Restore’s Pathetic False Flag

We’ve heard stories before about how in the 1930s the Nazis invented attacks on their members to garner sympathy with the public, and used false flags to force the Weimar Republic to clamp down harder on leftists. The Reichstag Fire was blamed on Communists and was used as a pretext for the Enabling Act of 1933, which granted wide powers to Hitler and his cabinet, effectively banned opposition parties, like the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), and laws were strictly enforced without the involvement of the Reichstag. It is now widely accepted that the Reichstag Fire was a false flag incident. The closest Restore has got to a false flag is a spilt cup of coffee.

Thankfully, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Party isn’t in power, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t invent acts of, what it calls, political violence. Yesterday was a case in point. Local anti-racism activists challenged and then chased out Restore activists who were canvassing for the forthcoming Holborn and St Pancras by-election. Restore activist and former neo-Nazi, Lewis Holmes, who’s leading the campaign, claimed he’d been “scalded” by a “communist”. It turns out that Holmes had spilt coffee on himself, and blamed an unknown person for his clumsiness. As false flags go, this one was pathetic. Nonetheless, sensing his Reichstag Fire moment, Lowe amplified claims of unruly and violent ‘communists’ on social media in the hope that mainstream media would pick up the story. They didn’t.

Many neo-Nazis have been attracted to Restore’s message of ‘remigration’ and are current members of the party. So, it’s rather rich that Lowe should complain about his members being labelled as Nazis when his party is quite literally full of them.

You will often see Lowe’s supporters on social media issuing death threats and threats of violence whenever anyone dares to challenge them. If they’re not issuing threats, they’re expressing violent fantasies about mass murdering people of colour, Muslims and Jews. Alternatively, they’ll talk about “remigration” without understanding the real world implications of their dystopian fantasy. Here’s a selection of the many posts Lowe made to his Facebook feed on Saturday.

The talk of “private security” is interesting but chilling. Are any of you getting Sturmabteilung (Brownshirt) vibes from this statement?

“Dark times” indeed.

Let’s talk for a moment about Lewis Holmes. Holmes has close links to prominent neo-Nazi, Patrick McGinnis of the National Housing Party, who once published an online video with the title “Jewish ideas are destroying our country.” According to The Morning Star, McGinnis himself oversaw candidate vetting for Holborn and St Pancras. But McGinnis isn’t the only former British National Party (BNP) member running operations in the constituency.

Restore’s campaign photographs in the constituency also include Michael Newland, once a leading figure in the fascist British National Party and Callum Barker, a former activist in the fascist Homeland organisation and a leader of anti-refugee protests in Epping.

Restore’s candidate, who Lowe announced three days ago, is Tyler Johnson, a junior City lawyer. McGinnis filed Johnson’s formal nomination. We need to know what connection Johnson has to the far-right beyond the façade of Restore.

Stand Up To Racism exposed Holmes for the fraud he is.

We caught the moment Restore activist @lewisrholmes was "scalded by boiling liquid" yesterday while being confronted about his relationship with neo-Nazi Patrick McGinnis. As you can see, he spilt the coffee on his hand while putting it in a bin. He refused to answer our question pic.twitter.com/HsSIDHamuE

— Stand Up To Racism (@AntiRacismDay) September 20, 2026

It’s no secret that the people who would have once been members of now moribund far-right parties like the BNP or National Front have been drawn to Restore and Lowe’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. For them, Reform is too soft. They want a party that not only expresses violence, but one that’s prepared to act on violent words and fantasies. Only last week, I saw one Restore supporter express an interest in creating death camps for asylum seekers and ‘undesirables’.

But Restore is far from being a unified organization, and there are internal tensions within the party, which Lowe seems neither capable of addressing nor resolving. He loves being an MP with all the prestige that comes with the role, but being a capable party leader appears to be beyond his limited range of talents. It’s worth recalling his second tenure as chairman of Southampton FC, which saw the club enter administration and relegated from the Premiership (after eight managers came and went). Lowe had also attempted to influence team selections and, in what turned out to be one of his final acts as chairman, install former England rugby coach, Clive Woodward, as first team manager. Angry supporters and shareholders eventually forced Lowe to resign.

Restore’s members, for all their talk of “violent communists” are driven by loathing and violent fantasies, and a belief that they can revive the British Empire. In their minds, all they need to do is deport millions of people from the country and their problems will evaporate. It’s as naïve as it is absurdly fantastical. It’s worth remembering that many of the far-right parties that emerged in the early 1960s, sprang from groups like the League of Empire Loyalists. The idea of reviving the empire never went away and this sentiment has found a home within parties like Restore, Reform and UKIP.

Although Restore is numerically weak in terms of parliamentary representation, its extra parliamentary activities are cause for concern. There are signs that individual Restore members are involved in Patriot Platform, for example. Restore, like Reform UK, the party from which it split, has overlapping aims and objectives with “Danny Tommo’s” street thugs. We already know that several Reform councillors are members of Patriot Platform. Thus, it is reasonable to infer that Restore councillors are also involved.

There needs to be a political and cultural response to Britain’s far-right. A law and order response, which is typical of this Labour government, will be insufficient.

It’s Not About Having Ideas Of Quality. It’s About ‘Triggering The Left’: Social Media And The Far-Right

If you’ve ever dealt with supporters of far right parties like Reform, Restore and even the godawful UKIP on social media, you’ll know that they don’t get involved in political discourse to make things better, but to beat their opponents with poor quality arguments and adjectivally overloaded and puerile insults.  For example, you’ll never hear supporters of these parties talking about how we need more housing, or how we need to reduce NHS waiting times, or how we need to make public transport and energy prices cheaper. Oh no. None of those things matter at all. What really matters to the far right and their supporters is ‘triggering the left’ or what they see, in their minds, as the left. Their idea of the left is a Schrodinger’s left, which is at once powerful and weak. In their minds, the left is also responsible for the lack of housing, jobs and so on. They will never utter the name name of Margaret Thatcher in relation to crisis of capitalism, deindustrialization, or the housing shortage. Yet, it was her government that implemented policies that directly led to the housing crisis, and an economy based almost entirely on services.

If far-right parties like Reform, Restore, or even the godawful UKIP had compelling ideas of quality, why would they resort to using bots to post banal messages like “Vote Reform”? Bots don’t vote. Bots don’t do much of anything, really. The answer is that none of these parties have any ideas beyond ‘stopping the boats’ or ‘remigration’ and think they can flood timelines with poorly-reasoned views and violent thoughts. The left doesn’t seem to use bots. At least, I haven’t come across any. I’m not saying that the left doesn’t. I just haven’t seen any and why would they? Because generally the left has an analysis and asks the right questions, and will propose nuanced solutions. Left also has a message… unlike Reform, Restore, or the godawful UKIP, who offer simple dystopian solutions to complex problems. Nuance simply isn’t possible in the minds of binary thinkers.

It’s, therefore, no surprise that supporters of these parties can’t articulate anything beyond immigration or stopping the boats, because the leaders of these parties are incapable of articulating anything else. They have no solution to the very things that I’ve outlined: housing, public transport, energy and the cost of living. So, their supporters never talk about those things.

Many supporters of parties like Reform, Restore and even the godawful UKIP, seem to have irrational and, frankly, conspiratorial views about the Fabian Society. Yet, none of them really know what the Fabian Society does, but they accuse them of all kinds of things including being ‘far-left’. which is quite bizarre because there’s nothing revolutionary about the Fabian Society. Even their name tells us as much. The Fabians took their name from Roman general and statesman, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, who preferred to harass and harry his enemy rather than engage in a direct conflict or set piece battles. Fabians aren’t revolutionaries; they’re reformists and, yes, early in their history they were attracted – as many other people were – to the pseudoscience of eugenics. Their support for eugenics gradually waned during the 1930s and 1940s. Currently, the only parties that are most vocal about eugenics are those of the far-right, like Reform.

If you find yourself in an online exchange with a far-right supporter, you’ll notice that, not only are their insults juvenile, but they will also talk endlessly about ‘facts’ and yet, they will dismiss evidence out of hand. You’ll also be struck by their weak arguments and their over-reliance on stories and feelings. In their rush to get one over on you, their paucity of arguments will lead them to issue threats of violence or death threats. That’s their limit. In a battle of wits, the far-right will always lose because their sense of humour is limited to posting laughing emojis in response to reports of asylum seekers drowning in the channel, or the story of another Black person being lynched in the Deep South. This is an exemplar of the superiority theory of humour, which fell out of favour with philosophers in the 18^th century. Yet, sneering superiority remained as part of comedic discourse for much longer and continues to linger among certain comedians to this day. Punching down, for them, is always easier than incongruity, or punching up. For them, the very idea of ridiculing the powerful is tantamount to spitting in the face of God.

There’s an emptiness among supporters of far-right parties that they can only fill with sadism, cruelty, racism, sexism, misogyny, ableism and thuggery. They literally have nothing else to offer but loathing and violent fantasies. That can’t be good for one’s mental health.

Empathy, Humanitarianism And Simon Jones: The Bad Faith Reportage Of The BBC

Simon Jones’ faithful reporting of Farage’s words

I’ve written many times about the bias at the BBC on this blogsite. On Tuesday, Simon Jones, their reporter who stands on the white cliffs of Dover looking out at sea for ‘small boats’ and ‘migrants’, was reporting from Dover and then Portsmouth. He noted that the RNLI was, in the words of those whom he describes as protesters, a ‘taxi service’ ferrying migrants who, apparently, aren’t in any mortal danger, to the shores of Britain. What struck me about his report was that the way Jones said that the RNLI is facing “increased scrutiny”. This framing shows us how the BBC not only misinforms their audiences but also seeks to legitimize acts of violence that come from the far right. The BBC has a long history of platforming far-right figures. For example, when John Tyndall of the National Front was interviewed by the BBC in the 1970s, he was given plenty of space to air his lies and racist views, while the interviewer didn’t challenge him once. Not much has changed. Indeed, the far-right’s claim that they’re not violent and that the violence comes from the Left is currently being repeated on social media.

The RNLI’s mission is to save lives at sea. That’s it. In fact, there’s a programme on the BBC called Saving Lives At Sea, which follows the work of the RNLI around the British Isles. Prince Peter Kropotkin, the architect of anarchist-communism, greatly admired the RNLI, and used it as a real world example of mutual aid and voluntary assistance. The RNLI renders its assistance with no questions asked. What our masked friends dressed in black seem to think is that humanitarianism can be selective. It cannot be selective. If you are the sort of person who thinks that leaving people to drown in The English Channel is a way of addressing, what you believe to be a so-called migrant crisis, then you need to look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself if you’re human.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Nazis exposed the German people to greater levels of cruelty and sadism, until large swathes of the population became desensitized to it. The release of Gad Saad’s book titled Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind provides the more cerebral members of the far-right with a handy intellectual justification for cruelty, racism, and xenophobia. Only a fascist (or a Revisionist Zionist) could come up with a title so blatantly absurd, cruel and sadistic. Saad is listed as an ‘evolutionary psychologist’ and he’s currently a professor of marketing at the University of Mississippi, where you will also find the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, a supposed ‘research institute’ of which Douglas Carswell is president and CEO. Carswell, you may recall, said in 2022 that all Muslims should be expelled from Britain.

Saad’s book has also been endorsed by Elon Musk, and that speaks volumes. Musk spends most of his time on X telling his followers how they need to be violent because ‘violence is coming to them’. For a man who’s purportedly the richest person on earth, Musk, rather than use his wealth to do good works (think of Victorian philanthropy), pits people against each other for his own entertainment. His attitude reminds me of the ‘Battle Royal’ chapter in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in which a group of Black boys are forced to box each other blindfolded for the entertainment of drunken local white businessmen. Replace the drunken white businessman with ketamine-addled tech bosses and the same picture emerges.

By telling viewers that the RNLI was ‘facing scrutiny’ Jones was doing three things. First, he misinformed the audience. Second, he was making the unstated claim that the RNLI’s role as a life-saving organization, should be scrutinized because they’re saving the lives of people whom the ‘protesters’ see as ‘invaders’. Third, he used the word ‘scrutiny’ to legitimize the offensive and unpleasant discourses of the far-right with regards to the RNLI.

In 2020, the Press Gazette reported that a news item by Simon Jones on BBC Breakfast had attracted more than 8,000 complaints. The BBC responded in typical fashion,

“This report was a stark illustration of the significant risks some people are prepared to take to reach the UK.

“Channel crossings is a topic of huge importance and we always endeavour to cover the story sensitively.

Yet, the BBC’s stories of small boat crossings aren’t treated sensitively. They’re often used as rage bait for the drooling hordes of far-right sadists looking for their daily fix of outrage. Contrast this to the way in which groups like Patriot Platform are reported. In fact, we’re usually told by the news orgs that these thugs have “legitimate concerns”. If you spend any time on social media, and read posts by soi-disant patriots, they’re spreading conspiracy theories, posting hate speech and racist memes, and making death threats. Is that what they mean by “legitimate concerns”? Meanwhile, the very real concerns of ethnic minorities aren’t even entertained. Since the Brexit referendum, there’s been an increase in the numbers of recorded hate crimes, and an upsurge in the number of incidences of workplace racism.

So, where did Simon Jones come from? Cast your minds back 6 or 7 years ago when Nigel Farage was filming himself at the Kent coast and posting his videos to the BBC. Here’s the first one he filmed and then sent to the BBC, which was also posted on social media:

EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE OF BEACH LANDING BY MIGRANTS

Shocking invasion on the Kent Coast taken this morning. pic.twitter.com/iuzAF0Uxz4

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) August 6, 2020

Note, if you will, the hyperbole. This is probably the first recorded incident of the use of the word ‘invasion’ to refer to small groups of asylum seekers landing on the coast.

Here’s another:

Suddenly, the BBC stopped showing Farage’s videos and started using Jones for the same purpose. Does he have links to Farage and Reform?  If not, then it’s one hell of a coincidence.

Fascist Showdown At Dover

Fascists love a crisis. In fact, they love them so much that they actually manufacture them in the language and the imagery that they use. They tell themselves and anyone who will listen the same stories about the country not being “recognizable” or, as the Patriot Platform (I won’t link to it for obvious reasons) website says: “We see our country slipping away—our streets changed, our traditions eroded and ordinary people pushed aside in their own land”. The use of language here is overly dramatic and veers into hyperbole.  It’s also clear that the far-right aren’t familiar with Heraclitus who, among other things, said that change is inevitable. If nothing ever changed, we’d still be living in caves or trees and conducting human sacrifices to placate angry gods. Given how many far-right types like to dress up as Knight’s Templars, it would be fair to say that they wouldn’t mind living in Peter Thiel’s techno-feudalist dreamworld.

They hate change – even when it happens to their physical bodies. They will eventually grow old and die. Change, whatever form it comes in, is inevitable. Yet, they continue to resist what is inevitable. Far-right outfits like Danny Tommo’s Patriot Platform like to talk about “traditions” but it isn’t clear what traditions they’re talking about. Even if you were to ask them directly what they mean by traditions, you’re likely to get a muddled, incoherent reply about Christianity or “free speech”. They’ll tell you that Britain is a “Christian country”, and while it may have an established church, Britain is not a Christian theocratic state, and it never has been. The strain of Christianity that the likes of PP believes in rejects charity, which is a central tenet of the faith.

Yesterday’s mob event in Dover closed the port for several hours as hundreds of masked men, dressed in black descended on the town. The police were apparently caught off guard as 500 men in uniforms swarmed streets and roads leading to the port. Lorries were backed up along the A20, and holidaymakers arriving and departing the port were trapped in their vehicles. Much of the media, but especially the BBC, called the mob event a “demonstration” and a protest, and the mob itself was inaccurately described as “protesters” – even though they were wearing uniforms. Here’s what BBC News’s Simon Jones, the man who stands on the coast hoping for small boats to come into view, said on X:

Masked protest in Dover. https://t.co/GhSySjLShl

— Simon Jones (@SimonJonesNews) September 5, 2026

It wasn’t a protest. It was a thuggish show of strength that was intended to intimidate people. He would do well to familiarise himself with Section 1 of the Public Order Act 1936, which prohibits the wearing of political uniforms. It states that:

Prohibition of uniforms in connection with political objects.

(1)Subject as hereinafter provided, any person who in any public place or at any public meeting wears uniform signifying his association with any political organisation or with the promotion of any political object shall be guilty of an offence:

Provided that, if the chief officer of police is satisfied that the wearing of any such uniform as aforesaid on any ceremonial, anniversary, or other special occasion will not be likely to involve risk of public disorder, he may, with the consent of a Secretary of State, by order permit the wearing of such uniform on that occasion either absolutely or subject to such conditions as may be specified in the order.

Yet, the local police were either powerless to stop them or simply didn’t care. We already know that the police attract members of far-right parties. In 2021, Benjamin Hannam was found guilty of membership of a proscribed terrorist group, National Action. He was subsequently dismissed from the Metropolitan Police. He was caught; there are likely many more officers who are either members of far-right groups or hold sympathetic views of them.

The mob’s leader, Danny Tommo (real name Daniel Thomas), is often described as “Tommy Robinson’s right-hand man”. According to a July article on Searchlight, Thomas was facing criminal charges over his “Dover exploits”. His court appearance at Margate (why?) in August was reported by Searchlight:

On April 6, he was arrested while livestreaming in areas of the port that were prohibited to the public. At the time, he was banned from entering the ports of Dover, Folkestone and Ramsgate.

Tommo, described as an anti-migrant activist, pleaded guilty to entering a restricted harbour area at Western Jet Foil, a short-term holding facility for small boat asylum seekers, without lawful authority or reasonable excuse on 31 March.

But he pleaded not guilty to the other five charges, which included using threatening or abusive words or behaviour to cause distress on 1 April, and trespassing on Dover Western Docks and the Dunkirk Jetty “to film and shout at vessels arriving” on 6 April, as well as using racially abusive words or behaviour to cause harassment or distress.

He now faces trial, with the next hearing in October.

He could face up to six months’ imprisonment if he is convicted of all the offences.

It’s clear from this report that Thomas breached the ban that was imposed on him. It’s also possible that he will face more charges arising from Saturday’s mob event.

For their part, Reform politicians have been quick to distance themselves from the Dover mob event. Here’s Richard Tice:

Disgraceful masked Dover blockade should have been stopped by police immediately

This is not lawful protest, it is militia style intimidation

Regardless of politics, left or right, this must be stopped urgently or thugs will feel emboldened https://t.co/481a0cOuWN

— Richard Tice MP 🇬🇧 (@TiceRichard) September 5, 2026

Rupert Lowe didn’t take too kindly to Tice’s protest.

Insulting concerned patriots is not going to achieve anything.

— Rupert Lowe MP (@RupertLowe10) September 6, 2026

“Concerned patriots” = white supremacist thugs.

So, what will this Labour government do to challenge these far-right groups? Labour will do as it’s always done: nothing. So far, Andy Burnham has offered no solutions and in that respect, he’s about as effective as ‘Sunny’ Jim Callaghan, who did nothing to counter the rise of the far-right in the late 1970s.Then, the resistance to the far-right came from Rock Against Racism, the Anti-Nazi League, Anti-Fascist Action and grassroots anti-fascist and anti-racist groups. If you’re waiting for a Labour government to protect you, you’ll be dead by the time they get around to doing anything.

Words As Amulets

Anyone who’s made even a cursory study of the occult will know that occultists and practitioners of Crowleyian magick, will use words of power, which are inscribed on magic amulets. Words of power have their origins in ancient texts and mystic practices like the Qabala (or Kabbalah), the Bible and alchemy. Our politicians, some of whom are master illusionists, understand the power of words, and certain words are used in ways to invoke powerful forces or, alternatively, distract from more pressing issues like poverty and the lack of housing. So, it is with Reform after last night’s expose into foreign donations being made to the party.

Within minutes of Channel 4 News’ film, Reform quickly resorted to using the word ‘hoax’ to dismiss evidence. It’s a word of power. This morning, they rather predictably claimed that the exposé was an “establishment stitch-up”. The word “entrapment” has also been deployed, despite not being relevant in this case. This use of language and the tactics Reform has adopted come directly from the lexicon of their hero and master alchemist, Donald Trump. Trump has often brandished the word ‘hoax ‘to dismiss serious allegations of wrongdoing, and the body of evidence against him. And here’s another point: whenever one challenges the reactionary views of Reform’s supporters and apologists on social media, they will throw the word “fact”, at you, and yet if you show them evidence they dismiss it out of hand – as they have done this morning. They’re not interested in facts unless they’re decontextualized or cherry-picked to serve a political purpose. Words like “facts” are deployed in the same way an alchemist uses magic amulets to ward off demons. They feel that by rendering certain words into amulets, they will magically ward off the ‘evil spirits’ of scrutiny and public interest.

Any minute now, a Reform spokesman will start whining about ‘the boats’ or ‘immigration’ in an effort to distract the public’s gaze from their criminality. Suella Braverman has just appeared on the BBC News Channel, complaining to Joe Pike that Verbatim Investigations were an “activist” company and no one should take them seriously. But the evidence is on film for all to see. It cannot be unseen.

This morning we also heard that James Orr and James Jukes, who were both caught on camera, had resigned. For his part, Orr is a eugenicist who has close ties to American evangelists. He also has connections to Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin. Orr previously hosted an event which was attended by Charles Murray, one of the co-authors of The Bell Curve, which asserts inter alia that Black people are ‘less intelligent’ than White people.

Our media needs to ask some probing questions about the far-right eugenicist movement that has dug itself, tick-like, into Cambridge University’s corpus. Thus far, they are doing their best to conceal Reform’s intellectual backers from public view. They can’t keep covering for Reform forever.

The Killing Of A Black Man

I’m reblogging this from Carol Cadwalladr’s Substack. It’s a long read but worth it.

https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/the-killing-of-a-black-man?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1ju273

Starmer To Leave Parliament

That went well

So, Keir Starmer is resigning from the Commons after telling us that he would retire to the backbenches and continue to serve his constituents. Time was, when former Prime Ministers would spend more than a few weeks on the backbenches before either retiring or being ‘kicked upstairs’ to the House of Lords. These days, former PMs spend as little time as possible on the backbenches before joining the speaking circuit and taking up a ‘non-executive’ director appointment with a merchant bank.

One thing we need to remember about Starmer is that he’s only been an MP for 11 years. When he first became Prime Minister, he’d only been an MP for 9 years. Similarly, when David Cameron became PM, he’d only been in parliament for 10 years. Never has British politics had such inexperienced political leaders running the country. If we contrast Starmer and Cameron with two previous PMs, we can see that before the 1979 general election, Margaret Thatcher had been an MP for 21 years before entering Downing Street. James Callaghan had been an MP for 20 years before becoming PM in 1976. He’d also had extensive political experience: for example, he served as a junior minister in the Attlee government and was a shadow cabinet member under Hugh Gaitskell. After the 1964 general election, Harold Wilson appointed Callaghan to the role of Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was later appointed Home Secretary in 1967 and was responsible for the controversial (some might say ‘racist’) Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1968). It’s no surprise, therefore, that while Callaghan was PM, Britain saw the rise of the far-right on the streets.

Starmer’s time as PM will be remembered for his rudderless leadership, the stripping away of civil liberties, support for the genocide in Gaza, and his willingness to pander to the far-right. With such a massive majority, Starmer could have done a great deal to address the structural social and economic problems that have long dogged with country, but he chose not to. That will be his legacy.

Burnham, while being more personable and telegenic, isn’t all that different to Starmer. For example, after talking about nationalizing water, he’s quietly dropped the idea. He’s also adopted a similar line towards Israel as his predecessor. As for the far-right, I see no attempt to curb them or directly challenge the increase in racism and anti-Muslim hatred.

Ralph Miliband was right about the Labour Party.

Life On Gilligan’s Island (Part 52) or Andrew Gilligan Isn’t A Fit Person To Be A Journalist

Andrew Gilligan is a cheap hack and his latest article for The Spectator is a testament to that. In the early 2010s, I wrote over 50 blogs about Gilligan and many of those blogs were about his cynical and snide articles for The Daily Telegraph and its now defunct blog site. I also wrote about his use of sockpuppets, one of which was named ‘Kennite’, and claimed to be a big fan of Ken Livingstone (Kennite, geddit?).

Gilligan frequently leans into crypto-racism. Take this blog from 2012.

Gilligan makes reference to the colour of people’s skin in his blog as I have noted many times. He tends to make liberal use of phrases like “white establishment”. In this blog, he continues to insist that Livingstone is linked to “Islamic extremism”.  If you look at the comments on the blog, you can see that it has attracted the usual suspects (“Groovybear”, the ironically-named “imrankhan” and “cartimandua”). I won’t bother quoting any of them here.

Gilligan is also remembered for his part in Dr David Kelly’s mysterious death in 2003. In the Hutton Inquiry, Gilligan’s original accusation was discovered to have been unfounded.

When he was forced to leave the BBC in 2004, Gilligan started working for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, and churned out smear story after smear story, mostly about Ken Livingstone, but also about other Labour figures who had apparently crossed him. There was a rumour that Gilligan went after Labour figures with such vigour because he was hoping for a job as Ed Miliband’s press secretary, but was pipped at the post by Bob Roberts. He also spent quite a lot of time and effort attacking Lutfur Rahman, the leader, now mayor, of Tower Hamlets Council. Gilligan’s use of language is also quite instructive: he used the term, “sexed up” to sensationalize the dossier that led us to a disastrous war in Iraq. It was this, and the sloppy transcription of his interview with Dr Kelly that cost him his job at the BBC.

In 2004, Boris Johnson, under whom he would later serve as London’s ‘Cycling Czar’, offered him a gig at The Spectator. He continues to write for that publication, and it is his most recent article for that outlet that concerns The Cat.

First, we need to understand that Gilligan was part of the same racist chorus that attacked Prof Jason Arday. Filled with disgust and loathing, he’s now turned his attention to calling for the dismissal of Lord Simon Woolley, the Principal of Homerton College at the University of Cambridge. Why? Because during the vigil for Prof Arday, Woolley had the temerity to use language that didn’t sit well with white colonialists and their lackeys in whose minds Black people should be seen and not heard – if at all. Here’s what he wrote in his article:

A man stands at a rally in Trafalgar Square, ranting that Jason Arday was murdered in a ‘lynching’ and ‘public assassination’ by ‘rabid wolves’ and ‘dogs of hell’ who had decided that ‘Jason doesn’t deserve to be alive’.

Some rabble-rouser from the lower shallows of race activism? No, or at least not solely. The man who said these inflammatory words is a peer of the realm and the principal of Homerton College, Cambridge: Simon Woolley, Lord Woolley of Woodford. His behaviour at the rally last week, surely unprecedented for someone in those roles, is further evidence that unsuitable appointments at Cambridge did not begin with Jason Arday.

Character assassination is a Gilligan speciality. For someone who has a degree in History from Cambridge University, Gilligan seems remarkably ignorant of figurative speech and, more importantly, rhetoric. This is odd, given that his erstwhile boss, Boris Johnson, was fond of using soaring, quasi-classical rhetoric – often badly so.

Here he paints a picture of a sinister Black cabal that allied itself with an Islamist ‘hate preacher’. Remember, if you can’t make it stick, accuse your quarry of ‘Islamism’.

Woolley was part of the supporting claque regularly rolled out by Livingstone to attack his opponents as racist and defend the mayor against any race-related controversy. One example was when Livingstone hosted the anti-gay and anti-Semitic hate preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi (some kinds of bigot are allowed, it would seem). During the grants scandal Woolley was also the key media defender of Jasper, who he calls his ‘hero and mentor’ and with whom he still maintains close links. He used the same tactics as he has with journalistic critics of Arday, accusing me of trying to murder Jasper with a campaign of lies. My peers disagreed, giving my stories the top award in British print journalism that year, and Jasper, happily, is still with us.

Here, Gilligan goes for the ‘wrong kind of Black man’ angle. As Fanon reminds us, “For not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man” (Fanon, 1986: pp82-83). Any Black person who doesn’t perform according to the expectations of the – to use Gilligan’s formulation – white establishment is automatically placed under suspicion. How dare they think for themselves?

But, like Arday, Woolley is, in my opinion, underqualified for the job he has been given. The advert for the Homerton principal demanded ‘an outstanding record of leadership and achievement in their field’. Woolley’s predecessor, Geoff Ward, was a lecturer, then professor, then department head, with an extensive academic publication record, as well as a published poet and novelist.

In this paragraph, Gilligan demonstrates a bitterness and spite that comes from his mediocrity.

True, non-academics are often appointed to lead colleges at Cambridge. But the university’s other current non-academic heads of house – former ambassadors and permanent secretaries, a former head of the BBC World Service, a former army general, a former chief executive of a top-ten charity, a former chief medical officer – have without exception led more people, achieved more, or attained higher rank than Woolley.

Like many of his fellow Fleet Street hacks, Gilligan is white and sees Black people demanding equity as problematic and ‘uppity’. He prefers to see to Black people playing up to white expectations of Blackness. Gilligan also confuses Islam with Islamism. Thus, in his mind, all Muslims are ‘Islamists’.

If there are three things that Gilligan hates, it’s Muslims, Black people who stand up for themselves, and the remnants of the British parliamentary left, which he laughably labels as “far-left”. Now that Ken Livingstone has retired, Jeremy Corbyn is now the focus of Gilligan’s anti-left slurs.

In 2016, The Daily Telegraph was compelled to pay substantial damages and publish an apology to Mujibul Islam, whom Gilligan had libelled over a series of defamatory articles. East London News reported:

From 18th January 2014 to 24th April 2015 the Telegraph Media Group and Andrew Gilligan published a series of 19 articles in The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and online at www.telegraph.co.uk which referred to Mujibul Islam, an East London businessman. The articles alleged, in summary, that Mr Islam had been a willing beneficiary of corruption on the part of Lutfur Rahman while Mr Rahman was the mayor of Tower Hamlets. It was suggested that Mr Rahman had enabled Mr Islam to purchase the Old Poplar Town Hall building from Tower Hamlets council for substantially less than its true value as a corrupt reward for Mr Islam’s political support. It was also suggested that as a further corrupt reward from Mr Rahman, Mr Islam had been able to obtain planning permission for the redevelopment of the Old Poplar Town Hall as a hotel through a means whereby scrutiny from the council’s Planning Committee was improperly bypassed.

In 2018, the Telegraph was forced to pay substantial damages to Mohammed Kozbar, the chairman of the Finsbury Park mosque, over an article in the Sunday Telegraph in which Gilligan claimed Kozbar held “extremist views”.  Middle East Eye reported:

The article highlighted Kozbar’s relationship with Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party and the member of parliament for the north London constituency where the Finsbury Park mosque is located.

In comments reported by the Guardian newspaper, Kozbar said the article had also been an attack on Corbyn.

“It was not just myself who was the target of this article, it was Jeremy Corbyn,” he said.

“The aim was to damage the reputation of Jeremy and make his progress with the Labour party more difficult.”

After the High Court ruled in Kozbar’s favour, the Telegraph removed the article from its website and posted a statement to say that it had “accepted an offer to settle the claim by payment of substantial damages and his costs to be agreed”.

In 2019, the press regulator, IPSO, ruled against a misleading Sunday Times article in which Gilligan claimed that “Ladies’ loos at City landmarks may open to trans women”. Pink News says:

The Sunday Times appears to have removed the online copy of the article.

A correction states: “Our report “Ladies’ loos at City landmarks may open to trans women” (News, July 29) was misleading because it did not accurately explain the current rights of transgender women under the Equality Act.

“Service providers can allow transgender people to use single-sex spaces such as toilets but can exclude them if this can be justified as a proportionate way to achieve a legitimate aim.”

The original article was penned by Andrew Gilligan, who has attracted criticism from LGBT+ campaigners previously for his critical coverage of trans issues.

Gilligan appears to have learnt no lessons from 2003 and is more than happy to keep churning out slop, smears and wilful inaccuracies for the Murdoch press or whichever rag will pay him. The Cat has also learned that Gilligan is also a ‘Senior Fellow and Head of Transport, Infrastructure and Liveable London’ for the right-wing think-tank, Policy Exchange. Make of that what you will.

Reference

Fanon, Frantz (1986). Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto

Nathan Cofnas: ‘After the revolution, I’ll be the head of the dept of eugenics & race science at Harvard’.

Nathan Cofnas who "broke" the story about Jason Arday: "After the revolution, I'll be the head of the dept of eugenics & race science at Harvard'.
byu/Nikhilvoid inBritain

This is chilling stuff.

Cofnas Admits To Revenge For Sacking

https://x.com/i/status/2088588003530711533