The campaign by Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, to become an independent MEP continues to develop not necessarily to his advantage. Not only has his reception across the North West been rather less adulatory than he might have expected, but his pretence to be working on behalf of victims of grooming has been brutally denounced by the very groups he pretends to support.
It’s a pretence because there is only one person Lennon supports - Himself Personally Now. He had, though, pledged that, should voters be foolish enough to elect him later this month, he would give away his MEP’s salary to those working with grooming victims. The problem he now faces is those charities don’t want anything to do with him.
As ITV News has reported, “Tommy Robinson’s pledge to offer his European Parliament salary to grooming victims if he is elected has been rejected and branded a ‘profound insult’ by women’s groups … Mr Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has told voters in the North West where he is running that he would donate ‘100%’ of any EU salary to ‘child victims of sexual grooming’”.
The Guardian has more. Rather a lot more. “More than 40 women and charities including the End Violence Against Women and Girls Coalition declared in a letter to voters and community leaders in the north-west that they would not accept money from the English Defence League founder, criticising Robinson for ‘factually incorrect messages about grooming’”. That means they’re calling him a liar.
Which is something that Zelo Street has been trying to get across for the past two years - ever since Lennon rocked up here in the dead of night on a false pretext. In other words, indulging in intimidation on the basis of lying. Back at the Guardian article, there was more bad news. “The coalition of women’s groups said Robinson exploited the pain suffered by victims in a self-serving attempt to fuel racial hatred”.
That means he’s being called out for racism. That’s the racism he denies doing, and the racism that, every time he’s called out for it, he counters by aggressively confronting those calling him out and demanding “show me where I’m racist”. Perhaps he’ll go and doorstep some of the signatories to that letter. Perhaps he won’t.
The condemnation is brutal: “Tommy doesn’t care about the rights of women and girls - he is exploiting the pain of survivors and their families to fuel racist hate for his own gain … Tommy Robinson’s factually incorrect messages about grooming, and his attempt to portray himself as a champion of the cause, are an insult to survivors of abuse”.
And the payoff line is in similar style: “They are also a profound insult to the women who have spent their whole lives building support services for survivors and working to ensure some cases finally got to court. Where were you during that work Tommy Robinson?”
He wasn’t there. He was too busy intimidating his critics, bullying his targets out of their jobs, demonising Muslims, consorting with hate preachers, and conning his followers into opening their wallets to keep him in the style to which he had become accustomed.
Stephen Lennon has once more been exposed as a sham. I’ll just leave that one there.
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"Oh well guess these charities must support child rape then"
ReplyDeleteWill say his fans.
Yup, I work for a CSE charity and have been told that I'm 'pro child abuse' by countless TR fans, for saying he not only doesn't help, but hinders, those working to support victims.
Delete