Fawkes Lavery Hit Job BEYOND A DISGRACE

With the onset of the Coronavirus crisis, some habits are proving hard to break, and not only among the lobby journalists who keep on bringing us their snippets of gossip hot from whichever anonymous Downing Street sources are briefing them this time. Those shamelessly leveraging the crisis to administer hit jobs have continued unabated, too.

What time is it Eccles?

And with the demand for uninformed gob merchants to appear on TV much reduced, that means some of those merchants have time on their hands to make mischief. Which brings us to the singularly repulsive Tom Harwood, replacement teaboy to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, who has this morning revealed an allegedly exclusive hit on Labour Party chair Ian Lavery. But here a problem enters.

Harwood may have secured the audio from a conference call to young Labour activists (the video is, for some reason, absent apart from one still image of Lavery, an omission on which I make no further comment), but to transcribe this in full might have taken the edge off the sneeringly partisan hit job. So it has been selectively edited down.

The beginning of the audio has been not just edited down, but edited out. Why? Then we have Lavery telling “it’s going to give the fantastic battalion of Labour Party members, community champions out there a great opportunity of showing how Labour, and why Labour, is best when it gets on the front foot and best when it [brings] people together”.

Lavery is talking of “community champions”. This sounds like he is trying to get those activists volunteering in their local communities. He then goes on to say “We need to make sure that we do that, and community organising what a great opportunity it’s going to give us”. At that point, Harwood ceases his transcription. Why might that be?

Ian Lavery MP

Well, the rest of the audio that the Fawkes massive have allowed us to hear has Lavery continuing “Every one of us, every one of our families, and our relations and friends, to organise in the community, cos there’ll be lots of people out there that need our help. And it’s free … it’s free to organise”. A great opportunity - to help those in need.

While Harwood - a singularly selfish and deeply unpleasant nobody - may not understand such concepts, him being famous and important and all, his dumping on Lavery as “beyond crass” and inventing “unsavoury partisanship” is the really nasty piece of work here. The Labour chair has encouraged activists to organise within their communities to help those in need, and for that he’s been subjected to a crude, selective hatchet job.

The Fawkes teaboy sneers “Lavery should be ashamed of himself, happily discussing the political benefits of this tragedy in private”, but no benefits were discussed. Did Lavery talk of making political capital out of Covid-19? No. He encouraged community organising. Volunteering. Helping the vulnerable. Concepts alien to creeps like Tom Harwood.

This hit job is not the first time The Great Guido has told his audience what to think when the material supporting the hit does not support the headline claim, as those who recall the hit on Jeremy Corbyn for attending a Passover supper with radical Jewish group Jewdas will know. The problem for Harwood is that his effort isn’t in the same league.

The Corbyn - Jewdas hit soon unravelled. And Harwood’s hit on Lavery already has.

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