Lee Hurst - Bang Out Of Order

Despite our free and fearless press champing at the bit for any and all restrictions relating to the Covid-19 pandemic to be lifted as soon as they demand, we are not out of the woods yet: infection rates are rising steeply, and more worryingly, hospital admissions and deaths are showing signs of taking off once more. But for one group, this doesn’t matter.

Who Lee Hurst is ...

... and where he shouldn't be

That group is the UK equivalent of QAnon, the resident idiocy that claims it’s all a hoax, that vaccines are some kind of control software, and that all those scientists and advisors feeding information to the Government are Very Bad People Indeed. This brains trust held a rally in central London last weekend, where journalist Sally Beck observed “Outside Chris Whitty’s house. Protestors chanting ‘traitor’ and ‘murderer’”.

Fast forward 36 hours, and Prof Whitty was assaulted in St James’ Park. It was not the first time he had been accosted. There has been almost universal condemnation of the incident, but not from unfunny ex-comedian Lee Hurst, who declared “Whatever has happened to Chris Whitty is not enough”. Hurst has since been reported to Twitter. A lot.

But he was in no mood to compromise on his message of undiluted stupidity. “I’m not putting any caveats into the Chris Whitty story. Fk him and his #FullPay, care home murdering scummy pals”. Would Sir care to dig himself deeper? Sure thing: “If there was no video footage of Chris Whitty we would have been told he was beaten up”.

A Tweeter known as Frankie McCrankie tagged the Metropolitan Police, just for good measure. Hurst was not happy. “Frankie is a grass. That’s why Frankie hides his real name”. But he did know that, somehow, this was all about THE ELITE. “Keep supporting the elite with your slave rags, social distancing and quarantining folks”.

By this point, Hurst’s campaign was developing not necessarily to his advantage. But he was right, and they, er, weren’t. So off he went again. “The bedwetting Trolls are out on force today”. Shouldn’t that be IN force? Who knows, and, indeed, who cares?

What Sunder Katwala cared about was that someone with a significant social media following appeared to be condoning, or even potentially inciting, violence: “I would have thought this could cross a threshold of criminality. It clearly demonstrates that Hurst has extreme views, and that he is actively seeking to legitimise violence against public officials”. Russ Jackson, meanwhile, had an inkling of how we got to this point.

“How we all laughed at the US QAnon conspiracy theorists, arrogantly assuming it could never happen here … This is the result of the UK Govt & media adopting wholesale Steve Bannon's strategy of 'flooding the zone' with hard-right populist nationalist anti-woke culture war ‘shit’”. It is significant that Gammon Broadcasting News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) is the only media outlet trying to “both sides” this one.

And Brian Moore let Hurst know why his intervention was so crass: “Whitty's father was dragged out of his car and murdered by terrorists in Athens. Lee Hurst is ignorant and a coward”. His father had been deputy director of the British Council in Athens. He was killed by members of Abu Nidal’s gang. That makes Sunday’s assault even less excusable.

Some people are on social media. They think Lee Hurst’s career is all over. It is now.

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