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.

An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Show all 20 1 /20 An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Maria, 31, holds her daughters, Elena, two, and baby Ioana, weeks old, in her London home A few months after Britain voted to leave the European Union, Maria was told her to go back to her native Romania whilst in hospital by an elderly English woman. “You are a foreigner, your place is not here” recalls Maria, who was stunned Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Maria and her husband Adi, 37, take their daughters for a walk in Hampstead Heath near their home The couple are preparing to leave Britain later this year with their two children, fed up with what Maria says is xenophobia and the rising cost of living in London Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Elena holds up British passports belonging to her and her sister. Both children have dual citizenship, but their parents do not want to apply for this despite having permanent residency in Britain Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Maria holds daughter Ioana, who is less than a week old, while Elena wipes a table Maria had never faced direct abuse over her nationality in her 10 years in the country until that moment at the hospital Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Adi spends time with his daughters Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Adi plays hide and seek with his daughter Elena Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Food is served Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Adi takes his daughter, Elena, to nursery Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Adi's sister, Nicoleta, 34, carries her niece Elena in a restaurant after a trip out Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Adi and Maria cook together at their home Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Adi holds his baby daughter, Ioana Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Adi and wife Maria take their daughters for a walk in Hampstead Heath Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Berwyn, a neighbour of the couple, who moved to the UK in the 1980s from Australia, says goodbye to Maria after a visit at her home. Berwyn has dual citizenship - Australian and Irish as she lived in Ireland for a few years before moving to Britain. She calls the family her 'dearest Christian Romanian friends' Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Religious pictures including a portrait of Arsenie Boca, a Romanian Orthodox monk, theologian and artist (top), hang on the wall at the home of Adi and Maria Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Maria dries Elena after giving her a bath after nursery Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Maria holds her baby daughter Ioana Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Adi works with his colleague Alexandru, who is also from Romania, for a removal company Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Maria holds her daughter Elena Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Neighbour, Berwyn, holds baby Ioana Reuters An immigrant's tale: Leaving Britain to escape Brexit hostility Adi and Maria, along with their daughters, leave St Andrews church in Kingsbury after attending a service Reuters

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.

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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.