TOMMY ROBINSON, former Leader of the English Defence League (EDL), is backing Anne Marie Waters to be the next Leader of UKIP.
Waters is one of eleven UKIP members who are taking part in the contest to select a new Leader to take over from Paul Nuttal, who stood down after UKIP’s disastrous showing in the General Election.
Waters founded an anti-Islam Group called Sharia Watch. She does say that she is not a right winger or a fascist or racist, and that she supports democracy, trade unions, gay rights and the right to free speech. However, she campaigns for right wing policies that are both extremely right wing and racist. Her leadership manifesto explains that Islamic culture has not made as much progress as “western civilisation” and blames most social ills on immigration – except for the ones she just blames on race (“white Britons are held to a separate standard [under the law] than non-white groups or immigrants”).
Some commentators had expected UKIP to ban Waters from standing, but the UKIP National Committee has given her the go ahead. Tommy Robinson is not the only “Kipper” who has backed her – but there are others who are strongly opposed to her taking over. Some MEPs threatened to leave UKIP if she was allowed to stand, and former Leader Paul Nuttal has also expressed his concerns, saying that her views make him “uncomfortable”.
Waters believes what she describes as “honesty” about Islam could attract a great deal of support for UKIP. Nuttal has said that if UKIP veers off course and become an anti-Islam party, then it will be finished. It seems that the UKIP National Committee is trying to keep the Party together by allowing Waters to stand (so that she cannot portray herself as a martyr) but assuming that she won’t win. That’s what they said about Donald Trump once, isn’t it?
•Read more about it: Islamophobia: a continuing threat Islamophobic attacker sent to jail
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