London mayor Sadiq Khan branded President Donald Trump “the global poster-boy for white nationalism”, attacked Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, and branded the Polish government, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, and France’s Marine Le Pen as far-right ahead of a trip to Gdansk to commemorate the outbreak of the Second World War.
The Labour politician, who has presided over an epidemic of violent crime — particularly knife crime — and the extension of London’s illegal drugs trade into surrounding areas by so-called “county lines” gangs, claimed that “a new wave of extremist far-right movements and political parties are winning power and influence at alarming speed – fuelled by Donald Trump, the global poster-boy for white nationalism” in an article for The Observer, sister paper to The Guardian.
“Politicians across Europe are following [President Trump’s] example by seeking to exploit division to gain power – from Matteo Salvini in Italy to Marine Le Pen in France,” he claimed, alleging that the Hungarian government, for example, had “systematically destroyed the independence of both the judiciary and the press” and linking this to the fact that those institutions “are also under daily verbal attack from Trump and other far-right leaders around the world.”
(The Hungarian government has always disputed this characterisation of its proposed judicial reforms and media landscape, which generally emanates from politicians and media commentators opposed to its strong stance against mass migration and state-sponsored multiculturalism.) – READ MORE