Sometimes you can’t help doing things that are stupid, wrong and bad for you, like having a couple of glasses of whiskey after getting back from the pub. Trying to find out a bit more about the new version of UKIP and the primordial soup it has emerged from is a bit like that, especially if you live in Tower Hamlets.  You end up constantly bewildered by the portrayal of it as a no go zone for Whites in which sharia law is enforced by a ferocious Taliban, alcohol is forbidden, and women are not permitted to show an inch of flesh.

To lapse into Marxist jargon, it is utter bollocks and easily disproved by walking around Brick Lane any night of the week after 7pm. I genuinely feel a lot more on edge and uncomfortable in the bits of Belfast where they’ve been hanging flegs (as they are known in Ulster Scots) on lampposts since lampposts were invented. Other than that big one by Bethnal Green station, there is not a single pub in the borough in which I would feel nervous about drinking. By contrast, there are whole areas of the six counties where I couldn’t conceive of having half a shandy other than in a nightmare which involves me trussed up in the boot of a car.

This morning, I went to the barber round the corner who always has Islamic recitations playing as background music. I like him because he doesn’t want to talk about football, or much else. Maybe I am just living in the past, but I really would not fancy sitting in a chair while someone with a lot of sharp instruments close at hand was playing his favourite playlist of loyalist songs, especially that one about being up to their necks in Fenian blood.

More to the point, I found myself wondering why anyone who isn’t a howling racist would have a problem with that

David Cameron described the Farage version of the party as “a bunch of fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists.” Much of that remains true except that the racists are out of the closet and showing a willingness for a bit of Combat 18 style confrontation, albeit dressed in cumbersome chainmail armour of a variety that is seldom worn by contemporary street fighters. Crusader nostalgic fruitcakes seem to like it though.

UKIP’s attempt to launch the Loony Crusade in Tower Hamlets didn’t even make it as far as the tube station in Whitechapel. By contrast, the disastrous Children’s Crusade to Jerusalem in 1212 was a logistical and spiritual triumph. Medieval ten year olds were less daunted by adversity than contemporary fascists who are apparently keen that “Christianity should be put back into the heart of government”.

Their demonstration has been shifted from Whitechapel, the opposite of posh, to Kensington, a borough with a palace. More precisely, it is “mustering” outside Brompton Oratory, the poshest Catholic church in England and one where they still say the Latin mass. Either it has escaped their notice that this pope and his predecessor shared views on migrants very different from their own, or that’s why they are going there.

UKIP had their arses handed to them in Tower Hamlets because of the strength of local feeling against them. If they want to draw inspiration from the Crusades, let them reflect on this.

“Few of the Crusaders returned from their journey; most died of hunger or thirst or were drowned at sea, while others were sold as slaves. The chroniclers’ story carried a clear message: God did not will it.”

Nor indeed, did the people of Tower Hamlets.