Liz Truss - Remove The Whip. NOW

No action was taken by the Tories following the outburst of bigotry in the Commons by Robert Jenrick, or the support of that outburst by Penny Mordaunt. And no action was taken following the throwing of petrol on the fire by Suella Braverman. But Lee Anderson had the whip removed after he did a racism with his attack on London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

30p Lee will, however, continue to be accommodated by Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”), which should surprise no-one, given that the broadcaster’s main money injecting man is Paul Marshall, who has just been exposed as having an Alt Twitter account which re-Tweets and likes a range of Muslim bashing wacko conspiracy theory bigotry.

Worse for the Tories in two ways is, One, that it has been strongly inferred that Anderson would not have had the whip removed had he apologised, and, Two, that the worst of the lot remains unpunished. Mary Elisabeth Truss, formerly, and fortunately briefly, comedy Prime Minister, has been to the USA, where she has been keeping some seriously dodgy company.

As before, she has claimed that her Premiership was undermined by something called The Media. But that media includes the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press, which praised her unconditionally. The Daily Mail, in particular, told its readers “COMETH THE HOUR, COMETH THE WOMAN” and “AT LAST! A TRUE TORY BUDGET”. So true a Tory budget that it came close to crashing the economy. And it got worse. A lot worse.

She proceeded to share a platform with the deeply unpleasant Steve Bannon, whom she asked “Would you work with Nigel Farage to restructure the Tory party?” That’s a whip suspension in one. Bannon proceeded to call Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, a “hero”.

How would Ms Truss respond? How would a statesmanlike and credible former Prime Minister have responded? How would any person with a hole in their arse and brain plugged in have responded? How would Nietzsche have responded? Sadly, Ms Truss does not operate on that intellectual plateau, and so she just nodded along with Bannon. And it got worse still.

Liz Truss is attending this year’s CPAC. She has delivered a speech to the gathering. The same gathering which Jack Posobiec has addressed, raising his fist as he proclaimed “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it”. Still want to give her the benefit of the doubt?

Nick Lowles of Hope Not Hate asked the obvious question. “Where is the media and political outrage at Liz Truss, a (short-lived) former British Prime Minister, addressing a conference where speaker after speaker glorify the storming of the Capitol on Jan 6 and promise worse is to come?”

His problem, sadly, is that rather too many in the media and politics are prepared to downplay or even dismiss the bigotry. Like the BBC (hello Robbie Gibb) dismissing 30p Lee’s racism with the headline “MP suspended over criticism of London mayor”. Oliver Dowden, still deputy PM, declared “I don't believe Lee Anderson said those words in any way intending to be Islamophobic”. Spectator editor Fraser Nelson is also in downplaying mode.

“Genuinely racist and anti-Muslim slurs are very rare in British public debate” he pontificated, for some reason not noticing the amount of genuinely racist and anti-Muslim slurs that appear in the magazine, and on the website, of which he is supposed to be the editor. Remember “My own view is that there is not nearly enough Islamophobia within the Tory party”?

And Ms Truss is probably safe when Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has to tell Laura Kuenssberg “You basically laid bare the Tory Party's problem.. you see ambivalence when it comes to Islamophobia. If the ‘they have got control’ was related to Jewish people that would straightaway be called out as anti-semitism. But there's a double standard here”.

Liz Truss should have the Tory whip removed. But her party, and its media allies, are already circling the wagons. The Tories’ racist sickness exposed.

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