I bet you the debate over face coverings masks a heap of hypocrisy.
I’d wager a couple of Yaxley-Lennons that ‘Danny Tommo’ – Tommy Robinson’s former body guard – and the crowd of balaclava clad men (it was almost entirely men) who turned up in Dover and Portsmouth to protest about illegal migrants have views about the wearing in the UK of the Burqa, and the Niqab by Muslim women.
I’d wager a couple of Sadiq Kahns that most of those who’d defend Muslim women’s right to ‘choose’ -there is a grey area there – to wear a Burqa or Niqab face covering in public in the UK think those men who turned in Portsmouth should be forced to remove their balaclavas as ‘threatening, anti-social and intimidating’
I’d be bet a bucket of Dawn French and Nadia Sawalhas that many on the left would brand ‘Tommo and Robinson’ far-right and fascist and yet turned a blind eye to those who marched week after week their faces covered by the ubiquitous Keffiyeh shouting from ‘the river to the sea’ and clapped like seals when a rapper called for ‘death to the IDF’. What they’d do if Kneecap’s performative balaclavad nod to the provos was barred heaven knows.
I’d bet a two-tiered black and white cake that police argue that unmasking those who cover their faces is public is unworkable because there is no law that says people can’t, would damage ‘community relations’ and that in the back of their institutional minds is the fact that six years ago in the midst of a global pandemic it was their job to ensure that all of us stood two meters apart, stayed indoors and wore a face mask.
Danny Tomo ambushed an equally opportunistic Zia Yusuf whilst he was on live TV. Reform’s unelected home affairs spokesman – who is clearly on manoeuvres, and had quickly manoeuvred himself to Portsmouth was giving an interview to Sky News, when ‘Tommo’ simply stepped into it.
His first point to “Yusuf” – he dispensed with first names – was to explain why his Patriot Platform people were wearing masks. Not about boats, or the reasons I know many ‘understand why they might want to protest’, but the masks. It was he said to do with the ‘left’ targeting his working class followers.
He was angry too because Zia’s leader had branded them ‘disgusting’. Nigel Farage wrote in the Telegraph:
“Around city centres, balaclava-clad youths tear around neighbourhoods on e-bikes and scooters, terrorising residents, making them feel unsafe in their own communities. We’ve somehow accepted that seeing masked people in the streets is just part of modern Britain. It shouldn’t be.”
Danny Tommo ended his TV ambush telling Zia Yusuf that he was building a ‘voting bloc’ and his followers:
“Are not football hooligans. They’re not. They are working class men”
Kemi Badenoch did not see them that way in a tweet that later caught Yusuf’s eye.
“Thuggery is never the answer. But the public is right to be angry about the Government’s inability to stop illegal immigration”
Now, she’s right, but the Conservatives are on shifting sands here, as I myself know from bitter experience in the Home Office, try though I assuredly did during my short time there, we too did not ‘stop the boats’. Nobody noticed the huge number we did stop, because too many made it across and with what looked to others like British help. Our record hurts us, and Yusuf knows it.
Yusuf replied, “How dare you call them thugs?”
This, a few days after a crowd of Reform supporters had pulled down an – albeit performative and annoying – young female rent-a-protestor at their conference, manhandling her, pulling her hair, striking her with a medical walking stick, and sticking fingers in her mouth.
For accuracies sake Tomo’s gang, quite deliberately, had been relatively mild mannered in comparison in Dover and Portsmouth. They had however obstructed roads and blocked traffic. Big deal you might say, but then check whether you haven’t said that when climate change activists have done the same and not in masks. I confess I like to see police hauling those people out of the road, and people who do it for them when they won’t. How’s Tommo’s mob different?
This entire issue of face coverings is like almost everything in politics far more complicated than each sides’ sympathies and perspectives admit. It’s too often: one general rule of thumb for all, except of course for those I agree and sympathise with, as to who should be exempt.
Labour MP and ‘proud feminist’ Stella Creasy – who within all this context of gatherings of men decided to explain she was ‘a riot on a night out’ just displayed some of what I’m talking about.
To celebrate the 46th Milad Al Nabi parade, to celebrate the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday, she posted a video of a large group of men marching on the streets. They were all men. The MP who had vigorously campaigned for gentleman’s clubs not to be barred to women, then obfuscated when challenged that women had been present and anyone could come to the 47th event to see for themselves. The fact remained that even if the women did march they did not do so with the men. A point Creasy seemed intent on not conceding.
Farage now has come down on a side.
“… Reform UK is calling for a ban on all full-face coverings in public spaces. No ifs, no buts. And yes, that includes religious ones, too.”
I have some experience of trying to square these problems.
Whilst in the Home Office and in a meeting with police leaders we discussed – in this case the almost weekly Pro-Palestinian marches – why they could not insist that protestors wearing masks to hide their identity remove that covering and identify themselves.
Since the new Government kept some of the plans in our Crime and Policing Bill, which is now law, police can impose a ban on protesters wearing face coverings at specific demonstrations.
According to the current Policing Minister the Dover protest had caught them out because they had not been ‘given notice’ and so such powers could not used. Which seems a tad baffling, and begs questions itself. Seems the perfect incentive for protestors who favour masks not to notify the police they intend to gather!
As if in the meetings I attended – he wasn’t but he knows the Home Office – Ian Acheson a criminologist and counter-extremism expert had this to say online:
“you can be sure that at the Home Office, officials will be preparing to tell Shabana Mahmood how impossible, unworkable and reprehensible banning ‘ALL’ active protestors from wearing face coverings is”
Spot on. Unworkable is the one they’ll major on and will remain the hill they won’t want to be moved from.
Farage might be right in principle, to call for a total ban on face coverings in public – though you’d already need exemptions for provable medical conditions – it has to cover all, or it doesn’t cover any, nor has credibility when exemption is based on personal bias. That’s before you get to the practicalities of this, as outlined. Besides the libertarian right dislikes bans in principle, as overly authoritarian, look at the calls for a social media ban for anyone under 16.
When newly minted Reform MP, Sarah Pochin suggested a burqa ban in her maiden speech to Parliament Zia Yusuf took two days off to resign from Reform saying it was “dumb for a party to ask the PM if they would do something the party itself wouldn’t do”
Why Zia Yusuf should be at odds with his leader may not be a mystery.
Despite still remaining loyal to Nigel, and Reform UK’s project, Tim Montgomerie’s suspension from the party for being an internal critic – not least of Yusuf – has not been lifted but led to his resignation from the party, with Montgomerie almost pleading with Farage to ‘wake up’ and see that Yusuf is after his job.
Has he ‘unmasked’ the real ambition of Reform’s online outrage exporter?
Zia might have got away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky kids.