BY FRANK HAVILAND

Last Saturday’s events in Oldham may have died down but the underlying tensions are still simmering. For those who missed it, Tommy Robinson’s MEP election campaign rally was besieged by balaclava-wearing Muslim thugs, who casually threw bottles and bricks while under police escort. The media trotted out the usual headlines, doing their best to confuse as to who was doing the attacking, and of course taking great pains not to mention the M word:

• ‘Tommy Robinson: Trouble flares at event in Oldham’ (BBC)
• ‘Tommy Robinson: Police vehicles damaged during clashes at campaign event in Oldham’ (The Independent)
• ‘Tommy Robinson event erupts into violence as ‘bricks and eggs thrown into crowd’’ (The Mirror)

Just checking – you got that it was Tommy Robinson there, right?

While the police and the mainstream media do not appear too sure who was behind the ‘protest’, less mainstream outlets have been more inquisitive. It appears that the group styling itself the ‘Muslim Defence League’ came largely from outside the town, and was chaperoned for miles by the police until they came upon the rally attended by women and children. The Old Bill stood idly by as missiles were thrown, patiently waiting to nick anybody criminal enough to tweet about it.

To be fair, it is increasingly difficult to gauge the tone of protests these days. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen hundreds of masked, tooled-up Muslim men screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ at WI meetings, charity events and Wednesday evening book clubs, so the violence must have come as a shock.

Oldham is symptomatic of a Britain mired by years of politically correct, platitudinous politicians and their disingenuous soundbites; the results of which are now playing out not in Kensington and Chelsea or MPs’ fiddled second homes, but across the council estates of Britain. For it is here where the police have turned the blindest eyes; here where the young girls have been forsaken for the good of diversity, and here where communities are most divided.

Left-wing hypocrisy is yet to find a low to which it will not stoop, or an abuse it will not overlook if the identity politics are right:

• Free speech, so long as it’s been approved.
• Democracy, as long as it’s the right kind.
• Tolerance for gays, unless it’s Muslims pelting them with eggs.
• Immunity for politicians, unless they’re milkshake-loving right-wingers.
• No to racism, unless you’re targeting ‘gammons’.
• No to Nazi slurs, unless liberal politicians wish to employ them.
• No to stereotyping, unless of course it’s white men.

No matter how violent they get, the left are merely ‘protesting’ while anyone to the right of Mao is directly responsible for Jo Cox.

If Remain fail to honour the obvious result of the Euro elections (and let’s be fair, they have form), then the divide between the establishment and the man in the street is likely to become irreparable. Since its inception, Brexit has foreshadowed a deep, public resentment, built perhaps over for a generation: for now our man knows what he did not know as he cast his vote in 2016 – that he was being betrayed all along.

Continued establishment collusion from this point on will have serious consequences. The conservative party will be wiped out. Nigel Farage will secure the keys to Number 10 at the next General Election. And the events witnessed in Oldham will be but a precursor to what is played out on a national scale.

It is now incumbent on our representatives, both in Westminster and Brussels that they listen to the way the wind is blowing, and enact the will of the people, no matter how distasteful they find it. If they do not, a stray milkshake will be the least of their problems.