The post you are reporting:
Steve Bannon writing in the Sunday Times.
Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon claims he is “ecstatic” that the far-right leader Tommy Robinson has been released from prison and describes him as a “force of nature” like the rapper Kanye West. In a wide-ranging interview with The Sunday Times, Bannon speaks about his relationship with Robinson, his advice for Boris Johnson on how to be as successful as Trump and his plans to shake up Europe with the launch of a new Brussels-based organisation called the Movement.
Bannon, who has called Robinson “the backbone” of Britain, caused fury last month when he clashed with the radio station LBC’s political editor, Theo Usherwood, who challenged him over his support for the jailed activist. Today he defends his remarks, saying Robinson, who was released from jail this month after winning an appeal against a contempt of court conviction, “should never have been locked up. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, faces a fresh hearing over an allegation that he committed an offence by broadcasting on social media from outside a trial.
“That’s why I told LBC that, and they all jumped up and down like babies live on air to insist he was guilty,” Bannon said. “We didn’t know at the time he was guilty. That’s the whole point. Now he’s won his appeal and no one in the press is apologising for the way they treated him.” While Bannon says he has not personally contacted Robinson since his release, he claims his “guys are in touch with him every day”.
“Tommy is not just a guy but a movement in and of himself now,” said Bannon. “He represents the working class and channels a lot of the frustration of everyday, blue-collar Britons . . . He is a force of nature — like Kanye [West] — not built to be managed.” Last month Bannon revealed plans for a pan-European movement to rally nationalist and populist voters in the European parliament elections next May, with the aim of undermining the bloc. He says until November 6, when the US midterm elections take place, he will spend 80% of his time in America, but from then on will spend 70% of his time in Europe “until our victory in May 2019”. “I pride myself in building organisations that roll up their sleeves and get on with it in regards to the hard, unglamorous work of winning. That’s our focus now on polling, analytics, messaging, grassroots organising,” he added.
Bannon has recently met with Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, who has called for a Europe-wide alliance against “mass immigration”. However, Bannon will not be drawn on whether he will be joining forces with the far-right leader of the League. “Salvini has a plan; [Viktor] Orban [the Hungarian prime minister] has a plan — it’s all great,” he said. “This shows vision, energy, commitment — it is what makes this so exciting.”
He also criticised the European Union, which he accused of being amateurish in the way it has engaged in the Brexit negotiations. “From the EU’s perspective they’ll want to seem strong,” he said. “But they’re not. It’s amateur hour the way they’re dragging this on. “They think they’re embarrassing Britain but they’re embarrassing themselves, too, like they did with the TTIP [Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership]. Negotiations that never went anywhere. “The EU doesn’t ever want to do fair deals because it is a protectionist trading bloc itself. It can’t do deals, otherwise it highlights its own hypocrisy and/or loses one of its core reasons for being: the German auto corporates, the French farmers and so on. It all comes down to a very shaky alliance of corporate interest and subsidies. That’s all the EU is.”
Bannon also thinks there is “obviously a need for a more populist party in the UK”. “At one time that might have been Ukip under [Nigel] Farage. But please don’t try to smear it with ‘far right’ and ‘anti-Islamic’ so as to scare off people,” he said. “The party can be populist, nationalist and want to thwart radical Islamic doctrine and Islamic supremacism without being anti-Muslim.” He has not written off Ukip, though, adding: “If [the Conservatives] cobble a deal together along the lines of the Chequers deal, there’ll be rebellion inside the Conservative Party. And I don’t just mean the MPs. I mean the members. Prepare for Ukip to hit 20% in the polls again.”
With speculation rife that Johnson could be preparing a leadership run in the autumn after this shock resignation as foreign secretary following the Chequers deal summit, Bannon said he “admired” the former cabinet minister. He claims they met several times during the transition and then during the first year of the Trump administration. Asked whether he had offered Johnson any leadership advice after his resignation, Bannon said: “Any conversations I have with active political figures are confidential — I consider Boris Johnson someone who understands the physics in the ebb and flow of events. Those individuals are rare.”
Bannon also denied that he had been responsible for improving the relationship between Johnson and the US president. During his visit to London, Trump embarrassed Theresa May by saying Johnson would make “a great prime minister”. But Bannon said it was “Trump who changed Boris’s attitude towards Trump – through action.” He added: “Boris admires [Sir Winston] Churchill and wrote a compelling book about him. What he most admired was Churchill’s courage and his ‘action this day’ mentality. I think he sees that in the president on his better days.”