Dan Hodges - Parasite Yourself

As the Labour Party continues with Jeremy Corbyn as leader - until a successor has been duly elected - so our free and fearless press continues to play its futile game of telling the party who that successor should be. Some pundits are going further, demanding that Labour goes on some kind of internal purge of those it deems inimical to the kind of political discourse of which billionaire proprietors approve.

He's desperate, Dan

Which brings us to the latest stage in the sad journalistic journey of the Mail on Sunday’s not at all celebrated blues artiste Whinging Dan Hodges, floor-crosser extraordinaire and zero self awareness operative supreme. Desperate Dan (for it is he) has decided to pass severely adverse comment on the Labour campaign for this month’s General Election, but sadly, all that has come out is a torrent of incoherent whinging.

“Labour doesn't need to unite. It needs to drive the Corbynite parasites out of the party for good” he announced grandly on Twitter, accompanying his Tweet with images of Greta Thunberg (not part of the Labour Party), Jess Phillips (not a Corbyn fan), and Becky Long Bailey (assumed to be “continuity Corbyn” by a pundit who always get it wrong). Worse, an overpaid pundit writing one column a week calling “parasite” on anyone else? Er, no.

This inauspicious start extends to the headline “Labour needs a leader who's prepared to kill terrorists - and doesn't bang on about Greta Thunberg”. But Corbyn did not bang on about Ms Thunberg. Nor could Hodges know what Jezza would do if confronted by a terrorist incident (he already said the security forces would use their judgment).

And soon Hodges cuts to the chase: his remedy is to purge the Labour movement, “There is no need for a great internal debate, or prolonged period of introspection. If Labour is to have even a snowball in hell's chance of forming a government at some point over the next decade, what has to happen next is obvious to everyone”. It is? Do go on.

“It's time to clean house. Ditching Corbyn will not be enough. They all have to be driven out. He has to go. Momentum have to go. The whole viper's nest has to go. Now is not the moment to 'build a big tent', it's the moment to burn the tent to the ground. And then draw some clear lines amid the ashes … When asked if they would use Britain's nuclear deterrent, the next Labour leader needs to say 'yes'. When asked if they would order police to shoot to kill terrorists running amok on the streets of Britain, the next Labour leader needs to say ‘yes’”. Wiping the country off the face of the earth? No problem!

But enough. This may appeal to a few bored MoS readers, but it is total tosh. Small wonder that Owen Jones has taken one look at Hodges’ latest offering and observed “This language is helping to radicalise dangerous people, and placing the safety of those of us on the left at greater risk”. And it’s not the first time, with a previous Hodges offering, headlined “Labour MUST kill vampire Jezza”, still lingering in the memory.

Thus the hypocrisy of parasite Hodges: sponging his six-figure wad while endangering many ordinary Labour members who don’t have the dosh to fight back, and when he is taken to task, blubbering like a petulant child that the Rotten Lefties™ are making lots of dastardly threats, when they are not. He is utterly and totally full of crap.

But a little betrayal pays well enough for him not to need to care. So that’s all right, then.

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