David Coburn is a man we’ve been chasing about for some time. Scotland’s first/only UKIP representative managed to ride the wave of publicity given to his pal Nigel Farage, and the wave of immigrant bashing from the gutter press, all the way to European Parliament in last year’s elections.
Prior to this, he was best known for his somewhat contradictory roles as a gay homophobe and for running a language school for international students while opposing immigration. The school went bust in mysterious circumstances, leaving students out of pocket but allowing Coburn to focus on opposing freedom of movement in Europe while running his freight-forwarding business instead.
Like any discussion of Coburn, this piece comes with a content warning for racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and generally roasterishness.
(Well, we did warn you.)
Since being elected, Coburn’s continued to enlightened us with such gems as telling us all to breed more, so the immigrants don’t take over while warning that gay marriage “breeds homophobia.” Whether lots of gay marriages can breed enough homophobia to stop the immigrants taking over, only David Coburn knows.
I have no idea how to make one of these. And no intention of finding out.
Having spent the past year or so calling the SNP “racists” and “fascists” at every opportunity, he has now revealed himself to be a massive racist. Like we couldn’t already have guessed that by the fact he’s in UKIP.
In comments made to the Mail, he referred to Humza Yousaf, the Minister for Europe and International Development as,
Humza Yousaf, or as I call him, Abu Hamza.
This isn‘t even the first time this week members of the Nats have had to deal with this kind of shit. The Sun ran a (late and not as good as mine) hatchet job on parliamentary hopeful, Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh…which the paper handily illustrated with a picture of a random Asian woman.
Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh (top), was not actually pictured in the Sun. Who knows who was…
The comparison between Yousaf, yer archetype SNP politician (competent, well meaning, a bit dull) and Abu Hamza (a “radical” cleric now serving a life sentence in the US for terrorism charges, having been found guilty of inciting racial hatred in the UK), is a step too far, even by UKIP’s standards.
This is nothing more than out and out Islamophobia and racism, shaming by associating. It doesn’t matter if we get the right target, you’re all the same to us. From a elected representative, that’s beyond the pale.
You’d think Coburn wouldn’t be keen to fuck with Humza Yousaf again, following his complete schooling on Twitter back in January…
It doesn’t matter that the target of Coburn’s abuse is a Government Minister, who’s probably better equipped to defend himself than most, we simply cannot tolerate racism like this from someone being paid for by the public purse. David Coburn has been exposed for what he is, a raging bigot. If UKIP wish to continue to pretend they aren’t racist, Coburn needs to be expelled from public life. Whether we can make that happen now or whether we’ll have to rage away for another 3ish years, it has to happen.
We can’t afford to be complacent about racism in Scotland, to pretend the fact we have a whole Humza Yousaf in Government and a solitary Scots-Asian MSP on the opposition benches means it all fine. A poll published this week showed once again that there was little or not difference between attitudes towards immigration in Scotland compared with the rest of the UK. We elected David Coburn for fuck sake. That’s why those of us who want to build a better country have to step up.
Comments like this may hurt the feelings of Government Ministers but on a more fundemental level, as pointed out by Yousaf himself, they give credence to the kind of people who would shout this stuff in the street. The real targets are ordinary Scots, who happen not to be white, lumped into a homogenous bloc of probably terrorists by Coburn and his chums. This isn’t just an attack on Yousaf or his party (who we hold no particular candle for) but an attack on our fellow Scots and on everyone working to build a safer, more welcoming place for us all to live in.
David Coburn, you’ve always been a wanker but this week is your climax. From now on, it’s all downhill, with no prospect of being able to get it back up. We’ll not be kipping until you’re gone.
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A Thousand Flowers 
The bit that gets me about Ukip is they managed to get a 140,000 votes in Scotland with about 6 members and one of them is a flute member from Airdrie.
At it’s height and with hundreds of activists the SSP only got 132,000 votes.