Zelo Street

Tuesday 29 October 2024

Oh Tommy - The Bard Of Belmarsh

And so it came to pass that Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, was taken from Police custody to Woolwich Crown Court to face charges of Contempt of Court. Lennon had been told not to repeat untrue comments about a Syrian teenager, Jamal Hidazi. He ignored the ruling and repeated the untrue comments. A lot.

Yes, the same person who rocked up on my doorstep in the dead of night and claimed - dishonestly - that I had “told lies about him” had been told, by a Judge, not to repeat lies he had been telling about a teenager who just happened to be one of those Scary Muslims™. The BBC report tells you all you need to know about the case, and why Lennon has now been jailed.

“The hearing on Monday was the culmination of events that date back to October 2018. That month, a video went viral showing how Jamal Hijazi, a Syrian in West Yorkshire, had been attacked by another teenager at school. Yaxley-Lennon then posted his own response to one million Facebook followers alleging that his investigation had established that Mr Hijazi was a violent thug, a claim that was untrue”. And there was more.

“The Yaxley-Lennon video spread widely and the Syrian teenager and his family received death threats. Three years later, Mr Hijazi won £100,000 in damages when the High Court ruled Yaxley-Lennon’s claims against him had amounted to defamation. The court imposed an injunction on Yaxley-Lennon, banning him from making the false claims again”. So what did he do?

“In February 2023, Yaxley-Lennon, who founded the long-defunct English Defence League (EDL), began repeating the claims and went on to post online a film claiming he had been ‘silenced’ by the state. That film may have been viewed at least 47 million times”. Very brave of him. Or maybe not.

Because, as the report also tells, “Eventually, this July, the anti-Islam activist showed the film to thousands of his supporters in London's Trafalgar Square, saying he would not be silenced. The following day he left the country”. Only now had he returned. The Judge was especially severe on Lennon.

“Jailing Yaxley-Lennon for 18 months, Mr Justice Johnson said: ‘In a democratic society underpinned by the rule of law, court orders must be obeyed … Nobody is above the law. Nobody can pick or choose which laws or which injunctions they obey, or which they do not. Even if they believe that an injunction is... contrary to their views they must comply with the injunction’”. So out came Lennon’s fans to redefine reality in his favour.

There were attacks on the court artist, because Lennon and his fans did not consider the likeness to their taste. There were appeals for more money, despite Lennon having pleaded guilty, which fact was also ignored by his faithful followers, who have decided he is a “political prisoner”.

Talk of “two tier” policing, justice, and of course Keir Starmer, followed. And the deeply sinister calls for the Judge’s hard drive to be examined, because, well, you know, nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat. Worse, the attacks on the Judge have featured his photo, as well as demands to know where he lives. Which, one hopes, is being gathered up by Hope not Hate.

One might be disappointed to see that group being distracted from Lennon and the rest of the populist far right by whining at those showing empathy for innocent civilians in Palestine and Lebanon being blown to pieces, incinerated, targeted randomly by snipers for shits and giggles, bulldozed, and all the rest of the bad behaviour indulged in by the IDF.

Stephen Lennon is not a political prisoner. He is not a fearless independent journalist exposing the truth. He has not exposed grooming gangs. He has not exposed corruption. He broke the law, and the law won. So he has been transferred to Belmarsh Prison, where, who knows, perhaps he will write a book about his struggle. While the rest of the world forgets about him.

The time of Stephen Lennon was for a time, but not for all time. Now he has been banged up and can harass no-one. Just rejoice at that news.

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Saturday 26 October 2024

Oh Tommy - Wheels Coming Off

And so it came to pass that Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, arrived back in the UK from his brief exile in Spain, and was not nicked. He was pleasantly surprised, and continued to promote his rally in London, scheduled for today. But into each life a little rain must fall, and for Lennon it came pouring as he journeyed to Folkestone yesterday.

The Great Man had been instructed to surrender himself to the cops at the town’s Police station. This he duly did, and was charged under the Terrorism Act, having declined to give the rozzers his phone’s PIN. But all was not lost: he was bailed in advance of a future court appearance. Then came the really bad news: he was nicked again, and this time he wasn’t walking free.

Having skipped the meanings hearing for his Contempt of Court charge, what is called a Bench Warrant had been issued for his arrest. And what better place to execute said warrant than down the cop shop? Lennon was then remanded in custody, to the great relief of all those people who wished it had happened rather earlier. So what happens to his London victory rally?

And this is where the wheels began to come off. “ADMIN POST - TOMMY HAS BEEN SENT TO PRISON!!!” told his account on Twitter, X, or whatever Muskrat’s calling it this week. But Lennon had not been sent to prison: he had been remanded in custody, which is not the same thing. And his delegate confirmed this: "We can confirm that Tommy is now being held on remand until Monday where he will appear at Woolwich Crown Court at 10am”.

But his rally would go ahead. “Demo day has arrived, sadly without Tommy in attendance, however we'd like to reiterate his message, to stay calm, don't react to provocation, we're here not only for him, but most importantly to pay respects to Peter Lynch, and support the families of the political prisoners”.

Lynch was one of those jailed for violent disorder in the wake of riots earlier this year, who later died in prison. He is therefore now a cause celèbre for the far right. He pleaded guilty; he was not a “political prisoner”. This means nothing to Lennon and his hangers-on, though, for whom the law must be applied in full for Scary Muslims™, but not for white people.

So what effect did Lennon’s detainment on the Kent Coast have on the list of the great and the good prepared to speak at his rally? Minor thesp, failed chanteur and not-even-getting-out-of-the-noise-floor politician Laurence Fox perused that list and decided that they were not significant enough people to warrant the presence of Himself Personally Now. He would not be attending.

Lennon’s adoring fans have not taken the news at all well. Also, the level of paranoia has reached new heights among them, exemplified by someone using the Twitter handle “No to ECHR & ILLEGALS … No to BBC Licence Fee” whining “Just had our coach from Leicester CANCELLED!!!!! THIS GOVERNMENT ARE A COMPLETE JOKE!!!” As if.

Yet the faithful will still turn up, still pony up their hard-earned cash, still watch Lennon’s tedious videos, with their distant relationship to reality. Brendan May mused “To all Tommy Robinson fans - he's being held in prison until Monday, so this is a reminder that now is the time to send him all your savings again, so he can spend it on his next luxury holiday to Cyprus next year. You know what to do!” LBC host James O’Brien was on the same page.

“I have been arrested, please send me your money … I have not been arrested, please send me your money … I am on holiday in a very expensive hotel, please send me your money … I am not on holiday in a very expensive hotel, please send me your money … Nice ‘work’ if you can get it”.

One Tweeter summed up the whole charade: “Tommy Robinson moved the date of this far-right march to coincide with his court date & handed himself in knowing he’d be detained. This gives him endless excuses to play victim for the knuckledraggers & gives Laurence Fox an excuse to pull out. Tommy Cultists - you got played”. Lennon has taken them all for mugs.

The law may have finally caught up with Stephen Lennon. That is all.

Monday 21 October 2024

Israel - USA Has To Call Time

As I’ve noted previously, time was when the state of Israel got a free pass, whatever its armed forces and security agencies got up to. A small country with so many hostile neighbours, who would rather it did not exist at all. So it was when the IDF fired first in the Six Day War; likewise the retaliation to the Yom Kippur attacks. But the free pass no longer holds.

So when the response to October 2023’s Hamas attack went way beyond going after the perpetrators, protests began in earnest. They have not ceased since, as most of Gaza has been reduced to a rubble-strewn wasteland, with indiscriminate bombing, rocketing and shelling of civilians continuing round the clock, for apparently no more than shits and giggles.

But those who could stop the killing, the maiming, and the destruction of health and even water supplies, with little or no aid getting through to those in need, did nothing. This included Governments in North America and throughout Europe, the chief culprit being that in Washington, DC. Israel gets away with it, it carries on killing. It gets away with it again, so carries on again.

The Biden administration could call time on what has become a rogue state, whose defenders howl down those of inconvenient thought by smearing them as anti-Semites, attempting to have them removed from jobs, or deselected from being able to run for re-election. But here a problem enters: the people are not listening to their leaders’ attempts to smear those showing empathy.

And the people are in no mood to let pass the horrifying litany of armed forces using tens of thousands of human beings for target practice. So exporting lethal weaponry to Israel so that it can be used to blow people to bits, incinerate hospital patients, and bury many more under the remains of collapsed buildings is generating growing and sincere opposition.

What fuels the opposition in ever-growing amounts is the way those acting on behalf of the Israeli state, after getting away with shelling, bombing and rocketing defenceless civilians, push the boundaries a bit further, hence the shelling, bombing and rocketing moving on to helpless hospital patients. And they got away with that. So now the offensive has moved to Lebanon.

Yes, to another sovereign country. Not the occupied territories, although that was unforgivable enough. Now, entire suburbs of Beirut, populated once again by defenceless civilians, are being levelled, while the leaders of the supposedly civilised West do nothing. Those leaders do not even say Boo in response to the latest, and probably lamest, Israeli excuse note.

Levelling apartment blocks in Beirut was because of a bank. As the BBC has reported, “At least 16 airstrikes were recorded across Lebanon against buildings with Al-Qard al-Hassan (AQAH) branches, Lebanon’s state media reports, including two strikes close to Beirut airport”. Yeah, right.

Let’s just stop and think for a moment. If someone were to take out a couple of dozen branches of Barclays, NatWest, RBS, Lloyds, or whoever, would that have any effect on the capacity of those banks to make loans or provide other financial services? In any case, AQAH has said “there was no cash at branches to be destroyed by Israeli strikes”. This is yet another lame excuse for terrorising civilians. And it’s high time it was stopped.

Some bemoan the fracturing of political allegiance, with Tories losing ground to the more forthright bigotry of Reform UK, and Labour leaking the support it took for granted to Independents, the Greens and others. Still our Government blethers about Israel having the right to defend itself. But this went beyond self-defence long ago. This is genocidal action with intent.

And it is action which that supposedly civilised West is enabling by sitting there and doing nothing. What happens next? Bombing, shelling and rocketing a bit more of Beirut? Trashing the city’s international airport? Destroying the port facilities? Massacring some UN peacekeepers?

The USA contributes the most to the Israeli war machine. So it’s the USA that has to tell the Israeli Government to desist. Sooner rather than later.

Tuesday 15 October 2024

Farage Migrant Threat = MORE LIES

Maintaining his public profile is proving challenging to occasional MP and Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. So it was that The Great Man decided to resort to what he does best - talking well, but lying badly. This was accomplished by claiming that someone who is not in the UK had in fact arrived in the UK, and made a death threat against him.

Also, the target of Farage’s latest pack of lies was one of those Not White Chappies, he had a distinctive gun tattoo, and was most likely one of those Scary Muslims™. So, including a video from the Not White Person, off went Nige. “This illegal migrant has made a threat on my life and is now in the UK. He is the kind of person we are letting into our country”. This was not true.

There was no illegality, the individual concerned was not a migrant to the UK, because, whisper it quietly, he was not (yet) in the UK. So he was not “the kind of person we are letting into our country”. So far, so straightforward, and so dishonest. Farage being a racist bigot, congenital liar, and con man, film at 11. The lie was so blatant that not even his own media outlet was buying it.

Yes, Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”), being thus far the only broadcaster or press source to report on Farage’s latest lies, could not stand up his claims. His followers on Twitter, X, or whatever Muskrat is calling it this week, lapped it up, though, some asking Mr Thirsty when he was going to join the calls for mass deportation. That’s as in mass deportation of people who are not white and/or are Scary Muslims™.

So over to GB News. “Nigel Farage has claimed an ‘illegal migrant’ has made a threat on his life after a video showed a young man making aggressive hand gestures while talking about the Reform UK leader”. Aggressive hand gestures? Ooh yes, that’s an instant deportation. In Farage world, that is.

Do go on. “The Clacton MP, who was twice assaulted on the 2024 General Election campaign, broke his silence on the heavily-circulated footage tonight”. Broke wind more like. It’s just attention seeking. Have another go. “Farage had earlier highlighted how TikToker Mada Pasa was posting about his attempt to reach the UK by crossing the Channel”. And?

“Pasa, who is believed to originate from Afghanistan, posted more than 60 videos about his journey across Europe … He gained nearly 20,000 followers, amassing 230,000 likes and millions of views”. Yes? Yes yes? Yes yes yes? “There was no evidence from the video to suggest Pasa has reached British shores”. Even GB News admits Farage is lying.

But there was more. “The Reform UK leader also shared Pasa's video which was riddled with expletives … During the video, Pasa said: ‘English man Nigel. Don't talk s**t about me. You not know me … I come to England because I want to married with your sister … Don't talk about me more. Delete the video. It is not good my friend, you do not know me. I am going to come to England”. He’s not in the country. Also, he’s taking the piss.

Any more? As if you needed to ask. “Pasa was heard saying ‘pop, pop, pop’ after making hand gestures and headbutting the camera … He added: ‘I'm TikToker, I'm not gang, I am not mafia I am Mafia's Papa.’” In other words, he’s just another attention seeking bore. Bit like Nigel Farage.

Nigel Farage is still a racist and congenital liar. But you knew that already.

Thursday 10 October 2024

New Tory Leader WON’T DO REALITY

As Labour gets itself mired in yet more factionalism and infighting, Keir Starmer need not worry, well, not for the next few weeks: to prove that he is the luckiest of generals, the opposition has ridden to his rescue, as the contest to lead what is left of the Tories has spat out the one name from those competing who was prepared to remain in the real world.

In the last ballot of Tory MPs before the final two candidates are offered to the party membership, James Cleverly, thought to be the front runner, was eliminated. This left a choice between a wacko, and, er, another wacko: the two names going forward to a ballot of members will be Kemi Badenoch, and Robert Jenrick, neither of whom appears to have a handle on reality.

Sadly for Jenrick, he has already been cursed by the endorsement of formerly totally out of his depth Brexit negotiator “Lord” David Frost, who memorably asserted “I’m backing Liz Truss for PM to lead the talented team that will deliver for Britain … It would not be possible for me to serve under Penny Mordaunt. I don’t believe a Government led by her could succeed”.

He is backing someone prepared to flat-out lie in order to get ahead: Jenrick has asserted that in 2010, when the Tories returned to power, Britain was bankrupt. It was not. He dog-whistles about migrants including “bad people”, which, for those not yet attuned to his modus operandi, means more of those Scary Muslims™. But he has one way to stave off criticism.

And that is to follow the lead of disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who has now been called out repeatedly for lying in his new book, and has responded by getting suitably righteous and denying that he has ever lied about anything. Sadly for Bozo, and indeed Jenrick, Peter Oborne has the receipts, and has documented the lies.

But that is as nothing when put alongside the inversion of reality offered by Ms Badenoch. Like her claim that “pavement dining” was a “Brexit freedom”. Well, sorry to disappoint you Kemi fans, but eating outside, whether just for a mid morning coffee and pastries, or full meals, happens here in Portugal even in mid-October, and the country is not leaving the EU any time soon.

Indeed, across the river in Lisbon, there are food and drink outlets where most, sometimes all, seating is out on the street. But such is the Kemi Badenoch reality warp that it is, when dutifully churned over by the political editor of the Daily Mail, a “Brexit freedom”. Then there is her habit of claiming that she did not say what she actually said. As with maternity pay.

As the BBC has reported, she “has suggested maternity pay has ‘gone too far’ and the government needed to interfere less in people's lives [and] said statutory maternity pay, set up to support mothers for 39 weeks after having a baby, is a ‘function of tax’ which she called ‘excessive’ [adding] We need to have more personal responsibility - there was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies”. But maybe she didn’t.

“She later said she had been ‘misrepresented’, and she was making a wider comment about cutting regulatory burdens on business”. The Beeb has helpfully set out exactly what she said, just in case. It’s almost as if some media outlets know in advance that what she says may later be denied.

The joke from a Labour source asking if Cleverly’s elimination from the Tory leadership contest can be declared as a gift is actually deadly serious. We have a main opposition party which may be about to appoint a leader who is so obsessed with dog-whistling that his policy platform is indistinguishable from Reform UK and its Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage.

And the alternative? Someone who has a habit of “off the cuff once too often”, but then becomes testy and even hostile when her “mis-speak” is pointed out. The Tories have been a wacko party ever since Bozo petulantly expelled the last remaining reality based MPs. Now they are giving their members a choice between one wacko candidate … and another wacko candidate.

The main problem is that the right wing press will consider them credible.

Tuesday 8 October 2024

Morgan McSweeney - The New Polecat

It was not so long ago that now disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was in 10 Downing Street, and his chief advisor was one Dominic Cummings. He was the Original and Genuine Polecat, a fount of megalomania, who knew more about everything and anything than anyone else, because they were all poo holes.

And what happened next was with the inevitability of night following day: in late 2020, even Bozo had had enough of his chief advisor and de facto chief of staff, and out went the Polecat, to the relief of many in and around Government who wished it had happened rather earlier. But that was then, and now we have another Polecat in Downing Street.

Moreover, we have another Polecat whose sense of self-awareness appears to have been surgically removed somewhere along the way: step forward Morgan McSweeney, the completion of whose ascension to undisputed chief Polecat has now been confirmed, perhaps unintentionally, by Pippa Crerar of the Guardian, as yet more of The Great Man’s thoughts are churned over.

McSweeney was “preparing to make ‘radical changes’ to the Downing Street operation … No 10 sources said that ‘nothing was off the table’ when it came to ensuring the machinery of government was fit for purpose, heralding a slew of changes that could reshape the Downing Street organisation”. And who is the source of this word salad, which tells us precisely Sweet Jack?

But there is more. “This could include recasting different teams inside No 10, resolving the pay dispute with special advisers and further bolstering the political side of the operation with more appointments. McSweeney would also take a more data-led approach to decision-making, sources said”. Ooh yes, a data driven approach will get the Daily Mail back in its box. Not.

Have another go. “‘The day-to-day machinery of government doesn’t work properly. Morgan has a different view on how to do things. He’s nothing if not the agent of change,’ said one senior source … ‘He will have to be radical. Nothing is off the table. We’re expected to be running a powerful G7 economy yet sometimes it’s all quite small and analogue. There has to be a better way of doing things.’” More word salad. Which conveys zero information.

Then come the first signs of megalomania. “Downing Street insiders played down the prospect of an imminent cabinet reshuffle despite reports that McSweeney could push for one … [McSweeney] is expected to attend cabinet on Tuesday”. And just exactly who voted for the SOB?

Having shat all over Sue Gray, after shitting all over the previous Labour leadership, McSweeney now has to shift to delivering, organising, and indeed taking responsibility. Schmoozing the Guardian is still in vogue with him, it seems, but he never did kill The Canary. Worse for him, the right-wing press has him in its sights. Titles like the Mail will have him for breakfast.

And that is no matter how hard he tries to shit on others to take the heat off himself, meaning, for bingo card holders, seeing which cabinet ministers are suddenly and inexplicably being briefed against, in the same way that Ms Gray and indeed Jezza were briefed against. Letting him attend Cabinet is a sign of hopeless weakness by Keir Starmer. He will come to regret it.

Behold the new Polecat. Worryingly similar to the old Polecat.

Monday 7 October 2024

Sue Gray - Same Old Smear Game

Those who eulogised the new régime in Downing Street after the Tories were rightly consigned to the dustbin of defeat last July might have thought that, now that the grown-ups were allegedly in charge, the old ways of in-fighting, smearing, and piss-poor client journalism would also be binned. Nothing, however, could have been further from the truth.

This has been confirmed after news came yesterday that Sue Gray, formerly chief of staff to Keir Starmer, was leaving her post. A variety of woefully weak excuses were advanced for her departure, while the reality of what was going on was blindingly clear to anyone with brain plugged in and a hole in their jacksy. Ms Gray was the victim of yet another bout of smearing and infighting.

We can deduce this from the BBC report into her departure, which tells “Labour said Ms Gray will be replaced by Morgan McSweeney, who was previously chief adviser to the PM and masterminded Labour’s election campaign”. What a non-surprise. And there is more. Rather a lot more.

“Ms Gray has been subject to intense internal briefings and criticism in a government yet to reach its first 100 days in office, and it's that level of dysfunction that has made it clear to Sir Keir that something needed to shift”. Intense internal briefings from whom? Maybe, oh I dunno, someone like Morgan McSweeney could help us here? But do go on.

“Much more damaging for her, though, was the level of anger towards her at the heart of government, indicated by high level sources being willing to leak the BBC confidential details of her salary”. How high a level are those sources at? High enough to be at a Morgan McSweeney sort of level?

We are constantly reminded that McSweeney was the great election mastermind, while no mention is made of the smear campaign run against the Corbyn leadership, which effectively meant some within the Labour Party working to throw the 2019 General Election. Worse, the 32.1% of the popular vote achieved in that campaign was increased by this year to, er, 33.7%. That’s 6.3% shy of where Corbyn was in 2017. So why the landslide?

Simples. Tories stayed home, or chose Reform UK and the packs of lies peddled by Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. The low turnout meant that Labour actually scored fewer votes than in 2019. So excuse me for not believing the “Mastermind” and “Guru” horseshit. McSweeney seems to have undermined Ms Gray in the same way he undermined Corbyn. Which brings us to the client journalists prepared to do a little churnalism for him.

And clueless does not begin to describe the result. Like Laura Kuenssberg musing “Morgan McSweeney, who ran the election campaign, and is long time political ally of Starmer is the new Chief of Staff - politics over Whitehall?” No, just the result of another smear campaign.

The Murdoch Times has told “‘There was no grid for the first 100 days,’ a senior government source said. ‘And that was the one thing she was expected to be working on while everyone else was busy on the campaign. There was barely a single story about how the culture of government was being changed.’” Does anyone believe that the press would have stopped kicking Starmer if there had been a grid in place? Away with you.

Especially when the same paper is now sneering that Angela Rayner bought her partner a suit, and paid for it with her own money. But “there was no grid”. Yeah, right. Owen Jones asked the obvious question: “is it possible to engage with the fact that Morgan McSweeney's camp led the war against Sue Gray, and has now toppled her? Why pretend this is all the Tory press when you must know McSweeney's camp led the insurgency against her?”

Sources. They didn’t want to lose their Tory sources when The Blue Team were in Government, now they don’t want to lose the Labour ones. And why pretend that McSweeney is some kind of mastermind, just because he can shit all over his opponents? That’s not the same as delivering for the boss.

The right-wing press won’t be mollified by puerile infighting. Morgan McSweeney is about to learn a very hard lesson. Mastermind my arse.

Friday 4 October 2024

Chagos Islands - More Faux Outrage

If ever an example were needed to show the yawning chasm between the reporting on Tory Governments, and that on Labour ones, once more the opposition has come riding to the rescue, as the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press marks the transfer of the Chagos Islands’ status from that of British Overseas Territory to part of the Republic of Mauritius.

The recent history of the Chagos can be put directly: Mauritius, which included the islands, was seized by the British in 1810, and as recently as 1965, the Chagos were split off from Mauritius and the islanders expelled so that an airbase could be built there. Mauritius was then given its independence from its former colonial masters in 1968.

More recently, to quote the Wiki entry, “Ruling on the sovereignty dispute between Mauritius and the UK, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has ordered the return of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius”. So they have now been returned, effectively minus Diego Garcia, the atoll where the UK/US air base has been built. So what do those Stateside say?

As the BBC has reported, “US President Joe Biden welcomed the ‘historic agreement’ … He said it secured the future of a key military base which ‘plays a vital role in national, regional, and global security.’” Then comes one more item to consider: when he was Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly was moving towards a very similar deal with Mauritius.

So what has Cleverly said when what was essentially his deal was signed off? As if you need to ask. He called his own deal “weak”. His fellow Tory leadership candidate Tom Tugendhat “argued the deal had been ‘negotiated against Britain's interest’ and it was ‘disgraceful’ that such talks had begun under the previous Conservative government”. His own party was poo!

But the whining of what Robin Day memorably and correctly called Here Today And Gone Tomorrow Politicians was nothing when put alongside the barrage of spiteful bad faith emanating from the Tory press. The Murdoch Times dispensed with reality as it whined “PM defies US to cede Chagos”.
That’s the same US whose President just backed the deal.

Equally clueless was the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, claiming “Fears for future of Gibraltar after Chagos Islands giveaway”. The deal has Sweet Jack to do with Gibraltar, or indeed any of the other British Overseas Territories. But the pièce de résistance was excreted by the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker, in today’s Daily Mail.

Here it comes: “The Chagos Islands have belonged to Britain since 1814 and include the strategically vital Diego Garcia military base. Yesterday, in a deal condemned as a shameful and dangerous capitulation, Labour agreed to hand them to Mauritius - which lies 1,300 miles away and is an ally of China … STARMER’S SURRENDER”. Why oh why oh why oh why oh why?!?!?

A headline selecting its facts very carefully: the UK and US keep control of Diego Garcia, the islands were part of Mauritius before the UK’s act of splitting them off in 1965, and Mauritius is free to make alliances with whom its democratically elected Government wishes. Cue another nay-sayer.

Yes, the Mail has exhumed the punditry career of Dan, Dan The Oratory Man! “Labour are surrendering to a Chinese puppet state” he claims. Jonathan Portes has corrected this flat-out lie, “Mauritius is pretty much level with the UK on the Economist Democracy Index, and ahead of US”, adding “I see Dan Hannan's self-proclaimed devotion to democracy and the rights of nation-states to make their own decisions doesn't extend to Africans”.

And all the while, one thought enters time and again: had this deed been done by a Tory Government, the Murdoch and Rothermere press would not have said boo. Nor would the Telegraph, whoever ends up controlling it. Also, the BBC report explains what the press doesn’t want us to know: “Brexit left many European nations reluctant to continue backing the UK’s stance in international forums”. The weakening effect of leaving the EU.

The Tories and their press pals are full of crap. But you knew that already.

Tuesday 1 October 2024

Bozo, The Mail, And Royally Lying

While the Tories spend their conference time demonstrating just how utterly wacko the party has become, to the extent that James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat come over as the most sane choices to succeed Rishi Sunak as leader, the deeply dishonest individual who set them off in that direction is demonstrating just what privilege and entitlement means.

To no surprise at all, that individual is disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who now has a memoir out titled Unleashed, serialised in the Daily Mail, still overseen by the boiling lump of spiteful rage, the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre. The serialisation shows us the privilege enjoyed by both author and newspaper.

It also shows us that, had a title like the Guardian or Mirror published what the Mail did, they would have been pilloried endlessly for it, and that the Mail would have been in the vanguard of such action. But such is the climate of fear around the Northcliffe House bunker, the Mail titles can get away with it. See also under “if it had been a Labour politician, especially Corbyn”.

To see this privilege in action, let’s look at Bozo’s response to Partygate. “Without belabouring this weary business, I think I made several catastrophic mistakes in the handling of the story”. He only thinks he screwed up. Maybe he wasn’t actually there when he was snapped leading the toast.

Do go on. “I should have been far more robust at the outset. I tried to defuse public anger by a series of rather pathetic apologies, even though I zero about the events for which I was apologising”. Bullshit. He was there, and his pals at the Mail were giving him suitably robust cover, such as “The cake remained in its Tupperware container”, which was also a lie. Have another go.

“My grovelling just made people even angrier - and made it look as though we were far more culpable than we were”. More bullshit. There was no grovelling. Bozo denied everything, then got caught lying. But the most obvious lying, and demonstration of entitlement, comes when Bozo gets on to the Royals, starting with “BORIS: MY ‘MANLY PEP TALK’ WITH HARRY IN BID TO STOP MEGXIT”. There was no pep talk. He was lying again.

Don't f***ing mention me again or I'll doxx you, c***

Thus demonstrating that he is in the same dishonesty league as Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and Combover Crybaby Donald Trump. All three talked up by our free and fearless press; all three congenital liars, united in their ineptitude and lack of empathy towards anyone except for Themselves Personally Now. And then came the pièce de résistance.

Successive Prime Ministers have not let slip even the most inconsequential detail of their audiences with the Queen. Nor have Liz Truss, Sunak, or Keir Starmer said anything about their chats with Brian. And to disclose any detail concerning the monarch’s health - unless the monarch decrees that the detail be made known - is Streng Verboten. Unless it’s the Mail and Bozo.

After the unintentionally hilarious admission that Brenda actually read her briefing notes and he didn’t - and so learnt the contents from her telling him about them - comes the breaking of confidence which, had any left-leaning politician made it, and any not right wing paper reported it, would have had the press establishment screaming the house down.

“I had known for a year or more that she had a form of bone cancer, and her doctors were worried that at any time she could enter a sharp decline” tells the Great Bozo, as if it were public knowledge, a kind of throwaway line. He’d already lied about having a “lack of general bitterness” about having to leave Downing Street. Chris Ship, ITV News’ Royal Editor, was unimpressed.

“Given Queen Elizabeth chose not to reveal her medical condition - and her death certificate recorded the cause as ‘old age’ - it’s highly unlikely she gave Boris Johnson permission to reveal in his book, two years later, that she had, in fact, been diagnosed with bone cancer. You wonder why the former PM felt compelled to break that confidence?” Because Bozo is a total shit.

Good of him and the Dacre doggies to show the rest of the world what privilege, entitlement and the nature of being protected really means, mind.

Thursday 26 September 2024

Speccy Goes From Nelly To Oiky

And so the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine was sold for a cool £100 million to Paul Marshall, the main benefactor of hugely loss-making Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”). Former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil was first out the door, apparently voluntarily. He has now been followed by long-term editor Fraser Nelson, perhaps not voluntarily.

Out goes Fraser Nelson ...

The BBC has reported on Nelson not being sacked at all, to be succeeded by former failed politician and alleged journalist Michael “Oiky” Gove, telling its readers “Former government minister Michael Gove is to be the new editor of The Spectator, after the magazine was bought by hedge fund tycoon and GB News-backer Sir Paul Marshall”. We are reminded of Gove’s past.

“Mr Gove, who stepped down from Parliament at the general election, was a journalist before he became a Conservative MP”. And his appointment will be waved through. “He will start the job after final approval from Acoba, the advisory committee on business appointments which advises former ministers when they take jobs after leaving the government”.

There was more. “Mr Gove replaces Fraser Nelson [who] will continue to write for The Spectator and will become associate editor … Mr Nelson called Mr Gove ‘the clear successor’ to replace him … ‘He’s a first-class journalist who took a detour into politics and not (as so often happens) the other way around,’ he wrote”. And then came the Oh What A Giveaway moment.

“There's never a good time to leave a job like mine but, after 15 years and a new owner with big ambitions, there is an obvious time”. Which is code for I Got Sacked. New publisher Freddy Sayers let us know that "the magazine's non-executive Chairman would be Charles Moore, a former Spectator editor [who] would have ‘the specific brief of safeguarding editorial independence and the soul of the publication’”. His soul is indeed our soul.

Charles Moore will do Sweet Jack to get in the way of whatever direction the new owner chooses for the Speccy. Which brings us to the question of why Nelson - whose tenure as editor has been a financial success story, whatever one might think of the content - should be binned in favour of Gove.

... and in comes Oiky

Were I a betting man, the money would be going on the answer to that question being Scary Muslims™. But, one might ask, why? Nelson has published some serious Islamophobic bigotry over the years, from the likes of Doug Murray The K, Rod Liddle, Mark Steyn, and indeed the aforementioned Charles Moore. All this is true. But here, Gove is in a class of his own.

He is, after all, the author of Celsius 7/7, for which the Wiki entry notes “Although, according to [Damian] Thompson, Celsius 7/7 provides a useful analysis of Western 'appeasers' of militant Islam, by and large comparing the war on terror to a war against a totalitarian ideology is ‘misleading’, and even dangerous”. Author and critic William Dalrymple went rather further.

He “has attacked the book as a ‘confused epic of simplistic incomprehension’ and pointed out that contrary to claims on the book's jacket that Gove was an authority on Islamist terror, he had in fact never lived or travelled in any Islamic country, knew little about Islamic history or theology, and showed no sign of having met or talked to any Muslims”. So who would defend “Oiky”?

He was “vigorously defended” by none other than Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips, and Stephen “Vicky” Pollard, the latter serving with less than total distinction as editor of the Jewish Chronicle, which has managed to attract several defamation suits and even the annoyance of sham press regulator IPSO for its occasional relationship with accuracy.

All of which suggests very strongly that, although Nelson published plenty of Muslim bashing copy, it may not have been enough for Marshall. Also, Gove has acquired the attribute of Very Clever Person during his time in politics, whether that is justified, or, more likely, not. A Muslim basher with the backing of other Muslim bashers is more likely to be what the new owner wants.

So farewell then Fraser Nelson, fired for not being Islamophobic enough.

Tuesday 24 September 2024

Labour - Tone Deaf In The Bubble

The Labour leadership should not need reminding of the promise brought by all those poll leads, only to result in an apathetic electorate giving them half a million fewer votes than in 2019, and a percentage increase in vote share of a measly 1.6%. Thus the reality of the party that had been transformed from a supposed basket case into an all-conquering electoral machine.

Had it not been for Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his pals eating into the Tory vote share, Keir Starmer’s magnificent landslide majority would have been rather more modest. But at Labour’s Conference, held this year in Liverpool, no such consideration was allowed to enter. Nor were the latest and not at all favourable poll numbers.

So, given that fewer voters chose New New Labour than Labour as led by Jeremy Corbyn, how would Starmer and his pals approach their first Conference since the General Election? What would a pragmatic, sensible and indeed listening party have done? What would a party supposedly of the left have done? What would Nietzsche have done?

Sadly, it soon became clear that it was not about thinking of the poor, of a new left-leaning tide raising all boats, of making the obscenely overmonied begin to pay their taxes. Instead it was about another obscenity, that of freeloading on an industrial scale, with Starmer as chief culprit, scoring supposedly free clothes, specs, and a private box over at The Arsenal.

Others were on the take, too, with the lamest of excuses proferred in response to questioning. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson had accepted “free” tickets to see Taylor Swift earlier this year, excusing herself with "It was a hard one to turn down ... one of my children was keen to go”. Fine. So open yer wallet. Pay for it yerself. For one obvious reason.

To paraphrase Milton Friedman, there is no such thing as free clothes, or indeed free specs, free boxes at The Arsenal, or free Taylor Swift tickets. Someone, somewhere, has to pay for them. And what Milt may not have said, but I will, is that there is inevitably a Quid Pro Quo: that someone, somewhere is not practising altruism here. The gifts are all about leverage later on.

And it’s no good pointing at disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and reminding us that, in the 2019 Parliament, he managed to rack up more than six million notes’ worth of supposed freebies. We know Bozo was irretrievably bent, but it’s not good enough to be a little less bent. Labour should not be bent at all.

Nor should it be intolerant of dissent: as Rachel Reeves was delivering her speech, one young man stood up and heckled her, calling out “Stop selling arms to Israel”. Again the tone-deaf response: “This is a changed Labour Party. A Labour Party that represents working people, not a party of protest”. If you won’t listen to those in the real world, protest is all they have.

The young man was dragged out of the auditorium, with obvious marks on his neck to show for his trouble. Labour MSP Richard Leonard mused “Grabbing this protester by the throat was an unnecessary and disproportionate use of force. When Walter Wolfgang was manhandled out of the conference hall in 2005, the Labour Party apologised to him. We should do the same now”.

Walter Wolfgang was from the left, Bevanite, tradition. Would New New Labour have even let him remain in the party? After all, they’ve managed to expel an awful lot of Jewish members in pursuit of allegedly tackling anti-Semitism. Added to all of that, our free and fearless press is on Labour’s case as never before. Because New New Labour gave them an excuse.

Jeremy Corbyn would never have accepted all those freebies; he still sits with the rest of those ordinary paying fans at The Arsenal. But, in the looking-glass world of New New Labour, he is The Bad Guy and Keir Starmer is The Good Guy. So why d’you think Labour’s poll numbers have dropped like a stone in a very deep pool? D’you think the freebies have something to do with it?

You might conclude that they most certainly do. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Thursday 19 September 2024

BBC Bozo And Laura K Shame

The BBC is not having a good time of it right now: quite apart from our free and fearless press relishing putting the boot in over anything to do with Huw Edwards, and the steady flow of claims about what may or may not happen behind the scenes at Strictly, there has been an entirely avoidable foot-in-mouth episode involving new political editor Chris Mason.

Mason discovered that Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray was being paid more than the PM. Armed with this information, he continued as if in possession of the Scoop of the Century until Peter Oborne asked him, as one might, “How much do you get paid, Chris?” To which the answer was, rather more than either Ms Gray or Starmer, as Oborne proceeded to tell.

“The BBC political editor (260K pa) thinks it's a story that the Downing Street chief of staff (170K pa) earns more than the PM (167Kpa). Welcome to political journalism! PS Laura Kuenssberg is on 325K, Nick Robinson 340K and Fiona Bruce even more”. And with mention of Ms Kuenssberg, we arrive at the Beeb’s crowning moment of current abject shame.

Yesterday, she proclaimed “One for the diary”. And what would be an event of such major import that it might be added to the diary? This is where the BBC once again generates more questions than answers, because that event is “Boris Johnson - The Laura Kuenssberg Interview”, which gets the prime time slot of 1930 hours on Thursday 3 October. Aren’t you all lucky?

Here in Portugal, there are the more appealing alternatives of rolling news channels (that’s factual TV, as opposed to Bozo’s propensity to talk well, but lie badly), or the latest edition of O Preço Certo. Sadly, the UK will be subjected to disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson indulging in another bout of self-promotion and justification.

Mike Galsworthy was unimpressed. “Kuenssberg always seems unhealthily close to Boris Johnson. Given also Robbie Gibb’s continued role at the BBC - this interview smells of chums of Boris Johnson using our licence payer money to promote the man as his new book is coming out”. New book? What that? It is, imaginatively, titled simply “Unleashed”.

Harper Collins wants us to know “Unleashed is a candid, unrestrained, and revealing book by Boris Johnson, the Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. In Unleashed, Johnson takes readers through all the big decisions during his time in power and why he took them. The challenges and crises, how they were resolved - or not - and how he nearly died from COVID”.

Will it be available in the fiction section of one of the public libraries that have survived all those rounds of Tory cuts? Bozo, after all, is a congenital liar whose ability to generate spontaneous trouser ignition is matched only by Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. How long, one has to wonder, has it taken to legal Bozo’s bumper book of lame excuses?

Moreover, how much insight will Ms Kuenssberg bring to events such as turning 10 Downing Street into Party Central during the pandemic, or lying to the Queen in order to improperly prorogue Parliament, or bung eye-watering amounts of money to those providing dodgy PPE, or indeed tens of billions spaffed up the wall, to use Bozo’s happy phrase, on Not Testing And Tracing?

What about a Brexit deal that is slowly but inexorably turning the UK economy into a basket case? What of his trying to whitewash Chris Pincher’s behaviour, the event that finally exhausted the patience of even the Parliamentary Conservative Party? And what will we learn about the role of the press in covering the not inconsiderable Johnson arse?

But those are not reasons for the BBC promoting Bozo; quite the reverse. The real scandal here is that the Corporation is willingly making itself an accomplice to another Johnson money-making scheme, and, worse, an effort to promote someone who has already proved himself to be an utter failure as a politician, and indeed, a failure as a professional human being.

The BBC board should hang their heads in shame. But you know they won’t.

Monday 16 September 2024

Jewish Chronicle BUSTED

The old adage that something that looks too good be true probably is too good to be true may not have been in the thoughts of Jake Wallis Simons, currently editor of the Jewish Chronicle, when he made his fateful decision to publish several articles by Elon Perry. Much of their content was, it seems, what Wallis Simons wanted to hear. The problem was that it wasn’t true.

Jake Wallis Simons, a suitable candidate for resignation ...

As the BBC has reported, “The most contentious was a piece he wrote claiming a document showed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning to smuggle himself and some surviving Israeli hostages out of Gaza and to Iran, via the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land on the Gaza-Egypt border”.

There was more. “The article's claims appeared to be similar to talking points used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to justify the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) presence in the Philadelphi Corridor. The story was followed up by media in Israel, and later shared by Netanyahu's son. According to the Times of Israel, the IDF subsequently said it had no knowledge of such a document existing”. And then it got worse.

Long-serving columnists decided they had had enough. “Jonathan Freedland, Hadley Freeman and David Aaronovitch announced they were quitting their columns over what Freedland described as a ‘great disgrace’ at the London-based newspaper. It comes after the JC said it conducted a ‘thorough investigation’ into one of its freelance journalists, Elon Perry, ‘after allegations were made about aspects of his record’”. Press misbehaviour redux.

At which point it has to be pointed out that, for the JC, this is not a first offence. As Hamza Yusuf reminded us, “The Jewish Chronicle was found to have breached the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practise 33 times in 3 years”. IPSO was asked to open a standards investigation into the JC. They declined.

As Alan Rusbridger noted, “Lord Faulks said this was partly because the paper had new owners … Not that he or anyone else knew who they were”. He also pointed out “Robbie Gibb’s BBC declaration of interest form registers that he is still 100 per cent owner of the [JC] though he claims to have resigned this summer”. Gibb is still a member of the BBC board.

Freedland, Aaronovitch, and Ms Freeman, though, remained with the JC when the title libelled Marc Wadsworth, claiming “that he was involved in an initiative to track down Jewish Labour activists at their private addresses in order to intimidate, threaten or harass them into silence”. Wadsworth instructed Carter Ruck. So it was expensive. And the JC lost.

... and Robbie Gibb, likewise

Rapper Lowkey remembered “I did a Fire in the Booth on BBC Radio 1 in 2017 in which I used the words ‘cosa nostra.’ The Jewish Chronicle lied that I used the phrase ‘kosher nostra’ and then lobbied the BBC relentlessly on the issue. Eventually the JC withdrew the lie from the headline and article”.

The JC’s Islamophobia has also been blatantly obvious, a recent example being “Imagine Corbyn with around 12 million Muslim votes to play with - that’s Mélenchon”. And then we come to Wallis Simons’ time at the Mail, where he was Associate Global Editor. There, he libelled Lord Sheikh.

Headlined “Top Tory peer’s appearance at Corbyn’s ‘hate conference’ in Tunisia comes after years of rubbing shoulders with Islamists, hate preachers and Holocaust deniers”, the article ended up with Associated Newspapers having to make an apology in open court. And Wallis Simons is still at it.

Last year, he Tweeted “Palestinian Muslims launch Ramadan attack on Church of the Annunciation in Beit Jala near Bethlehem”. The story was not true: he deleted the Tweet soon afterwards. There should be no questioning the assertion that Wallis Simons must resign. Or that Robbie Gibb should do likewise from the BBC board. Meanwhile, it should be borne in mind that Wallis Simons was the Mail’s main man for kicking Jeremy Corbyn.

So how much of that copy was partially, or wholly, untrue and/or defamatory? The JC was also in the vanguard of smearing Corbyn, kicking off its campaign in no style at all by proclaiming the then Labour leader to be “Anti-Semitic and a racist”. Jezza was neither of those things, but the mud stuck, not least because, as we now know, a significant part of his own party was briefing against him in an effort, ultimately, to throw the 2019 election.

Maybe the Jewish Chronicle was for a time, but not for all time. One thing is for certain: its best chance of survival is without Jake Wallis Simons.

Sunday 15 September 2024

Corbyn Bashing Becoming Tedious

Guardian Media Group has, of late, done an exceptional service to those who wondered just how convinced of their stance were the people who now wield power within the Labour Party. And the answer is that they are not convincing others, nor are they convincing themselves. Hence the constant stream of articles attempting to justify their factionalism and disloyalty.

Keir Starmer, and ...

The latest of these has come in today’s Observer, under the by-line of Anushka Asthana, who has, it seems, written a whole book around the subject of New New Labour, which sounds like something worth avoiding. The article is described as an “exclusive”, which is a bit rich, considering it’s the media group she usually writes for. So what’s the schtick?

“‘Corbyn had flown too close to the sun’: how Labour insiders battled the left and plotted the party’s path back to power … Exclusive extract from new book says Corbyn’s appearance at Glastonbury was a key moment in the party’s long way back to power. And as one anti-Corbyn group tried to build a moderate coalition, it also needed a credible leader”. Do go on.

“Some in Labour make fun of the idea that Corbyn supporters treat the 2017 general election like a victory when, in fact, it was a loss. But in reality, the Labour leader had defied his detractors who were expecting a repeat of Michael Foot’s 1983 election drubbing and instead watched Corbyn strip Theresa May of her parliamentary majority”. And there was more.

“Moreover, Corbyn had won 40% of the national vote, more than the 35% that handed Tony Blair a significant majority in 2005”. And who is the main protagonist here? As if you need to ask. “Meanwhile, some 130 miles away in a south London park, Morgan McSweeney was sitting on a bench, thinking about what the scene at Glastonbury meant for his new job”. And more.

“Labour Together, as the operation became known, was explicitly not about trying to defeat Corbyn through any internal coup - they now considered that to be impossible. But it would try to defeat Corbynism … McSweeney was among those who took the 2017 result very seriously and believed that Corbyn, whose politics he despised, could win the next election”.

Oh what a giveaway! Gives the lie to all the “unelectable under any scenario” drivel. Then came claims of anti-Semitism: Labour Together “identified problem posts in hundreds of Facebook groups with links to either the party or leftwing politics …They then farmed out the posts they uncovered to journalists who were … reporting on rising evidence of antisemitism”.

... his unconvincing enabler Morgan McSweeney

Links to? Meaning what? Were these posts by Labour members? If not, that would have been smears. But it was working: “Together with a row over whether the party would adopt all the examples linked to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, the scandal was becoming increasingly destabilising for Corbyn”.

Plus this nugget: “McSweeney had an aim - to schmooze the Guardian and kill the Canary. ‘Destroy the Canary or the Canary destroys us’”. And? “As part of a ‘Stop funding fake news’ campaign, they took screenshots of articles they felt had either racist or fake content, then posted messages on Twitter aimed at brands that were advertising on the websites’ pages”.

That wasn’t all. Was “stop funding fake news” the campaign of the same name that had a seriously dodgy privacy policy and made claims about its successes that it failed to stand up? It was, after all, regularly targeting sites like The Canary (and Evolve Politics). Was it going after fake news, or merely trying to defund sites whose politics it disliked? No word on that one.

And the result? A measly 33.7% of the popular vote. The excuse? “Those who opted to vote ‘tactically’ for the Lib Dems where they could beat Tories, but also others deciding to go with their ‘hearts’ by voting for the Greens or independents in the certainty that Starmer would be prime minister”. No admission that today’s authoritarian Labour has alienated activists.

So what is the legacy of “Labour Together”? A leader whose dishonesty in getting the Top Job - and since getting it - has been exceeded only by Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. An increasingly authoritarian party which has claimed to be hot on anti-Semitism, while expelling rather a lot of Jewish members. And don’t mention that “hierarchy of racism”.

Another day, another apologia. They got a landslide, and that means they were right. Right to smear the Canary. Right to egg on the idea that Labour had come over all anti-Semitic. No mention that when Corbyn said the latter problem had been exaggerated, he was right. Stripped of the whip for making a factually correct statement. The looking glass world of New New Labour.

Pity about the freezing pensioners and the poorest young families, mind.

Tuesday 10 September 2024

Labour, Pensioners, And Cruelty

One hates to come over all Neil Kinnock, but right now we have A Labour Chancellor - A Labour Chancellor - scuttling around media outlets trying pointlessly to justify taking pensioners’ winter fuel allowance from them. It is a move which, it is claimed, will placate The City. But The City does not need to be placated. And the move will hurt the Labour Party yet more.

That’s as in, more than the two child benefit cap. More than the alienation of now former activists following the abandonment of Keir Starmer’s “ten points” pledge. More than the alienation following all the expulsions and other needlessly authoritarian behaviour. More members walking away, and not returning any time soon to help canvass and leaflet.

A Government with a huge majority, but only because of parties like Reform UK, domain of Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, eating into the Tory vote. Labour’s share of the popular vote, after posting opinion poll ratings well into the 40s during the campaign, was a miserable 33.7%. 1.6% better than 2019. 6.3% down on 2017. Less than convincing.

And, coming hard on the heels of the refusal to lift the benefit cap, has come another measure guaranteed to generate No Additional Economic Activity At All. As this blog has pointed out more than once, giving the less well off more money is a sure-fire way to generate more economic activity. These are the people with the highest propensity to spend. They will spend that money.

It is no use at all to anyone interested in generating more economic activity to allow that money to be retained by the very well off, those with the highest propensity to save. It is also no use at all to stretch peoples’ credibility beyond its structural limit by claiming that leaving the winter fuel allowance in place will somehow precipitate a run on Sterling, which it will not.

Add to this the pointless misquoting of Keynes, seemingly to suggest that he would have approved of Rachel Reeves’ policies (which he certainly would not), and the authoritarian response of the Labour leadership to anyone demonstrating the slightest empathy towards the least well-off (vote for this cruelty or you lose the whip), and you have a party in imminent disarray.

No surprise, then, to see Zarah Sultana reminding us “We need to defend universalism. Universal benefits like Winter Fuel Payments & demands like Free School Meals for All ensure no-one falls through the cracks. It builds solidarity, reminding us that we all belong to the same society & deserve warmth, food security & dignity”. And avoids the humiliation of means tests.

And Richard Murphy telling “I am so bored of hearing Labour ministers talking about ‘difficult decisions’ they didn’t want to take when there is no reason whatsoever for them to have taken them”. With Mick Lynch of the RMT adding “We cannot balance the books by cutting off the heating for our pensioners. Labour has to find a better, fairer way”.

On top of that is the inevitable charge of hypocrisy, Paul Lewis bringing the inconvenient reminder “Chancellor tells her MPs to blame Conservatives for her decision to raid Winter Fuel Payment … so she is blaming the party that in 2017 said it would do that but backed down when Labour said it would kill 4000 pensioners. Oh dear”. This whole charade is pointless.

Worse for Labour, the steady alienation of members will only accelerate. It was clear during the General Election campaign that some constituencies would have gone to The Red Team, if only more canvassers and other activists could have been mustered. Next time, there will most likely be even fewer of them. Added to a disheartened and disillusioned electorate.

Who suggested this path? Did anyone in Downing Street, or any of those advising the Labour leadership, bother to think through what consequences might flow from imposing more misery on the least well off? One has to credit the brains behind New New Labour with the notion that, if they did all this to a deliberate plan, they must have also figured a way out of it.

Because if they haven’t - no. Just no. You don’t want to go there.

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