Simon Danczuk In Your Face

When your continued political career depends on retaining your membership of a major political party, and that party has already suspended you for what it deems inappropriate behaviour - like “sexting” a 17-year-old girl - it is probably a good idea not to go round pestering young women using easily recorded social media applications, especially when one of those women is also one of your fellow party members.

It’s an even less good idea when one of those young women is a serving councillor, and she’s already dumped you in the wake of the “sexting” scandal (see above). But the application of common sense was never one of (still) nominally Labour MP Simon Danczuk’s strong suits, as he has shown by finding himself alone somewhere south of Alicante and looking for someone to talk to.

Spanker Si had retired to his Spanish “gaff” the other week in the run-up to the Rochdale Half Marathon: presumably ex-wife Karen had by this time headed back to Rochdale and her delusions of becoming a Real Proper Sleb. But keeping head down and nose to the grindstone in preparation for his 13 mile run was not enough to keep him occupied: he had to find a young woman to chat up. But here there was a problem.

Who did he know, and who might listen to him without cutting the call short? Well, despite her having dumped him after last Christmas, when he prioritised visiting a pub in Leyland and becoming Elephant’s Trunk and Mozart over remaining in Rochdale and trying to help the best he could as the flood waters rose, Spanker Si decided to pester former partner Claire Hamilton, a Labour councillor (ie she is still in the party).

As a result, a selection of bizarre FaceTime images has come to light, in which the thought occurs that Danczuk is trying his best to frighten anyone viewing them totally crapless. What is he doing in the first two photos? Just yawning? Or is he, as they say in Cheltenham, stimulating himself by hand? That could be a sticky one to tackle. But what he is doing in the other two photos needs no explanation.

Drinking. Something where Spanker Si needs no encouragement, and no training. And a subject on which he has no shame whatever. Imagine all of these coming at you, unsolicited, unwanted, from someone who thinks his conduct is OK and therefore wants to be let back into the party Ms Hamilton represents on South Ribble Council.

We know what she thought of it, because she later took to Twitter to let her followers know “When your ex contacts you … #NoThanks”. With the threat of expulsion from Labour looming ever larger for Simon Danczuk, is this what he needs? Being a sex pest in addition to the “sexting”, the blazing row with the less than fragrant Kazza, the creative use of the desk in his constituency office, that most regrettable incident in a central Rochdale pub not long ago, and all the snaps taken outside the Lowry Hotel?

It’s as if he’s trying to get word to Labour’s NEC to hurry up and throw him out.