After Labour MP David Lammy appeared before the inquisition of the host on The Andy Marr Show™ yesterday and correctly identified the world as being round, many out there on the right, in both politics and the media, have been getting terribly worked up about the idea of the Tories having far-right links. One of those getting worked up, although doing it in a restrained and gentlemanly way, you understand, is Jacob Rees Mogg.
The Moggster, who was in Lammy’s firing line over his liking for the pronouncements of politicians representing German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), has sniffily Tweeted “I feel sorry for Mr Lammy, comparing a Parliamentary ginger group with an organisation and creed that killed six million Jewish people makes him look foolish and his comments unbalanced. It damages his reputation”.
Reputation. That’ a most interesting choice of words, and a potentially unfortunate one for Rees Mogg. Let us consider the effect on his own reputation of his occasionally unfortunate choices of association, which include rather more of the far-right than the AfD.
For instance, the Member for times long past first made a name for himself in this area when he turned up at a gathering of the Traditional Britain Group alongside phoney toff Gregory “Lauder” Frost, who claims to have been born in Mayfair, but in reality entered this world at a Salvation Army maternity hospital in Newcastle, New South Wales.
Frost’s speeches to TBG include one on “Immigration and repatriation”. One TBG favourite, Sam Swerling, was a member of the BNP for five years. The group’s Twitter feed described the Duchess of Sussex as a “Mulatto”. It is a cesspit of racist bigotry.
You'll have to speak up, I'm a bit Mutt and Jeff
No matter, perhaps this was an isolated lapse by the Moggster. Except it wasn’t, as his liking for AfD material shows. That party’s MEPs include Beatrix von Storch, a grand-daughter of Hitler’s finance minister, Lutz von Krosigk. Rees Mogg should know about her from his pal Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, who was invited by her to speak at an AfD rally held not at Nuremberg, but Spandau, near where Rudolf Hess spent his last years.
Ms von Storch has been a member of Farage’s group in the European parliament since being expelled from the more mainstream European Conservatives and Reformists Group in April 2016, following comments in which she called on European border guards to use firearms to deter illegal immigrants, including women and children. She later described the comments as a ‘tactical mistake’”. Also, she is not a racialist but, and this is a big but.
Could it get worse for Rees Mogg? It certainly could: he willingly met with Steve Bannon, a white supremacist. As the Guardian later reported, “The meetings took place on the day of the diplomatic spat between Trump and Theresa May, after the US president retweeted anti-Muslim material from the far-right fringe group Britain First. Rees-Mogg confirmed the encounter, saying Bannon was ‘an interesting man to have met’”.
Moreover, the ERG isn’t a mere “ginger group”. It is a convocation of hardline right-wingers hell-bent on ripping the UK out of the EU for the benefit of hedge fund investors, US Pharma and Agribusiness, and most importantly Themselves Personally Now.
Jacob Rees Mogg’s far-right associations show David Lammy was right. That is all.
Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at
5 comments:
For crying out loud- the US now has a president who is a natural born Fascist and is using every Nazi trick in the book against various ethnic groups and scarily has revealed that there are tens of millions of like-minded extreme right wing Americans who hang off his every word.
Why is Rees Mogg even going anywhere near these creeps like Bannon?. It's either deliberate and he's a fellow traveler or he is an idiot (difficult to choose).
David Lammy MP is worthy of much respect for not backing down and he perfectible demonstrated with his responses to the gormless statements of "tv presenter" Andrew Marr.
Imagine going round calling yourself Grand Wizards and than objecting to people calling you racists
Then again imagine doing that and the MSM giving you a completely free pass...more, they'll even defend you.
What is embarrassing for Rees-Mogg is that fellow Tory Michael Heseltine pretty much backed up David Lammy's words on CH4 news later on in the day. But that said, I think the likes of Rees-Mogg are embarrassment proof. They feel no shame whatsoever. Paul Abbot's 'Shameless' could equally apply to them.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/michael-heseltine-warns-of-chilling-similarity-between-extremes-of-1930s-and-todays-political-crisis/ar-BBVW4Wv
@Sam Best, whatever Rees Mogg is, he's no fool. He is a fellow traveller comfortably at home with the likes of Bannon and Trump, and the Nazis for that matter.
@iMatt, I could never *like* a Tory, but I do have some regard for Hezza
The ERG behaves like a party within a party, as the Irish news media has pointed out from time to time. If there was a similar group operating within the Labour party (with its own caucus meetings etc) the mainstream media would be going full smear ahead.
Post a Comment