David Lammy is spot on – the British right is tumbling into extremism and we should call it out before it’s too late

Having spent years throwing flammable material into our national debate, Brexiteers are now acting aghast at a big fire raging

The backlash to David Lammy’s comments yesterday has been entirely predictable and hypocritical. If there’s one thing for which you can rely on Brexiteers, it’s to blame others for the mess they spent years carefully creating.

David Lammy told Andrew Marr on the BBC yesterday: “When people are experiencing rising hate and extremism in this country, we must not concede ground, we must fight it and call it out for what it is.”

And he’s absolutely right. Last year the former head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany said of the country’s AfD: “For the first time a party has made it into national parliament whose programme can be summarised with the words: Jews out.” When asked if she saw the AfD as a Nazi party, she said: “What else are you supposed to call a party that disseminates a platform that makes Jewish life impossible?”

These are the people Jacob Rees-Mogg is boosting and promoting from his own Twitter feed. These are the people Boris Johnson’s ally Steve Bannon praised and wanted to forge an alliance with.

The idea we should give an inch of respectability to these people and allow European Research Group members to mainstream them is unacceptable. We must not give an inch, as Lammy rightly said.

And this isn’t the first time Rees-Mogg has consorted with the far right. In 2013 he was “guest of honour” at the annual dinner for a group called Traditional Britain, which called for ethnic-minority Britons to “return to their natural homelands”. Rees-Mogg claimed he didn’t know their views before he went, though I usually like to know who I’m having dinner with.

When a Muslim MP is found sharing antisemitic memes, she is rightly asked to apologise and educate herself. But when a Tory MP is boosting antisemitic parties in Europe, most of our right-wing press and the BBC look the other way. The double standards are galling.

Having spent years throwing flammable material into our national debate, Brexiteers are now acting aghast there’s a big fire raging on. This morning Boris Johnson is complaining about Lammy’s words causing “toxic polarisation” – from the man who claimed the EU was behaving like Hitler and that Theresa May’s deal was like a “suicide vest” around Britain (before he said he would vote for the same deal).

This debate isn’t about inflammatory rhetoric. That’s an attempt at diversion. What it’s about is whether we should look away as politicians boost and promote far-right fringe figures long and hard enough for them to be able to take over our political system.

When the BBC covered Nigel Farage’s latest vehicle last week, they didn’t ask him about his support for Marine Le Pen or the AfD. They didn’t ask him why he campaigned for the disgraced candidate Roy Moore, who was accused of sex with underage girls multiple times. All that has been forgotten and brushed under the carpet already, allowing him another clean slate to campaign on.

But some of us haven’t forgotten so easily because our lives will be on the line if the far right come into power again. Some of us can’t just sit back and say nothing as Tory leadership candidates use the far right to threaten the rest of us.

There is a long, proud history in Britain of fighting fascism. But there were also plenty who wanted to appease and work with the fascists. It’s time for politicians to decide which side they want to be on. I’m on Lammy’s.