Sun Gibraltar Fake News

Always on the look-out for the tiniest scrap of news that might enable them to give Johnny Foreigner the finger, the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun have latched on to the visit to Britain next week of Spain’s King Felipe, when he will address MPs. Despite the constant flow of jingoistic bullshit from the likes of the Sun, we maintain good relations with the Madrid Government, and the Spanish monarchy.

That does not deter the inmates of the Baby Shard bunker, who have brought forth an allegedly exclusive and freshly steaming pile of bullpucky headlined “Theresa May faces diplomatic storm as her MPs threaten to walk out of state address by the Spanish King over Gibraltar”, under the joint by-lines of alleged “Westminster Correspondent”, Master Harry Cole, and the paper’s non-bullying political editor Tom Newton Dunn.

So what’s the story? “Patriotic Tories last night vowed to stage an unprecedented protest if King Felipe dares raise the Rock next week … If the Spanish monarch raises his country’s discredited claim of ownership, as expected, a walkout could create a major diplomatic embarrassment”. Patriotism, eh? And what might provoke this?

“Relations between Britain and Spain have already been tense after Gibraltar was put at the heart of Brexit negotiations in April”. In the fevered imaginations of Sun staff, maybe. But in the real world, no. Do go on. “The intervention would echo a 1986 state visit, where King Felipe’s father Juan Carlos was rebuffed on a deal that would see the Spanish agree to lease Gibraltar back to Britain if they conceded the Rock was Spanish”.

Rebuffed how? By Parliament? By Her Maj? This is bullshit. In any case, who’s going to protest? “But Tory MPs have vowed to spark diplomatic humiliation in protest, with Downing Street and Gibraltar’s government braced for a major upset”. Would Master Cole and his boss care to name these thus far mythical MPs?

Yawn

Well, one MP, anyway. “Romford’s Andrew Rosindell told The Sun: ‘If such an august occasion was used by the Spanish to try re-open the non-negotiable issue of Gibraltar’s sovereignty, I would expect there to be serious anger.’ … The vice-chairman of Parliament’s cross-party Gibraltar supporters group warned: ‘The King of Spain should not be surprised if there were to be walkouts from his Royal Gallery speech’”.

So Cole and Newton Dunn have found themselves a Tory gobshite who speaks only for Himself. What the Sun is also not telling its readers is that Rosindell is a Death Penalty adherent, a member of the hard-right Freedom Association, and was a member of the Monday Club before then leader Iain Duncan Cough forced him to renounce that loyalty.

And that is who the Sun is holding up as Tory exemplar. Rosindell’s only diplomatic embarrassment is going to be to himself. This is another example of the kind of story which would be denounced as Fake News if the New Media, especially that on the left, ran it. Instead, because it is in a Proper Newspaper, it is treated as Real Journalism.

Well, it isn’t real journalism, which should surprise no-one, as Master Cole is not a real journalist. It’s Fake News, and should be called out as such, wherever it appears. The Sun’s obsession with Gibraltar will not win those lost sales back. Don’t buy the Sun.