Simon Danczuk Damns Liz Kendall

Regular Zelo Street readers will be familiar with the machinations of the self-promoting, and nominally Labour, Simon Danczuk, who represents part of the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, while calling out anyone who disagrees with him on the basis that they are in some way “metropolitan”. They will also know that I passed severely adverse comment on Danczuk’s recent claim to be running for the Labour deputy leadership.

Behold the representatives of Themselves Personally Now

It took all of one week for the Danczuk deputy bandwagon to drive itself into the dust, as he told his pals at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun that “it’s come a bit too early for me”. What will wife Karen make of his “come too soon” claims? Oo-er! Fnarr!! Yik!!! Spab!!!! But seriously, this exercise demonstrates how seriously anyone in the Labour Party should take the Danczuks - in other words, not seriously at all.

That thought, however, is not allowed to enter at the Sun, where Rupe’s downmarket troops are happy to get anyone from Labour to talk to them. This the Danczuks understand well. And the Sun wants to portray itself as the kind of authentic voice of the kinds of people whom Labour will need on side if the party is to return to power next time round. So it is that Danczuk’s opinion becomes regarded as credible.

Thus this slice of hokum: “LIZ KENDALL IS THE ONLY LABOUR LEADER WHO COULD WIN BACK SUN READERS … Simon Danczuk said she ‘won’t be pushed around by trade unions’”. Hello Sun hacks! Tony Blair (remember him?) was endorsed three times by you - and his leadership was endorsed by, er, the trade unions. They did not push him around, and nor did they push Pa Broon or Mil The Younger.

But do go on. “Campaigning Labour MP Simon Danczuk revealed he was backing Ms Kendall to ‘reconnect’ with the aspirational Brits Ed Miliband lost touch with. In a dig at leadership favourite Andy Burnham, he insisted she ‘won’t be pushed around by trade unions’. Mr Danczuk said: ‘The biggest challenge for the Labour Party is the need to drag us kicking and screaming out of the comfort zone. I know Liz can do that’”.

And what “comfort zone” would that be? Ah, but Sun readers are not taken that far into Danczuk’s confidence. All that they are expected to believe is that the MP who claims to be loyal to his party, while supping with Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, and the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, and who was shown to be full of crap over his deputy leadership pretensions, is a useful supporter for Ms Kendall.

What those readers also know is that their paper is shit scared of Andy Burnham, as witness “Meanwhile, Mr Burnham was engulfed in an expenses controversy after it emerged he is charging taxpayers £17,000-a-year rent for a ‘second home’ in South London”. That would be yet another cheap smear: Burnham has scrupulously kept within the new and stricter rules on expenses, and has not profited from the public purse.

Meanwhile, will Liz Kendall recover from being damned by Danczuk? It won’t be easy.