Captain Bellend - Pants On Fire

Not content with his previous mardy strop exhibition at being found out by the Labour Party and his application to become a registered supporter refused, the loathsome Toby Young has been given a platform by the Telegraph - not that they’re partisan in the Labour leadership election, you understand - to whine that this effectively means the whole process is somehow suspect, as well as it jolly well not being fair.

Fire extinguisher for Tobes!

Zelo Street readers may recall that Tobes found he could sign up as a supporter for just £3, did so, then threatened legal action when he was rumbled and Labour declined to give him his money back. By this time, though he now claims otherwise, he would have had to make two fraudulent declarations - to assert he supported the party’s aims, and that he was not a member of an organisation opposed to it - to complete his application.

This all happened six weeks ago. But, like the BBC which he, along with all those other Clever People Who Talk Loudly In Restaurants, hate with a passion obligatory among the ideological right, Tobes is not averse to the occasional repeat, and so back he has come to tell “Labour has purged me from their leadership election. How many more will follow?” And, who knows? More importantly, who cares?

But he wants anyone still reading to know that he’s serious: “Harriet Harman is right to stop Tories from infiltrating the contest. But a broader cull could undermine the leadership election result”. So let’s take this one nice and slowly. Weeding out the likes of Tobes is the right thing to do, but Ms Harman and her team should not remove too many names - how many we are not told - because that would not be the right thing to do.

It gets worse: “The chief difficult [sic] faced by those trying to police this election is that the new rules leave it unclear as to who should be entitled to vote. Harman says she also wants to weed out members of hard left groups like Militant - and gave Derek Hatton as an example - but it’s hard to see how Labour can do that while, at the same time, allowing members of Unite the Union to sign up”. No thanks Tobes, I don’t want to look over there.

Think about that. A supposedly mainstream pundit suggests that being a member of a Trades Union is equivalent to being part of the Militant Tendency. That’s the kind of stupidity that would get someone run out of the stupid faculty of the University of Stupid in Stupid City. And it gets worse than that.

“If you try and become a ‘registered supporter’, you’re asked to confirm that you ‘support the aims and values of the Labour Party’ and that you are ‘not a supporter of any organisation opposed to it’. I wasn’t asked that question when I applied earlier this month and it’s clearly been introduced to exclude members of the Conservative Party – honest ones, anyway”. Tobes’ pants are now well and truly alight.

That declaration was on the Labour website on the day Tobes made his application - as the screen shot in my previous blogpost shows. His claim is totally untrue. Should he have problems with being called out for his flagrant dishonesty, he is free to contact his legal representative - there will inevitably be a first time for me to refer someone to the precedent case of Arkell versus Pressdram 1971.

The Labour Party’s electoral processes are a matter for the Labour Party. End of story.