The Mail, Truth, Proof - AND LYING

The inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker have, during the past week, gone through the looking glass, in the hope of not only taking their readers with them, but creating an equivalence between the repeated breaches of lockdown laws in and around Downing Street, and one post-campaigning takeaway consumed by the Labour leadership.

Why the f*** is he making the story about me, c***?!?!?

And there is one more item on the Mail agenda: to target a popular opposition politician, and to keep on targeting her, until they break her. That is what the pursuit of Angela Rayner is about. I’ll just repeat that: the Mail titles have set out to break her. If they drive her out of politics, there will be a playground huddle and a few puerile sniggers; if she stands firm, they will carry on, casting her as unfeeling and guilty as charged.

The wretched nonentities sent into battle have no choice in the matter: they are well paid, they have their instructions; that is the Mail way. And standing behind them, in the style of Nikita Khrushchev at Stalingrad, is the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, holding not a revolver, but their future work prospects on the dunghill that is Grubstreet.

Evening all

Dacre clearly believes he can bend public opinion to his will and save the Tories from a local election shellacking come next Thursday. Alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson broke the law; the Vagina Monologue will prove Keir Starmer, and Ms Rayner, did likewise. He will accomplish this by smears and lies. But accomplish it he will.

Bozo had a birthday cake? So did Starmer! But here a problem enters: Starmer’s came when there was no lockdown. So the Mail titles do a little omission. LYING by omission. Starmer had a curry! The Mail can’t stand that one up, but they have a photo of him having a curry. Except the photo is from 2015 and featured Frank Dobson. Who died in 2019.

So that’s more LYING. Then comes the victimhood: Mail on Sunday political editor Glen Owen is a victim! He suffered a Twitter pile-on from VILE TROLLS! But Glen Owen doesn’t have a Twitter account. And then comes the pièce de résistance: the claim that Ms Rayner imitated the actions of Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct to distract Bozo at PMQs.

The Mail’s defence to the welter of adverse comment has been to claim that Ms Rayner started the story herself. Therefore they are the victims and are merely reporting what she set running. So they are owed an apology. But here another problem enters: the story was actually set running in January by, er, the Mail, under the by-line of “acceptable face of inward migration” Amanda Platell. So that’ll be more LYING by omission.

Last weekend’s embellishments by not even slightly celebrated blues artiste Whinging Dan Hodges only dig the Mail titles in deeper: claiming as many as four anonymous MPs had heard Ms Rayner use the phrase “ginger growler” in an al fresco discussion in the Commons. The same phrase that the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog set running, like an e-hare, before the latest smears were published.

With the certainty of night following day, none of those four anonymous MPs will come forward to identify themselves. Hodges’ intervention is in any case irrelevant: it only achieves relevance if Ms Platell starting the story running is discarded. Ms Rayner was most likely referring to that story. Did she use the phrase attributed to her? That Staines and his pals pushed before the story was published? Meanwhile, another problem enters.

And that problem was raised by - guess who - the Fawkes blog. Remember that this entire furore revolves around the claim that Ms Rayner distracted Bozo at PMQs by doing a Sharon Stone. But The Great Guido has pointed out that, from where the PM or his appointee sits on the Government front bench, you can’t see below the waist of your opponent. Because the table bearing the mace, and Dispatch Boxes, are in the way.

The apparent coordination between the Mail titles and the Fawkes massive (Staines and Hodges are pals) can be seen in a comprehensive thread by Marc Owen Jones (read it HERE). Especially noticeable is the abuse directed at Ms Rayner: while the Mail titles play the victim, they engineer a vicious pile-on of hatred against a female MP.

Meanwhile, Hodges tells the world that The Truth (where have we heard that one before, press people?) is that Ms Rayner started the story off. When Ms Platell did. So that gives us the perfect Nineteen Eighty-Four moment: TRUTH is LIES. Marc Owen Jones observed caustically “Such brave journalism”. The reality is that Glen Owen, Dan Hodges and the rest are wretched patsies who must do the bidding of the Vagina Monologue.

They work for the Mail titles in the same way that Orville worked for Keith Harris. Dacre has decreed that women who do not know their place must be brought down. His boiling rage at His Papers being taken to court by the Duchess of Sussex - and losing - means only that the campaign against Ms Rayner will be that more vitriolic, that more vicious.

Our politics is broken. Our media is sick. Our country is screwed. No change there, then.

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