Extremists and the mainstream: the case of Comrade Newman

The Chippenham Labour Party has decided that its candidate to contest the 2015 general election will be one Andy Newman. As the anti-totalitarian blogs Howie’s Corner and Harry’s Place have already argued he is almost certain to be the worst politician to stand for a mainstream party. An innocent observer, who believes the British Left’s protestations that it is for workers’ rights and against sexism, racism and homophobia, could go further wonder how such a man could get close to the Labour Party – let alone close enough to run on a Labour ticket.

Newman manages the laughably named “Socialist Unity” website: laughable, not just because it engages in vicious factionalism, but because it indulges the religious strain of far-right thinking. He has campaigned against Anne Marie Waters of One Law for All , which opposes the imposition of Sharia law in the UK. In other words, he has put himself on the wrong side of the struggle between religion and women’s rights.