UKIP – Chief Spinner’s A Bigot

So Andre Lampitt was suspended by Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his fellow saloon bar propper-uppers yesterday after he was discovered to have Tweeted that Islam was an “evil organisation”, and that “All Muslims need to leave Europe... or denounce their pathetic satanic religion”. The Muslim abuse problem, however, is only just beginning for the UKIP hierarchy.

Yes, "Lunchtime", you're bang to rights

This is because there has been equally vitriolic rhetoric deployed by one of Mr Thirsty’s most senior lieutenants: step forward chief spinner Patrick “Lunchtime” O’Flynn, whose oeuvre as political correspondent of the Daily Express was laced with the most unfortunate sentiments. Yet O’Flynn is not merely still in place, he is also top of the UKIP list for the East of England.

In August 2005, in the wake of the previous month’s London bombings, O’Flynn was telling “Muslim fanatics ‘are no better than the Nazis’”. In December 2007, he called the Muslim Council of Britain “a by-word for fence-sitting in the face of Islamic extremism”, and that “following the rise of Islamic extremism and British involvement in the Iraq war, our country is widely detested by Muslims across the globe”.

And, for “Lunchtime”, the piece de resistance came in February 2008, with a vitriolic tirade titled “The time has come for Muslims to fully adopt the British way of life”. Readers of the Express were told in no uncertain terms that “the leaders of British Islam still don’t appreciate the degree to which their behaviour is despised by the majority of the public”. And, as the man said, there’s more.

“British people feel their hospitality has been abused and will brook no further compromise with radical Islam. A profit-and-loss account of the impact of Islam on Britain will quickly demonstrate why. On an economic level, the impact of Britain’s Muslims is massively negative. Research shows Muslim communities are typified by heavy levels of welfare dependency and low levels of wealth creation”.

They are? “A report last year by the Left-wing Institute for Public Policy Research found that fewer than half of adults from four of the biggest Muslim groups here – Somalis, Bangla­deshis, Turks and Pakistanis – are in employment”. So some wives stay at home – you know, like other housewives – and some are retired. And your point is? But he’s not finished just yet.

“Muslim urban ghettos have also reintroduced electoral fraud as a regular feature of British political life ... large Muslim communities which are almost wholly non-integrated and have brought with them massive social, political and economic problems ... Britain’s Muslim population will continue to rapidly expand”. No wonder Andre Lampitt spoke as he did – Islamophobes are openly welcomed by UKIP.

That is, unless “Lunchtime” O’Flynn is going to do the decent thing and resign.