I don’t think I’ve ever come across a more sickening, gratuitous example of cultural misappropriation (read: outright theft) than the one detailed here. I’m not going to say much about it, but the racist disgrace to human civilisation Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has been told to stop using the famous anti-apartheid theme Something Inside So Strong at his rallies. “For decades, Labi Siffre’s hit (Something Inside) So Strong has been a global anthem against apartheid. It was inspired by a documentary about apartheid-era South Africa, and was widely reported to be Nelson Mandela’s favourite song. But now the singer-songwriter has taken the step of issuing Tommy Robinson with a cease and desist order after the far-right activist incorporated the song into his social media posts and used it at the recent “unite the kingdom” rally in central London.”

If that doesn’t strike you as perverse, I don’t know what will: it’s as if the racist, violent thug is trying to frame himself as some kind of freedom fighter, on the level of great civil rights activists like Mandella or Martin Luthur-King. The obvious reality is, Robinson is the figurehead of the very kind of intolerance, arrogance and bigotry such heroes fought against. More to the point, Yaxley-Lennon seems to be trying to spin the story that he is the victim of some enormous injustice, silenced by the state as Mandela was. For the p’tahk to make such vainglorious, self-pitying claims for himself really is sickening: Rather than being a civil rights leader, Yaxley-Lennon is nothing but a racist scumbag whose views have no place whatsoever in civilised society. Rather than being somehow discriminated against, he is the one pompously demanding the right to discriminate in a society where such bigotry is no longer acceptable.