Just a warning before we begin, today's podcast includes a month pleasant and offensive language.

Last week, a small mob filmed themselves shouting abuse at the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.

Most coverage focused on the abuse itself, but who exactly were the abusers?

Where they come from? And what do they want?

You're listening to stories of our times and the Sunday times. I'm David Aronovich.

Today, the US-style conspiracy theorists now work in Britain.

So my name is Ben Ellery and I am a news reporter at the Times.

Of the course of the pandemic, one of the things that I've become fascinated by is the

world of conspiracy theories, particularly the the anti-vax movement. Ben, where are you talking

to me from? I'm at home, although I'm slightly hesitant maybe to go into a bit more detail than

that for reasons that might become a bit more clearer later.

Let's go back to last Monday. Can you just briefly explain to us what happened then?

Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader and David Lamy, Labour MP and the Shadow Foreign Secretary,

were walking by a embankment in London when they were suddenly ambushed by a group of protesters,

mainly men. They were shouting abuse at them.

The scenes were extremely intimidating. The men were filming the encounter and they were

sort of thrusting these cameras into their faces, shouting comments at them.

Pido Protector was one of them and a police escort surrounded the politicians

to keep these men at bay. And this is obviously given the background in the UK we've had with

politicians recently and sad deaths of Joe Cox and David Amos. This was a very frightening scene.

It must have been pretty extreme for the police to need to bundle the leader of the opposition

into the car. Actually took him by his arm and led him to the cars as if to say,

...