Bartholomew's Notes

From CBS:

Police estimated that around 60,000 people attended the “Unite the Kingdom” march, making it one of the largest right-wing mobilizations seen in Britain in recent years, though smaller than a similar Robinson-led rally last September… Crowds carrying St. George’s Cross and Union flags marched through central London chanting “we want Starmer out” and “Christ is King.” Some wore red “Make England Great Again” hats, echoing President Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

At the Guardian, Ben Quinn described the rally as a “far-right Glastonbury” that was nonetheless “low energy”; the festival vibe was also noted by Fred Sculthorp at the Critic, who reported one marcher complaining about it being more “middle class and established” than the previous march in September,”as if this were some undiscovered festival that had been ruined now that word had got around”. At UnHerd, Cosmo Adair similarly judged that

It hadn’t erupted into the orgiastic hate of which both Starmer and the Metropolitan Police warned, but it also hadn’t had quite the take-off Robinson expected. If it heralded anything, it was the arrival of a Right-wing Omnicause. There were Pahlavists and anti-vaxxers in attendance, rubbing shoulders with hooligans and country gents. Neo-Nazis mixed with ordinary concerned citizens.

In contrast, Nadeine Asbali, writing in Metro, found the rally “noticeably more sinister” than previous events:

Someone who calls himself the Scottish Korean appeared on stage for a cello performance wearing bacon on his shoulders to ward off the Muslims (because, clearly, like vampires and garlic, we self-implode at the mere sight of a dead pig).

…So-called feminist group Collectif Nemesis wore niqabs on stage before stripping them off as the crowd laughed, jeered and chanted ‘take it off’ (I don’t know about you, but nothing screams feminism like the idea of thousands of drunk men shouting at women to undress!).

Kellie-Jay Keen, best known for her anti-trans activism, stood on the stage demanding that Islam be taken out of every ‘area of authority’ in the UK, whatever that means.

Emily Lawford, at the New Stateman, reported hearing one audience member express the belief (hope?) that Collectif Némésis trio were “strippers”. As for the religious element, Lawford found that “not everyone at the march was a Christian, but most were happy to mumble along to the Lord’s Prayer and join in chants of ‘Christ is King’ when instructed”.

Meanwhile, Hope Not Hate has the most comprehensive round-up of the various speakers, although even they failed to identify the man who “performed the cello while draped in bacon” – this was actually an influencer named Ryan Williams, whose rasher-wearing antics brought him fame in Australia last September.

Hope Not Hate also notes the religious angle:

Kevin Carroll, a cousin of Lennon [i.e., Tommy Robinson] and a founding member of the English Defence League, opened by declaring that Christianity in Britain was “under attack”, while praising Donald Trump and leading the crowd in the Lord’s Prayer… Actor-turned-activist Laurence Fox delivered a rambling religiously themed speech, reading from the Bible and describing Britain as “God’s Kingdom”.

Also on stage, once again, were Bishop Ceiron Dewar and Rikki Doolan – and Doolan now says he intends to sue Piers Morgan for using a clip that shows him singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” out of tune, which Doolan claims was faked. The Religion Media Centre further notes that Bishop Jwan Zhumbes, an Anglican bishop from Bukuru in Nigeria “spoke about the persecution of Christians by the Islamist group Boko Haram, and urged the crowd not to depart from the UK’s Christian principles”.

One distinguising feature of the rally was the presence of wooden crosses held by members of the crowd; according to Dewar these were made by his associate Deacon Pete Prosser and his son and daughter. A report by Elliot Harvey for EWTN noted among the attendees one “Luke Barker from The Lord’s Work Trust”, who was handing out a leaflet titled Common Sense: What the Bible Has to Say on the Issue of Immigration.

The event might have been more of a “red meat” affair had a number of international speakers not been refused entry into the UK (although the risible conspiracy theorist and libeller Glenn Beck was apparently seen as harmless enough to get through). In particular, the cartoonish Valentina Gomez would probably have generated some easy copy for joutnalists with her conspiracist and abusive rants, such as her claim that the recent drowning accident in Brighton was the work of “rapists Muslims” (1). When Gomez was denied her visa in April, she denounced the home secretary as a “dirty Pakistani Muslim” – Robinson did not object, although Carl Benjamin, who opened the rally, complained  on social media that it made “everyone look bad”. This provoked a row that Robinson tried to laugh off.

Also banned from attending was a Polish politician named Dominik Tarczynski. This might have put Nigel Farage in a difficult position, as he knows Tarczynski – but speaking up might undermine the distance the Reform UK leader wants to keep from Robinson. His solution, apparently, was to express a view privately to his associate Lois Perry, who then relayed it to a Polish television channel. According to her account, Farage said Tarczynski was “a good friend” and that he “knew him from his time in the European Parliament”. (2)

Farage also referred to “patriotic Brits” attending the rally, presumably in contrast to a Government statement that described Unite the Kingdom as “unpatriotic” – a misjudged scolding adjective unlikely to convince anyone attracted by Robinson’s rhetoric.

Notes

1. Three women recently drowned in the sea at Brighton after a night out: it appears they had been paddling and perhaps misjudged the edge of a coastal shelf, but the initial information void was the usual gift to opportunists. In contrast to Gomez, Robinson adopted a “just asking questions” pose (“Wtf is going on?”). Ant Middleton, who sent a message to the rally, concurred with Gomez’s allegation of murder by replying to her social media post with a “bullseye” symbol, which he later deleted.

The deaths came two weeks after it was reported that two Sudanese women had died in a small boat that had run aground on a beach in northern France. The two women were reportedly suffocated in the stampede this caused, but an unsubstantiated story has done the rounds, based on a supposed “Border Force” source, claiming that they were murdered by male migrants. Among those spreading the claim was Don Keith, another American scheduled to speak at the rally who was denied a visa.

2. Tarczynski and other speakers denied visas have instructed an Italian lawyer named Francesco Gargallo di Castel Lentini to issue a “letter of claim” against Keir Starmer:

I hereby submit this letter in the name and on behalf of Don Keith, Ada Lluch, Joey Mannarino, MEP Dominik Tarczyński, Eva Lotte Louise Vlaardingerbroek, who have granted me express mandate to formally contest, for all legal purposes and effects under international law, the law of Great Britain, the law of the United States of America, the law of Spain, the law of the Netherlands, the law of Poland, the public declaration issued on 12 May 2026 by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in which he referred to my Clients as “far-right agitators”, and in the public declaration issued on 15 May 2026 in which he referred to my Clients as “those who seek to stir it [hatred that manifests as violence] up”.

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From France 3:

Un feu de végétation a provoqué l’incendie de l’église de Montenach en Moselle à la frontière Luxembourgeoise ce jeudi 30 avril 2026. Une partie du clocher s’est effondrée, la charpente a été entièrement brûlée, 60 pompiers et 40 véhicules étaient engagés pour circonscrire le sinistre maîtrisé en fin d’après-midi.

News that a brushfire in eastern France had spread to a church ought to be a subject of merely local interest – however, images of the blaze, but not links to the news reports, are currently doing the rounds on social media, based on the assumption that when churches catch fire the reason must be arson, and that the arsonists must be Muslims, who always get away unobserved and without leaving any incriminating evidence. Followers of the likes of Tommy Robinson congratulate themselves for penetrating the mystery through their superior deductive abilities.

This is a regular occurence – back in 2019, Full Fact noted the existence of a map that purported to show acts of arson at churches all around France:

A post on Facebook claims that a heavily annotated map of France shows how many churches have been “destroyed” there in the last four years. It has had over 1,700 shares.

However:

The pins on the map don’t just show churches that were “destroyed”; they also include vandalism incidents, like graffiti, as well as theft, violent incidents at churches and religious buildings, plus incidents where priests were attacked or threatened.

The map was promoted five years later by Darren Grimes, one of Reform UK’s less guarded councillors, in a social media post in which he accused “France’s newcomers” and claimed that it explained the fire at Rouen Cathedral’s spire – a blaze that was most likely caused by a welding spark touching plastic sheeting in the context of works that were going on at the time.

Of course, that does not mean there is no church arson: in 2022 in the UK a teenager named John Brady was given a hospital order for “a string of devastating arson attacks on schools and churches” in Derbyshire, while a man named Ryan Haggerty was jailed for starting a church fire in Glasgow. Fires at churches in Europe, when started deliberately, are almost invariably the work of vandals or pyromaniacs (the 1990s Black Metal-related church attacks in Norway and the occasional self-styled Satanist excepted).

The trend of blaming Muslims for starting church fires without evidence, or even in the teeth of counter-evidence, perhaps began with Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019. Recent cases include the Institution des Chartreux (Chartreux boarding school) in Lyon, France (likely an electrical fault) and the Monastero della Bernaga (Bernaga Monastery) in Lombardy, Italy (also electrical). In the UK, a fire at a Victorian Gothic building in Weymouth last year was taken to be another church fire – in that instance, the structure was actually a former eye hospital that had been converted into a restaurant, giving conspiracists the bonus complaint about the media not calling it a church. Also last year, a church fire in Doirí Beaga, Donegal was falsely attributed to Afghans by Radio Europe; footage of the blaze is still being posted, in one case at least incorrectly relocated across the border to Northern Ireland. One might diagnose apophenia, the tendency to see connections where none exist, were there not so much grift and bad faith involved.

Fires at churches are also useful for building a resentment narrative that arson at mosques is being given too much consideration. Thus when the home secretary wrote last October that “reports today of an attack on a mosque in Peacehaven in East Sussex are deeply concerning”, conspiracist pop duo Right Said Fred rejoined with images of a church fire at St Mary’s Church in Beachamwell, Norfolk (caused by a welding spark) and All Saints Church in Fleet, Hampshire (arson committed by a teenager named Daniel Finnerty in 2015). Populist commentators such as Mike Graham showed more interest in Peacehaven when there was speculation that a Muslim might have done it (1), but less so once white Britons were charged – one of whom, Ricky Ryder, has now admitted arson.

Note

1. Graham was confused due to a case of attempted arson at a mosque in Kettering, Northamptonshire, around the same time. The arsonist in that case was a man named Arif Ali Rafiq, who had absconded during day release from a mental healt unit and reported hearing a voice in his head telling him to commit the offence. The damage was minimal, and he called police himself to report his actions. The incident was conflated with Peacehaven by numerous people on Twitter/X. Internet detectives also misinterpreted a fragment of a taxi-driver speaking Urdu that became attached to footage from Peacehaven.

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Although undoubtedly accidental, posts on Twitter/X posted by GB News “National Reporter” Charlie Peters yesterday have had the effect of breathing new life into conspiracist interpretations of the arson trial in which three young men are accused of having set fire to property associated with Keir Starmer. As discussed yesterday, the prosecution case is as follows, as reported by Sky News (emphasis added):

Continuing to outline his case, Duncan Atkinson KC says that the three defendants acted motivated by money and not political or ideological reasons.

…”It is not part of your considerations to decide who ‘El Money’ is and what reason he might have had to coordinate the actions of these defendants against these properties and this car associated with the prime minister,” Atkinson says.

“That is because you do not have to decide what motivated these three defendants.”

Conspiracists, however, assert without evidence and despite the obvious implausibilities that the three men were “rent boys” with a private grudge against Starmer. Normal media restraint prior to the trial was treated as a sinister conspiracy of silence which some (e.g. Andrew Bridgen) continue to assert exists despite widespread publicity now that the trial is underway. Peters quite properly does not refer to any of this nonsense, but a thread he posted yesterday obscures Atkinson’s assertion as to a financial motive (with phone transcripts presented as supporting evidence), and is written in such a way that most of the time it is not immediately clear whether the jury is being addressed by the prosecutor or instructed by the judge.

Here is the first of three:

I’m at the Old Bailey for the case against three men accused of arson attacks at properties and a vehicle linked to Keir Starmer.

The men are said to have not shown any political or ideological motivation and were paid by a Russian-speaking Telegram account called “El Money”.

This leaves open the question of what their motivation actually was, even though as reported by Sky News (a few minutes before his post) the prosecutor explicitly stated that they were motivated by money.

Next:

The jury has been told not to consider who “El Money” is and why he coordinated the arson attacks.

Jurors have also been told by the prosecution that they do not have to decide what motivated the defendants, only if they conspired to commit arson.

The men deny the charges.

This post has taken on a life of its own, via screenshots that separate it from the thread context. The clarification “told by the prosecution” at last appears, but its connection to the second line leaves the first line ambiguous – and those promoting the post as a screenshot have explicitly interpreted it incorrectly as an instruction from the judge (see this nested farrago of nonsense for an example)

Moving on:

The jury was also told that it does not matter whether the defendants knew that the vehicle and properties they were targeting were connected to Keir Starmer.

Jurors were also told not to consider if the links to the prime minister were part of their motivation for the attacks.

“Told not to consider” puts it more strongly than “you do not have to decide” – it creates an impression of the jury being warned not to do something, rather than advised they don’t need to do something. Thus motive is implicitly framed as something to be excluded, rather than as superfluous to the prosecution case. This is something that conspiracists will exploit to the full.

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From BBC News:

A Russian speaker recruited and offered money to Ukrainian men to carry out arson attacks on properties connected to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, a court has heard.

…The prosecutor said analysis of messages from phones recovered from, and connected with, the defendants showed “communication between them before and during the relevant period”.

He said [Roman] Lavrynovych was offered payment to set the fires by a contact using the name or pseudonym “El Money” on the Telegram messaging app.

The three defendants deny the charges, and while the trial is in progress commentary must be respectual of the law as regards contempt of court.

However, we can say that the first day of the trial has destroyed online conspiracist claims forming no part of the case, that the three men were rent boys with a grudge against the Prime Minister, who for some reason had decided to commit arson rather than sell their story to the press. This conspiracy theory had been allowed to fester online despite being it being obviously prejudicial, and it exploited the fact that once the defendants had been charged then further details were very unlikely to be published until the trial. Dark suspicions were raised of some sort of gagging order on the media, or if not some inexplicable conspiracy of silence that would have included media outlets usually viciously hostile towards Starmer on a daily basis. The speculation reached fever pitch on Monday, due to the media’s failure to report the non-story of some trial preliminaries. The first day of evidence was today, and the trial has now been covered extensively in the media (Sky News in particular has a very informative live thread).

Among those who spread the conspiracy claims, either directly or through insinuation, included the likes of Tommy Robinson, James Melville, Andrew Bridgen, David Atherton and George Galloway. Monday’s non-reporting also inspired media commentary on the left-wing site Canary, which was then amplified by Toby Young.

Mention must also be made of Reform UK’s Richard Tice, who in August amplified a photo of a banner over a motorway walkway that read “Starmer hates Brits, loves rapists, invaders & and rent boys”. Tice disingenuously shared the photo (posted on Twitter/X by @GBPolitics) as evidence of the “depths to which PM has lost confidence across the UK”, rather than because he was winking a sex smear against a political opponent arising from what appears to have been a crime targeting him.

UPDATE: John Bye notes further examples, including posts by Carl Benjamin, Gareth Icke, Jacqui Deevoy and John O’Looney

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From BBC News, 15 April:

Police are yet to identify a group of men who raped a woman outside a church in Surrey, four days after the incident.

The woman, in her 20s, was followed after leaving Labyrinth Epsom nightclub and attacked by several men outside Epsom Methodist Church in the early hours on Saturday.

The allegation was here reported as fact, but it relied purely on the woman’s account; and on 18 April, Surrey Police announced that after reviewing “an extensive amount of CCTV footage” and “interviewing potential witnesses, carrying out forensics investigations and conducting house-to-house enquiries” no evidence could be found. The investigation has now concluded, with police stating that the offence had not occured, and that the woman had given a “confused report” following an “accidential head injury”. In the meantime, Epsom has experienced public disorder orchestrated by right-wing elements led by Danny Tommo, most notoriously with a home for vulnerable adults coming under attack in the mistaken belief that it was housing refugees. (1)

The initial BBC report could very reasonably have begun with “Police are yet to identify any suspects after a woman reported that she had been raped by a group of men outside a church in Surrey”. However, it was perhaps natural to take the woman’s account at face value: everyone knows there are false accusers – Carl Beech, Ellie Williams – but signalling a position of agnosticism might have come across as pedantic scepticism and as downplaying a serious crime with similarities to a recent genuine case in Brighton. Also, the woman was not accusing anyone specifically, and so there was no need to be mindful of the rights of a suspect.

Naturally, the case attracted commentary from opportunists:  on 16 April, Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick was quick to demand that Surrey Police “share what they can about the horrific rape in Epsom”, the implication being that they might be remiss in doing so. Jenrick referred back to the Southport killings, stating that “the authorities were silent” and that this made “a bad situation worse”. This of course ignores that the police were limited in what they could say, and that one thing that made things “worse” was Nigel Farage suggesting a cover-up and giving spurious credibility to an online rumour. (2)

In this way, Jenrick invited the public draw adverse inferences from the fact that Surrey Police did not have anything to share – and once again, suspicion and disinformation flourished. On Twitter/X, CCTV images from an unrelated 2025 case in Humberside did the rounds as supposed images of Epsom suspects; they were debunked, but the high-profile Reform-adjacent activist David Atherton then addressed Surrey Police with the claim “I have just been sent images which purport to show the suspects from the gang rape in Epsom.” He went on: “Can I DM them to you for verification. No one is going to be shocked, if true.” Were these the same Humberside images, or something else? Atherton never clarified, although by claiming to be in the know he helped to whip things up while increasing his profile.

Next, on 21 April, a police officer answering questions from a hostile and abusive crowd in Epsom referred to the woman “the victim”. More properly, she ought to have said “the complainant”, but at this stage it would have sounded pointed and suggestive of scepticism, and it might have riled up the mob (3). The clip was exploited as a “gotcha” by Dan Wootton, with Atherton suggesting that it meant the police had lied about not having any evidence.

“Head injury” may be a strong defence against a charge of wasting police time, but some may feel that it is not a satisfactory resolution. Conspiracists have a window for contining to claim there has been a cover up, although more reasonably we might infer that the police would prefer not to prosecute in case it deters genuine victims from coming forward in future.

UPDATE: There’s a useful overview from Alan Rusbridger in Prospect.

Notes

1. Tommy Robinson was not present, but happily noted that a protestors had “hit a suspected HMO [House in Multiple Occupation] housing unvetted migrant men”.

2.  Jenrick also cites Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, who was quoted as saying that “I personally think that more information could have been put out safely without compromising potential criminal proceedings”. Hall, though, was unhelpfully vague about what information he meant exactly. Farage claims to have been vindicated by Hall – even though Hall was concerned with police countering the kind of disinformation that he was promoting.

3. The 2016 Henriques Report, by Sir Richard Henriques KC in the wake of the Operation Midland fiasco, criticised police procedures that instructed officers to automatically “believe” complainants, and recommended using the word “complainant” rather than “victim”. However, old habits die hard, and when presented with someone in distress who says she has just been attacked any sympathetic person might find it difficult to suspend belief.

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From Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick, on Twitter/X:

We’re told Starmer is “furious”.

Well only because he’s trying to save his own skin again over paedo pal, Peter Mandelson…

The lack of any article or pronoun before “paedo pal” (“his” or “the”) creates ambiguity, although the most natural reading is that Starmer has a paedo pal, who is Peter Mandelson. However, the post also includes a short clip from Jenrick speaking in Parliament, in which he refers to “the paedophile pal Peter”, more clearly denoting a reference to Peter Mandelson as a “pal” of Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson famously described himself as Epstein’s “best pal” back in 2003, several years prior to Epstein’s first arrest – although this is shaky ground for an attack from the right, given that the quote is from the same Epstein birthday book in which Donald Trump is also alleged to have also called Epstein “a pal”.

Unlike Trump, though, Mandelson remained friends with Epstein following his conviction, although this was no secret and he was hardly alone in being part of Epstein’s attempted social rehabilitation before his final fall. In September, it was further revealed that Mandelson had commiserated with Epstein over his original conviction, which he appears to have believed was unjust.

This poor judgement in matter of private friendship has since been overshadowed by more substantive allegations of wrongdoing: Epstein emails show that Mandelson shared confidential government business with him. His failed vetting prior to his appointment to an ambassadorial role perhaps rested in part on the reputational risk of his Epstein association, but also likely involved conflicts of interest over his business career. Jenrick, though, collapses all this into what he calls “a paedophile scandal”, a tacky and demagogic framing of Starmer’s predicament intended to inflame rather than inform the public.

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An X post from Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice:

After his nice messages at Eid and Ramadan, we look forward to a warm Easter message from King Charles III in his role as Defender of the Faith of the Church of England

Tice, of course, is here striking a sarcastic pose: his post obviously refers to a GB News story from a few hours beforehand, headlined “Buckingham Palace confirms King Charles will not issue Easter message this year”. His fiancée Isabel Oakeshott clarifies the point, while also exposing the cynicism behind it, in a coarser social media post of her own (redaction of “holy fuck” in her original):

THE King is head of the Church of England. He issued Ramadan and Eid messages, but apparently isn’t bothering with Easter this year. What the holy f***? Not ok.

The grievance is currently ubiquitous on X, with some conspiracy influencers also suggesting that the king is secretly a Muslim convert (what he does with the various alcoholic beverages he has been shown quaffing in public is unexplained). As noted by John Bye, Dan Wootton claims that Charles has “refused” to issue a statement, while the most unhinged rhetoric, from Laurence Fox, is a call to “bring back hanging, drawing and quartering for traitors”, posted alongside a video of Charles sending a Ramadan greeting in 2021.

However, a careful reading of the GB News source shows some false equivalence:

Buckingham Palace has confirmed King Charles will not issue an Easter message this year.

GB News understands that it is not a message that the Palace releases every year, unlike its annual Christmas speech.

The late Queen Elizabeth II did not frequently issue an Easter message either, opting to do so only during the coronavirus pandemic.

…Buckingham Palace’s decision not to release an Easter message will likely ruffle some feathers among Christians, given that in February, the King and Queen’s social media account faced backlash for issuing Muslims a “blessed and peaceful Ramadan” on Shrove Tuesday.

The first three paragraphs imply an “Easter message” as a “speech” comparable to what we get at Christmas, whereas the Ramadan message refers to a short text posted to social media – as was also the case with Eid. These texts are thin grounds on which to build a “double standard” resentment narrative, hence the recourse to other material: the 2021 greeting, which was a Covid-era morale booster (1), or some pleasantries about Ramadan made by Charles at a recent state banquet for the President of Nigeria.

The vitriol expressed this year goes beyond the usual culture wars clichés about the word “Easter” not appearing on chocolate eggs, and it is reasonable to suppose that the some of it has been spurred on by recent displays of Christian-nationalist religiosity involving Donald Trump and his court evangelists.

One GB News story headlines how a bishop is “bitterly disappointed” – only three paragraphs into the article is the bishop identified as none other than Ceirion Dewar, and readers are not burdened with the detail that he is the “missionary bishop” of an obscure Anglican offshoot based in Tennessee. Nor is there any mention of his association with Tommy Robinson.

Note

1. Inevitably, some sources mislead about how long ago Charles made the video: a clip posted to YouTube by Sky News Australia is entitled “King Charles under fire for issuing Ramadan speech but not Easter message”. This implies a false contemporaneity, not least because it obscures that he made the Ramadan speech as Prince Charles.

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Last August, I noticed how Reform ideologue Matt Goodwin has a tendency to present banal but arguable maxims as quotes attributed by him to scholars and Classical figures ranging from Pericles and Cicero to the late Sir Robert Scruton, but that verifying his sources online always proves impossible (1). I can’t claim anyone much noticed, although a journalist named Jake Pace Lowrie suggested to me that Goodwin had perhaps produced “a Chatgpt hallucination of a Scruton quote”.

The issue of Goodwin’s quotes has now come to the fore with the publication of his book Suicide of a Nation: Immigration, Islam, Identity, due to a close reading by a writer named Andy Twelves. In a viral social media thread, Twelves claimed to have found “a huge amount of what appears to be false quotes and basic misinterpretations of data, that appear to be AI hallucinations” in the first five chapters, which he then proceeded to lay out. Another poster, John Merrick, then provided the extra detail that Goodwin’s minimal footnoting includes urls that contain referers from ChatGPT (inspiring the nickname “MattGPT”). Although Twelves’ sympathies are to the left he was invited to expand on his theme in The Spectator, and he was acknowledged in a scathing review of the book by Ben Sixsmith published in The Critic. Merrick, meanwhile, provided a piece for the New Statesman. Twelves also published an article in The Nerve.

In response, Goodwin now argues that the “focus on disputed quotations” shows that critics are unable to assail his argument, although the two are intertwined and in fact both aspects of his work have come under scrutiny. He has also posted a longer “response to my critics”, in which he simply reiterates the book’s main points and explains that the book was not published through a mainstream publisher because “I believe the publishers have been ideologically captured and no longer allow genuine free speech and debate” – which is hard to credit given that the likes of Douglas Murray and Liz Truss enjoy mainstream book deals. At Unherd, meanwhile, Mary Harrington has written a – hopefully ironic – “qualified defence”, arguing that in today’s world

legacy book-type concerns such as exact quotation or factual precision are secondary to more net-native attributes, such as emotional intensity and a sense of epistemic validation… In… older terms, conventional within mainstream print publishing, citing AI-generated fake “quotes” is obviously inexcusable. But there exists a large and avid audience for whom accuracy is by the by — and that can, on occasion, tempt academics into more heated and sometimes dubiously fact-checked territory.

That audience, of course, ought to include senior figures in Reform UK – Nigel Farage and Richard Tice have an opportunistic attitude when it comes to amplifying false claims that serve their purposes (e.g. here). Yet Reform has done nothing to promote the book, despite Goodwin having recently stood as the Reform candidate in a high-profile by-election in Gorton and Denton. This gives the impression that Reform UK does not regard the work – and perhaps even the failed candidate himself – as even useful. Indeed, Tim Montgomerie, who recently defected to Reform, appears to regard him as a liability, going so far as to suggest that the party “should now fully investigate Mr Goodwin’s book and if there are repeated examples of factual error he should be removed from the candidates list”.

Goodwin replied to Montgomerie with “All you do is criticise Reform & our campaigns. I have no idea why you are even in Reform unless it is to try and weaken it?”. Perhaps Farage would shrug off the spat as “one of those things that happens between men”, although if asked to adjudicate Montgomerie is well-connected via other high-profile Conservative Party defectors in Reform.

UPDATE: Goodwin and Twelves have now debated the book on GB News – Goodwin has his own show on the channel, but this was a standalone clash hosted by Miriam Cates. We cannot know how popular Goodwin is among his colleagues, but follow-up commentary on the channel by “The Saturday Five” mocked his “Triggered Tantrum of the week”. Goodwin has also responded with an article in the Daily Mail, in which he attempted to downplay his fabricated quotations by focusing on one example from Cicero and claiming that this shows “my critics would rather nit-pick over interpretations of Latin nit-pick over interpretations of Latin than deal with the evidence-based arguments I put forward”.

On social media, meanwhike, Goodwin has attempted to compensate for the humiliation and to resassure everyone that he is not in fact having a meltdown by making some crowing posts: “I’d like to take this moment to thank all the Lefties & Losers for helping make Suicide of a Nation the 2nd biggest book in Britain”, he writes, adding that he is “Drinking ‘Remainer Tears'”. This argument that strong sales are an answer to criticism is based on an Amazon ranking.

Note

1. Much print literature can now be searched even if not directly accessed via Google Books and the Internet Archive, while Google Scholar and websites that allow reseachers to upload academic papers provide innumerable secondary sources where quotes may often be found. The content of many indivdivual books can also be searched on Amazon.

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From the Guardian:

[Nigel Farage] described as “a wake up call and a warning to everybody” an event in Trafalgar Square earlier this week where hundreds of Muslims and people of other faiths prayed together, before the celebration of Eid.

He said the event, organised by the Ramadan Tent Project and attended by Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, was “an open, deliberate, wilful attempt, not at the private observance of a different religion, but the attempt to overtake, intimidate and dominate our way of life”.

The event has happened in the historic square in central London five times before without incident or previous controversy.

Farage has posted a clip of his speech online – he described participants as “a group of people headed up by the ghastly Sadiq Khan”,  and denounced the previous Conservative government for having “let most of these people in”, ending with the promise that “we will not put up with this any more”. This was not, then, criticism of Islamic extremism or even of Islam: his target was Muslims as people, seen collectively as recent and unwelcome arrivals in the UK who therefore have less right to a public space that has historically been a focus for all sorts of cultural, political and religious events (such as a 2021 conspiracy theory rally).

It seems likely that Farage, as usual, was inspired by simple opportunism – his talking points were cribbed from a social media post made a couple of days beforehand by Nick Timothy, the Conservative Party shadow justice secretary. In  Timothy’s view:

mass ritual prayer in public places is an act of domination.

The adhan – which declares there is no god but allah and Muhammad is his messenger – is, when called in a public place, a declaration of domination.

…I am not suggesting everybody at Trafalgar Square last night is an Islamist. But the domination of public places is straight from the Islamist playbook.

In other words, we don’t need to ask people why they participated – we know it was an “act of domination” (rather than, say, an expression of community spirit or religious witness) whether or not participants would recognise such a framing. There was no prima facie evidence of religious extremism, but ordinary Muslims who attended were being manipulated by “the Islamist playbook”, meaning that in terms of their presence in public spaces there is no real difference between a liturgical and traditional expression of faith and belligerent extremists waving obnoxious banners around. Timothy strikes the pose of a typical moral entrepreneur, identifying urgent social problem that most people appear to have overlooked for several years.

Timothy was countered by Dominic Grieve:

I agree that mass prayer in public by large groups without prior permission, that aims to disrupt the activities of others, can be an act of ‘domination’ just as a sit down on Westminster Bridge or the M25 can be or any other illegal demonstration or one accompanied by threats or harassment.

This did not apply to this gathering in Trafalgar Square. It was done with permission. It comprised short prayers followed by an Iftar to break the Ramadan fast. It threatened no one any more than the Palm Sunday procession (with permission) in which I shall participate shortly where I live and where there will be hymns to the effect that Jesus Christ is Lord. Your original post says that this event ‘should not happen again’. You are the Shadow Justice Secretary, perhaps one day the person who will take an oath to uphold the rule of law. As I put to you in my last post [here], stopping such an event would be unlawful and discriminatory unless you intend to advocate changing the law to discriminate against Muslims. Is that what you are saying? So far you have not attempted to answer this question.

A couple of recent examples of religious “domination” from central London come to mind: the Christian Right “King’s Army” march through Soho last October, and the month before that Brian Tamaki’s participation in Tommy Robinson’s misdescribed “free speech” rally, in which the New Zealand fundamentalist called for outright bans on non-Christian religious expression.

UPDATE (22 March): Reform figures have continued to milk the supposed controversy, their views of course amplified by GB News. One GB News social media post tells us that according to Matt Goodwin, the Trafalgar Square event was “‘an attempt to undermine our Christian culture and values” – a clip from his show on the channel shows him quoting Jonathan Sacerdoti on the subject of a “1991 memorandum” by the Muslim Brotherhood, which Goodwin pelieces has explanatory value. Another GB News post then clips Robert Jenrick on their channel calling it “essentially an anti-British event”.

Meanwhile, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has tried different approach. After being goaded by Keir Starmer she has given her backing to Timothy, but she has tried to shift the discussion towards the issue of gender segregation.

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Snopes discusses claims that the destruction of a girl’s school in Minab in Iran resulting in great loss of life was due to a misfired Iranian missle rather than the US-Israel bombardment, and that Iran had supposedly admitted as much (urls in original):

Did Iranian authorities claim responsibility?

In short, no. Iranian authorities have not issued any official statements taking responsibility for the attack on the girls’ school. Numerous posts spread the claim on X (archived here, here, and here) and shared the same screenshot of a Telegram account that reportedly shared an IRGC statement written in Farsi.

Difficulties with the claim ought to have been obvious from the start. The school is close to an IRGC compound that was likely to have been the intended target, and even if Iran had done it, it seems unlikely that an autocratic regime would admit to it. And why would the story not have made its way into mainstream media in Israel at the very least? (1)

The second of the three links noted by Snopes belongs to none other than Richard Tice, Deputy Leader of Reform UK. And he he did not just “spread” the claim – he presented it accusingly as proof that the mainstream media and Zack Polanski (leader of the Green Party) were “spreading fake news” about the attack. (2)

This is part of a pattern in which Tice and Reform leader Nigel Farage express absolute confidence that they have penetrated the truth of some matter of public concern, based on dubious evidence that they have no inclination to look into before mouthing off. Some instances are relatively trivial, but the ideologically driven misattribution of a mass child casualty event during military conflict ought to raise serious alarm bells as to how easy it would be for bad actors to manipulate UK policy under a Reform government.

Some previous examples

Last summer, Farage was confident that he had “proof” that Essex Police had transported counter-prostestors to the site of anti-asylum seeker protests in Essex – in fact, the video he relied showed counter-protestors being taken away from the area; and before that, he and Tice both misinterpreted screenshots from IMdB to make wild accusations that a racist Reform activist had been a paid actor sent in by Channel 4 News (3). And most notoriously, of course, Farage gave spurious credibility to a false rumour about the identity of the Southport attacker, although in that instance he was more careful to couch his words in vague generalities.

Tice also appears to believe that what an unnamed “cancer expert” reportedly told Piers Morgan over lunch proves that mass Covid vaccination was disastrous (4); that the juxtaposition of two weather maps suggests that “we are being played” by meteorologists; and the fact that a scraper website in Pakistan helped to spread pre-existing fake news about the Southport attacker means that the whole matter can be laid at the door of “a gentleman in Pakistan”.

Notes

1. Further detail in the Guardian:

Shortly after the attack, misinformation began to proliferate online. Some social media accounts claimed the footage of the school was old footage shot in Pakistan, a claim that has been debunked. Several X accounts also made viral claims that the school had been struck by a misfired IRGC missile, but the photographs of the misfire that they present as evidence were taken about 1,600km (994 miles) away from Minab, in the city of Zanjan.

2. Although not mentioned by Snopes, the same line was taken by the Telegraph‘s Alison Pearson, who asked why BBC News had not retracted its reporting. The BBC had in fact quite properly reported on the matter as “Iran has blamed the US and Israel”, flagging up a lack of independent verification.

3. After the evidence collapsed under scrutiny, was announced via Paul Staines that an unnamed “senior barrister” was investigating the claim on behalf of a group called “Ofcom Watch”. It is reasonable to suspect here a contrivance by which Reform UK could “move on” while not appearing to back down.

4. Almost certainly this was Angus Dalgleish.

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