James Delingpole – Top Trolling

Yesterday, I considered the situation at the batshit collective otherwise known as Breitbart London, and concluded that the site’s backers would require more traffic – a lot more – before any more money is thrown at the operation. Then today, to prove my conclusion true, James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole went off on a rant which can have had no purpose other than as clickbait.

"Gay marriage" ... "Global warming" ... "Eco crucifixes" ... "Red-meat conservatism" ... "Desperate trolling"

“There is nothing wrong with wanting to punch Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the throat” he asserted, in reaction to the row over loose cannon Tory MP Mike Fabricant’s attempt to let as many people in the UK know that he is a Grade A tosser. Fabbers has been caused to apologise: Del Boy, though, has declared that there is nothing for which he should apologise. So he’s penned an excuse note.

“He's talking about Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, almost certainly the most irritating socio-political commentator in the land. Her wittery voice is annoying; her prim, de haut en bas twittery manner is annoying; her views are annoying. She's the living embodiment of almost everything which is most maddening about the left-liberal chattering classes” whines an irritating socio-political commentator.

And everyone has to agree with Del: “Have you seen the interview she did on Channel 4 with Cathy Newman and Rod Liddle? If you are capable of watching the video to the end and not reacting in the visceral way that Mike Fabricant did, then you are frankly weird or so incorrigibly left-liberal/rampantly feminist that you have completely lost touch with what it is to be human and normal and honest”.

He proposes giving Fabbers a medal: “Far from being censured, Fabricant ought surely to be praised for illustrating in his tweet the wise restraint which forms the basis of civilisation ... [he] is offering an eminently practical solution to the problem of his beast within: he is vowing never to come within interview distance of someone as intensely irritating as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown for fear of what he might do”.

And it’s not about the Tory MP: “This is not really about Fabricant. Nor is it about the content of his tweet. It's about an increasingly shrill, co-ordinated, left-leaning, professional grievance lobby which exploits confected outrages like this in order to destabilise its enemies and advance its politically correct agenda”. I can see Del waving his patented “air quotes” already.

There is no news value in Del Boy’s rant, and nor is there any comment value. We’ve been here before: constructing the mythical “liberal-left” strawman only to knock it down in a mock triumphalist barrage of sneering and sundry bullshit. The only value is to generate hits, and Delingpole will have to churn out a lot more of this if he wants to remain in the style to which he has become accustomed.

“Executive editor” sounds so much grander than “professional troll”, doesn’t it?