Mair has now been tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. We don’t know precisely what his motives were because he refused to speak – or even enter a plea – during the trial. What we do know is that he was a loner with OCD; he kept an extensive collection of Nazi literature in a shrine bookcase; he subscribed to neo-Nazi magazines and ordered books from the National Alliance, the US neo-Nazi group that inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; he kept extensive cuttings on Norwegian far-right mass murderer Anders Breivik; he compiled a dossier on Jo Cox, to whose pro-EU leanings he clearly objected; also we know that according to several reports at the time of the death – subsequently disputed – he is said to have shouted as he stabbed and shot Jo Cox “Britain First, this is for Britain.”
You might think, as I do, that here was the case of a bitter, angry, emotionally damaged loner with neo-Nazi sympathies doing what bitter, angry, emotionally damaged loners with neo-Nazi sympathies sometimes (perhaps once every four or five years) will.
But London Times columnist David Aaronovitch thinks he has a much better handle on this awful event. Apparently, deep down, it was the fault of all those ghastly people who voted Brexit. Oh, and by extension, the sort of people who voted for Donald Trump…
Here’s how I summarised his article in a Tweet this morning…
Read the rest at Breitbart.
