Who’s Behind The Red Roar?

Appearing on the scene only last year, a blog called The Red Roar has caught the attention of Zelo Street regulars, and mostly for the wrong reasons. A Twitter feed that follows more than twice the number of its followers - just under 2,200 as I type - but manages to generate significant numbers of likes and RTs from its feed is one sign that someone out there is giving it a little assistance. There is more in the same vein.

The target of The Red Roar is the Labour Party, or perhaps one should stress the party as it is right now: anything and everything that can be spun against the current leadership is thrown into the mix. Kicking anything Momentum is de rigueur. Any whiff of alleged anti-Semitism that can be dredged up will be dredged up. In other words, The Red Roar serves up the view of Labour that the right-leaning Press Establishment wants to see.

It has been put to me that The Red Roar is the product of those “disaffected Blairites” of recent legend, but I’m not so sure. The language is that used by the Tories and their press pals: the defeat of the Haringey Development Vehicle is referred to in terms that would be used by the Murdoch press, with anything deemed undesirable termed “Hard Left”, the term imported from Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

All the targets beloved of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog are present and correct: there are attacks on Haringey Councillors, Emily Thornberry, Emma Dent Coad (the old “sharing a platform” smear once more), Chris Williamson, Unite the union, Jon Lansman, John McDonnell, The Canary, The Skwawkbox, Len McCluskey, and of course Owen Jones.

A further parallel with The Great Guido is the occasional morsel of information about goings-on around Parliament. And then we come to an amateurish attempt to curry favour with the Murdoch press, “Canny Brooks outfoxes Guardian hacks at West End showing”.

This post tells “Politicos and hacks alike have been queuing up to see Ink, the play that chronicles the establishment of the Sun and the impact it had on the industry and the country … They include Rebekah Brooks, the former ‘Current [sic] Bun’ editor who now runs its parent company News UK. She attended the play at the Duke of York theatre, where she went unrecognised because her distinctive flame-red hair was pinned up”.

How The Red Roar came by this nugget is not told. But readers do get “She will have been delighted by the play’s relatively sympathetic portrayal of her boss and mentor Rupert Murdoch … But the same cannot be said of the group of senior Guardian contributors who saw the play the same night. They were even more aghast when they discovered Brooks had been present in the audience but they had failed to spot her”.

Tee hee hee! Rebekah wonderful, invented Guardian people total and utter poo holes! But seriously, what is this, other than a desperate attempt to suck up to the Murdoch mafiosi? The Red Roar may not have any connection with The Great Guido or any other Tory misinformation purveyor, but it treads the same boards. The occasional swipe at Tories to maintain cover isn’t making it. It doesn’t work for the Fawkes rabble, either.

So who is behind The Red Roar? We’ll find out - sooner or later.