Bartholomew's Notes

From BBC News, a few days ago:

A businesswoman who was arrested after sharing a fake name for the Southport attacker online will face no further action.

Bernadette Spofforth, from Chester, was arrested on 8 August after reposting the fake name, commenting that if it were true there would be “hell to pay”.

The 55-year-old, who has more than 50,000 followers, later deleted the post and apologised after realising the information was incorrect.

I discussed the case previously here – Spofforth was suspected not just of having “shared” the fake name, but of being the first person to have put it online. The name, “Ali Al-Shakati” (double-hyphenated by Spofforth as “Ali-Al-Shakati”), apparently means “I have to go to my apartment” in Arabic, but it created the impression that the Southport attacker was a Muslim. Spofforth’s post also claimed that he was an asylum-seeker on an “MI6 watchlist”, which was then amplified in a general way by Nigel Farage when he referred to “reports” that the suspect was “being monitored by the security services”.

I thought at the time that it was unlikely that the arrest would lead to any charge, although it was matter of public concern where the false name had originated. Spofforth’s own explanation has been vague, and friendly populist-right interviewers since the case was dropped (Dan Wootton and Julia Hartley-Brewer) aren’t pressing her on the point. Inconsistences and anomalies have been noted by Sunder Katwala here and earlier here. However, it appears that Cheshire Police were concerned only with whether a case could be built against Spofforth, rather than who else might be culpable, and so it may be that we will never know who invented “Ali Al-Shakati” or why. (1) Despite her interview round, Spofforth hasn’t said a great deal about what specific questions were asked during her police interview.

Some commentators have suggested that the phrase “if this true” in Spofforth’s post proves that she did not knowingly spread false information, and thus should never have been suspected of incitement. The logic of this, it seems to me, amounts to saying that it can never be incitement to ask a question, which would be preposterous. However, in the wake of the arrest various populist-right figures (Dan Wootton, Bev Turner, David Vance) posted a notice which they apparently believe would give them immunity from successful prosecution. (2)

It should also be noted that Spofforth has a blue-tick verified Twitter/X account, which creates a financial incentive to sensationalise rather than exercise caution and discernment.

Note

1. The fact that it wasn’t a real Arabic name suggests a mixed motive – not just to spread disinformation, but also to feel a sense of superiority by including an “in joke” that most people wouldn’t understand.

2. The notice reads as follows: “None of the information posted or repeated on this account is known by its author to be false, nor intended to stir racial or any hatred of, nor cause psychological or physical harm to, any person or group of people (howsoever identified)”. This is a sovereign-citizen adjacent approach to the law, in which a form of words amounts to an incantation that somehow confounds the the power of the authorities.

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From the Daily Telegraph:

A Pakistani web developer accused of spreading fake news that helped foment anti-immigration and anti-Muslim riots after the Southport stabbings has been arrested in the city of Lahore.

Farhan Asif is alleged to have worked for a sensationalist news aggregation website called Channel3Now, which published false reports about the identity of the knife attacker.

Channel3Now infamously repeated claims that the attacker’s name was Ali Al-Shakati; that he had recently arrived in the UK via boat as an asylim seeker; and that he had been on an MI6 “watchlist”. From an extra detail carried in Dawn, it appears Asif is claiming that he got this false information from another aggregator site, called Kossyderrickent and based in Nigeria. Kossyderrickent has removed the relevant page, but an archived version shows that its write-up included a verbatim Twitter/X post (now deleted) from an account called XCellent78:

Southport Stabbings suspect, Ali-Al-Shakati, was on MI6 watch list and was known to Liverpool mental health services. He was an asylum seeker who came to UK by boat last year.

Those kids have been failed by our pathetic government who are more interested in going after Tommy Robinson on made up terrorism charges than actually stopping real terrorists

These sentences were integrated into the text, rather than being presented as a quote by a third party. XCellent78’s post also included a full stop that is missing on Kossyderrickent, which is suggestive of a cut-and-paste job. The reference to “our pathetic government who are more interested in going after Tommy Robinson” of course is incoherent in a Nigerian context.

Channel3Now repeated much of the first line, but without the comma: “Ali-Al-Shakati was on MI6 watch list and was known to Liverpool mental health services. He was an asylum seeker who came to UK by boat last year.”

The first part of XCellent78’s post also appeared in a post by a member of the UK conspiracy crowd named Bernie Spofforth (@Artemisfornow); Spofforth claims that she copied XCellent78, but her post appeared first and so it would appear to have been the other way round. Spofforth and XCellent78 both have an extra space after the second comma (“Ali-Al-Shakati,  was on MI6…”) that is not present on the Kossyderrickent version. Questions that occur to be include (1) why was the false name given two hyphens?; (2) why does the sentence refer to “MI6 watch list” rather than “MI6’s watch list”, or “an MI6 watch-list”?; and (3) why “came to UK” rather than “came to the UK”?

Spofforth was arrested a couple of weeks ago, and she remains under investigation by Cheshire Police. So far, she appears to be the earliest person to have put the false claims into the public domain. We may never be sure whether she’s the ur-source for all the online repetitions – if the rumour was circulating privately before her post then there may be other lines of transmission. However, we can suggest with some confidence a chain of Spofforth → XCellent78 → Kossyderrickent → Channel3Now. Alternatively, there may have been some unknown source common to both Spofforth and XCellent78 (in which case, Spofforth might have mistook the XCellent78 post for this earlier source).

Channel3Now in Pakistan was the focus of an ITV News investigation that appeared a week ago. However, the arrest is now being seized on by bad actors to re-write the history of the past month; here’s Reform Deputy Leader Richard Tice, extrapolating wildly:

If this is true…..well well well

Seems a gentleman in Pakistan spread the fake news about Southport

Perhaps he was of the Far Left, deliberately creating division ….

What say you ⁦@Keir_Starmer?

Meanwhile, Tommy Robinson:

So as the UK government blamed everyone from the non existent group “EDL”, the “Russians”, even me, for the riots.

It was a Pakistani.

Hundreds jailed, scores attacked by Muslims because of the government lies.

#StarmerMustGo

And Laurence Fox:

I hope the police are grovelling their way to @Artemisfornow front door to apologise for their dreadful abuse of power.

While from GB News:

‘Starmer’s claim that these riots were organised by far right agitatiors was itself, fake news.’

Director of Free Speech Union, Toby Young, reacts to a man in Pakistan identified for allegedly giving a false name for the Southport attacker.

These interpretations are all deeply dishonest, although the motive is to “flood the zone” with a superfically plausible narrative that populists and conspiracists will identify with without needing much or any convincing.

Channel3Now certainly played a role in amplifying the false information: for example, it provided the basis for a post on Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch that was (typically) quietly deleted. However, it did not create the “fake news” – and either way, the site’s involvement does not exonerate those who spread it further or who acted on it by rioting and inciting disorder.

“A Pakistani made them do it” is a pathetic excuse.

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From the Daily Telegraph:

BBC presenter Chris Packham has been criticised after urging people who bank with Barclays to stick their heads in a bucket of petrol and set themselves on fire… He said: “But, if anyone here is banking with Barclays, then, I suggest you stick your head in a bucket of fuel and set fire to it because you’re burning our planet down. And, it’s time to put this stuff behind us.”

A complaint about Packham’s comments was also made to Derbyshire Constabulary.

The complainant, a country sports enthusiast who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote to officers asking how the BBC presenter’s comments could be legal “given the recent spate of civil unrest which we have seen across the country” and those “inciting people to take direct action.”

A police spokesman said: “The video has been reviewed and no offences have been committed.

“Each incident that takes place is reviewed based on the language used as well as the specific set of circumstances in which the comments are made.

“In this instance, while there is legislation covering individuals encouraging or assisting a person or persons to cause serious harm to themselves, there is no suggestion that this is a serious attempt to influence anyone to commit any such acts.”

This preposterous non-story, bylined to Simon Trump and Steve Bird, is just the latest installment in an ongoing series of lame attack articles aimed at Packham, in each case bolstered by a convenient anonymous accuser.

Back in April 2023, the same duo reported on speculation that a vehicle working on Packham’s Springwatch programme may have been responsible for running over a badger nicknamed Bernie in Suffolk… in 2015. How did this become “news” eight years later?

The mystery surrounding the badger’s death only came to light after a keen naturalist recently posted a message on social media asking whether the BBC would ever reveal what happened to Bernie.

Details of where to find the message were not provided. This was followed by another item in August:

When Chris Packham appeared on The One Show with three goshawk chicks, the naturalist took great pride in showing how a bird of prey once near extinction in Britain is at last thriving.

But, that BBC recording is now at the centre of a police investigation over whether a wildlife crime – including the somewhat unusual practice of bird sniffing – was committed before the nation’s very eyes.

The clip, broadcast in June following a morning of filming, prompted a complaint to police that a filming licence may not have been obtained.

…The man who complained – a shooting enthusiast who does not want to be named for fear of reprisals – said: “I watched the programme and was struck by the way Mr Packham was handling and sniffing the birds. These birds are Schedule 1 protected and it is a crime to ‘intentionally or recklessly disturb at, on or near an active nest’.”

The matter was dropped in October:

Hampshire Police has written to the man who complained – an amateur shooting enthusiast who does not want to be named – to say that no charges will be brought and the case has now been closed.

It is tempting to suspect that the “country sports enthusiast”, the “keen naturalist” and the “amateur shooting enthusiast” are all the same person – or if not, that there is some coordinating intelligence behind them. Does this individual really “fear reprisals”, or is it rather that the two hacks for some reason would rather obfuscate who it is they are repeatedly relying on for their stream of easy copy?

As well as the above, in 2022 the paper also published a more serious story about Packham – this time, it was written up by the paper’s crime correspondent Martin Evans, but as with the more recent examples an unnamed individual was at the heart of it:

A mystery businessman has offered a £50,000 reward to help capture a gang who carried out a terrifying arson attack at the home of the BBC TV nature presenter Chris Packham.

Suspicion immediately fell on pro-hunting supporters who were thought to be targeting Mr Packham because of his vocal opposition to bloodsports.

But there was also fevered speculation online that the attack might actually be the work of animal rights activists who were trying to set up and discredit their opponents.

…The mystery benefactor, who claims he is not a hunting, shooting or fishing enthusiast, has appealed on a website to a number of potential parties, which he believes could help.

The website was being sued by Packham for libel (mentioned by Evans in passing), and there is no evidence that Evans did anything to verify the existence of this “mystery businessman” for himself. In his witness statement, Packham detected bad faith (para 179):

The clear message from these articles is that in addition to writing myself a death threat letter, I also fabricated the arson attack in order to, presumably, elicit further publicity and/or public sympathy. I understand that the final date for the reward to be claimed is 2 May 2023 which is the first day of listing for trial in this litigation, making a mockery of the idea that the reward is not associated with my defamation claim.

Packham’s advice to Barclay’s customers was captured by a website called Fieldsports TV, which had settled a separate libel action last November.

UPDATE (October):

On 5 October 2024, Trump and Bird produced yet another story about Packham:

Chris Packham has been forced to pay £200,000 to a pensioner and country sportsman he was accused of pursuing “vindictively” through the courts, it has been claimed.

In 2023, the naturalist and BBC presenter was awarded £90,000 in damages after the High Court upheld his defamation claims against two contributors to Country Squire, an online magazine that wrongly accused him of misleading people into donating to a tiger rescue charity.

But his case against Paul Read, a 70-year-old grandfather who was the proofreader for some of the magazine articles, was thrown out by the High Court judge.

It meant Packham, 63, became liable for the pensioner’s legal costs, and Mr Read has now claimed his damages have been dwarfed by that bill.

It is understood the Springwatch presenter had to pay £196,008, more than double the £90,000 he was awarded as damages.

Read was actually billed on the website (previously discussed here) as a “co-author” of the articles, a designation he was happy to accept until the libel action was launched. However, given that Trump and Bird go on to quote Read, why is the costs figure only “understood” to be £196,008? This implies some intermediary. The article does not explain why this is news now, 18 months after the court case.

Ten days later the same detail appeared in the Daily Mail, in a short piece by the paper’s gossip columnist Richard Eden that also contains further claims:

He [Packham] has, it emerged, sustained a grievous blow in his latest High Court battle, after which he was accused of ‘vindictively’ pursuing a 70-year-old grandfather through the courts – and was landed with a legal bill for £196,008.

But that, it seems, does not mark the end of Chris Packham’s current woes.

I can reveal that the BBC presenter has just suffered the publication in America of a marmalade-dropper of a book which has been privately published but is financed in part – so its publisher claims – by some of Packham’s BBC colleagues, with elements of research apparently supplied by High Court staff… it pulls no punches, even alleging that Packham, 63, is ‘narcissistic’ and a ‘manipulator’.

That “He” in the first sentence starts the article, which implies some botched late editing. As for the book, Eden neglects to provide its title, its author or the name of the publisher. It seems poor form to publish vicious allegations against Packham’s character – “narcissistic” and “manipulator” – that are unattributed and unexplained.

The book in fact is called The Fall of Packham, and an image of the cover was posted online by Andrew Gilruth of the Moorland Association on 8 October. No publisher is apparent, although the author is supposedly one “James Johnson”. It doesn’t seem to be for sale anywhere, and there’s no ISBN number. However, copies have been circulating privately: Jeremy Clarkson brandished a copy in an Instagram video that was noticed by the Express on 24 October (Clarkson miread the title, referring to it as the “The Fall of Chris Packham“), while celebrity farmer Gareth Wyn Jones showed off his one the next day. Several apparent references to the title of the work have also been made on Twitter/X by a law professor named Andrew Tettenborn, in undignified goading replies to Packham’s own posts (here and here).

Clearly, then, the book is being disseminated by someone with a grudge, and it provided a bit of easy work for Eden at the Mail. So why did Trump and Bird at the Telegraph ignore it? It seems unlikely that they wouldn’t have received a copy as well, and its appearance is the only news hook on which to hang Read’s award so many months after the case. Perhaps they don’t believe everything anti-Packham that comes their way.

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On LBC News, Nigel Farage has been pressed by Tom Swarbrick about his 30 July references to “reports” claiming that the Southport stabbings suspect was a Muslim who had recently arrived in the UK (an aspect of “cover up rhetoric” that I previously noted here). Here’s Farage’s reply:

One of the reasons the Southport riots were as bad as they were is we weren’t told the truth. There were stories on online from some very prominent folks with big followings, Andrew Tate, etc., suggesting the man had crossed the English Channel in a boat in October 2023. Other suggestions that he was an active Muslim, and much of this led to the riots that we saw.

I asked a very simple question: was this this person known or not [to the security services].

…Give us some clarity… I mean, I remember, the London Bridge attacker, we knew within an hour that this person was known to the security services. Whenever in Northern Ireland there was a terrorist outrage, very quickly people were told the background of the perpetrator. I asked a very simple question.

I could have said “some reports suggest he crossed the Channel last October. Some reports suggest he’s an active Muslim”. I did none of those things. What I asked for was clarity. We didn’t get clarity, and I would argue… that what happened in Southport would not have been at the same magnitude had the truth been told, and told very, very quickly. It wasn’t for many hours that we learnt more.

Here’s what Farage said at the time:

Was this guy being monitored by the security services? Some reports say he was. Others are less sure.

The next day, however, he reformulated what he had suggested:

…I also asked whether, amidst a sea of speculation, the 17-year-old involved had been under the watch of our authorities.

It’s remarkable that Farage would choose now to say that “some reports” means Andrew Tate. Most people would have understood Farage as referring to credible sources, some of which were supposedly saying the suspect was known to the security services while others were saying that this only might be the case. Anything emerging from Tate would very obviously have just been a derivative rumour. This false picture fell apart, which is why the next day Farage tried to give the impression that he had instead merely raised a broad and general question arising naturally from the circumstances.

Farage’s new self-justification fails to convince, due to several leaps and false premises.

First, Merseyside Police confirmed on the evening of 29 July that the suspect had been born in Cardiff. An update at lunchtime on 30 July said that an “incorrect” name (i.e. Ali Al-Shakati) had been circulating on social media. Farage’s statement was posted to Twitter/X a few hours after that – it appears he wants credit for not repeating specific claims that had already been debunked by the police despite the fact that the “security services” claim had been bundled in with them. Most reasonable people would have thought “well, the rest of the internet rumour was rubbish, so why should the supposed ‘MI6 watchlist’ claim be taken seriously?”. Farage, in contrast, appears to have thought “well, police have responded to the false claims overall, but here’s one detail that I can still get some mileage out of”. And he also appears to have thought, “an ‘MI6 watchlist’ can’t be right, since MI6 operate abroad, so I’ll amend to ‘security services’ as being more credible”.

Further, Farage’s comparators are bogus. A more reasonable inference from the London Bridge attack would be that if a suspect is known to the security services then this will probably come out very quickly, not that the lack of any such confirmation indicates a cover up. And in the case of Northern Ireland there was a very obvious terrorist context, with groups even phoning in to take responsibility for bombings. That’s why people were told “very quickly” (1) – but where context is unclear, it will take a few more before police will be in a position to update the public. Understanding the vast differences shouldn’t be difficult.

If Farage had merely wanted police to act more quickly to neutralise false rumours then that would have been explicit in his 30 July statement. He would also have highlighted what the police had actually said. Instead, he gave credence to the “security services” rumour, which in turn implied a context of Islamic extremism. As such, there is no reason to go along with his self-exclusion from the factors he says affected the “magnitude” of what happened in Southport, and elsewhere.

Now that the suspect has been charged and named, news reports must be guarded so as not to prejudice the trial, although unsourced claims about his alleged motivation continue to circulate on social media (I saw one instance promoted by Carl Benjamin). Given the circumstances, many social media users will either chafe at or ignore the legal requirement to describe Rudakubana as “the suspect”, and there’s scope here for bad actors to suggest that the word has been chosen by the media in order to favour him – this may seem ludicrous, but Laurence Fox claims that the media has published photographs of Rudakubana as a child in order for some reason “to make him look like the victim.”

Note

1. It should also be remembed, though, that what we were told “very quickly” as regards Northern Ireland wasn’t always correct.

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From the Daily Telegraph:

Nigel Farage has questioned “whether the truth is being withheld from us” over the Southport stabbings.

Speaking about the 17-year old-suspect, the leader of Reform UK said: “Was this guy being monitored by the security services? Some reports say he was. Others are less sure. The police say it is a non-terror incident just as they said the stabbing of the army lt colonel in uniform on the streets of Kent was a non-terror incident.”

“I wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us. I don’t know the answer to that but I think it is a fair and legitimate question.”

“Just asking questions”, as they say. Farage made the statement in a video.

It’s not clear what “reports” Farage has seen: there was an internet rumour that the suspect had been on an an “MI6 watchlist”, but the same rumour also misidentified the suspect with a faux Arabic-sounding but nonsensical name and falsely stated that he was an asylum seeker. The reference to “MI6” rather than “MI5” was also a red-flag of misinformation.

This rumour was spread around social media and written up, possibily with the help of AI, by a website called “Channel3 NOW”. As noted in a thread by Marc Owen Jones (here and here):

…@channel3nownews is obviously an illegitimate website. Indeed, I found four Facebook pages connected to them. One of these pages was repurposed – it used to be called “Funny Hours” in 2016, but changed its name to Fox3News and then Channel3Now. Those who operate it are reported to be in Pakistan & the US. Their website doesn’t have anything by way of a serious ‘about us’ page. The only author I could find through checking the sitemap… goes back to a LinkedIn profile of a guy running a lawn company in Nova Scotia.

In the US, the Channel3 NOW article was quoted at length by Robert Spencer on his Jihad Watch site; at some point he had second thoughts and deleted, although as per his usual practice there’s no sign of any correction. One big Twitter/X account that also spread the rumour but then deleted was “EndWokeness” (captured by John Bye here), an account that is regularly amplified by Elon Musk. In the UK, one person who apologised for spreading false information was Dave Atherton, although as regards the security services he backed down only so far, saying “It is not known if he was on an MI5/6 watch list” (1).

The rumour also got a mention in The Times, although in a context that made it clear it had no credibility:

A name being shared on social media as that of the suspect in the Southport knife attack is false, Merseyside police have said.

Some fringe news outlets and social media accounts claimed an asylum seeker who was on the MI6 watchlist was behind the stabbings. Some posts with the name were shared hundreds of times.

On the face of it, Farage’s “some reports” means nothing more than this debunked rumour – a lack of discernment and due diligence that looks like a pattern.

The idea of some sort of cover-up has also been fed by a Twitter/X post by Steven Barrett, a barrister who is part of the “senior leadership team” of Lord Cruddas’ Conservative Democratic Organisation. Barrett wrote that

I have been privately contacted by a Police Officer – which is rare for me

And told that what we are being told about the Southport stabbings is being managed

And that their priority is that our response is managed

After the post went viral, he added that “I have no intention or desire to be, or to stoke, drama”. Levins, a firm of solicitors based in Liverpool, was unimpressed:

This has now been QTd by Tommy Robinson. The police have a very serious legal duty to manage the information that’s released to the public. Quite what a rent-a-quote member of the Chancery Bar thinks he has to contribute is unclear.

The attraction of such rumours, of course, owes much to the fact that the suspect has not been named. Naming any arrested but not charged suspect is currently fraught with difficulty due to a civil privacy ruling in 2022 (recently invoked by Dan Wootton). Further, the phrase “cannot be named for legal reasons” is instantly familiar to anyone who reads or watches the news, and it is common knowledge that this always applies when a criminal suspect is under 18 years old, as is the case here. Nevertheless, some people who ought to know better have recently been spreading misinformation about this restriction: earlier this month, for instance, Isabel Oakeshott suggested that the identity of a 16 year old on trial for murder was “being covered up”; when corrected, she cited the naming of the 10-year-old killers of James Bulger in 1994, although she neglected the detail that they were named only after their trial had concluded with guilty verdicts.

Unsurprisingly, the information gap has been weaponized by bad actors: Tommy Robinson’s ally Katie Hopkins asserts that the attack was “Islamic Terrorism”, and that because of this the police have “conceal[ed]” the suspect’s identity and are “divert[ing] attention from illegals” (2). As for why they would do this, her explanation is that (dots in original)

The money is with the Muslim invasion. Follow the money. And there are surprising overlords – most of them religious …. Catholic Churches. Chief Rabbi .. heads of ‘charities’

Laurence Fox meanwhile argues that “we need to permanently remove Islam from Great Britain”.

Speculation that the suspect was an asylum seeker was for the most part dampened by a statement from the Chief Constable of Merseyside Police that he was “born in Cardiff”. The statement did not refer his ethnicity, but the Daily Telegraph reported (as far as I know, before any other source) the added detail that his parents had come to the UK from Rwanda. This means that it is unlikely that he has a Muslim background, but the fringe-right has simply pivoted to claiming that his ethnicity establishes a link between the killings and “multiculturalism” in a more general sense. Given the lack of any details to work with, this is obviously a pre-existing one-size-fits-all agenda-driven assumption rather than an interpretation that had emerged out of any actual evidence.

The former MP Lembit Öpik – who these days is one of several British presenters on an Australian conspiracy website called TNT News – meanwhile formulated an anti-BBC attack line based on its delay in referencing the suspect’s Rwandan heritage. He argued that “born in Cardiff” was “risking anti-Welsh sentiment due to vileness of crime”, and when the Rwandan detail was later carried by the broadcaster he framed it as “BBC finally admits”. In fact, there was a very good reason for the BBC and other media to hold back from referencing Rwanda: editors considering whether to mention the suspect’s ethnicity would have had to weigh the public interest, as well as the risks of illegally facilitating “jigsaw” identification or inciting online misidentifications.

UPDATE: Farage has now retroactively reframed his question, in a new video shown on GB News:

…I also asked whether, amidst a sea of speculation, the 17-year-old involved had been under the watch of our authorities.

This is sleight of hand: “our authorities” can mean whole host of agencies (e.g. police, social services), whereas “the security services” has a strong implication of Islamic terrorism and interest at the highest levels. He’s also now giving the impression that he was merely asking in general terms, rather than raising a specific concern based on “reports” that in truth were never anything more than a malicious rumour.

Note

1. Atherton also claimed that “He appears to be a Jordanian Palestinian from his name”. How he got from the faux Arabic name to such a specific sub-group is mysterious.

2. Hopkins refers to “the attacker” rather than “the suspect”. The media’s more guarded language is based on the legal principle that guilt should not be inferred from the fact of an arrest or someone being on trial. This would be the case even where there appears to be overwhelming evidence of guilt, or where there would no such agnosticism if the suspect were dead. For instance, in 2016 the murderer Thomas Mair was described as a “suspect” even though his first court appearance was basically an uncontrite confession. Many of Tommy Robinson’s legal problems have arisen from his apparent belief that he has a right to describe defendants on trial as being guilty.

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Hope Not Hate has a round-up of yesterday’s Tommy Robinson rally in central London, including a section on what the organisation calls his “Christian turn”:

In recent months Lennon [i.e. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, Robinson’s legal name] has begun to talk more regularly about God and Jesus and that was reflected today with numerous speakers and singers referencing Christianity and chants from the stage of “Christ Is King.” There was also a band from the Spirit Embassy London church in Bruce Grove, Tottenham.

However, perhaps the most extreme speech was delivered by Bishop Ceirion Dewar who screamed:

We are not at war with just the Muslim, we are not at war with just woke ideology, we are not at war with just cancel culture but we are at war with four hundred and twelve idiots that sit on those benches just up there. […] We are the defence walls upon which modernity and multiculturalism crash.

Bishop Dewar has previously addressed a UKIP meeting.

While the English Defence League drew on Christian and crusader imagery Lennon has never organised an event as overtly Christian in tone as todays.

There was some indication of this general direction at last month’s rally, which I noted here.

Dewar’s would appear to be an “independent” bishop: his website says that he was ordained in 1999 and consecrated in 2005, but does not tell us by whom. On LinkedIn, he describes himself as a Pentecostal, and posts on Facebook indicate that he is close to the American Prosperity Gospel preacher Mike Murdock (previously blogged here in relation to another British associate) and to various UK-based British-African church leaders. In 2012 Dewar was involved in a financial dispute with an elderly woman, in which a court ordered him to pay £1000.

The Spirit Embassy Church, meanwhile, is headed by a British-Zimbabwean businessman named Uebert Angel, who has the status of “Ambassador at Large” for Zimbabwe’s government. Angel was not himself part of the event, although clips show that a British associate named Rikki Doolan was on stage. Last year, Angel and Doolan featured in an Al-Jazeera documentary about gold smuggling and money laundering, in which they were secretly filmed; Doolan subsequently issued a statement denying any wrongdoing, although he admitted that as a businessman he has to say things sometimes that seem “ugly”. Around the same time, he was building links with Turning Point UK via anti-drag queen storytime protests alongside Laurence Fox and Calvin Robinson.

Fox of course was also prominent at yesterday’s rally, and the night before he spoke at a function room in Hammersmith at an event hosted by the relentless conspiracist David Vance and someone named Sarah Jane Smith. The discussants also included Dave Atherton, Peter McIlvenna and David Scott; the football manager Joey Barton was originally scheduled to take part, but it appears he stepped back due to his latest legal difficulty. Smith describes herself as “a Quantum Healing Hypnosis Practitioner” whose “mentor” was the late Dolores Cannon, an American New Ager who specialised in past life regression and who published books of “communication from Nostradamus via several mediums through hypnosis”.

Footnote

A couple of weeks ago, a short video was posted online of a planning session for the rally at a serviced office in Fleet Street – familar faces included Laurence Fox, Katie Hopkins, Tommy Robinson, Calvin Robinson, Gerard Batten, Mahyar Tousi, Richard Inman and Jeff Taylor; also spotted were “Stefan Tompson owner of @visegrad24… Paul Thorpe… Momus Najmi”. A document called “The Pledge” was shown propped against the windows.

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A much-discussed pair of posts on X/Twitter – first up, journalist Charlotte Gill:

Back to the UK tomorrow.
I’ve never had such dread about Britain.
Coming back to London and knowing how unpleasant it’ll be.
The demographic changes and feeling that 🇬🇧 is most against Brits.
The lack of functional media.
The feeling something big has to happen to restore order.

Then, commentary in support from right-wing populist academic and pollster Matt Goodwin:

London is turning into an unaffordable shit-hole with the “enjoyable” parts closed off to an elite minority. Everybody who lives there can see it even if liberal progressives will never accept it bc to do so would shatter their worldview. Charlotte is just saying out loud what we can all see.

Goodwin has since deleted the post, although he hasn’t explained why.

It’s possible to read too much significance into one off-the-cuff comment on social media in relation to someone’s overall worldview – indeed, I criticised Goodwin for doing just that in my previous post, although his “gotcha” was an obviously malicious misinterpretion of a joke whereas the above was published in earnest. Without overdoing it, it seems to me that his post is worth noting as representative of a trend within a political movement.

The profane expression “shithole” (fussily hyphenated by Goodwin) can reasonably be seen as signalling alignment with Trumpian rhetoric and attack lines; in May, Donald Trump Jnr expressed the view that the Democrats had “succeeded in their years long attempt to turn America into a third-world shithole”, and Trump himself was famously said to have described African nations, Haiti and El Salvador as “shitholes” in 2018. It seems to me that the collocation is so strong that the outdated term “third-world” can be inferred as the implied context whenever the word is used. The term “shithole” in relation to London is also a favourite usage of Laurence Fox, and it featured heavily during a tired and emotional phone-call to his fiancée that he filmed and put online after a car he was a passenger in crashed into a London bus on his way back from last month’s Tommy Robinson rally.

The phrase “third-world shithole” in turn evokes another anti-immigration mantra: “Import the Third World, become the Third World”. Reform MP Lee Anderson recently used a variant of this (“Import a third world culture then you get third world behaviour”) in relation to the disturbances in Leeds, after party leader Nigel Farage falsely attributed what happened to “the politics of the subcontinent” (background on Zelo Street).

Perhaps Goodwin deleted because he felt that he had strayed too far into “red meat” territory, both as regards the word and his endorsement of other elements of Gill’s Tweet. He also faced criticism; as expressed by Matthew Sweet:

If you don’t like “demographic changes” maybe you just don’t like cities. I’ve never heard a serious argument that uses the word “shithole”.

We might also ask what Goodwin means by an “elite minority”. Goodwin frequently bemoans the supposed influence of a “new elite” who hold harmful progressive views at odds with the common-sense instincts of ordinary people such as himself. However, “closed off” areas would refer to the gated communities of the super-rich – an actual elite who would much rather we focus our critical scrutiny elsewhere.

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Writing or saying something that imagines a real-world public figure coming to harm should not be done lightly – even when it serves some legitimate purpose, there is a risk of poor taste or, worse, that one’s words will be taken out of context by enemies looking for a “gotcha”. In such cases, a comment may falsely  be cited as evidence of malice, or even as a threat or as incitement to bring about such harm.

This is what happened when the commentator David Aaronovitch recently reacted to news about a recent US Supreme Court ruling that appears to give US presidents extraordinary latitude beyound the reach of the law. Aaronovitch’s response on X/Twitter was sarcastic and satirical, opining “If I was Biden I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security #SCOTUS”. A number of individuals pretended to believe that he meant this in earnest, and the story was picked up by some newspapers: Aaronvitch presents a programme for BBC Radio 4, and so the incident was useful grist to the anti-BBC mill.

The controversy died down, as these things do, but of course it flared up again when a couple of weeks later a young embittered nobody who in a non-election year would likely have massacred some schoolchilden or shoppers decided instead to grasp at posthumous significance by attempting to assassinate Trump.

David has written about his experience on Substack. The first round, he explains, was initially set off by Laurence Fox. After that,

the pugilistic owner of two pubs in Essex [Adam Brooks] – a regular contributor to GBNEWS – was on my case alongside his 300,000 followers. The disgraced former Sun employee and GBNEWS presenter, Dan Wootton was there too. A ludicrous Trump supporting survivor of Piers Morgan’s departure from NewsUK’s failing Talk TV station, Mike Graham, was fulminating. Several Reform party candidates weighed in… 

The story then got picked by Christian Calgie of the Daily Express, from where it jumped to the Daily Mail, the New York Post and even his former employer The Times. The headlines suggested that David had actually “called for” Biden to murder Trump, although The Times later modified their initial version. GB News meanwhile described him as “woke BBC presenter” – an adjective that served so explanatory purpose and would probably surprise a lot of people more likely to be described as “woke”.

Then, following the attempt on Trump’s life:

On the Laura Kuenssberg programme on BBC1 last Sunday Nigel Farage cited my tweet as an example of BBC-linked liberals wishing physical harm to their enemies… New online characters… such as a handsome but vacuous YouTuber called Mahyar Tousi were running whole discussions about it. Dim old luminaries like Henry Bolton.., renewed the demand for me to be fired… Katie Hopkins (remember her?) tweeted the head of Radio 4 wanting to know what he was going to do about me – an intervention. unlikely to damage my cause, I felt. Tommy Robinson added his pen’orth.

There was also, of course, a great deal of general abuse from lesser-known or anonymous individuals, some of it sinister. Even now, David’s Tweets on other subjects receive irrelevant and goading replies, sometimes featuring a screenshot of the long-deleted offending Tweet.

David doesn’t mention all of his higher-profile accusers and attackers, perhaps to keep his piece to managable length but also perhaps to avoid giving an impression of responding personally to certain individuals rather than offering public commentary of general public interest. However, there are two further instances that I think are worth noting.

First, Covid “lab-leak” exponent Matt Ridley waded in with a gratuitous goad after David reasonably suggested that being accused on inciting the attempted murder of a politician might be endangering.

Second, right-wing populist academic Matt Goodwin denied outright David’s explanation that the Tweet had been satirical, although he declined to be drawn on why he believes it was meant as a serious proposition. Last year, it may be recalled, Goodwin complained bitterly and Partridge-like that after debating David in London, David and the convener, Alan Rusbridger, had gone off to dinner without inviting him. After the shooting, Goodwin decided again to amplify a screenshot of the Tweet, as provided by the dubious Visegrád 24 outfit.

Goodwin also expanded on his theme with his own Substack post, in which he opined more generally about how the shooting had occurred because Trump has been the victim of unfair vilification. There’s currently no evidence that the shooter was inspired by any anti-Trump polemics, but either way this was ludicrous cant and opportunism. Sky News ran a piece pointing out Trump’s actual violent rhetoric, although it was forced to amend its headline after being accused of “victim blaming”. In the US, Rolling Stone showed a bit more gumption with the headline “Trump Allies Try to Bully Dems, Media to Shut Up About His Fascist Plans”, followed by the observation that “Republicans are seeking to capitalize on Trump’s assassination attempt — using it to demand everyone stop talking about his threats to democracy”.

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Speaking on Question Time, Nigel Farage goes all in on the claim that a canvasser in Clacton-on-Sea named Andrew Parker is an actor who infiltrated his campaign with the intention of being filmed by Channel 4 News making racist comments. Via the Daily Mail:

He said: ‘We then found out, yes, actually, he is an actor. He’s worked in the past for Channel 4. On his own site he says, ‘I’m a well-spoken actor with an alter-ego, I do rough talking’.

He added: ‘Let me tell you, from the minute he turned up in that office in Clacton and I saw him, he was acting from the very start. He even says on his website, ‘hire me, I do undercover filming’.

Asked who he believed paid the man to pretend to be a Reform canvasser, Mr Farage said: ‘It may well have been the production company, or it’s the guy himself who wanted publicity to get more parts, I don’t know. 

‘What I know is this is a political setup of astonishing proportions.’

Farage’s deputy Richard Tice meanwhile says that Channel 4’s denial of any involvement with the canvasser is “desperate stuff”, and he demands to know “Why did he say he is a property developer when he is an actor?”. The attack line appears to have originated with Tice’s partner Isabel Oakeshott, who suggested Channel 4 may have “used” Parker.

A bad-faith actor infilitrating some cause or group to make it look bad is always a possibility, although this seems to be an overly literal interpretation of the concept. If Parker wanted to express views that aren’t his own, and that are socially stigmatising, why didn’t he use a pseudonym? There are other difficulties.

First, there is ample documentation of Parker’s career as a property developer, including Companies House filings going back years (here and here) and corroborating details that remain available online from a recently deleted LinkedIn profile. In answer to Tice’s question, then, the reason he said he’s a property developer is because he is, and acting is just a sideline he has pursued over the years (since childhood, according to one profile page).

Second, Farage’s claim that Parker has “worked for Channel 4” lacks significance. Farage relies on a screenshot from Parker’s acting CV posted to a site that refers to Dead Pixels, alongside “Al Campbell / Channel 4”. Campbell was the show’s director, and Channel 4 was the broadcaster – but it was actually produced by Various Artists Ltd. The idea that this acting gig (so minor it’s not even listed on his IMDb – maybe the scene was cut) indicates a surreptitious pre-existing connection with Channel 4 News is fanciful. (1)

According to another Daily Mail article, Parker insists that he was a genuine Reform campaigner, although he regrets the comments that he was filmed making. Perhaps he brought his thespian instincts into his campaigning – modifying his accent, improvising some racist banter – but that would more likely mean that he wanted to fit in rather than that he’s an infiltrator. It seems to me significant that other campaigners haven’t come forward to say that he was different with them in private conversation than he was when he was being secretly filmed. (2)

It is difficult to see how Farage’s claim can be disproven, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for it either. His confidence is either confirmation bias or opportunism, and should be balanced against his crafted image as a tough-talking plain speaker. It also fits a pattern of making wild accusations – he recently alleged that the company that Reform had employed to vet prospective candidates had deliberately allowed individuals with discreditable views to go forward to selection and then had tipped off the media. In fact, it seems that the company had been unable to do its work because the election had been called several months earlier than expected – a rather more plausible explanation than a criminal conspiracy.

The controversy over Parker has also conveniently deflected from another person who was secretly filmed by Channel 4, a man described as a member of Farage’s ground team and named in the media as George Jones. Speaking to several others outside a pub, Jones expressed anger at a “degenerate” rainbow flag on a police car bonnet and suggested that the police were promoting “nonces”. He added:

Our police officers would be paramilitaries, they won’t be police… We’re going to bring back the noose.

Note

1. Parker’s appearance on Channel 4 News is also now listed on IMDb, as “Self” for “Episode dated 27 July 2024“. As such, the site also describes him as “known for… Channel 4 News (1982)”. The “1982” here refers to when Channel 4 News started broadcasting, not when he appeared on it. Richard Tice, taking his lead from Mahyar Tousi, is confused on this point, and uses it as the basis for accusing Channel 4 of “fibbing”.

2. Parker was also filmed saying he had previously met Farage in a restaurant; Farage later told a Channel 4 reporter that he was “someone I met once years ago”, but it seems more likely that he was taking Parker’s claim at face value rather than remembering an encounter that was unlikely to have been significant.

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From British Christian magazine Woman Alive, last month:

Former midwife Laura Brett says she has been called an ‘anti-vaxxer’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’. Here she explains how asking questions led to her personal conviction that no one should have been pressured into taking the Covid-19 vaccine.

Brett alleges that Covid vaccination is “one of the biggest medical frauds in history”, and she writes that in October 2023

we gathered 100 church leaders, heads of charities and other prominent people in the Houses of Parliament to worship, pray and provide evidence-based information about the truth concerning Covid-19 and the vaccination programme

The “hook” for the article was AstraZeneca’s admission in court documents that their vaccine can in rare cases cause blood clots. Although this has been widely known now for several years, the acknowledgement had been presented sensationally in the media as a new development.

Brett is the author of a book called Losing Liberty, Finding Freedom, and as well as being a “former midwife” she describes herself as “an evangelist, a qualified midwife, international speaker, mentor and activist… positioned at the frontline of Christian ministry”. The book came out last last year, and the back cover features a blurb from none other than Covid conspiracist Michael Yeadon praising the work as “a loud bright celebration of the power and greatness of God!” The book was launched first in Williamsburg, VA, but then also in London in January this year: attendees (H/T @PozzyWozzy) included Andrew Bridgen MP, as well as Lara Fawcett, a PR agent known primarily to the public as Bear Grylls’ sister. Bridgen has posted some photos, including one in which he and Fawcett pose in front of a hanging t-shirt bearing the words “conspiracy theorist”.

The front cover of the book, meanwhile, comes with blurb from “Rev Richard Fothergill, Founder and CEO of the Filling Station Trust”. Fothergill was in the news a year ago, after he was “de-banked” after writing to the Yorkshire Building Society “to complain about their public messaging during Pride month”, particular as regards “gender ideology”. The “Filling Station Trust” organises “celebration meetings” around the country, meaning worship sessions along evangelical/Charismatic lines. This is Brett’s own affiliation, and Fothergill is on board with her anti-Covid vaccination alarmism. Writing a comment on the Premier Christian Radio Facebook page, he recently expressed the view that

The eminent Proff [unidentified] got it very wrong. The Vax was never suggested as being ‘experimental’. It was forced on us as a necessity. ‘Don’t kill granny’ remember? We were lied to and now those who did this hope to brush it all under the carpet. Evil days 2020-2022.

In the same thread, Brett adds:

We are happy to pray for anyone who is vax injured or worried they might be and we pray deliverance of all the spike proteins etc. We do this all the time at Harrogate Filling Station. Just get in touch via email and we can do that via zoom. The Lord heals!

Alongside running the Filling Station network, Fothergill is also “Trustee & Relational Covering” of a Christian coffee shop project in Yeovil called “Bread”, run by an evangelist named Dominic Muir. Muir’s other projects include “the Wesley Academy”, where he is listed as “Minister” alongside Rev Dr Joseph Boot, Virginia Logan, Sam Kyung-Min Lee and Joseph Buthee, described as “Bread Church coffee shop manager”. However, Buthee has more recently been active in London, and he recently led the Lord’s Prayer at the recent Tommy Robinson rally in London. Robinson has himself joined the Covid antivax bandwagon, and in September last year he was photographed with Bridgen at a conference in Denmark.

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