The men of the National Rebirth Party will know that size isn’t everything. And that’s good because today’s so-called National Conference, attended by around 30 desperate and misled souls, was a springboard into an empty swimming pool.

We sat and watched them entering the Headley Verity Wetherspoons just outside Leeds City Centre. It’s not difficult to spot a fascist.

A group of shambling men, struggling with their masculinity, in ill-fitting suits over shirts that have never seen an iron, held together loosely by cheap, polyester ties purchased maybe from Primark.

Suspicion and paranoia

Party leader Alek Yerbury, wearing his favourite dark blue suit, looked more like a dodgy 1930s B -movie gangster as he introduced small numbers of his perfectly-formed neo-fascist party to other comrades.

This did not take long.

The suspicion, paranoia and “which one of these people in here is a Jewish agent?” looks were very evident.

Then, at around 12.30 Katie ‘Sanity’ Fanning entered with another party member curiously attired in a long, summer dress with an armful of truly awful tattoos on display.

Fanning, Yerbury’s partner and not just in crime, likes to be the Fairie Queen and tottered up to the bar in a ludicrous pair of black high heels and matching business suit.

Think Alexis Carrington from the 1980s Dynasty TV show meets office manager trying too hard to gain promotion and you get the picture.

Desperation

One man with a Hitler Jugend haircut, perfectly styled by his mum just hours before, looked around the pub in desperation. “Where are all the other members of this bloody party?

“Yerbury says we’re coming to power in ten years.”

Anti-fascists marched to the hotel to demonstrate against this neo-nazi gathering but, frankly, there was precious little to oppose.

Those spiteful rumours emanating from rival fascists Patriotic Alternative about Fuhrer Yerbury travelling from Manchester to Birmingham recently where he was both speaker and audience now ring true.

Sorry group

And for a man who served in military intelligence, Yerbury shows few signs of having undergone counter-surveillance training, for he it was who led us to the rendezvous.

They might as well have stayed there. There was enough room on the pub terrace by the main road to accommodate the whole sorry group.

But no. At precisely 13.20 hours the NRP, not marching but dawdling, paranoically looking up and down the street and missing us completely, moved off around the corner as we followed close behind.

Venue for this Hofbrauhaus mega-gathering? The smallest conference room in the Radisson Blu Hotel. The security detachment, three clowns vaping and smoking outside, appeared to be bored already.

So Alek Yerbury is on record as saying that Searchlight is nearly always right.

Thanks, Alek. Looks like we were right again today.