There are few more strident critics of the Labour leadership than minor thesp Frances Barber, and especially late at night. This being well known to the Twittersphere, and given also her joining the chorus of those claiming that Jeremy Corbyn is somehow soft on anti-Semitism, it might have been thought that she would exercise care when Tweeting. But that thought appears to have been sadly misplaced.
Frances Barber
Ms Barber appears to be one of those still prepared to sit through the theatrical tedium that is BBC Question Time, and the appearance on last week’s show of Ash Sarkar from Novara Media displeased her mightily. “I am going to bang on & on & on that my once beloved [Labour Party] is now the Communist Party. Watch next week” she frothed.
From there, she moved swiftly to go for Ms Sarkar. “Communism is vile hateful despicable destructive & a murderous regime. Good our [Labour Party] representative [Ash Sarkar] loves it”. That, of course, depends on defining Communism in terms of one or more régimes that claimed the title, which is not the same thing, as in the “Democratic Peoples’ Republic of [North] Korea”, which, whisper it quietly, is not a democracy.
Ash Sarkar
Ms Sarkar humoured her. “I’m not a Labour Party member. Night Frances, hope you’re having a normal one!” How would the thesp cope with that nugget of information? “In your own words. So why are you representing them?” She isn’t. Have a think about it. Ms Sarkar attempted to couch her reply in straightforward language. “Unless I’ve been elected an MP without noticing, I’m not representing them. Good night, sleep well”. Quite.
And then Ms Barber lost it. In a most revealing way. “Neither you or Shami Chakrabati [sic] have been elected, but you speak on behalf of Seumus [sic] each time you are on Political programs . We the people hate it. You do not speak for us”. What has Ms Chakrabarti got to do with Ms Sarkar? It’s not a brown people thing, is it?
Louise Raw wanted to ask that very question. “Why throw Shami Chakrabarti in when having a go at Ash Sarkar? What’s the justification? One is a media commentator, the other the Shadow Attorney General of the UK. Or does one Asian woman just automatically remind you of another?” But there was even worse to come.
After reading that someone had proposed standing a Labour candidate against Harriet Harman if she were to become Commons Speaker - another suggestion duly inflated by those in the media who should know better - Ms Barber was livid. “They are the BROWN SHIRTS”. We’re getting perilously close to Godwin’s Law here.
Jon Lansman
Then it got even closer, as she reacted to news that Jon Lansman had tabled a motion to abolish the post of Labour deputy leader by sniping “As if we didn’t tell you . Ernst Röhm in action”. OH DEAR! Frances Barber just compared a Jew to a Nazi. And in doing so, she veered across the anti-Semitism line in no style at all.
Not much use calling anti-Semitism on others if she’s going to indulge in it herself. And that’s on top of the brown people inference. Ms Barber needs to learn one lesson.
Stay away from Twitter late at night. Or don’t bother, and give us all a good laugh.
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17 comments:
"We the people."
Oh fuck off, Barber. Take Watson with you. And don't let the door hit you both on the way out.
I'll pay your bus fare if you want.
Ernst Röhm? Presumably Ms Barber hasn't heard what happened to him and his mates one July night in 1934.
As expected, Watson has been whining that this is "sectarian" and against "a broad church".
Odd, isn't it, that the New Labour gang like him didn't tolerate "a broad church" when instigating illegal wars and mass slaughter in the East, intensifying tory economic gangsterism and theft of national assets, all while gutting the Labour Party constitution of its founding principles.
Watson is a self-pitying right wing quisling of the worst type. There's nothing "centrist" about him, nor is he fit to be deputy leader as Labour struggles to restore social decency in its policies. He's inside the tent pissing in. If he had one shred of integrity he'd resign and go to the back benches. Or, better still, fuck off altogether and join the tories or LibDems. His constant snivelling wouldn't be missed.
Remind me again how many MPs were expelled from, or simply left, the party during the Blair-Miliband years.
Given how bigoted Ms Barber has shown herself to be in recent years, I'm surprised she made the film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid in the '80s. It must have been hell for her acting opposite so many brown people. I hope Ash Sarker challenges her tweet that links her with Shami Chakrabati for no actual reason.
Watson's choice of language today, 'sectarian attack' was ignorant, offensive and ego-laden. What a tiresome, meddling idiot.
The attacks on Watson by the 'hard' left, which rely on rather reductive descriptions of the successful 90s Labour party that could have been written by Murdoch himself, are self-defeating. They ensure the party will never be in power. People may mock the idea of a 'broad church', but that's the only workable paradigm for even the most progressive of parties in a democracy. Polarisation based on extremes leads to terrible crimes like Trump and Brexit. Which is why when I see anonymous comments on here calling Labour party members 'quislings', part of me suspects (hopes?) the comment has come from from a far-right troll account trying to sow division.
@ 12:35, "Andy McDonald, 42, clerk, from Liverpool".*
Now remind me how many hundreds of thousands of innocents (if not millions) were slaughtered in Blair's illegal wars, how many countries and their economies are in ruins, how many millions of refugees it created, how much of the NHS was privatised by the Blair toe-rag Milburn, how much more was ripped out of the economy by PFI, how successful Blair's "third way" was in preventing the worst Depression and financial catastrophe since 1929. Then remind me how he and his gang brown nosed the urfascist Murdoch.
Then remind me about the guilty MPs - like Watson - who supported that shameful gang of New Labour warmongers and lickspittles for the USA. Then remind me which of those who left recently were among the warmongers and henchmen of Blair's lies. Then remind me how much Blair "earned" per "lecture" after he stood down.
Then tell yourself it's OK to support that kind of mentality. Then remind yourself that's precisely how Europe gradually sank into poverty, nazism, fascism, falangism and genocide between the world wars.
If you can ignore and live with all that you'll deserve the kind of osmotic horror that looms yet again. And all because people with your kind of New Labour conscience-free stunted mentality couldn't summon the courage to resist.
*Yeah, right. Believe that and you'll believe anything.
But Mike, as Andy said, there wasn't much of that 'broad church' sentiment back in the 'successful 90s Labour party'
To 17:44.
Even less in New Labour's "successful" years. You know, when Labour "won" elections but committed genocide in the East and helped the tories loot the economy.
Yes, let's have more of that back to "finish the job". We might as well go the whole hog and vote in a fuhrer, duce or caudillo. We've already got Herman Goring as PM and Josef Goebbels running the BBC with Julius Streicher in the new guise of Murdoch/Rothermere.
Anon,
Never said I was a Blairite. Just implied that not many MPs were expelled from the party for not toeing the line.
BTW it's obviously up to you what you believe, but trust me, being a "clerk" (I love that taste for the anachronistic euphemism you exhibit every now and then), but it beats knocking out identikit rants over a keyboard in the local library. So yes, I whore myself to pay the bills. Just like your mum.
Mark,
Mark,
Quite the opposite to the point I was making. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
@ 18:58.
Well, that outed your true nature. It was only a matter of time. Your seedy cheapness as predictable as your usual weasel words. Blairites are all the same. Which is why they are being routed.
THIS.
Seedy cheapness?
Very expensive, dear boy.
Unlike your mum.
Yes I realised after I posted, but the thing is Andy, I know plenty of members who were literally frozen out of their local party and made to feel distinctly unwelcome during the Blair years...and I'm not a million miles away from where you are it seems.
I haven't got a dog in this fight, I'm just standing on the sidelines, but can we not go down the 'your mum's a whore' route please? I'm sure that each of your mothers brought you up to be more respectful to each other than that. Besides which, it's taking the topic of the blog completely of course.
@ 21:02.
Good grief.
You get sicker with each post.
Then again, not unexpected coming from a Blairite who tries to ignore Blair's genocide and theft. As does Watson. What a coincidence.
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