Tommy Robinson is to stand trial again for contempt of court.
This is the same offence for which he has already spent a considerable amount of time in prison, most of it in solitary confinement for his own safety.
The journalist who has been following his case more closely than anyone is Ezra Levant of Rebel Media.
Levant, himself a trained lawyer, is very worried that justice is not being served here.
He believes that Robinson is being re-tried for political reasons.
I find it hard to disagree with Levant’s assessment. There are a number of worrying aspects to this case, not least the zeal with which it is being prosecuted.
What is clear from earlier hearings is that Robinson did not breach the rules on court reporting wilfully and maliciously (he had actually gone for training to try to make sure it didn’t happen again after the first time he got into trouble).
Nor is this a mistake he plans to make again. Nor is there any precedent in similar contempt of court cases for sentencing as draconian as that meted out to Robinson. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that the British public will benefit from making Robinson spend any more time behind bars.
Because Robinson is everyone’s favourite virtue-signalling device – “I may believe in Brexit, freedom of speech, that Muslim rape gangs aren’t very nice – but look, I hate Tommy Robinson and refer to him as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, so that makes me one of the good people and not dangerously right-wing” – barely anyone has bothered to acquaint himself with his background or the details of the case.
For example, it is widely assumed that Robinson jeopardised a rape gang trial: no he didn’t. It was theoretically possible that he might have done. But no, it didn’t happen.
About the worst you can say of him is that he made some nasty men who had committed multiple rapes on young, vulnerable often underage girls — men who have been convicted for this crime — feel uncomfortable by questioning them on video.
I worry – as I’ve said before – that the Establishment is out to get Tommy Robinson because it finds him inconvenient, embarrassing and because it wants to be seen to be making an example of the “far right” – a largely fake menace which it wants to play up for political reasons mainly to do with not looking “Islamophobic.”
Meanwhile, our mainstream media’s only interest in the case is to be able to remind everyone that Tommy Robinson is a football thug with criminal convictions and that his real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.
Robinson is, of course, standing as an independent candidate in the coming European elections.
Given the bitterness that many ordinary working class feel about the way Robinson is being treated by the Establishment, I expect this won’t do much harm to his chances of being elected.