Telegraph Glenda Talks Hard Left Sex

There is one sure sign that a pundit is more than a little adjacent to being all washed up, and that is when they have to resort to cobbling together copy on the subject of what others might, or more often might not, get up to in their private lives. Thus the Telegraph’s very own Glenda, Julia Hartley Brewer, has issued her plaintive cry for help with a piece imaginatively titled “Does the Hard Left have the best sex?”

Julia Hartley Brewer - next stop Daily Mail?

Thus the Tel shows it has not moved on from the 1970s Pink Panther films, where on one occasion the femme fatale asks Clouseau “was it hard in the Résistance?” only to receive the kersnick-inducing reply “Yes, it was hard in the Résistance, but not as hard as it is at the moment”. Ms Hartley Brewer’s article is utterly pointless, even for this increasingly downmarket paper. Worse, the research is none too good.

“When it comes to sexual shenanigans around Westminster, the scandals that linger longest in the popular imagination have usually starred Right-leaning romantic heroes: Jeffrey Archer, Cecil Parkinson, David Mellor, Edwina Currie and John Major” she tells, managing to miss rather a lot of names. Let me refresh her memory.

During “Shagger” Major’s tenure in Downing Street, we were treated not only to the indiscretions of “Shagger” Mellor, but Tim Yeo (love child), Steve Norris (serial extra marital shagger), Hartley Booth (“friendship” with a Commons researcher), the Earl of Caithness (extra marital affair which precipitated his wife’s suicide), Piers Merchant (more serial shagging), and two Tory MPs involved in extra-curricular same-sex liaisons.

Instead, Ms Hartley Brewer reminds us that Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott had an affair at a time when neither of them was married. Well, big intercoursing deal, say I. But this does not deter our heroic Glenda: “it seems that one of the main attractions of being an activist on the staunchly right-on Left is not just a meeting of political minds but a bumping of intimate body parts, too”. Care to give a few examples?

“There’s nothing that veterans of the Left love more than a day spent making banners, going on a protest march, followed by a few drinks in a grimy pub surrounded by the proletariat masses and then, after their eyes meet over a copy of the Socialist Worker, a comradely roll in the hay”. Yes, yes, very commendable Phil Space journalism, but would she care to furnish some examples of this “Hard Left” activity?

Oh, what’s this? She’s found one! “[Ken] Livingstone has long been renowned for his unconventional relationships. Father to five children, the former Mayor of London has married twice, with a string of sexual conquests among like-minded female activists”. You mean not unlike his successor as London Mayor, except that Ken was honest about it, and Bozza got sacked for lying? Yeah, right.

This is a truly lame article, showing not only that the Tel is spiralling lower and lower in pursuit of clickbait, but that Ms Hartley Brewer should stick to the guest punditry. Unless she’s really desperate for the monetary reward, in which case that’s just sad.