NEWSNIGHT AND THE FAR RIGHT

The BBC’s Newsnight programme has been presenting a series of reports on the problems of asylum seeking. One such report, on Thursday 20 September 2023, focused on the far-Right. Of particular interest were two interviews with Neil Basu, who is now a non-executive director of the College of Policing, and the Tory MP, Tim Loughton, who has been very keen to open up ‘safe and legal routes’ for asylum seekers to use to get into the UK.

Two far-Right campaign organisations were targeted in particular, one of which issued the following statement to Newsnight:

‘The plan to replace White Britons is not a “covert” plan as you falsely claim, but an overt attempt to reduce the indigenous people of these islands to a minority in their own ancestral homeland.’

In the programme, Basu was immediately interviewed following the presentation of the above statement. Basu said:

‘We talked about some of them, the great replacement theory, White supremacism, neo-Nazism – that is what I would describe as unlawful terrorist activity that would put them right in the cross-hairs of MI5 and counterterrorism policing.’

In his interview, Tim Loughton said:

‘I think there are two things here. People have a genuine concern about large quantities of people coming into areas, for the pressure that they are putting on services, schools and doctors, and everything else, whether they are coming from abroad or big developments mean huge pressure on local services. These are legitimate concerns. What we are seeing here though, are people who have no local interests. They are just anti-immigrant. They are racists and they want to take advantage of people who have got genuine local concerns in order to push their own racist agendas.’

Neil Basu followed and said of the local protests

‘… [legitimate concerns are being] hijacked by people who start talking about invasion and start talking about these people being dangerous. That’s an extremist conversation and drives a polarised debate that means people from the extreme Right Wing get very heated and people protesting against them from the Left get very heated and then you’re going to see violence and then you are going to see a problem with law and order.’

Someone from Hope Not Hate was also interviewed. Naturally, he was presented as an expert rather than a communist.

A number of issues arise out of this:

1. Why is Neil Basu involved with the College of Policing? Over a number of years he has expressed views that are hostile to English interests (eg ‘Assimilation implies that I have to hide myself in order to get on. We should not be a society that accepts that.’) and has exaggerated the threat from the far-Right.
2. Why was there no balance on the programme? Both Basu and Loughton are openly pro-immigration.
3. Why are communists being presented as objective experts?
4. Since when has holding a politically incorrect view on immigration been tantamount to ‘unlawful terrorist activity’?
5. Since when has a police fear of counter-protests from the Yobbo Left been a legitimate reason to ban protests from those on the Right?
6. Is it Tory policy that the only legitimate objection to the illegal immigrant invasion is to dispute the choice local area into which the immigrants are to be settled? Why cannot people object to the invasion of England? Why is is deemed racist to demand secure borders?
7. Why was the impact of immigration only described as putting pressure on local services? The pressure at a national level is substantial. Why was not Loughton asked to explain himself?
8. Why were not those accused of being racists and/or terrorists by Loughton and Basu given the opportunity to directly respond to those allegations?
9. What does being ‘in the cross-hairs of MI5 and counterterrorism policing’ actually mean in practice?
10. In a country with a population in excess of 65 million, so what if there is a politically-incorrect campaign organisation with a couple of hundred activists? The country will survive.
11. Did it not occur that ‘the great replacement theory’ is not a theory but a fact? One only has to look around to see that the number of immigrants is rapidly increasing as a proportion of the total population.
12. Given the reference ‘not a “covert” plan as you falsely claim’, why was there not full disclosure of the correspondence?