Delingpole’s Hilarious Eastleigh Excuses

Expensive private educations are supposed to bring mental agility and discipline, the ability to order thoughts and not appear to peddle irrelevance while avoiding the insertion of foot in mouth. Sadly, though, this privilege has not prevented James “saviour of Western civilisation” from demonstrating, in his take on the Eastleigh by-election, that this is not always the case.

Definitely not fair and balanced

Del Boy, who attended Malvern School and then went up to Christ Church, Oxford – to read English literature, so he could forever after look down on all those redbrick and Polytechnic graduates who had opted to study subjects which would enable them to pursue productive and practical careers – has listed five reasons why the Tories lost last night. Every one is without foundation.

Let’s look at the five Delingpole decisions one by one.

1 The shabby treatment of Owen Paterson

2 Tim Yeo and Lord Deben (formerly John Selwyn Gummer)

3 The marginalisation of John Hayes

I’ll take all three of these together, as they merit an identical response: the voters of Eastleigh couldn’t have given a flying foxtrot about any of these. All are utterly irrelevant to the outcome of the election.

4 Mid Staffordshire Hospital

Del goes on: “Perhaps 1,200 patients died unnecessarily ... the NHS is broken”. Well, as Jon Stewart would have said, two things here. One, there is no such place as “Mid Staffordshire Hospital”. And two, I would commend the addition to Del Boy’s reading list of one exhaustively researched blog post titled “The Real Mid Staffs Story: One ‘Excess’ Death, If That”.

5 Cameron’s positioning on Europe

See my analysis of Del’s items 1, 2 and 3 (and my earlier Eastleigh post).

Then, in conclusion, as if Delingpole had not taken the biscuit already, he told his adoring readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers) that “I could come up with plenty more reasons – and perhaps I will. But I've got to dash off for a doctor's appointment”.

What was that about the NHS being broken, Del? And how much did you have to pony up to see the doctor?

Maybe one day the Tory Party will listen to James Delingpole. But they’ll have to be even more desperate than they are right now.