Jacob Rees-Mogg melee student a hard-left Corbyn nut who posed nude and flopped
Josh Connor was seen on video calling the MP 'scum' while wearing a cap, dark glasses and with a hood up - but during the Momentum member's failed run for Student Union president, however, he pictured himself in the altogether
A STUDENT who threw a punch during a scuffle involving Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg is a Jeremy Corbyn-supporting hard-left activist.
Josh Connor is a member of the Momentum movement and once posed naked as part of a failed campaign to become president of his student union.
The media design student, 24, lives in a smart flat with a glass-fronted balcony with his Romanian girlfriend Elena Andreea Dumitrache, who was also caught up in the confrontation.
Connor was seen on video calling Tory favourite Mr Rees-Mogg “scum” and screaming abuse in his face at the University of the West of England.
He is also heard yelling “no platform for racists, no platform for homophobes”.
As the scuffle breaks out and Mr Rees-Mogg steps in, Connor appears to try to throw punches.
He might have been defending Ms Dumitrache who claimed she was punched by a man in a white shirt.
She wrote on Twitter: “I was standing in front of him when he punched me.
"No student was violent here.”
However, the protesters were widely condemned yesterday, with the university claiming they were not UWE students and it was “absolutely appalled”.
William Bates, vice-president of UWE Conservatives, said: “They breezed in wearing sunglasses, hats, balaclavas and bandanas around their faces screaming ‘Nazi scum’.
They looked like anarchists, a typical hard-left look.
“There were a lot of 18-year-old kids who found the protesters — there were some in their 40s — quite menacing.”
And Labour-supporter Tom Canham, who was in the audience but not part of the protest, said: “It was a stupid stunt with no legitimate point.”
The 26-year-old, who caused controversy last year by staging story sessions read by drag queens for children, said: “Rees-Mogg tried to have a conversation with them — kudos to him for that.
"Then a guy in a white shirt lunged in.”
The demonstrators defended their actions on the Bristol Antifascist Facebook page, saying their peaceful protest turned ugly when one of the group was struck by an audience member.
The statement added: “We felt that we had disrupted the meeting enough turned around and left as the fascists tried to gather their pieces.”
Mr Rees-Mogg, who was invited to UWE by its politics and international relations society, refused to be cowed.
He plans to address the Cambridge Union on Thursday and speak at Bristol University in the coming weeks.
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He said: “I got the impression they just wanted to shout.
“There was no reason to be afraid.”
Connor posed naked for his 2015 campaign with the slogan: “I’ve got nothing to hide, so why should UWE?”
It flopped and he came third.
