Never let the Sun go down on a good story..

There’s another big splash in the newspapers today about Britain First. A former member, “whistle-blower” Matt Lester has told the newspaper his shocking story of the nine months he spent in the organisation over two sensational pages.

It’s pretty poor, even for the Sun, so before people get too excited about it, let’s correct a few mistakes that are not the fault of Matthew Lester. Lester, who makes a living selling used Ipads and other tablets, did his interview with the Sun’s Matt Quinton who may have filled in a few gaps for him:

1: According to the soaraway Sun, Britain First is a “6000-strong Kent based group.” Really, their march in Rochester, in Kent last month, drew less than 50 people. They also only managed 56 votes in the Rochester (Kent) by-election last month (0.1% of the vote) and were beaten by The Monster Raving Loony Party (among others) who got a much healthier 151 votes.

The claim that Britain First has 6,000 members was made by their leader Paul Golding during a ridiculous television interview with the BBC last month. The interviewer decided not to query Golding’s claim despite it quite obviously being nonsense. Yes, they are probably the biggest group on the far-right about now. They have about 1000 people registered as members by their founder Jim Dowson. You may have noticed that it is always the same five faces on their demonstrations however. Hardly the work of a party that has “thousands” of members. Yes, it is active, but it is still very small.

2: The Sun claims Britain First wear “berets emblazoned with BF insignia”. Er, they are cloth caps. Like what Del Boy Trotter wears-not like the army wears. Or, like in the accompanying pictures with the story in the paper-nothing on their heads at all!

3: According to Lester/The Sun, Britain First are getting between “£10,000 to £20,000” in donations per week. Well, that would be interesting. How did he manage to have a look at either Jim Dowson or Paul Golding’s personal bank accounts? Did the Sun do it? If this were true, Dowson would never have left. He’d probably have tried to marry Golding! Still, Britain First does have to pay a lot for their Facebook followers… They get a few hundred pounds per week from the sales of their shoddy merchandise. That bank account is probably empty by now having been spent on diet pills and Vodka.

4: According to the Sun/Lester there has even been an influx to Britain First of people from “banned neo-Nazi outfit Combat 18.” Well, there is two lies: No there has not and also, Combat 18 is not a banned organisation, either.

The rest of it is sensationally brilliant. Sadly, the story about a certain former member having an “arsenal of loyalist guns” hidden at their property did not materialise.

Britain First are nasty, they are dangerous and they are pretty sick. But let’s not build their army further for them.

Not “berets” but binbags and cloth caps