As I was on air last night and we were debating just how we should respond to the truly horrific attack and murder of those three young girls up in Southport, I raised a couple of questions.
I said why is it these days that whenever something happens we're told almost immediately it's a non-terror attack? And I was very struck the week before in Kent when the Lieutenant Colonel in full uniform was stabbed and nearly killed in the street. It was a non-terror attack.
I also said, in the wake of the murder that we saw that was declared to be terrorism in Hartlepool sometime last year, that it seems whenever these things happen there was a reluctance to tell us the full truth. And indeed in the Kent case, the police in Kent were telling all the broadcasters they needed to play down the incident.
So I asked why what had happened in Southport was a non-terror incident. I also asked whether, amidst a sea of speculation, the 17-year-old involved had been under the watch of our authorities.
Nigel Farage said that his questions were reasonable
GB News
Well, I was asking some gentle questions that I thought were fair and reasonable. At the same time, the Internet was awash with all sorts of theories, all of which proved to be unfounded.
That's what led to the riots last night. That's what led to people being outside that Mosque in Southport. Sometimes just tell the public the truth and you might actually stop riots from happening.
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Well, that doesn't matter because it's me. So I listened to the BBC this morning at Radio Four's Today programme to be greeted by Brendan Cox.
Brendan Cox used to work for Save the Children. He's held up to be this paragon of virtue, his wife Jo had the misfortune to be murdered in what was undoubtedly a terrorist murderer. So he's held up to be somebody who can speak on these things.
He said: "But the willingness of supposedly mainstream politicians, somebody like Nigel Farage to put out that kind of insinuation and that line of is the truth being withheld from us?
"Not do we not know some of the answers to this, which we certainly don't. But is the truth being withheld from us? Is this person being monitored? Some people say they are. It's right out of the Trump playbook and in my view it makes Nigel Farage nothing better than a Tommy Robinson in a suit."
Brendan Cox said "Nigel Farage is nothing better than a Tommy Robinson in a suit"
PA
There was Brendan Cox, the high priest of virtue. You would have thought to listen to these people, but I was arm in glove with Tommy Robinson, which I never have been and never, ever will be.
You would also think I've been encouraging people to head to Southport. None of which were true. And interestingly, a lot of Labour MPs attacked me.
I suspect that's because the Labour Party know there is a very deep sense of unease out there in this country as to what is going on. And it's not just what happened in Southport, it's what happened later on that evening in Southend.
It's the marches, it's the mob violence, it's the situation in Leeds where the police literally withdrew and allowed a riot to continue.
And it's also, in many, many cases, a feeling of double standards of policing.
He defended his comments yesterday
GB News
But I also spoke today to a Northern Ireland member of Parliament, somebody of a certain age who'd lived through the Troubles.
And he said, whenever there was an outrage in Northern Ireland, the first question anybody asked was who was the perpetrator and had we been let down by the security services?
I think what I asked was perfectly fair and reasonable.
I think if my questions have been answered, that Mosque would not have been attacked last night.