Sunny Hundal is back from his hols and immediately launches into an attack on last week’s UAF demonstration: “A mis-guided group of people held a protest on Friday against the ballerina Simone Clarke and her continued employment by the English National Ballet.”

Sunny assures us that “there is no evidence that Simone Clarke was ‘using her position as a platform for the far-right party’.” Well, apart from a double-page spread in the Mail on Sunday headlined “The BNP Ballerina”, of course, in which Clarke states:

“Sometimes it feels as though the BNP are the only ones willing to take a stand. I have been labelled a racist and a fascist because I have a view on immigration – and I mean mass immigration … Britain isn’t really very big. And it’s an island. I really cannot see the logic of allowing so many people in…. I don’t regret anything. I will stay a member…. I’ve never been clearer in my head that I’m moving in the right direction and at the right time.”

Sunny takes an uncompromising stand in defence of freedom of expression: “I’m opposed to people getting persecuted for being members of organisations that are universally disliked but not illegal”.

So, a clear commitment to opposing people being sacked from their jobs on the basis of their political affiliation, then? No, apparently not: “I did earlier support the Guardian firing HuT’s Dilpazier Aslam because he was clearly trying to influence others with his views without declaring his membership and because they were incompatible with the Guardian‘s own liberal leanings”!

Pickled Politics, 14 January 2007

See also Karen Chouhan’s open letter to David Lammy: BLINK website, 15 January 2007