Guido Fawked - Sadiq Khan Source Fail

The London Mayoral election will soon be upon us, and City Hall will be well rid of its increasingly occasional inmate Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, whose lack of achievement in the role has, to no surprise at all, not been highlighted by his pals in the right-leaning part of the Fourth Estate, many of whom have a more pressing problem, which is how to stop Labour’s Sadiq Khan succeeding him.

Sadiq Khan: Mayoral favourite right now

This has been exercising the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, effectively a deniable branch of CCHQ, who have been running a series of posts trying to frighten Londoners over the prospect of one of those Scary Muslims (tm) becoming Mayor. The problem for the Fawkes folks in trying to diss the company Khan keeps is, er, the company they themselves keep.

Kicking off the latest Khan-bashing diatribe is the crude linking of the attack to a murdered Ahmadi Muslim shopkeeper in Glasgow. “Readers will be aware of the murder of Glasgow shopkeeper Asad Shah, an Ahmadi Muslim killed by another Muslim for wishing customers a Happy Easter … The case has provoked debate about persecution of the Ahmadi community perpetrated by Islamic extremists like Corbyn fanboy Suliman Gani”.

Suliman Gani, who the Fawkes rabble smear as an “Islamic Extremist”, becomes a “fanboy” merely by congratulating Jeremy Corbyn on his gaining the Labour leadership. But, it is stressed, Gani and Khan “have shared a platform”. Sadly, the link provided reveals that Gani has also shared a platform with Khan’s Tory opponent Zac Goldsmith. For some reason, the Fawkes blog manages to miss this minor detail.

But they do manage to tell their adoring readers “It’s worth reading this 2010 interview where Khan is grilled about anti-Ahmadi sentiment preached at the Tooting Islamic Centre. His Tory opponent at the time had to be locked in a room for his own safety after being mistaken for an Ahmadi”. At the time of the interview, Khan did not have a Tory opponent, having been returned to Parliament some months previously.

And the “opponent” referred to, whose account we are by inference supposed to take on trust, is no less than “Tatler Tory” Mark Clarke of Tory Bullying Scandal infamy. It gets worse: there is a hat-tip at the foot of the post to one Douglas Murray. That would be the same Doug Murray The K who said “Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board” in a speech in the Netherlands Parliament in 2006.

Murray’s behaviour led to the Tory front bench breaking off relations with him almost five years ago. More recently, the Tories threw Mark Clarke out of the party, awarding him a life ban. So how do the Fawkes rabble end their latest attack on Sadiq Khan?

They chirrup in unison “Both Corbyn and Khan are well in with this wrong un”.

With Mark Clarke and Douglas Murray as sources, the Fawkes blog is in no position to call “wrong un” on anyone. Another fine mess, once again.