Camilla Tominey’s Inept Desperation

As alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson sinks further into a mire of sleaze largely of his own making, cowardly chickening out of yesterday’s Parliamentary debate on standards, his former paper, the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, rallied to his rescue with a suitably pointless slice of false equivalence.

This is my article here, and as you can see, it's total shite

To no surprise at all, the hack charged with saving Bozo’s not insignificant bacon is “associate editor” Camilla Tominey, another of those who, in the days of Bill Deedes, would not have been allowed through the door at the Tel. The smearer of the Duchess of Sussex and the Greenfell cook book has today served up “Sir Keir Starmer: The self-styled bastion of democracy who made no fewer than 48 attempts to block Brexit”.

Yes readers, on the one hand we have Bozo The Clown, an irredeemably corrupt, unprincipled, dishonest, selfish, serially philandering and terminally inept scoundrel, and on the other, someone who casts his vote in Parliament in a way the Tel doesn’t like.

Worse, the headline cannot be stood up: “research suggests that the current Labour leader … made no fewer than 48 attempts to thwart Brexit”. RESEARCH SUGGESTS. And whose research is this? We are not told. Does this research even exist? We aren’t told that, either. Has Starmer done anything improper? Er, no. But needs must, eh?

So do go on: “amid all the pious hyperbole expressed in the House of Commons on Monday, Sir Keir’s own chequered history when it comes to respecting the democratic process appeared conspicuous by its absence”. APPEARED. “It may have been a wholly different set of circumstances, but”. Ja, und zis is a big but! There is more.

Starmer, she claims, “was at the forefront of attempts to overturn the mandate that 52 per cent of the British public voted for in 2016”. Overturn a vote? How could he do that? “By using every trick in the parliamentary book”. Ah, Parliamentary democracy. The thing that is OK when the Tories do it, but not the Rotten Lefties™. Have another go.

So show us the charge sheet: “repeatedly voting against the EU Withdrawal Act … twice voting against the Customs Bill … twice voted against the Trade Bill … As well as voting against the first, second and third Meaningful Votes in 2019 … supporting the Cooper-Letwin Bill … voting for the Surrender Act three times”. WHOOPS! The pass is duly sold.

Such is Ms Tominey’s desperation that she resorts to terminology no Telegraph hack should be using. We even get “Siding with the likes of Jean-Claude Juncker and Michel Barnier” and a conclusion of false equivalence: “Mr Johnson may have suffered a sharp drop in his personal ratings in the wake of the sleaze scandal - but when it comes to decrying attempts to subvert the parliamentary system, history proves his political rival doesn’t really have a leg to stand on”. Because Starmer did not attempt subversion.

Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party may be less than totally effective right now, but to pretend his legitimate use of Parliamentary democracy is in some way equivalent to Bozo’s corrupt and potentially lawbreaking premiership is beyond ridiculous. In God’s Own County, they’d say of Ms Tominey “I wouldn’t pay her in washers”.

The defence of Bozo’s bad behaviour is beyond desperate. No change there, then.

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