Ian Austin - Serves You Right

Few who campaigned for the Labour Party at the 2019 General Election, who trod the streets, knocked on doors, leafletted, and canvassed hopefully, will forget the name of former MP Ian Austin, who turned on the party whose endorsement had kept him in the style to which he had no doubt become accustomed for so many years. Austin brutally smeared then leader Jeremy Corbyn and urged voters to support the Tories.

A smug twat speaks

For this, and very little else, he was awarded a peerage by alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Austin then took it upon himself to liberally dispense the smear of anti-Semitism against others, and in this endeavour he was readily supported by the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press. That is where he came unstuck.

After Laura Murray, who had actually served the party loyally, lost a defamation action brought by minor Sleb and Countdown numbers person Rachel Riley, Austin, in concert with the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, saw his chance. In he went with both feet, baselessly denouncing Ms Murray as an anti-Semite.

What a more sensible and circumspect person might have done before so pronouncing would have been to ask if Ms Riley went after Ms Murray because of alleged anti-Semitism. Because she did not. Perhaps Austin and the Tel thought that, as Ms Murray had lost the case, they could make a deduction of anti-Semitism as a free hit, a given.

Sad to say, that thought would have been sorely misplaced: Ms Murray took grave exception to Austin’s allegations, and launched her own defamation action, which has now resulted in both Austin and the Tel making the appropriately grovelling apology for their groundless and defamatory smear - just because Ms Murray was loyal to Jezza.

Characteristically, the Tel has put its apology behind a paywall, but ways and means, eh? “In an article ‘Rachel Riley deserves every bit of compensation for the hard-Left abuse she’s endured’ (23 December 2021) written by Ian Austin, we suggested that Laura Murray, a former staff member at the Labour Party, was an ‘anti-Jewish racist’ and part of the ‘vile anti-Semitism of Corbyn’s Labour’ who had been stood up to by Rachel Riley during a recent court case. These allegations were and are untrue”. There was more.

“We accept that there was and is no basis to suggest that Ms Murray is anti-Semitic. On the contrary; the court heard in unchallenged evidence that Ms Murray devoted significant time and energy to confronting and challenging antisemitism within the Labour Party whilst she was employed there. The Telegraph and Ian Austin apologise to Ms Murray. We have agreed to pay her substantial damages”. Sounds like that was dictated to them.

Austin, an appallingly immodest individual with much to be modest about, grudgingly Tweeted “The Telegraph and I have today published an apology to Laura Murray over false allegations in an article I wrote shortly before Christmas. Please see link below”, but, as Owen Jones noted, did not add “Please RT”. So Jones did. To rather more followers.

Ian Austin shat on the party that had given him a career he maybe did not merit. For that act of treachery, he was put in the House of Lords. And then given space in the press.

Now he has received his comeuppance. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving creep.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by becoming a Patron on Patreon at

https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton