Sarah Vine Felled By Falling Bookshelf

Not so long ago, Sarah “Vain” Vine decided that Twitter was not for her, and flounced out, supposedly never to return. But no Daily Mail columnist is of perfect courage, and soon enough she was back, using the typically pretentious handle @WestminsterWAG (because she’s dead glamorous, innit?). This gave Tweeters everywhere the opportunity for some capital entertainment, but perhaps not the kind Ms Vine anticipated.

Her latest example of those campaigns destined to turn out not necessarily to her advantage started as yet another self-promotion exercise, as she Tweeted out a shot of her husband Michael “Oiky” Gove taking the daily Downing Street briefing, with the comment “Surreal”. The photo also showed the contents of her bookshelves.

Including a large volume on Hitler, next to two on Mrs T, picked up on rather swiftly by former Labour spinner Alastair Campbell: “having Hitler, Rommel and Napoleon next to Maggie is not a good look”. She wasn’t having any of that Rotten Leftie™ talk. “Don’t be so absurd. They are books. You should try them sometimes - you can learn a lot from them. You will note there is also a Peter Mandelson”. He knows. He saw it already.

But this was a mere hors d’oeuvre for a rather more substantial entrée: Ms Vine could not possibly leave it there. Her personal vanity forbade it. She had A Lot Of Books and wanted the world to know about them. So off she went, opening mouth and inserting foot as she went. “As a very special treat for my trolls and [Alastair Campbell] here is another bookshelf. There are about 20 more. Enjoy!” Owen Jones did just that.

“Why [do] Michael Gove and his wife own a copy of a book by David Irving, one of the most notorious Holocaust deniers on earth?” he mused. The book, The War Path, is the prequel to Irving’s Hitler’s War. It wasn’t the only book with which others took issue, with another Tweeter pointing out “There is also a copy of The Bell Curve, about how intelligence is connected to race”. Mehdi Hasan also pickup up on that.

Meanwhile, Jones was getting stick from those out on the right, but held to his course. “Two years ago, when I criticised an article published in The Spectator which argued (and I quote) ‘that there is not nearly enough Islamophobia within the Tory Party’, here is how Sarah Vine responded”. She called the article, by Rod Liddle, “clever and funny”.

Then Dawn Foster joined the party. “Having read Michael Gove’s short and virulently Islamophobic Celsius 7/7, and written on his time as education minister, it’s obvious The Bell Curve has had a fair amount of influence on his thinking. It’s dangerous, racist rubbish”. Libcom Dot Org found more: “Michael Gove and Sarah Vine also own 'Beyond Human Rights: Defending Freedom' by Alan Benoist, a central figure in the European New Right and Third Positionist movements”. White Nationalist and Russian fascist links, too.

Ms Vine had, by now, had enough. “Extraordinary how many people on here seem to be so censorious of books and the idea of knowledge. In common with the Nazis, the Spanish Inquisition, Communist Russia - and pretty much every despotic, brutal regime you can think of. Says it all, really”. But Dan Waddell was not sympathetic. “It’s a bit rich for Sarah Vine to get the arse about people pillorying her bookshelves when she wrote a whole column ripping the piss out of someone’s kitchen”. Extrapolating from one photo is fine for her Mail columns, but not for her critics. Can you smell hypocrisy?

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