Rod Liddle - Still A Creep

What d’you think is the motivation for all those refugees coming out of Africa and the Middle East in the past few years? Famine, war, persecution and other upheavals would be at the top of that list. But names like Amal Clooney? How would comments by a human rights lawyer induce millions to up sticks and make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, and the overland trek across eastern Europe?

I've just had the one, honest

The answer is that they would not, but in the strange parallel universe inhabited by those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet, all ills may be conveniently dumped on those they dislike, or in the case of Ms Clooney, envy. So it is that the Mail has gone after her today with “Spare us from these bleeding heart luvvies like the Clooneys who lecture us on migrants while jetting off from mansion to mansion”.

And over at the Baby Shard bunker, professional Miserable Git Rod Liddle, confirming the downwards career path of someone who once held down the editorship of the BBC Today programme, has waded in with “Angela Merkel has finally admitted making a huge mistake on migrant crisis in Europe… if only our luvvies would do the same”.

And there was more: “Posh luvvies have done enough damage already and it is time for them to apologise as 2016 is now the worst year ever for migrants drowning in the Med, says Sun columnist”. Yes, Liddle clearly believes that “luvvies”, that increasingly loaded and pejorative term used to describe anyone more famous than him who he doesn’t like, have caused the refugee crisis in southern and eastern Europe.

Liddle claims, perversely, that no-one should have been saved from drowning in the Med: “We should have made it absolutely clear that no migrants crossing illegally by sea would be allowed in. None. Then more lives would have been saved”. Exactly how this works, we are not told. But we are told who is to blame: “Largely the posh luvvies and their tiresome wags. Moppety actress Carey Mulligan is the latest to wring her hands and say she’s ‘ashamed to be British’”. And then he lets loose at Ms Clooney.

“The same goes for the hugely irritating and smug Amal Clooney, ticking off the British Government for not letting more migrants in … Amal, Carey, Simon [Schama]  and indeed, Angela [Merkel]. Please keep your traps shut … You have done enough damage already”. Two things here. Britain is hardly letting any refugees in. And policy is not made on the say-so of lawyers, no matter how well connected they might be.

What we have here is a washed-up has-been, eking out his career churning out hit pieces to order for the Murdoch mafiosi, trying desperately to divert attention from the approaching shit-storm that is Britain’s departure from the EU, something his paper, and especially his proprietor, wanted to see, and now dread the backlash when the readers figure out they’ve been had for mugs. Hence blaming someone well-known.

Stanley Baldwin was right: “The power of the harlot through the ages - power without responsibility”. And Rod Liddle is still a creep. No change there, then.