Flannelled Fool Fabrication Fails

The holding of the Labour Party conference in Manchester has brought the faithful to the city, as well as commentators and pundits for whom the party is definitely not their favoured political choice. And nobody dislikes Labour more than the odious flannelled fool Henry Cole, tame gofer to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, who has headed north today.

Everybody believes me, cos I'm on telly!

And Master Cole dislikes shadow chancellor “Auguste” Balls yet more than his party, so it was no surprise to see the latter’s speech to conference subjected to adverse comment. Not having the grasp of economics to rubbish the content – without one of his pals to supply the arguments and talking points – Cole instead pretended that Balls was rubbish because the faithful hadn’t turned up to listen.

“Lots of empty seats for Balls” he Tweeted, provoking one fellow Tweeter to ask him which hall he was in. Tellingly, he did not respond. Another suggested he was being mischievous as the only seats available were in the balcony. So how did the flannelled fool know how popular the Balls speech was? Where within the conference secure zone was his vantage point?

This was not revealed for another half an hour, by which point Cole Tweeted “Looked out the window. Council houses with horses in the garden. Must be nearly there”. What window was he looking out of? Certainly not one in the city centre, let alone anywhere near the venue of the Balls speech. And “nearly there”? So was he still en route from London?

Dead right he was. Soon after came the admission that he had arrived at Stockport. So the assertion that there were “Lots of empty seats for Balls” had come from someone who not only wasn’t at the venue, he wasn’t even anywhere in the area. By his own admission, he had seen the empty seats on broadcast media 20 minutes before making his statement.

There’s a word for folks like Cole, which has to do with straightforward dishonesty and begins with the letter L. One has to wonder what Andrew Neil and Fraser Nelson, publisher and editor respectively of the Spectator, where Cole is a “contributing editor”, make of such behaviour, over and above the mildly inconvenient fact that he invented his status as a “journalist”.

But Fawkes blog observers will not be surprised. Another fine mess, once again.