Guido Fawked - Corbyn Inheritance Fail

Spare a thought for the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog. No, seriously: while Zelo Street is able to discuss Culture Secretary John Whittingdale’s dalliances, the Tory Bullying scandal, anything to do with Offshore interests, and the behaviour of leaders like Vladimir Putin, The Great Guido is hopelessly compromised on all four, having sold out, in some cases literally.

You need money when you're perpetually thirsty

So it should surprise no-one to see the piss-poor offerings being served up chez Fawkes right now, especially the constant Labour bashing. Now that such earth-shattering items like Chuka Umunna having more than one wristwatch and Diane Abbott earning money other than from her MP’s salary have been flogged half to death, there is very little left. Which brings us to today’s no shock horror revelations about Jeremy Corbyn.

Claiming an “exclusive” (yeah, right) the Fawkes rabble declare “10% of Corbyn’s Inheritance Set Aside For CND”. Do go on. “10% of Jeremy Corbyn’s significant inheritance was set aside for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Guido can reveal”. Ooh, how significant was it? Actually, it wasn’t: “When the Labour leader’s mother passed away in 1989, she left Jezza and his three brothers a hugely valuable estate worth the equivalent of nearly £600,000 in today’s money”.

So it was a fraction of that amount back then - around a quarter of the figure shown. And nothing has been “set aside”: “Mrs Corbyn expressed a ‘hope’ that, after taxes, her sons would give one tenth of their inheritance to organisations including the CND and Greenpeace. So that’s where Jeremy got his strong unilateralist principles from”.

That means the headline cannot be stood up by the rest of the article, or, as they say at IPSO, a “Clause 1: Accuracy” breach. Small wonder the Fawkes mob aren’t keen on the idea of press regulation. And it gets worse. “More awkwardly, did Piers Corbyn, the famous climate change denier, really give thousands to Greenpeace as mum wished?” Why is having his view on climate change incompatible with giving to CND?

And it gets worse still: “So how much did Corbyn inherit? After taxes Jezza received the equivalent of around £100,000 in today’s money”. Or, to put it another way, not enough to buy him a garage in the grottiest part of Greater London. But The Great Guido maintains the conceit to the very end, by which time there can only be one response.

“Dave isn’t the only leader who enjoyed the privilege of well-off parents” concludes the post. “Well-off”? Well, “off” is right. As in just f*** right off. That is the lamest hatchet job since the Lame faculty of the University of Lame in Lame City redefined Lame to be even more Lame than usual. Jezza gets a piddling tiny fraction of what Young Dave has been trousering, and will continue to trouser. It’s not even good enough to be a non-story.

Still, the money from the Russians, the Press Establishment, and all those other constraining sources makes it worth it, I suppose. Another fine mess, once again.