The phrase “witch hunt” seems to have lost its meaning. In the good old days the phrase “witch hunt” could be used in good faith by witch hunters to describe a legitimate hunt for witches. Now it is only used to describe a witch hunt for someone who is not really a witch at all, and the very idea of witch hunts is entirely discredited. Which is why evidence-allergic Reform UK plc supporters have been ringing up LBC all week to describe the two concurrent police investigations into Nigel Farage’s financial irregularities as “witch hunts”. Even though the witch in question has been filmed practising witchcraft while riding on a broom dressed in a cape and a conical black hat and consorting with Satan. And is a witch.
The impotence of legacy media is evidenced by the fact that this story has failed to penetrate the minds of the LBC listener massive, who get their news from Russian bots on Twitter (currently X), US-funded far-right Facebook posts, AI memes and something someone in the next pub urinal said about migrants to pass the time between shaking their penis dry, farting and zipping up their flies. It’s telling that Andy Burnham declared this week that, in the interests of communicating actual facts, we need to boost the social media profiles of legacy media. Yes. We live in an information landscape so totally skewed that even the Daily Telegraph, Britain’s worst newspaper, is more trustworthy than the latest Elon-Musk-accelerated neo-nazi propaganda dump, or Donald Trump sharing fake footage at 3am of King Charles ignoring a collapsing Asda distribution centre worker to prove the monarchy are aloof. Let them eat cake. From Asda’s Just Essentials range. Only £1.25 per item.
Trump’s response to Burnham’s declaration of intent was to cry censorship, and to vow to ensure that American “independent journalism” – for example, fake footage of British kings ignoring dying British peasants – still penetrates the infosphere. As he would. Last November, America openly declared that its foreign policy was committed to destabilising and ultimately removing democratically elected liberal or left-leaning European governments, and Musk’s big social media boosts of the far right AfD in Germany have shown the key role online propaganda has to play in this. And bad-faith internet disinformation is, in part, is why Nick Ferrari’s breakfast show listenership dismiss the actual witch hunt for the actual witch Nigel Farage as a mere witch hunt.
If Farage wriggles and worms his way out of this one, while Keir Starmer took a hit below the waterline for accepting a pair of glasses and the poisoned chalice of some free tickets to see Coldplay reduce all human emotion to a puppet show of nameless abdominal surges, it will be another example of what Reform UK plc spokespersons like to call “two-tier policing”. Although we may see less of these comments from Reform UK plc now, as “tier” rhymed with “Keir” but doesn’t rhyme with “Burnham”, and so is harder for “30p Lee” Anderson to remember. Political messaging is currently operating with a level of nuance slightly below 1970s TV advertising slogans. For Mash Get Smash! Everyone’s A Fruit And Nut Case!! Stop The Boats!!!
Perhaps Daniel ‘Danny Tommo’ Thomas, or perhaps those advising and funding him, have realised the window of opportunity for starting a race war may be closing
Two-tier policing was also on display all week on England’s south coast, particularly in Portsmouth, where I have previously enjoyed the patriotism of local mosques, Indian takeaways and Chinese restaurants, all of which have loyally chosen to fly England flags from adjacent lamp-posts, while the lazy white working class conspicuously left street furniture outside nearby churches and fish-and-chip shops complacently unadorned, putting the safety of our women and girls at risk.
The Christian activist Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas is currently assembling groups of masked black-clad followers, whom he describes as “working-class men who are bricklayers, roofers and carpenters who build the house you live in and the roads you drive on”, at migrant-crisis flashpoints in the south-east. He has called the organisation Patriot Platform, which sounds like a place you can wait at a railway station if, like Nigel Farage, you don’t want to get on a train with people speaking foreign languages. Like Welsh.
Unlike environmental or anti-genocide protesters, some of whom received prison sentences for merely arranging a meeting to talk about the possibility of direct action, no masked Christian Patriots were arrested during the Portsmouth protests, which created massive traffic delays, intimidated motorists and caused Millets to run out of balaclavas. Hopefully, Nigel Farage will make a rare appearance in parliament to harangue the government about this egregious example of two-tier policing, if he can find time in between eating oysters and drinking champagne with now-dismissed long-term lieutenants he suddenly sees fit to describe as mere “contractors”.
(Incidentally, while Reform UK plc’s funding farrago has made Farage see fit to rid himself of his strategist – JD Vance’s “UK sherpa”, the rightwing Christian theologian James Orr – on ethical grounds, Orr still holds his post as associate professor of philosophy of religion at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. Here Orr allows students he has identified as future rightwing influencers to live on his riverside property and wear special James Orr-approved jumpers, in clear contravention of university guidelines, and received funding for his Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation from the far-right-friendly Hungarian institution Mathias Corvinus Collegium. It’s a crazy world where Reform UK plc has higher moral standards than Cambridge University, but what ethical guidance can you expect from the place that gave us Jonathan King?)
In a fashion that reflects Reform UK plc’s reliance on receiving the vast majority of its money from foreign sources, Patriot Platform’s Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas himself has previously benefited from thousands of pounds’ worth of funding from the conservative American thinktank Middle East Forum, which “promotes American interests abroad”. Take back control!
Thomas’s Patriot Platform is a grassroots protest group reflecting ordinary Christian men’s fears for the safety of their women and girls. It’s not clear if the rape alarms Patriot Platform hand out at protests have been paid for with any of the money Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas previously received from Middle East Forum in order to promote American interests abroad. And it’s not known whether those donations, like much of the money Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas’s mentor Stephen “Tommy Robinson” Yaxley-Lennon receives, has allegedly already been spent recreationally.
Historically, Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas has moved in a world of expensive habits. In 2016, Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas attacked a man called Graham Page with a machete in front of his partner because he believed Page had mislaid £10,000 worth of drugs which belonged to him. Page only managed to avoid being kidnapped by Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas, in front of his terrified partner, by hanging on tightly to a sturdy door frame. Protect our women and girls!
But, in a comical misunderstanding that reads like the opening scene of a low-budget British version of The Sopranos starring Robin Askwith and Danny Dyer, Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas had targeted the wrong Graham Page! The Graham Page who was supposedly concealing Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas’s £10,000 worth of drugs lived 15 miles away. This must have freaked Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas’s nuts right out! What are the chances of there being two people with a name as unique as Graham Page?
One of Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas’s two drugs-coveting associates later sent the wrong Graham Page a thoughtful and sincere message – “I’m so sorry, please let me apologise and sort out some sort of financial compensation” – but the trio still ended up, unfairly in my view, serving time. Until the drugs trade is legalised and properly regulated, its infrastructure will inevitably remain chaotic, and it is hardly the fault of traders like Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas that they have to resort to attacking people with machetes in front of their families in order to resolve legitimate business disputes.
Daniel ‘Danny Tommo’ Thomas standing in the street shouting up at the offices of the Daily Mail is just a dog barking at its own reflection, writ large in multi-storied plate glass
I hope Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas has been as thorough in apologising to the touring Pakistani Under-19 cricket team, whom his followers mistook for migrants and surrounded at Portsmouth’s Marriott Hotel. Suddenly everyone who isn’t white is a legitimate target. Indeed, earlier this week the bad boy of Brexit Arron Banks tweeted: “Going through Heathrow today, there wasn’t one white face in security or airport services. The Home Office is staffed by the kind of people we are trying to keep out! What hope?” Aaah! It makes you nostalgic for the good old days, when all the Brexit racists tried to pretend Brexit wasn’t about race. Arron! You said the quiet part out loud!
Perhaps Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas, or perhaps those advising and funding him, have realised the window of opportunity for starting the sort of race war Elon Musk told a Trafalgar Square crowd was coming to Britain may be closing. Especially if the Labour government’s rapid reduction of the number of migrants arriving here across the channel continues on its current downward, but largely unreported, trajectory. We won’t see an AfD insurgency here unless the far right can continue to amplify the supposed threat from migrants, or they get better at blaming disabled people or the RNLI for everything instead. Is that why Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas is suddenly on the ground, focusing attention on the greatly reduced numbers of people arriving here? Or is he just a shameless grifter on the make?
Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas’s tactics also threaten to create an unwitting ongoing satire of our news media. Concerned to keep his momentum going, but having exhausted the limited possibilities Portsmouth has to offer, on Wednesday Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas assembled his phone-a-goons outside the offices of the Daily Mail, demanding that the paper buy his mother a new house. The Daily Mail had revealed the name of Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas’s roofing company, RMT Roofing Specialists, which is registered at his mother’s address. It’s not known if the company, which the Christian Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas describes as being “rooted in faith”, uses regular scaffolding or a bespoke Patriot Platform. But it’s always worth having your roof put on in a religious way by a racist.
Should enemies of Patriot Platform choose to do so, they could have found the home of Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas’s mother and surrounded it, and it is not fair to intimidate anyone in that way. I understand Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas’s fears. A few years ago, a discussion board on the website Mumsnet, which was created in 2000 by Justine Roberts to help parents pool information and advice following a disastrous first family holiday with her one-year-old twins, revealed the location of my family home in a thread discussing my various ideological transgressions, professional shortcomings and imagined moral failures. “I’ve walked past that house,” volunteered one contributor, “and it isn’t very nice.” But unlike Danny Tommo, I didn’t then march an army of black-clad thugs up to Mumsnet’s trading address in Kentish Town and demand Mumsnet buy me a new house.
I think Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas knew his claim against the Daily Mail was a stretch. He did it for clicks. He probably is a racist, but he’s also an attention-seeker who is learning fast how to monetise attention. And in that respect he is the same as his mentor Stephen “Tommy Robinson” Yaxley-Lennon. And he is also the same as the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, whose relentless bullying of the late Jason Arday drove valuable advertising revenue through their gates. They have blood on their hands. On the printing presses. On their boots. And on their whips. But Daniel "Danny Tommo" Thomas standing in the street shouting up at the offices of the Daily Mail is just a dog barking at its own reflection, writ large in multi-storied plate glass.
Even the wrong Graham Page knows this. When asked by the Daily Mail for comment on the criminal leader of Patriot Platform who once attacked him with a machete, the wrong Graham Page was keen to play the ball and not the man, saying: “I’m not against the broad message he’s trying to put out ... but I’ll never follow him. He’s just chasing fame on the internet, if you ask me. The truth is, I just don’t like the bloke and never will. I think Danny wants to make a statement, but the trouble is he’s just living in Tommy Robinson’s shadow.”
Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf tours everywhere in the UK and Ireland until the end of the year, with a final November and December London run.
Stewart’s new book, Pea Green Boat, is available now, and so is a DVD of his last live show, Basic Lee.
And he appears with the musicians Charlotte Keeffe, Thurston Moore and Mark Wastell in an improvisation based around Pea Green Boat at London’s Wilton’s Music Hall on 22 October, and at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, on the same project but with the dream-pop prodigy Stone Anthem, on 11 October