Green Leader Natalie Bennett to appear on anti-UKIP platform with convicted fraudster

We were not entirely surprised today to receive details of a meeting by yet another anti-UKIP campaign group which has popped out of the woodwork. The 'Movement Against Xenophobia' is an umbrella group comprising 99 separate organisations operating under a secretariat provided by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. Included in the 99 are many of the usual suspects: UAF, SWP, Unite, the Green Party and many others - the full list is here

This latest piece of scaremongering is based on distortions of UKIP's position by MAX offshoot 'Stop Scapegoating Immigrants' is a Rally Against Racism on the 19th May at the Indian YMCA in Fitzrovia, London: details are here and as shown on the screen grab.

What was more surprising was to see the speakers list. Natalie Bennett, the Green Party leader is the headline speaker: she fits right in, representing as she does the watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) wing of the Green Party. What was rather more shocking was to see her sharing a platform with Jasna Badzak and Lee Jasper.

Regular readers of this blog will recognise Badzak's name. She was briefly employed by UKIP MEP

Jasna Badzak - convicted fraudster and forger

Gerard Batten before defrauding him of £3,000 by using a forged bank statement to claim she hadn't been paid. She was convicted of fraud and forgery at Southwark Crown Court, received a 12 month suspended sentence and was tagged and curfewed for 6 months. The judge at the trial said if it wasn't for her child she'd have been imprisoned, and described her as thoroughly deceitful. Which was much the same verdict reached by the Industrial Tribunal she took Batten to for racial  harassment, and from which her multiple cases were thrown out, and her failure to pay fines, compensation and legal fees lead to her bankruptcy. She was never a 'UKIP' press officer either, and is also the architect of a long-running fraud perpetrated on Central European banks which has links to the Russian mafia. Full details can be found here

A measure of Badzak's consistency can be found on her Twitter feed. Aside from clearly being obsessed to the point of barking mad, she also claims to be a Tory supporter. This is surprising to say the least, as only 5 years ago Badzak left the Tories claiming 'racial and sexual harassment' - full details can be found here, but in brief she claimed that

"I have been told by the party agent that people like me can forget about progressing in the Conservative Party. This is not just locally, but nationally. It is just jobs for the boys. Unfortunately, I did not go to private school. I did not go to Oxbridge"

Alternatively, they may have found that her CV was a complete pack of lies. Which makes her tweet (below) all the more surprising.

Then we have Lee Jasper, former Director for Policing and Equalities under London Mayor Ken Livingstone who left under rather a cloud - Jasper had sent e-mails of an intimate nature to a woman involved with organisations who had received Greater London Authority grants and that Jasper has not declared the relationship. A subsequent report concluded that "Jasper failed to record declared interests to the "standards expected". He also found that Jasper's role in approving funding was "inappropriate given his interests" in a number of cases".

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett - in trouble if you
know a person by the company they keep.

For Natalie Bennett and the Green Party sharing a platform with a convicted, mentally unstable fraudster just because they have an unfounded vendetta against UKIP is surely scraping the barrel, not least because you know a person by the company they keep, as they say. We understand that they are desperate to save the seat of their London MEP Jean Lambert - aka 'the bag lady' - but this really is pitiful stuff. Bennett's leadership has already drawn criticism and created factionalism within an already divided Green movement, as can be seen in the Green stronghold of Brighton. The lack of judgement shown borders on the suicidal, displays the lack of foresight which has marked her leadership and will surely come back to haunt her in the future.

It hardly reflects well on JCWI either, although relying as they do on support from the SWP - where unreported rapes seem to be a matter of course - such unsavoury participants are perhaps more a matter of course, if not daily visitors.