Cole Digs His Own Hole

If the rabble of hacks and pundits that scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet had not been hyperbolic and clueless enough over Young Dave’s less than jolly good trip to Brussels last week, they have been outbid in the business of routine idiocy by the serially clueless Henry Cole, tame gofer to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog.

Cole, as with his less than convincing observations ahead of the Russian elections, has broadcast his superior insights at The Commentator, a repository of right leaning frothing and ranting where he claims to be “Political Editor”, a boast which should have Nick Robinson resembling an extra in a Smash advert. He begins his hole-digging with routine abuse of his opponents, and goes downhill thereafter.

Tone and Pa Broon (for some reason he calls the latter “the Brown”) are derided as “being on the wrong side of history” (an assertion of utter meaninglessness) and are asserted to have given up “our further sovereignty”. The largest single pooling of sovereignty in recent EU history, signed on to in 1986 by Margaret Thatcher, is airbrushed out in the tribalist retelling.

Then it’s more of the yah-boo: Mil the Younger, he tells, “can’t negotiate with his own brother”, which fails to explain why Mil the Elder appeared on the Today programme this morning to put the boot into Cameron, calling his action at the Brussels summit “the first veto in history not to stop something”. This, though, does not detain Cole, who moves right along to kick the Lib Dems.

Corporal Clegg, says Cole, “is blinded by a backward ideology that binds him to the EU”, another meaningless soundbite. We then get “Though he is on the more sensible wing of his party (should have got someone older and wiser to read that first – here’s why) ... his bearded party elders clearly have different ideas”. Who’s that? Paddy Ashdown? Charlie Kennedy? Ming Campbell? Simon Hughes? Alan Beith?

Never mind, there’s still the lack of referendum to spin: readers are told that Young Dave doesn’t want one of these “as it would destroy his first term”. Yeah, right. Now spin the same tale for any other party. This is tribalist pap of the crudest and least effective kind, as is the assertion that Labour has an “inbuilt 7 percent head start” (and that re-drawing constituency boundaries would “remove” it).

The rubbishing of those parts of the media that do not cheerlead as Cole would like is also predictable: these are the Guardian, BBC and Channel 4, who are “furious”, as poor Henry can’t tell the difference between “reporting news” and “fury”. But he leaves the comedy gold till last: “My generation’s Berlin Wall moment suddenly doesn’t feel such a distant dream”. They sup some strong stuff at The Commentator.

No, don’t laugh. Remember, he’s a journalist. He’s got a card that says so.