Arise Lord And Lady Turncoat

Briefing the Murdoch Times on this occasion, and thereby demonstrating that the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph is no longer seen as a credible conduit for such information, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his pals have let it be known that Bozo is about to ennoble a selection of individuals , some of whose reputations enforced social distancing, even before the Coronavirus pandemic.

The headline name - pitched well up with plenty of late swing in order to distract readers from the less deserving names to come - is former cricketer Ian Botham, who, we are told, Bozo has decided he should emulate. What he has missed is that while Botham was indeed a match-winner with both bat and ball, as a captain he was not a success. Perhaps Bozo is conceding that he is not actually the captain of his team.

But on to the politicians who have been put forward for ennoblement, and here we see favours returned in no style at all. Gisela Stuart, for starters, who abandoned the party that had supported her for so many years and sided with the lawbreakers of Vote Leave, prepared to go along with a campaign based on rank dishonesty.

There's party loyalty for you

Frank Field, who when he stood as an independent candidate for the Birkenhead seat that he had represented for so long discovered just how popular he really was, is another Bozo peerage nominee. Field resigned the Labour whip last year, to the joy of London-centric pundits who managed to miss the inconvenient fact that his constituency party was on the brink of deselecting him. But there are worse nominations to come.

As the Mail has put it, “Former Labour MPs Ian Austin and John Woodcock have also been nominated for peerages after both men urged Labour voters to back Mr Johnson rather than Jeremy Corbyn in the 2019 General Election. They both had backed remain in 2016 but stood down at the general election after leaving Labour”. John Woodcock, who quit before a complaint against him was heard. That John Woodcock.

Another who ran away from his electorate

And Ian Austin, the bad taste in the mouth of so many Labour supporters who went out knocking on doors in the run-up to last year’s General Election only to find that Austin had penned a heavily promoted letter urging anyone reading it to vote Tory. Ian Austin, the ultimate kick in the teeth to so many in the party which had given him a career with a nice salary and a generous pension, biting the hand that had fed him for so long.

Frank Field is merely a has-been. Gisela Stuart was overrated as an MP - the myth that she had held Birmingham Edgbaston through sheer force of personality was bust when Preet Gill turned the seat from a marginal one to safe Labour in 2017 - and she is now remembered only as a turncoat who went along with the Vote Leave con.

Sneering all the way to the bank

John Woodcock is another who sulked off rather than fight the 2019 General Election. And Ian Austin is the ultimate expression of someone whose record as an MP consists of zero achievement, but a consummate ability to undermine and shout down his opponents.

That those people are being offered peerages shows just how rotten the political establishment has become. Good riddance to all of them.

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