Murdoch Corbyn Hatchet Job FLOPS

Although he departed the Labour leadership several months ago, Jeremy Corbyn is still fair game for our free and fearless press, and especially that part of it under the less than benign control of the Murdoch mafiosi. So it was that Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund of the Times put together a book called Left Out, on Jezza’s time at the top.

This was eagerly promoted by fellow Murdoch shilling taker Matt Chorley, who may have been additionally incentivised by seeing Philip Collins sacked recently for being of inconvenient thought. “All those years when I wrote that Corbyn was useless for the LOLs. No gag I invented comes close to the real life shitshow unfolding behind the scenes, revealed in new book Left Out by [Patrick Maguire] and [Gabriel Pogrund]” he told.

Laura Álvarez - smeared

There was more. “It was Corbyn refusing to visit flood victims, sabotaging events, sulking about not having an electric bus. Incredible … And WTAF is going on here? Corbyn’s wife Laura hijacking a campaign event demanding he make an oatcake with honey. And why didn’t ITV use the footage?” And here it all began to unravel. Because ITV did use it.

Matt Chorley - faithful Murdoch servant

ITV News’ head of politics Amber de Botton responded “ST has now amended the article. We didn’t receive a call from Labour about not airing footage and we wouldn’t negotiate in this way. Not least, the footage that day was pool (shared with the BBC and Sky News) so anything filmed is sent out unedited to all UK broadcasters”.

Oh look, it's Gabriel Pogrund. Again

The Maguire and Pogrund book claimed that Labour phoned ITV to stop them using the supposedly incriminating footage. Then Justin Schlosberg intervened to tell “I spent some time on the Labour campaign bus for an independent film project and nothing of what's been published in the Sunday Times has the slightest whiff of the reality I saw. There was no suggestion of any tensions between Jeremy and his aides”. There was more.

Like “no sense of the campaign team being in any way downhearted or disunited, no hint of Jeremy's wife upsetting aides, and Jeremy seemed perfectly comfortable travelling on the bus”. Then it all descended into farce, as filmmaker Oz Katerji weighed in on behalf of the Murdoch hacks, and tried desperately to find a conspiracy to unearth.

There looked to have been a cut in the footage! “Editing rushes isn't that unusual an occurrence, but straight after the cut, the next clip Alvarez is much closer to the window, and again making a request for food. Not only was she in the broadcast shot, she interrupted Jeremy having his cutesy press shot with the boat's owner”. Elvis Buñuelo responded “Never listening to this man about chemical weapons ever again”.

Then the thought entered that we have been here before with Gabriel Pogrund. There was the supposed Labour “crackdown on whistleblowers” where the documents he ponied up as part of his story gave the impression of having been edited. Later, he was caught smearing someone as “An Islamist terror suspect” when they were not.

No matter though: Oz Katerji wants us to know “if I am being asked whether I believe in the integrity of Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, then yes, I do”.

Belief is a wonderful thing. Especially when it supports the view already held.

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