on a chilly December day to fill a seat for a few weeks, registering a turnout of just 19%. Even so, Newkip couldn’t pull off the classic snatch-one-in-a-micropoll stunt that they planned on.

Even under the sarniephobic leadership of Kalamity Kemi, the Tories hung on to the ward, and come May Reform will be demolished there.

It was better news for Deform in St Helens where, in a similar low-turnout stunt, they did actually succeed in pickpocketing a seat in the borough council ward of Blackbrook from Labour – again in a by-election occasioned by the death of an incumbent. When we say ’similar’, in fact we mean that the turnout was even lower – just 16%.

No doubt the Bloaters will be cock-a-hoop at this win, but Victor ’Fink’ Floyd’s (above) tally of 546 votes can’t really be claimed as evidence of Nutty Nigel’s delusional claim that Reform are now the country’s main party of opposition. Come next election proper, the seat will surely be back in Labour hands, rejoining the ward’s other two councillors.

Poor desperate Niglet. How he must be hoping for the next POTUS to appoint him ambassador to London. Or at the very least award him the franchise to sell Trump cologne and sneakers in the UK, so he can go AWOL and ABC (Anywhere But Clacton)

The cancellation of the Traditional Britain Group annual Xmas event in London last weekend has kicked off a bitter blame game on the far right, with accusation of betrayal made against one of the far right’s most prominent figures.

The fact that the secret venue of the meeting became known to their opponents is being attributed not to intrepid work by anti-fascists but to duplicity with the ranks of the far right itself. And the man at whom fingers are being pointed is none other than Patriotic Alternative boss Mark Collett (below) who had already fallen out with TBG and increasingly has the hump that they are cosying up to his bitter rivals in the Homeland Party.

Indeed, the fact that recent Homeland Party recruit Pete North was the guest speaker at the TBG event, thus raising their profile even more within the ranks of the far right, only added to Collett’s unhappiness.

It is being claimed that he personally gave permission to a PA member to leak the address.

Homeland was formed out of a breakaway from PA two years ago, and is led by former BNP and PA officer Kenny Smith. Some PA regional branches were virtually wiped out by defections and unlike PA, Homeland is currently increasing its membership.

But UKIP ‘leader’ Nick Tenconi is also coming in for a share of the blame for TBG’s humiliation. Heritage and Destiny, the self-styled nazi ‘intellectual’ magazine, is already pointing out that in recent years the far right have been able to hold their events without much in the way of physical disruption, unlike during the 1980s and 1990s, and that the TBG cancellation marks a departure from that.

 Tenconi’s gang attack on a Stand Up To Racism meeting, in an Aldershot church the week before (below), is being seen as ill-considered and reckless, and threatens to start a tit-for-tat war that the fascists don’t particularly relish.

The row has also resurrected gossip among the far right about how Collett often avoids the handcuffs while those around him end up in the excrement. Though doubtless it is his proficiency at karaoke, rather than anything else, that has earned him the nickname ’Canary Collett’.

UKIP ‘Leader’ (he’s still unelected) Nick Tenconi has go the hump that a meeting he was due to address in Southampton has been cancelled. It is, he says, all down to left-wing intimidation.

As usual he’s lying.

He booked the venue (The View Bar) as ‘Nick’ for ‘After Work Drinks’ So, not unreasonably, when the pub discovered it was booked under false pretences, they shut it down. And good for them.

Tenconi, as we know, is now best bae with ‘Tommy Robinson’ with whom he is enjoying (at a distance given that TR is banged up) a far-right-handed ‘bromance’. We wonder how long it will be before it becomes a brotherly threesome…

But he plans to return to S’ton in the New Year, and is full of body-building bluster: “We will be returning to Southampton in January. We will meet the soldiers of anarchy and chaos head on. “There will be no mercy, no diplomacy, and no surrender shown to domestic terrorists. The battle rages on and victory in war will be ours.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah… And Southampton’s anti-fascists will be ready for you.