Dent Coad Attack Gets Desperate

Still the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, with newly anointed teaboy Alex Wickham in the vanguard, go after Labour MP Emma Dent Coad because she shows no sign of submitting to their implicit demands. Now, Wickham has been joined by apprentice sandwich monitor - oops, sorry, “senior reporter” Ross Kempsell in their sniggering schoolboy huddle.

Milk, no sugar, hold the smears

Having run out of accusations of racism - never a good topic for a blog that spends an unduly large amount of time kicking Diane Abbott, Chuka Umunna and Sayeeda Warsi - this less than dynamic duo have gone after Ms Dent Coad for suggesting that 13-year-olds do not engage in sexual intercourse, and for illustrating a blog post in a fashion that does not meet with their approval. Yes, it’s becoming that desperate.

The attack is laced with heavy suggestions that Ms Dent Coad should be a Good Little Lefty and run along, such as “It’s another Jared O’Mara case - Labour clearly didn’t vet this candidate, and now the people of Kensington have ended up with a fruitcake for an MP”. Yes Labour people, we got O’Mara, and you’re going the same way too. Also, the customary mental health smear is duly noted. It’s not the only one.

Ms Dent Coad is then accused of “suggest[ing] her Kensington constituents were victims of a conspiracy at the hands of the Illuminati and Freemasons”. They weren’t her constituents, and she was talking about the Council, which does not use the same boundaries as the Parliamentary constituency, but hey ho. This is followed by another mental health smear as the post under discussion is called “particularly loony”.

Once again there is an attempt to tell Ms Dent Coad “we got O’Mara, and you’re next” as the post concludes “the sort of thing which the most basic vetting should have flagged up before she became an MP”. There is yet another characteristic smear, the use of the tinfoil hat, another Fawkes standby. Then comes their backing for Tory MPs James Cleverly and Kemi Badenoch, because they are pushing for Ms Dent Coad to lose the whip.

Emma Dent Coad

The difference in tone towards those MPs - Ms Badenoch is even awarded the first name “Kemi” in the post title (almost “Nadine” status, eh?) - stands in stark contrast to the nastiness directed towards Ms Abbott, Umunna and Baroness Warsi (who is routinely introduced to Fawkes readers by the smear “BAROMESS”), despite Warsi being a Tory.

Of course, not all Fawkes targets are pursued so obsessively: former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan was the subject of some particularly vitriolic attacks at the time that phone hacking finally burst through into the public consciousness, as Zelo Street noted at the time, as well as predicting correctly that the Fawkes rabble were going nowhere with their sniping and would get nothing out of it.

Now that the evidence is stacking up against Morgan, The Great Guido is absent. Because his ultimate boss, Rebekah Brooks, will cut him off at the knees if he so much as peeps in the direction of her old pal. Something to remember next time anyone suggests that the Fawkes blog could differentiate between a moral stance and a hole in the ground.

Meanwhile, Emma Dent Coad remains in post, unaffected. Another fine mess.