Two racist rioters were brilliantly taken apart by their sentencing judge in Plymouth.

John Cann (left) and Ryan Bailey (right) both pleaded guilty to violent disorder and appeared at Plymouth Crown Court for sentencing. Judge Robert Linford rounded on Cann telling him that according to his police interview he discussed with them “about the better use of taxpayers’ money and why people were having to pay to keep these people in this country after committing such heinous crimes.”

Judge Linford then launched a stinging rebuke to Cann saying: “So let’s look at how the taxpayer have been funding your activities over the last 38 years – let’s see what you’ve cost the country: you’ve got 10 aliases, four fictitious birth dates, you’re 51 years of age, you’ve been convicted of 170 offences, you been convicted of theft, arson, taking cars, handling stolen goods, obtaining by deception, burglary, dangerous driving and possessing bladed articles.

“In all over the years that you’ve been visiting the criminal justice system you’ve received sentences totalling 357 months in prison, many of them concurrent.

“In other words, nearly 30 years. That, Mr Cann, is what you’ve been costing this country and you sit there in that interview and saw fit to be critical of others. You have no right whatever to say who should or should not be in this country.”

To Bailey, Judge Linford said he had 29 convictions for 39 offences, including theft, criminal damage, possession of drugs, supply of class A drugs, threatening behaviour, breach of a Domestic Violence Protection Order and robbery “and you were chanting with the rest of that rabble about immigration”. “You two were in no position to judge anybody”.

Judge Linford accepted the pair had pleaded guilty at the earlier opportunity and handed Cann a three year jail sentence and Bailey a 30 month jail sentence. He said they would serve half before being released on licence.

Be in no doubt, though, they will soon be lionised as free speech martyrs by the far right.