It has been a long time since Londoners visited Bedlam to see the mentally unwell in states of great distress, but one can still pay to see a gathering of lunatics in pockets of the capital today.

This month saw one such congregation of the paranoid, as our friends from America, Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens, made their first address on behalf of Turning Point UK. Kirk and Owens were there to help their organisation’s British offshoot get off the ground, but they took up most of the audience’s time engaging in verbal catharsis of all their political fears.

Kirk, Owens and their squad all suffer a paralysing fear of the same big, bad monster: the Left. The Left has infested the media and injects malicious and creepy narratives into its so-called “reporting”. The Left kills culture, destroys families and hypnotises poor people into voting for left-wing parties. The Left beats people up, enslaves blacks, poisons the well and throws babies onto bayonets before roasting them over open fires.

The one thing the Left doesn’t do, though, is defend Hitler — they’d never sink that low.

First impressions count, of course, and Turning Point UK hasn’t made the best of first impressions on the political commentariat. Kirk and Owens were happy to clear the air. Kirk in particular wanted to show us that Turning Point would be insightful. “In the States, we have an expression, it’s a Latin expression, called e pluribus unum, you may have heard of it?” he said. In English, it means “out of many, no Mexicans.”

For Kirk and Owens, the best way for the West to solve its problems would be to stop letting problematic people in. Problematic people should stay at home and sort out their own problems. If all those problematic people decide to flock to the USA, bringing their problematic religions and their problematic morals and problematic skins, the USA will turn into Mexico, or Saudi Arabia, and that… well, even saying that leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth.

Suddenly, a reference to nationalism. We started to tremble. But the loonies’ throats were too croaky to make a good case for it. Enter the Turning Point UK dream team: a Leave Means Leave leader, a Taxpayer’s Alliance talking head and a disgraced York Tory (or, a leading York Tory).

After giving a brief tour of his CV like the careerist young man he is, Matthew Edginton made some superb soundbites: “the EU is like China,” “Brexit is our Trump” and “If Brexit doesn’t happen, 17.4 million people will be livid”. Best of all, young people should tell the EU, “we’ve had enough.” Stirring words indeed. You could start a revolution with rhetoric like that.

Meanwhile, one can only commend the low-tax, small-government libertarian Chloe Westley, who, after making a sincere speech about freedom of thought, freedom of speech and individualism, kept smiling as the small-faced man beside her proudly defended a protectionist trade war against China, national identity, Western cultural superiority and a restrictive immigration policy.

Turning Point UK aren’t sexist, said Westley to someone in the audience who asked about the Taxpayers’ Alliance’s source of funding. “What’s really at the heart of this question is whether I believe what I’m saying or whether some rich white men are telling me what to say. It’s 2019 and you don’t think a grown woman can have her own political opinions?”

Barrelling down the central aisle to, a rich, white son of a rich, white man George Farmer, chairman of Turning Point UK, stormed to the stage to interrupt Westley as she dished out her own political opinions and tell the questioner to shove his inquiry up his arse. “Who funds us? You should really ask, who funds Momentum? Some super shady boys. Amirite, lads, amirite?”

Later, confronted with a man who had received an education, Kirk almost had to be restrained. “What’s your name, Sparky?” he snapped, searching himself for the knuckledusters he’d left at home. The questioner quoted some facts and statistics at Kirk, who told him not to believe what the Marxists at the London School of Economics are telling him, but the brainwashed little communist wouldn’t shut up. “Why I oughta — c’mere, punk! I’ll rough you up so bad, ya little…”

Throughout, we were all waiting to hear York’s finest speak her mind — when would this lass prove that she isn’t just Darren Grimes’s warm-up act? Alas, she elected to appeal to the howling Tories in front of her by admitting to her Labour past. Edgington leaned over to flick the switch on her neck; Dominique was deactivated for the rest of the night.

“Bad ideas get way too much credibility,” said Charlie Kirk at some point or other. It’s a great slogan for Turning Point UK.

— Reynard