"Sorry, but I have a prior engagement," was not a good enough answer from Nigel Farage. He should have explicitly refused to have attended today's event in Trafalgar Square with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon ("Tommy Robinson"), whose boozed up and coked up mob had rioted against the Police at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day, injuring nine Officers, and being found in possession of weapons including a knife, a baton and a knuckleduster. They are no friends of the Police, and nor is any politician who, presented with the opportunity, did not actively tell them to get lost. Farage is a Member of Parliament now.
Any claim to have packed more than 20,000 people into Trafalgar Square should be treated with extreme caution, and any claim in excess of 30,000 should be dismissed out of hand. This was no Durham Miners' Gala, much less was it any Gaza ceasefire march.
The Government's resumption of the funding of UNRWA, its withdrawal of its objections to the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants, and its hints at the restriction of arms sales and at the recognition of Palestine, are all consequences of the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn, of the election of four more Left Independents, of the defeat of Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire, of the halving of Keir Starmer's constituency vote, and of the near-defeat of Wes Streeting, Shabana Mahmood and Jess Phillips.
All of those went back in turn to the Gaza ceasefire marches, which had already brought down Suella Braverman. There has not been such a successful movement from the streets in Britain since the Poll Tax and its Prime Minister were swept away. Trafalgar Square, indeed. But they have already outlawed one-person protests. Do not put it past them to outlaw Independent parliamentary candidacies.
His fanzines are saying over 30,000 even though it's physically impossible.
ReplyDeleteTheir readers would never have him in the house, of course, but he is one of their guilty pleasures. His ostensible enemies also find it useful to indulge him. Useful, and amusing.
DeleteIf they are going to make up an absurd figure, then why stop there? Why not claim that a million people had been in Trafalgar Square?
Westminster Council lists Trafalgar Square's maximum capacity as 19,999, there must be different fire regs or higher insurance premiums if it's 20,000. The papers now claiming "Tommy" had got a crowd the size of the army into it said it was "crammed" when 15,000 anti-lockdown people held a rally there. It hasn't got any bigger since the lockdowns.
ReplyDeleteThey give the capacity as lower even than that when they put the football on the big screens. Whatever that entails, it seems highly unlikely to halve the number of people who could be fitted in. So even 20,000 must be optimistic. Yaxley-Lennon's claims are as absurd as he is, an Irish passport-holder who lives in Spain, detained as an illegal immigrant in Canada, and now detained as a terrorist on Parliament's doorstep.
DeleteI remember hooting when I read a comment from you, it must have been on Guido Fawkes, that Boris Johnson shouldn't have sent the suitcase boy to buy booze from the Co-op on the Strand because the Tesco on Trafalgar Square was closer. 30,000 people is credible at a hell of a push but they'd hardly have been able to breathe, the real figure must have been a lot lower. I still dream of the pies in the Admiralty when I'm not eating them. What a pub, how come you knew about it when you live 300 miles away?
ReplyDeleteWouldn't that be telling?
DeleteSadly, I never did get to Albannach.
They're saying it must hold 30,000 because "Tommy" says he got that many in.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of Fuller's beer, as served by the Admiral?
Yaxley-Lennon has fled the country.
DeleteI am not regionally chauvinistic about beer. Quite the reverse, in fact. The Parcel Yard inside King's Cross station is one of many capital Fuller's pubs.