It seems our UKIP-related posts of the last couple of days have prompted yet further desertions from the upper echelons of the party.
Dr Chris Ho (pictured left) a Glasgow-based doctor who had been the party’s Health and Social Care Spokesman, was so dismayed at our story that leader Nick Tenconi had a conviction for kicking someone in the head in a club brawl, that he immediately resigned his post.
He concluded, we are told, that such an association was not a great look for a medical doctor whose colleagues frequently had to treat kick-in-the-head victims.
In fairness, we should say this was not our revelation; we merely reposted a tweet from another UKIP watcher, @ukipunzipped, but it was our repost which came to the attention of Dr Ho, and prompted his departure.
That was followed by the sudden removal of Lester ‘Jeff’ Taylor’s name as Party Director from the leadership page on the UKIP website. The word is, though we cannot confirm it, that he was becoming increasingly concerned at being linked to Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, and our printing yesterday a photo of the two together (pictured right) broke the camel’s back. Party Chairman Ben ‘Rogue Builder’
Walker is reported to be not at all pleased at these latest defections. And he is saying very disobliging things about Searchlight.
Back in 2018, UKIP began tearing itself apart when party leader Gerard Batten appointed Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, as the party’s ‘grooming’ adviser. Batten, who had only recently become leader, was passionately anti-Islam and wanted to move the party firmly in that direction.
But an association with the likes of Yaxley-Lennon was too much for many members, and there was an exodus, including the resignations of most of its 24 MEPs. Batten was effectively forced out in 2019, and his pro-Robinson anti-Islam party faction was banned by the NEC.
But how times change: with the recent departure in droves of prominent, more traditional pro-Brexit, anti-immigration members, the door has been opened once more to conspiracy-obsessed, pro-Robinson, anti-Islam activists who are now filling key positions. The lure of Robinson’s online following and his ability to fleece his supporters repeatedly is obviously proving a powerful lure for Ben Walker, UKIP’s Chairman and controller of the mysterious trust that controls UKIP.
Ironically, Walker was part of the group who forced Batten out in 2019.
UKIP’s current Leader is Turning Point UK CEO and fanatical Christian Nick Tenconi (above, pretending to lead Tommy Robinson’s July demonstration) who was appointed Deputy Leader by Lois Perry before her sudden resignation during the general election. He was then promoted to Leader by the NEC having been a member of the party for only a few weeks.
After she resigned, Perry claimed that one of the things that forced her out was that there was something “sinister” going on “at the very top of the party” where some people, “wanted to go after quite an extreme viewpoint”. Specifically, she said, they wanted a tie-up with Yaxley-Lennon.
This claim is now being borne out.
The party’s newly apointed ‘Lead Spokesperson’ is another very recent recruit, the far-right anti-Islam clergyman Calvin Robinson – ordained only by the obscure Nordic Catholic Church – who is also a close associate of Laurence Fox. In 2023 he was sacked from GB News after publicly supporting Fox when he was dismissed for making grossly misogynistic remarks on air.
And the new Party Director, replacing the recently resigned Pat Mountain, is Lester ‘Jeff’ Taylor, one of the attendees at a meeting (below) with Yaxley-Lennon, ex-UKIP leader Gerard Batten, Laurence Fox, Calvin Robinson and others prior to Yaxley-Lennon’s 27 July ‘Uniting the Kingdom’ march and rally in London. The meeting was to discuss closer ongoing co-operation.
Tenconi, Fox and Batten all appeared alongside Robinson at the rally. Taylor (pictured below with Yaxley-Lennon) had publicly said he would be there, but was not actually spotted on the day.
UKIP’s Lead Spokesman for Wales has, for a while now, been the online Voice of Wales founder Stan Robinson, another admirer of Yaxley-Lennon, whom he welcomed to a UKIP event in Llanelli, Wales, back in March (below) and interviewed on VoW.
Although these are early days, it seems things might be shaping up for at least a partial ‘unite the right’ move which would bring together Yaxley-Lennon/Robinson and some of the more obsessed anti-Islam campaigners who have previously confined themselves to online agitation.
A particularly aggressive Christianity may also be a feature of whatever emerges.
It’s not just the presence in the UKIP leadership of clergyman Calvin Robinson, who appears with tedious regularity in sermonising online discussions with Laurence Fox. Tenconi is a noisy ‘Christ is King’ advocate, and Yaxley-Lennon’s right-hand man, Danny Tommo (Daniel Thomas – the man who broadcast the first incitement to riot after Southport) has recently led aggressive interventions at Speakers Corner (below) where non-Christian speakers have been drowned out by chants of ‘Christ is King’.
in his online posts, Yaxley-Lennon himself is referring increasingly to the need for a return to Christianity.
And only a week ago, Stan Robinson’s Voice of Wales posted that: “…this is a spiritual battle and we need to reclaim Christianity in our communities… Whatever your beliefs, our lifestyle & culture is built on Judeo-Christian values. We need to restore these values and reject anything that doesn’t fall into line with these”.
The one thing getting in the way of this love-in is, of course, money. Both Yaxley-Lennon and Fox enjoy comfortable livings the way things are. Fox has his hedge fund sugar daddy, and Y-L has thousands of mug supporters who will swallow any old tosh he puts out about being persecuted, and throw money at him. Before they commit, both would need some pretty clear assurances that their cosy incomes would not just vanish into the black hole of a Ben Walker-controlled trust.
Remember we mentioned a couple of days ago that there was wild talk from the fringe about Tommy Robinson possibly being a Kremlin asset. You thought we were making it up, didn’t you? Well, it just became a bit less wild or fringe – and it’s got Yaxley-Lennon twitching again.
Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele has been talking to The Guardian. “Steele said security officials would be ‘looking at things like their travel movements, who they’ve been in touch with, monetary transfers, and so on, because that will reveal or not, as the case may be, a pattern of behaviour, which can lead to some conclusions about the degree to which Russia has been interfering in this situation’.”
The ’they’ he’s talking about? Step forward Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage. We have yet to hear from the Fuhrage, but it’s already got TR in a bit of a lather; he’s online today denouncing Steel as “a professional liar and propagandist”.
What do we think? Well, we still don’t really believe it. But we do enjoy the idea of The Fugitive and Frottage sweating on, er, spooky possibilities.’
’Tommy Robinson’ seems to have calmed down just a little. In his latest video missive, he has at least for a moment lost that eyes-popping-out look that is so reminiscent of Arnold Schwarzenneger in the Martian near-vacuum in Total Recall.
It’s all the clean living, apparently. There was a time, he tells us, that he would have reacted to the pressure that he’s under now (everybody has it in for him!) by ”going on a bender”. But he doesn’t do that these days, he says, which will come as a surprise to anyone who has read the sordid details of his recent lost weekend in Canada.
But anyway here he is, up in the clean air of the mountains. We don’t actually see any mountains, but ‘The Fugitive’ is somewhere a bit foresty. Presumably, but not explicitly, still in Greece. Maybe we should be less sceptical about the mountain thing. Granted the size of his ego, maybe he’s ascending to his rightful place on Olympus.
But there’s a limit to suspension of scepticism, and ours is pretty much there at his claim that he has started this video ”four or five hours” into a gruelling mountain trek. The odd thing being that there’s not the teensiest hint of sweat on his face.
Is it yet another of his cons, you may wonder. Or is he Ballyburberry’s answer to Prince Andrew?
The royal roué, you may recall, told Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis: ”I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at and I simply… it was almost impossible for me to sweat.”
Non-perspiration due to being chronically frit shitless? It’s an interesting proposition. But if the prince was terrified about having to act as a decoy for Exocet missiles, what can have rendered the Irishman similarly sweat-free?
Surely not the thought that the net is closing in, and that pretty soon he’s going to be slopping out alongside the halfwits who got taken down during the rioting he inspired, while their hero shirked on a sun lounger in the eastern Mediterranean?
Don’t worry, Stevie. We’re sure your fellow cons will still hold you in the highest esteem. You may even get to share a cell with one who really likes you.
It is reported that a Chester woman has been arrested for an online post containing inaccurate information about the identity of the suspect accused of killing three young girls in Southport. She is alleged to have posted it on the day of the killings.
So, let us not forget that one of the very first people to post, gleefully, the fake, Muslim-sounding name of the alleged Southport killer, was none other than that odious darling of the far-right ‘Hatie’ Katie Hopkins.
On the very day of the stabbings she posted a video online where she said:
“Police have immediately launched into their standard operating procedures for covering up for illegals.
“Number one – hide the identity of the attacker.
“Number two – divert attention away. Say that he was from Cardiff.
“His name is Ali Al Alkati – yeah, a very Welsh sounding name…”
The Chester woman was arrested on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred and false communications.
So, the question is, does Hopkins – who made a guest appearance at Tommy Robinson’s London rally two days before the killings – have a similar case to answer?
Hopefully the CPS will give the matter urgent consideration. Let’s make sure they know about it.
Oh, and by the way, we have archived the video. Just in case…
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