Downing Street “boot boy” lobbied for arrest of French scholar

The arrest of French revisionist scholar Vincent Reynouard last Thursday – for a ‘crime’ which isn’t even an offence under UK law – was accomplished thanks to lobbying by a notorious political fixer, whom a former Prime Minister once described as a “boot boy” because of his strong-arm tactics.

Despite Mr Reynouard having broken no UK laws, a Zionist pressure group in London was able to work with the French authorities to put pressure on British police officers to waste time and money pursuing him. A central figure in persuading the UK police to collaborate in this disgraceful arrest and extradition process is Lord Austin.

Ian Austin – now Lord Austin of Dudley – was a Labour MP for fourteen years and previously an aide to Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown. In 2006 he was described by Tory leader David Cameron as one of “the Chancellor’s boot boys”, after persistently loutish behaviour in Parliament.

As a fanatical pro-Zionist, Austin’s lies have got him into trouble several times. In 2012 he was forced to apologise to the Palestinian human rights group Friends of Al-Aqsa after falsely labelling them “Holocaust deniers”.

In 2018 Austin was reprimanded by his own party for criticising Labour’s code of conduct on anti-semitism: needless to say, Austin was arguing that Labour was insufficiently pro-Zionist.

And in March 2022 Austin was forced to apologise to Laura Murray, an ex-aide to former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, after he had accused her of being an “anti-Jewish racist” and part of Corbyn’s “anti-semitic” leadership team. By this point Austin had betrayed his own party and had been ennobled as ‘Lord Austin of Dudley’ by Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson. His libellous attack on Ms Murray came in an article for a Tory newspaper, the Daily Telegraph: Austin and the Telegraph had to pay Ms Murray £40,000 in damages and issue an unreserved apology.

Is this really the sort of man on whose word police officers should be persuaded to spend UK taxpayers’ money and on whose advice the British authorities should be persuaded to abandon our traditional freedoms?

For years, both as an MP and in the House of Lords, Austin has prioritised Zionist campaigns including ‘Holocaust’ remembrance. The parliamentary register shows repeated cash donations to Austin (even looking solely, for example, at the period 2015-2019) from two well-known Zionist businessmen, Sir David Garrard and Sir Trevor Chinn. Garrard is a London property developer who in 2005 gave a secret loan of £2.3 million to the Labour Party (despite having previously backed the rival Conservative Party): by a strange coincidence Labour nominated him for a peerage at the same time as this secret ‘loan’, but he withdrew his nomination when a ‘cash for honours’ scandal hit the headlines. Garrard chose not to demand repayment until the party elected an anti-Zionist leader ten years later. In 2019 he gave £1.5 million to the so-called ‘Independent Group’, a pro-Zionist faction of MPs who set out to undermine Corbyn’s leadership.

For several years Garrard was a trustee and patron of the Philip Green Memorial Trust, a charity set up by Cyril Paskin, veteran leader of the violent ‘anti-fascist’ 62 Group. Garrard was involved in an unsavoury court case in 2014 when serious allegations of financial misconduct were levelled by his own son-in-law. Garrard’s donations to Austin included: £10,900 in 2016; £10,000 in 2017; and £10,000 in 2019.

Sir Trevor Chinn is also a regular donor to pro-Zionist politicians and sits on the board of several Zionist lobby groups. His donations to Austin included: £7,500 in 2015; £5,000 in 2017; and £5,000 in 2019.

In addition to these gifts from Garrard and Chinn, the register shows many payments from Zionist organisations, ‘Holocaust’ remembrance groups, and even Israeli government entities who have regularly flown Austin around the globe, all expenses paid.

In 2019 the then Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May appointed him as Trade Envoy to Israel, a post he has continued to hold under Mrs May’s three successors.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that such a committed Zionist fanatic spends his time trying to arrange the arrest of a man who has broken no UK laws. But we really ought to be surprised that the police in England and Scotland have taken any notice of self-interested, lavishly-funded lobby groups and their parliamentary allies.