It's a revelation. That moment when you find the party you want to run for might be a tad racist

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It's a revelation. That moment when you find the party you want to run for might be a tad racist

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* Stephen Bates
*
o Stephen Bates
o The Guardian, Thursday 29 April 2010
o Article history

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• In what may count as the quickest conversion since Saint Paul, the Kenyan-born pastor James Gitau (pictured), who less than three weeks ago was campaigning for the BNP, is now standing instead for the Christian party, after making the surprising discovery that the BNP is a bit racist. It seems like only yesterday – it was, in fact, April 10 – that Gitau was strolling round Barking with Nick Griffin, but within the week he'd seen the light. It may be that the BNP's refusal to appoint him as its candidate in Croydon had something to do with it, but that's where he's standing now, under his new colours. He told the Croydon Guardian that he had joined the BNP because it was the only party that boldly speaks against sodomy in public, but he was at pains to add: "I don't hate homosexuals. I love them. They are my friends ... we're all sinners." Hallelujah, but he's still keeping his hotline to Griffin: "I am giving him advice that racism is not the way forward."

• Let's hope Nick gets the message. It seems doubtful that some of his supporters will. Here's one Claire Khaw – whose background, interestingly, is Malaysian Chinese, and who is acting as cheerleader for Jeffrey Marshall, the party's candidate in London's Bethnal Green and Bow – engaging in some recent banter on Facebook: "I see no harm in introducing a form of slavery with those who don't have the right papers and aren't British citizens. After five years they are free to go. They can re-enslave themselves for a further five years and thereafter become British citizens. It would solve the Labour shortage ... Then everyone would be happy." Mark you, Marshall sounds lovely, too: on record as saying, the day after David Cameron's son died, that it would be a kindness to kill children with disabilities. Wonder where he got that idea?

• And, while we're on the subject, mystery surrounds the identity of Peter Strudwick, last seen making a speech at a BNP meeting in Essex that was gushingly reported by the Brentwood Gazette, which claimed he was a former leader of Westminster council. The council says it has no record of anyone of that name ever being a councillor, let alone leader. Searchlight, the anti-fascist magazine, thinks Strudwick might actually be a chap called Sam Swerling, who was a Tory Westminster councillor for four years 30 years ago, and was at that time chairman of the rightwing Monday Club. In an article online Strudwick claims he was a councillor for "many years", which seems strange. In the unlikely event he's a Guardian reader, perhaps one, either or both of them might like to get in touch to clear the matter up.

• That's enough nasty rightwingers for one day. Kelvin MacKenzie, star columnist at the Sun, is £94 lighter in the wallet after accusing Trevor Phillips, head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, of splashing out public money to that amount on a bottle of wine while entertaining someone to lunch. "Couldn't it simply have been the house red ... he thought: 'The taxpayer's coughing for this.' Makes you throw up, doesn't it." Not half as much as MacKenzie himself, since being told Phillips bought the bottle with his own money. He's written him a cheque andpromised to set the record straight in his column but hasn't got round to it yet, so remember where you read it first.

• Hats off to author Dominic Shelmerdine, who says he saved Mark Thatcher from death in Chelsea yesterday lunchtime. "I said to him if he'd been successful with that coup in Equatorial Guinea he'd have been lauded as a hero in the press and he said, yes, probably. Then he nearly walked in front of a car." I think we can all agree Shelmerdine's done the nation a favour.

• And from the too much information department: Lou Reed, interviewed by Record Collector magazine: "OK – you have one more question. I have to be someplace. I'm having a testicle removed, so I'm a little nervous."