Reporter Isabel Loubser is told she has been brainwashed

WHERE it began, I can’t begin to know when, but Harrington has complained before and will no doubt again about the Sweet Carolinification of everything.

And while Neil Diamond probably doesn’t mind the odd extra royalty rolling in for its use at The Football or for stag nights in Brighton beach bars, perhaps he doesn’t know that it was also being pumped out in Trafalgar Square on Saturday for a rally of “patriots” gathered to hear Tommy Robinson warn that their culture and way of life is at risk.

If you want to work out what guides the average Tommy Robinson supporter, it’s worth looking up the film made by reporters from the West End Extra and journalist Isabel Loubser’s attempt to decipher it all.

It’s not the easiest task, as she was quickly told by one flag guy that she just wanted to be Beth Rigby and was looking for a ‘gotcha’ moment.

And then came the claim that the questions she was asking meant she was possibly brainwashed at university – ‘where you will see Palestinian flags but never an English one’.

Brainwashing is a stern term, not very nice, but it was perhaps ironic that the same man who had used it about our reporters went on to reel out an anecdote about how he’d heard bête noire James O’Brien joking about Donald Trump being shot.

“If Tommy Robinson said that he’d be arrested and thrown in jail…”, came the angry punchline.

But of course, that clip of the LBC presenter apparently smirking at Trump’s near miss is a doctored clip which did the rounds on social media and comes with a warning on Twitter not to share it.

Most explained that they don’t watch the ‘mainstream media, who don’t tell the whole story’ ­– and the real facts could be found on YouTube channels and TikTok. That’s right! You may think that TikTok is just about the dance crazes and yummy street food, but the… patriots… have been able to snap through the algorithms to reach younger audiences in a way that the usual political parties have been slow to clock on to.

And everything there is treated as gospel by them, while everything that Beth Rigby says on Sky News must surely be a set-up.

It was important then for the Extra’s reporters to head not too far up the road and hear from the anti-racism march which had gathered in opposition to Tommy Robinson.

Here, of course, you will hear in the film, campaigners used sharp words about what was happening in Trafalgar Square. There were warnings that unless the new Labour government actively change people’s lives for the better then we will see more gatherings like this

Demonstrators said that immigrants had been ‘scapegoated’ as things grew harder for everybody in the cost-or-living crisis.

One even suggested there was not much difference in the lives of people on both marches ­– they just needed to recognise that demonising any group of people would help nobody.

Take a look at the film if you get the chance.