Piers Corbyn And … Boris Johnson

Back in the news this week is self-styled climate expert and Covid denialist crank Piers Corbyn, who has got himself arrested over anti-vaccination leaflets which compared the concept of vaccination to entering the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. As the BBC has reported, “The 73-year-old brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he voluntarily attended a police station on Wednesday”.

Piers Corbyn

There was more. “He was then arrested on suspicion of malicious communications and public nuisance … The flyers show a drawing of the gates of the Nazi concentration camp. The camp's infamous ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign - which means ‘work sets you free’ - has been replaced by the phrase ‘Vaccines are safe path to freedom’”.

The deliberate linking of Piers Corbyn to his younger brother was not restricted to the Beeb: Sky News’ report also tells of “The anti-lockdown campaigner, the elder brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn”. But the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog have not linked the two, and for good reason.

His new crop of gofers may not know why, but Staines does: linking Piers Corbyn to Westminster politicians will always end up with the one MP The Great Guido does not want to see linked to this ruckus: alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has been, in the recent past, a great admirer of Corbyn senior.

Bozo may now have embraced the need to tackle climate change, but like so many of his supposed principles, this has been a highly mobile feast. Of his mission to debunk the idea of global warming, as the Guardian noted in 2016, “Piers is whispering in the ear of any MP who will listen … ‘Boris is very sympathetic [Johnson tends to use Corbyn, in an unlikely alliance, as his climate guru]’”. Indeed, Bozo devoted a Telegraph column to him.

It had been unseasonably warm in December 2015. Bozo wondered if real winter weather would be lost forever. So, “In my despair, I rang the great physicist and meteorologist Piers Corbyn … ‘Piers,’ I said - and I felt like the children of Israel, denouncing Jeremiah for getting it wrong - ‘what about the new Ice Age? Where is it?’” There was more.

“Piers did his best to calm me down. ‘Helmsman!’ he said (since that is how he addresses me). ‘Relax. Winter has not gone’ … The current mild spell would last till the end of January, he said, and it would then turn bitterly cold in February. Whatever is happening to the weather at the moment, he said, it is nothing to do with the conventional doctrine of climate change”. So Bozo believed Piers Corbyn, as his column’s conclusion shows.

“It is fantastic news that the world has agreed to cut pollution and help people save money, but I am sure that those global leaders were driven by a primitive fear that the present ambient warm weather is somehow caused by humanity; and that fear - as far as I understand the science - is equally without foundation. There may be all kinds of reasons why I was sweating at ping-pong [!] - but they don’t include global warming”.

And that is why, when Piers Corbyn gets himself arrested for likening vaccination to the Holocaust, the one who should be worried is Bozo, and not Jezza. Because our alleged Prime Minister has been encouraging Corbs senior. Worse, Bozo has dabbled in anti-Semitism in the past. So this is an episode his pals would rather not talk about.

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