Martin Wingfield is a slow learner

Rumour has it that Wigton-based fascist Martin Wingfield has jumped ship from the British National Party and joined True Brits, the new far-right party set up by former BNP MEP Andrew Brons. True

What a difference a couple of years makes. Back in 2010, Martin, who is an immigrant from Sussex, and his wife Tina were leading members of the BNP nationally and were very active locally. Both stood for the local elections in Maryport in 2007 and Martin was the parliamentary candidate in Workington in 2010. Martin was also second on the BNP’s Northwest regional list for the European elections in 2009, behind Nick Griffin who was elected as an MEP.

Martin was a big supporter of Nick and a firm believer that sun shone out of his arse. His blog (which is not updated anymore, funnily enough) was filled with gushing articles about how hard Nick was working, and how well he was doing as an MEP.

Then, to cut a long story short, they all fell out. Andrew Brons challenged Nick Griffin for the party leadership in 2011 and narrowly lost. Martin and Tina supported Brons as they are very experienced at losing elections.

After months of dithering about what he should do next, Brons has thrown the toys out of the pram and formed a new party with the poorly chosen name True Brits (or TB for short – I think I had a jab for that when I was at school).

Unbelievably, this is not even the first time that Martin Wingfield has fallen out of with Nick Griffin and joined a breakaway group led by Andrew Brons. In the 1980s, Brons and Wingfield split away from the National Front to form the Flag Group after falling out with Griffin.

Clearly, Martin has never understood the phrase ‘those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it’.

The Flag Group eventually became the National Democrats and then sank without a trace with many of its active members joining the BNP.

The True Brits are looking at a similar future as the party’s membership is drawn from the ranks of bitter, dysfunctional ex-BNP members who are united by the fact that they hate Nick Griffin. After Brons waited for months before launching the party, they have no political momentum and their unique selling point is that they lost a faction fight inside a far right party. In short, they are going nowhere fast.

Members of Maryport Against Racism can remember warning Martin not to trust Nick when bumping into him on a stall in Maryport town centre in 2007.

We hate to say we told you so Martin, and look forward to you spending another 10 years in the political wilderness.