Simon Danczuk £10K Payday Revealed

Those who look in regularly on Zelo Street will know that the entries in the Register of Members’ Interests for Rochdale’s nominally Labour MP Simon Danczuk passed before my inspection yesterday, and that one item stood out: a payment “received from News Group Newspapers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF … 24 July 2015, received £10,000 for an article I contributed to. Hours: 5 hrs. (Registered 28 July 2015)”.

Smug, much?

As I pointed out at the time, ten bags of sand for five hours’ work is a truly magnificent rate of return. What would the Murdoch empire find so interesting that they were prepared to bung Danczuk £10K for it, and only then for his “contribution”? That means his name may not even have appeared on the by-line. The search was on to find the article concerned - what could possibly be worth that much?

Ah well. There are only two articles - both, to no surprise at all, in the Super Soaraway Currant Bun - from the weeks leading up to Danczuk’s bumper payday. One of these, titled “Ed Miliband Was A Terrible Leader”, was another in the genre of tedious slagging-off of his own party, demonstrating once again his unflinching loyalty, or lack of it. But his is the only name on the by-line - so it can be ruled out.

That leaves just one candidate, written ostensibly by the Sun’s deputy political editor Steve Hawkes, and dated June 24, and titled “LORD JANNER ‘RAPED KIDS IN PARLIAMENT’ CLAIMS LABOUR MP SIMON DANCZUK … He said police told him shocking allegations about the disgraced peer”. Note the ever-present quotation marks: the Sun can’t stand up that claim, mainly because, er, neither can Danczuk.

What the MP said, and under protection of Parliamentary privilege, was that “I have met with Leicestershire police and discussed the allegations in detail … Children being violated, raped and tortured - some in the very building in which we now sit”. What he did not say was the exact nature of what was alleged to have happened inside the precincts of the Palace of Westminster - hence the quote marks.

This story, with its headline-grabbing, lurid claims, was then copied by the rest of those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet. What Danczuk alleged in addition, and which was of particular interest to the Sun, was the claim that Mil The Younger was told about the allegations, but did not act on them in accordance with Danczuk’s wishes. This enabled the Sun to put the boot in on the then Labour leader once again.

So it seems that Simon Danczuk’s £10K payday was for exclusive access to his allegations about Janner, none of which were new news - the MP, as he did with Cyril Smith, using historical allegations as a way of bandwagon jumping - together with serious claims against the then leader of his own party. So that’s a combination of shameless opportunism and yet more of that routine disloyalty that is a Danczuk trademark.

Nice work if you can get it - and have such a flexible attitude to those high principles.