Asa Bennett profiles Gerard Batten, UKIP MEP for Greater London, who heads the party list for that region and is guaranteed certain re-election.
Bennett notes that Gerard Batten addressed the inaugural “Counterjihad” conference in Brussels in 2007. Batten was reportedly accompanied by Magnus Nielsen, a UKIP council candidate in Camden, who entirely shares Batten’s views on Islam and has similarly expressed sympathy for the English Defence League.
If you’re wondering why UKIP has failed to do anything about Nielsen, despite the damaging media coverage of his rabid Islamophobia, this is the likely explanation. How could Nigel Farage take disciplinary action against Nielsen without doing the same to Batten?
For more on Batten’s so-called “Charter of Muslim Understanding”, see Steven Rose, “Sam Solomon, Christian Concern and Gerard Batten”, Tell Mama, 16 May 2014