Bartholomew's Notes

From GB News:

‘Did nobody vet this lady? Why does she have direct access to our Prime Minister?!’

@PatrickChristys reacts to Keir Starmer meeting with “Muslim leaders” to discuss his “plans for change”, including Saima Aslam, who tweeted in 2015 that “Islamophobia is more dangerous than ISIS”

The Tweet was first noted by GB Politics, and then amplified by Nigel Farage with the added question “What on earth is @Keir_Starmer doing?”. Christys purports to be some sort of journalist, but the brief here was not to look into the matter but simply to reinforce the material handed to him on a plate – thus he lists off some ISIS terrorist atrocities, which he infers that Syima Aslam (to give her correct spelling) wants us to ignore.

Here’s her 2015 post in full:

Islamophobia is more dangerous than ISIS, ISIS will burn out but Muslims are underestimating the far right threat @hamzayusuf #ImamsOnline
1:05 PM · Mar 26, 2015

The context is not immediately obvious: at that time, Tweets could not be threaded, and anything related she may have posted just before or after does not appear. However, there are some clues, in the reference to Hamza Yusuf and the “IslamOnline” hashtag. It doesn’t take much effort to follow up these leads, and to see that Christys’ interpretation is both implausible and vicious.

The hashtag refers specifally to a launch event for a magazine called Haqiqah, which was put together by Imams Online to oppose ISIS. As was reported the day after Aslam’s post:

A new online magazine has been launched with the aim of “reclaiming the internet” from extremists.

Haqiqah, external – “the truth” or “the reality” – has been created by British Muslim scholars who say they want to do more to educate young people about the reality of extremist movements.

They say it is a direct response to the threat of radicalisation from groups such as Islamic State.

IS extremists have widely used social media to spread their message.

More than 100 imams gathered in London for the launch of the magazine, which has been started by the website Imams Online.

“Someone has to reclaim that territory from ISIS, and that can only be imams: religious leaders who guide and nourish their community,” according to Qari Asim, senior editor at imamsonline.com.

The comment from Hamza Yusuf that is quoted by Aslam (she’s since clarified that is what it was) is most sensibly interpreted as a contemptuous assessment of ISIS’s geopolitical pretensions – at the time, ISIS controlled a big chunk of the Middle East, but Yusuf correctly predicted that its supposed “caliphate” had no long-term prospects – unlike the far-right threat. Yusuf in fact has been so outspoken against ISIS that the terrorists responded by targeting him as an “apostate”. A search of Aslam’s posts further shows her own unequivocable opposition to ISIS. Christys’ inversion of all that is grotesque.

Aslam is a public figure who has been rightly commended for her contributions to civil society in the UK, most notably the Bradford Literary Festival. That goes some way to answering the question posed by Christys and Farage about why she was meeting Starmer, although I doubt they actually want to know.

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From the Evening Standard, a week ago:

Farmers will stage another tractor protest outside Parliament on Monday as they continue their campaign against changes to inheritance tax rules.

The tractor rally, organised by Save British Farming, comes as MPs debate an e-petition with more than 148,000 signatures calling to keep the current inheritance tax exemptions for working farms.

…Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is expected to address farmers making a pit stop on their way into London on Monday morning.

That “pit stop” was actually a distinct event called “Battle for Britain”; DeSmog has further details:

Monday’s event, which preceded over a thousand tractors descending on Westminster, was organised by the anti-vax campaign group Together Declaration and the protest organisation Farmers To Action.

Set up in 2021 to oppose mandatory Covid-19 protection measures, such as lockdowns and vaccines, the Together Declaration has since launched a “no to net zero” campaign that calls for the UK to scrap policies designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Together has also campaigned against London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone scheme, and low traffic neighbourhood schemes across the country designed to combat air pollution.

The group has recently partnered with Farmers To Action, which has used recent anti-inheritance tax campaigns to spread anti-climate views.

The leader of Farmers to Action, Justin Rogers, has spread conspiracy theories across his social media accounts. He has claimed that “climate change is one of the biggest scams that has ever been told”, propagated by “our governments and their puppet masters.”

Rogers has also claimed that oil and gas are renewable, and that carbon dioxide cannot be dangerous because it “feeds plants”.

On Twitter/X, Rogers is known as “The F in Farmer”, and his most recent post exhorts readers to “wake up” to what another poster describes as “hidden plans for a Govt Terror attack to intentionally release Foot & Mouth Disease once again”. He has also affirmed his “100%” “Anti-Zionism” (H/T @_johnbye) in reply to a user who denies anti-semitic intent but who posts claims such as “zionist Jews ran every aspect of the covid ‘pandemic’.”

The “Battle for Britain” event was heavily branded with black Together Declaration placards bearing the message “WITH OUR FARMERS”, flanked by two QR codes; an oversized version of the placard also formed the backdrop to the stage, from which Farage reportedly told the crowd that the government wants to take over farmland “because they’re planning for another five million people to come into the country”.

After the various speeches (1), the tractors made their way to Westminster to join the main protest – the Daily Express, slightly confused, saw this as part of the “Battle for Britain” rather than as a distinct event. However, not everyone was happy with the Together Declaration’s high visibility (although the group’s placards also appeared at earlier protests): conspiracy influencer James Melville of No Farmers No Food (noted for its own bright yellow placards) took to Twitter/X (H/T @_johnbye):

All I care about is the best interests of farmers. I will burn every fucking bridge against any manipulative fucker who seeks to manipulate this horrendous situation for farmers for their own means.

I saw first hand the horrendous difficulties that farmers face within my own family farm. For decades. It’s difficult to fully express how difficult it was. No money. No security. No time off. And all of this was done for the sole purpose of feeding a nation and a love of the land.

I will absolutely not accept have a bunch of non farming politico and campaign group grifters exploiting the perils of farmers for nefarious agendas that include slapping on QR codes at protests to drive folk to sign up as paid members

Curiously, however, Melville is also himself involved with #together, as a member of the group’s “cabinet”. When John Bye asked him whether he would be resigning he got a block, but Melville then also deleted the post.

I previously noted conspiracist involvement with farmers’ protests here.

Note

1. According to a flyer, the line-up comprised “Nigel Farage, Justin Rogers, Alan Miller, June Mummery, Liam Halligan, Fred Roberts, Adam Brooks, Phil Barnes, Tess Wheldon, Matt Hellyer, David Irwin, Rhianna Deeble, Darren Selkus, Marc Harvey”.

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From Mary Dejevsky at the Spectator:

Let me put my own cards on the table. I have no view on, or sense of, Letby’s innocence or guilt. I was not in the courtroom; I followed the case through media reports. As an ingrained sceptic and questioner of conventional wisdom, however, I am wary of the cast-iron certainties that marked this case, and the circumstantial nature of the evidence. It seemed to me that a consensus had been formed early on about Letby and her guilt that would have been very difficult for any trial to dislodge.

Most people like to regard themselves as sceptical and critically minded when it comes to “conventional wisdom”, although in some cases this is more likely to express itself as kneejerk rejectionism and conspiracism rather than genuine engagement with the details of some issue. But in the case of Lucy Letby, the “consensus” position since the trial tends more towards the view that her conviction is at the very least unsafe, as expressed in articles in sources ranging from the Guardian to the Telegraph; the Mail on Sunday even recently ran a front-page splash headlined “Police File Raises New Doubt Over Letby Guilt”.

In the past, journalists and campaigners who argued that someone convicted of some particuarly terrible crime might in fact be innocent would be met with a barrage of hostily, with accusations that they were morally defective and heedless of distress caused to the relatives of victims. Here, though, it seems more stigmatising to express confidence in the verdict, with calls for a book called Unmasking Lucy Letby to be withdrawn for sale. This reflects the general mood of Britain in 2025, not least with the Post Office scandal still very fresh in people’s minds. (1)

Meanwhile, articles supportive of the conviction can be found on the contrarian website Spiked!: there is a long article by the IEA’s Christopher Snowdon, which has been followed with a piece by Luke Gittos; both take a critical view of the recent press conference in Parliament, in which a panel of medical experts presented arguments that the conviction is unsafe (Snowden: “It is much easier to present a hypothesis at a press conference in a hotel in front of Peter Hitchens and Nadine Dorries than it is to be cross-examined in a court of law”).

Less polemical but still analytical assessments of the press conference can meanwhile be found from David James Smith the Independent and from Liz Hull in the Daily Mail (with a headline that overeggs her “DAMNING VERDICT”). On social media, the issues are being discussed critically by Dr Susan Oliver (who has also done a lot of work debunking anti-vax disinformation) and Deb Roberts.

Tortoise Media ran a piece on the case last September; on Twitter/X, Tortoise’s Ceri Thomas described the reaction to the conviction as “fascinating”, and asked whether “a trial which could have been run better (and left room for worries about its fairness) nevertheless delivered the right verdict?”

Note

1. The conspiracy milieu, of course, is certan of Letby’s innocence, but it frames itself in opposition to the media despite the slew of mainstream articles expressing doubts about the conviction. One example here is that of Dan Wootton, who writes that “If you have only followed the MSM on the case of nurse Lucy Letby and believe the narrative that somehow this beautiful blonde young woman turned into an angel of death, despite having no motive and there being no evidence of her murdering any baby, then please listen to me now”. The suggestion that Letby’s physical appearance has evidential value is probably just a troll, but it’s a particualrly grotesque and contemptible one.

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