John Mann - You’re A Clown

Now that nominally Labour MP Simon Danczuk’s star has waned somewhat, following his suspension from the party as a result of being caught “sexting” an 17-year-old girl, the mantle of obedient tabloid Labour poodle has passed to perennial back-bencher and serial whinged at nothing in particular John Mann, who has been given a platform by the Murdoch Sun, while not realising he has not been awarded it for his party’s benefit.

No, the benefit is the Murdoch mafiosi’s, and theirs alone. Mann has been favoured with a column because he has decided that there is no self-publicity to be gained by just being another Labour MP backing the Remain campaign. He wants out, telling “THE Labour Party is nothing if it can’t represent working class interests … But too few Labour MPs are campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union on June 23”.

That’s because working class interests are more likely to be represented within the EU, John. But do tell us why so many of your colleagues don’t agree with you. “Because in Westminster people are inculcated into Westminster establishment politics too much”. Says the poodle of the lobby hacks. But there’s more. “people have been terrified about talking about immigration”. That’s why they’re all talking about immigration, then.

So tell us about immigration: “we have at all times now one arm tied behind our back by the European Union and there is nothing we can do about it … Nowhere is that clearer than with the free movement of people, which has, is, and will continue to undermine pay and conditions in working class communities … It is not sustainable to have 300,000 new people added to the population every year”. Most of whom come from outside the EU.

And we can do plenty about that. Plus we can talk realism on occasion, unlike Mann, who goes into Wibble overdrive with “If you live in London and you want a cheap nanny, and a gardener and a cheaper plumber you can get really nice, really good people cheaper than you could before and you can go to a different restaurant every night and eat a different kind of food”. Most people who live in London can’t even afford a regular takeaway.

That epitomises Mann’s empty rhetoric: rich people employ others No Shock Horror. He’s also confused as to who he’s fighting: “Many Labour colleagues say we should stay to protect workers’ rights … But the poorest in society are the ones who have been hit by agency workers and zero hours contracts already”. Zero hours contracts are something exploited by the Tories. Why blame the EU? Mann makes no sense.

And he keeps on making no sense: “Do we want to live in a country where big business can do a deal with the European Commission and we just have to deal with it?”. Let’s take this nice and slowly, John. On the subject of big business stitch-ups, this is what Rupert Murdoch, the owner of that paper, said about why he hated the EU: “That’s easy … When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice”.

John Mann is not only a clown, he’s being had for a mug by an unelected foreigner who wants to bend a democratically elected Government to his will. No change there, then.