Laurence Fox - The Fortnums Tommy

As law enforcement authorities subject Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, to restrictions on where he is able to appear on his targets’ doorsteps, and a libel trial verdict awaits him, the effectiveness of his campaign against all those Scary Muslims™ diminishes. Who might take the opportunity to fill this particular void?

While pundits consider the field of potential replacements, consider this: washed-up minor thesp, failed tunesmith and DOA politician Laurence Fox, despite all the money thrown at his campaign, did so badly in his run for Mayor of London that he lost his deposit. But his future direction was beginning to take shape, one Tweet at a time.

As early as March, he was endorsing the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, where Charles Moore was frightening the dwindling readership by telling them of “Islamist Rhetoric”, whether or not it actually existed. Another clue came as Fox sneered “With numbers of Christians attending church plummeting, the the C of E have offered to fill empty pew space so they can preach for the Critical race theorists and their brothers and sisters of the new woke cult”. Attacking anti-racism? That’s most interesting.

And then, yesterday, it happened. First came the denunciation by inference of Black Lives Matter: “There is no place in Christian culture for death and rape threats. We all have a responsibility to stand against all religious extremism. We must stop taking the knee and turning a blind eye to hatred just because it comes from a seemingly oppressed minority”.

Which “seemingly oppressed minority” might this be? We did not have to wait long to have it spelled out for us. “All the ancient, dyed in the wool conservative Muslims who refuse to let their children become truly British, with your insistence on blasphemy laws that have no place in a country that belongs to all of us, set your children free to become part of something beyond religion”. Is he pitching for the Lennon gig?

Looks like he is. “If the consequences of free speech are a group of micro-dicked brain-swabs storming Charlie Hebdo and massacring everyone inside because of hurty feelings, then there is an argument that they possibly should relocate to more welcoming pastures”. Maybe we get a chorus of “Send the buggers back” too? We certainly get a list of Muslim men charged with rape and the nudge-nudge observation “Uncomfortable truths”.

Watching this unfold was former prosecutor Nazir Afzal, who pointed out “Comfortable Truth - 84% of lone sex offenders & majority of sex offending ‘gangs’ are British White. I prosecuted 1 white group which consisted entirely of members of Far Right. Don’t remember this guy or anyone else making a fuss. You don’t think he’s being deliberately selective?” Indeed. And Peter Walker of the Guardian was concerned.

“If Laurence Fox is, as this tweet indicates, going to try and take the space departed by Tommy Robinson then we might have to stop treating him largely as a joke. It's very dodgy territory”. One has to wonder what Fox’s backers make of what looks like a swerve not merely to the far right, but an attempt to exhume the worst of 1960s race hatred.

Laurence Fox wants you to know he’s not a racist. But, it seems, you can see it from there.

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