Reform UK Salisbury candidate says Putin 'seemed very good'

[Emrys]

...
Julian Malins KC told a hustings audience that the Russian president "is not the Austrian gentleman with a moustache come alive again" on Sunday evening, June 23.
...
Acknowledging that thousands of young Ukrainian and Russian men were dying as he spoke, Mr Malins added: "We support diplomacy. We support every possible effort to reach a compromise and a settlement over the issues in Ukraine.
...
The 74-year-old continued: "War is not about as it were punishing or in some way running over thousands of young men n tanks and blowing them up because one person takes points of view which you disagree with.

"I have actually met Putin and had a 10-minute chat with him and he seemed very good. He is not the Austrian gentleman with a moustache come alive again."

Boos and looks of disgust were directed towards Mr Malins, who does not live in Salisbury, after he made this statement.

https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/24407670.reform-uk-salisbury-candidate-says-putin-seemed-good/

For a venerable KC, Malins' debate strategy seems rather lacking. It didn't take long for a member of the audience to bring up novichok and the Skripals. Malins' enthusiasm for cathedral spires hasn't been explored at time of writing.

[canuckledragger]

1. Boy, UK conservatives lie alot and make too many excuses for dictators

And, yes, Putin IS another incarnation of that murderer with a mustache.

[dutch777]

2. Another reason Labour will have a hard time losing in July. Curious how Farage's party will do. Even more whackadoodle

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. I don't think Reform will get more than a handful

Farage himself might win Clacton - his (in)fame could draw voters, and the constituency elected a UKIP MP in 2015 (who had represented it as a Conservative earlier). Lee Anderson, who had been a Tory vice-chairman before he defected to Reform, might hold his seat; there are one or two others, in heavily-Brexit-voting constituencies, where they stand a chance. But they have to take over half the previous Tory vote in a constituency, plus overcome the Labour candidate (who will probably get some of the previous Tory vote too), to win anywhere.

But where they've avoided selecting the nutjobs like this one, they may well come second in many seats.

[Emrys]

4. Yeah, I think their impact will be more in terms of depleting the Tory vote in certain seats,

rather than winning outright.

All along, it's not been so much Reform/UKIP's policies and candidates in themselves that have presented a threat to other parties as their fear of having "their" votes poached, driven by polling.

What happens if any of them do win seats is another matter, of course. The UK Parliament isn't as tolerant of the sort of high jinks and disruptiveness Farage likes to get up to as the EU Pariament was. In the past, when UKIP and its ilk have won council seats, let alone Westminster ones, they've usually imploded within a couple of years.

[Emrys]

5. I posted this mainly because Malins' cloth-eared buffonery was obviously ridiculous,

but investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr did some digging into his background in 2008:

Link to tweet

Carole Cadwalladr
@carolecadwalla

So here's an interesting connection. Julian Malins QC, the totally independent lawyer, who today gave Cambridge Analytica a clean bill of health? Here he is with fellow City of London alderman, Matthew Richardson...aka Robert Mercer's lawyer

Others have chimed in with more information about Malins' links to various shady figures in the UKIP/Trump axis and dodgy dealing in PPE during COVID.

If anyone's curious and can't or won't use Twitter to click through and see the replies, if you pipe up, I'll transcribe them later, but I have to go out right now.

[LeftishBrit]

6. At least it ensures that he'll lose badly in Salisbury

Doubt that Putin is popular there.