Karim El-Bar
25 February 2020•Update: 26 February 2020
LONDON
Far-right British activist Tommy Robinson will set up a populist alliance with former UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Brexit Party figures, the group said Tuesday.
The new populist group will be an “Alliance for Free Speech,” and will officially launch Friday in central London.
“Although it lost the Brexit battle, this elite is winning the war to impose its own woke, ’progressive’ and Anglophobic worldview on all people and in all corners of national life,” the group told hard-right website Politicalite.
Robinson is co-founder and former leader of the English Defence League, a far-right and Islamophobic group. He will be joined in the new endeavor by Carl Benjamin and Catherine Blaiklock.
Benjamin is a right-wing YouTube personality who focuses on anti-feminism among other topics favored by the far-right. He ran unsuccessfully for UKIP in the 2019 European Parliament elections.
He previously said he “wouldn’t even rape” Labour MP Jess Phillips, a vocal women’s rights campaigner. During the 2019 European Parliament elections he refused to apologize for those comments, instead doubling-down and saying Phillips was a “giant [expletive].”
Blaiklock was the founder and first leader of the Brexit Party.
She was forced to quit after two months when Islamophobic and racist comments she made online were unearthed. These included “Islam = submission - mostly to raping men it seems,” and “I want my country back… not acid attacks, mobs and mosques.”
She was previously the UKIP economics spokeswoman.
The group’s spokesman, Peter Mcilvenna, told the Politicalite: “So far we have failed in the UK to have a populist movement and have been at the mercy of an increasing left wing liberal bias in our society.
“Neither the Islamisation of our culture nor the grooming gang scandal has not been enough to wake people up. But there is a growing concern about the LGBT agenda sexualising our young children and the draconian clamp down on free speech. And with Brexit now delivered (in some shape or form) this distraction has now been removed.
“More or less everyone we have spoken to say it’s time that we all work together. This movement will be a loose alliance of many big hitters that will work together to challenge the liberal agenda and educate the public and provide the tools to push back the tide. It will be a cultural movement that seeks to educate through media and regular face to face gatherings.
“We want a conversation on Islam. We want to bring parental common sense into the discussion on LGBT. We want to reclaim freedom of speech,” Mcilvenna.
The launch event is “open but invitation-only,” and those wishing to attend were told to bring ID to the venue.
