Russell Jones's Week Moment: Semi-Goodenough and the Kebab Shop Mussolini

This has not been a great week for the far right, or those politicians seeking to imitate them, suggests Russell Jones

At the risk of straining your capacity for sympathy, it hasn’t been a great week for Britain’s far right.

On Monday, kebab shop Mussolini Tommy Robinson was told he would be released early from prison. This is partly because the Tories closed over 10,000 prison spaces, so it’s hard to find room even for somebody as space-saving as Robinson. But it’s also because his lawyers assured the judges that Robinson had turned over a new leaf. They didn’t specify in which direction. Just 24 hours later, he was charged with harassing journalists and is heading right back to court.

Quick, somebody knit me a black armband.

And then there’s Rupert Lowe, who – and it’s hard not to be weirdly impressed by this – managed to too discriminatory for Reform. Nigel Farage’s incredibly popular party lost one fifth of all the MPs it has ever had when it expelled Lowe and referred him to the police, following “credible evidence” that showed he was harassing female colleagues. The police opted not to press charges – not because there was nothing to see, but because squinting at facts is quite hard work, actually. But Lowe, a keen advocate of law and order, decided to help the Old Bill out by getting himself filmed making antisemitic remarks in Parliament.

What future in politics can there be for such a man? I’ll tell you. “I could join the Tory Party tomorrow”, Lowe assured Emily Maitlis.

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Far-Out Tories

To be fair, I suspect the Tories, even accommodating a new Lowe, would object to the term “far right”. I have some sympathy. “Far-out right” might be better, since they’ve embraced a form of transcendentalism every bit as vivid and detached as that of a drug-addled sixties dropout. To today’s right – as to the acid-tripping bohemian – both individual conscience and the tangible world have lost all relevance. All that matters is the dream state in which they find solace. Evidence of demonstrable reality or predictable consequences are secondary to the boundless mysticism of Brexitania.

The only difference between today's right-wing zealots and the LSD pioneers is that the advertised effect of acid is to dismantle the mind until, all barriers gone, the tripper experiences oneness with the infinite. Whereas the populist headbangers choose to block out reality by demanding ever-higher barriers, higher, higher, higher.

Sadly, just like the 1960s psychonauts seeking to get higher by surrendering their minds to dangerous substances, 2025’s far right has sustained a wide number of acid casualties. Dead-eyed, fried-brained, soulless zombies still convinced that their dangerous experiments with self-gratification have revealed to them a unique wisdom, they can be found stumbling around the place, pitiable figures barking nonsense at their demons.

So, let’s see what Kemi Badenoch has been getting up to.