Fawkes’ Sick Reeves Obsession

The greatest efforts of the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog churned out post after post of knocking copy aimed at Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner. They would get her; she was going to be yet another scalp for The Great Guido. And little good it did them. Ms Rayner is still deputy leader; their smear campaign got them nowhere.

It is the kind of abject failure that the Fawkes massive is unable, or unwilling, to consider as it goes after yet another senior Labour politician who just happens to be a woman. This time, the target is Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and indeed the first female to hold that job. The pretext for this latest smear job is that Ms Reeves claims to be an economist.

In this she has some of those inconvenient things called facts in her favour: she has a Master’s degree in economics from the LSE. She is therefore correct in calling herself an economist. Much of the Fawkes moan about her is over her job titles since graduating. Big deal. As any fule kno, job title and what skills are actually required and used are very different things.

But that thought has not been allowed to enter chez Fawkes, as a succession of bad faith sneers has brought forth “Reeves Pushed ‘Economist’ Myth To Win Seat” (she won it as the Labour candidate, Fawkes folks), then “Pressure Piling On Reeves Over CV Farce” (it wasn’t), and then “Starmer Keeps Schtum On Reeves LinkedIn Fiddling”. Which got them precisely nowhere.

But they had to pretend that their obsession was justified, and so we got “Guardian Gets Excuses In Early For Reeves”, telling readers “The press is piling pressure on Reeves”, with a link that cites Themselves. And on it went, the next effort titled “Tories Target Chancellor Over Career Edits”. Except that her career had not been edited. So was that the end of it? You wish.

Later the same morning came “Labour Veteran: CV Edits Are A Good Thing”. That afternoon bought an alleged “Exclusive”, with “Retail Banking Reeves Signed Legal Documents Claiming To Be Economist”. Which she was, and is. On it went, the following morning bringing “Reeves Reeling From Economist Claim Fallout”. Which she wasn’t. Yet the obsession continued.

The next day brought “Latest Desperate Reeves Defence Line Deployed”, with The Great Guido still calming “Pressure is still piling on Rachel Reeves”, which it wasn’t. One day later, it was “Reeves’ Real Customer Relations Role Revealed”, then later the same day “Reeves’ Economist Myth In Labour Candidate Contest”, the Fawkes rabble now recycling old attacks.

But enough; you get the picture. And to make it worse, in the very next breath, the Fawkes blog is extolling the virtues, such as they be, of Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. A congenital liar, racist bigot, and con man. But this should surprise no-one: they were cheerleaders for disgraced former alleged PM Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Rachel Reeves can still legitimately call herself an economist. Which is more than a whole succession of former Tory Chancellors could do. Like Winshton, who conceded that he did not know much about economics, but that shooting Montagu Norman would have been a good thing. There were others.

Long-serving Chancellor Neville Chamberlain was not an economist. Nor was Harold Macmillan. Nor were Selwyn Lloyd, Reggie Maudling, Tony Barber, Geoffrey Howe, John Major, Ken Clarke, George Osborne, or, indeed, Kwasi Kwarteng. And nor is Farage, the latest to be championed by The Great Guido. But that’s not the point: this is the kind of creepy obsession that would earn lesser mortals a visit from the Police and a suggestion to desist.

I am not Rachel Reeves’ greatest fan, and have passed adverse comment upon a variety of her decision making since Labour won this year’s General Election. But what the Fawkes rabble, whether encouraged by Staines, or by his successor Ross Kempsell, sorry, “Lord” Ross Kempsell, is doing, this sick and creepy obsession is bang out of order. But it should surprise no-one.

Because Guido Fawkes is part of the press establishment. This is how that establishment moves against its hate figures. I’ll just leave that one there.

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Farage + Fawkes = Violence Hypocrisy

The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, now overseen by “Lord” Ross Kempsell, were in their element last Friday, talking up the far right for all they were worth, while jeering at those rotten Labour people who were, of course, total poo. This version of the far right was Reform UK, and their Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage.

Violence? What violence?

“Reform Kicks Off Runcorn & Helsby Campaign With Amesbury Sucker Punch Letter … Reform Running Punchy Runcorn Campaign” leered the Fawkes post, going on to proclaim “Reform is out of the traps early with a new letter campaign across Runcorn and Helsby. The party has gone for two visual elements: A massive picture of Nigel and a snapshot of sitting MP Mike Amesbury ‘allegedly’ thumping a constituent”. All first name friends, eh?

There was more. “The expectation is of course that a by-election is inbound”. They think that Mike Amesbury is going to go to jail for a significant stretch, do they? And that on the back of previous Fawkes headlines “‘Frodsham Bruiser’ Amesbury Suspended” and “Helsby Hellraiser’s Greatest Hits”.

But then a problem enters: this is yet another example of The Great Guido using the same tactics as their fellow members of the press establishment, choosing not merely what to publish, but what not to publish. And when it comes to Reform UK and gratuitous violence, the Fawkes massive are likely to end up in one of those Very Difficult Positions.

That’s because James McMurdock, the Reform UK MP not as well known as Farage, Richard Tice (he’s not very nice), Rupert Lowe, and 30p Lee Anderson, and who is sitting on a majority of just 98 votes in the constituency of South Basildon and East Thurrock, has a past which does not sit well with his usual smiling bonhomie. Because it includes domestic violence.

Ross Kempsell, sorry, "Lord" Ross Kempsell

This from the Guardian: “The Reform UK MP James McMurdock was apparently detained as a teenager for repeatedly kicking his then girlfriend, it has emerged, despite him previously claiming she was hurt after he pushed her …[he] spent 21 days in a young offender institution after kicking the victim ‘around four times’ in an incident outside a nightclub in Chelmsford when he was 19”. Who hasn’t confused pushing and kicking in the past?

And there was, once again, more. “Later in July, the mother of his former girlfriend told the Mail that the new MP was ‘a monster’ who had ‘left marks on her body’, saying: ‘It took two security guards to pull him off her.’” Reform supporters have been busily passing it off as a youthful indiscretion.

And yet more. “According to a copy of the court register extract, the magistrate explained that McMurdock was given a custodial sentence that ‘was not suspended in light of serious nature of the offence’. Such an offence ‘requires immediate punishment’, the extract said, adding that a pre-sentence report appeared to show a ‘lack of willingness to comply’”.

Before The Great Guido joins the “20 years ago” chorus, perhaps Stanies, Kempsell (sorry, “Lord” Kempsell) and their pals could explain why it would have been OK for Farage’s pals, but whatever Rachel Reeves may or may not have been employed to do 20 years ago is fair game to dig up and rake over again and again and again, ad infinitum, and indeed ad nauseam.

The Fawkes rabble are stinking hypocrites. But you knew that already.

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Allison Pearson - Get The Nanoviolin

This week, the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph has been in maximum pearl clutching mode after Essex Police paid a visit to their increasingly batshit pundit Allison Pearson. There has been much howling, and indeed gnashing of teeth, on the subject of FREEZE PEACH. But the Tel has not, for some reason, put the reason for the visit front and centre.

Most of what has been served up tells us that Ms Pearson is a victim. Thus the asymmetric world in which the likes of Ms Pearson get to threaten legal action and try to have their critics’ livelihoods ruined, but play the victim when it comes the other way. She has even been backed by the loathsome Toby Young and his so-called Free Speech Union. But here a problem enters.

No-one has circumscribed Ms Pearson’s free speech. Nor have all too many of those speaking in support of her bothered to find out what this is all about. One might have thought that all those so-called journalists would have made that their first priority, but that thought would have been misplaced: that’s not how our free and fearless press operates these days.

So what did happen to cause Essex Police to rock up on Ms Pearson’s doorstep? Ah well. It was left to the Guardian to lay out some of those inconvenient things called facts. “Daily Telegraph readers have woken up this week to successive front-page headlines alleging a grave threat to free speech, triggered by a star columnist’s ‘Kafkaesque’ encounter with police”.

Do go on. “The rightwing broadsheet described how Essex police had told Allison Pearson on her doorstep last weekend that she was under investigation for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in a tweet last year. The Telegraph and Pearson say they are unaware which post caused two officers to knock on her door at 9.40am on Remembrance Sunday”.

They’re aware now. “It is an alleged retweet by Pearson of a photograph posted several months ago amid heightened tensions over the policing of Gaza protests. It shows a group of people of colour posing with a flag on a British street, flanked by three police officers”. There is more.

“The photograph angered Pearson, who allegedly wrote a tweet condemning the Metropolitan police: ‘How dare they … Invited to pose for a photo with lovely peaceful British Friends of Israel on Saturday police refused. Look at this lot smiling with the Jew haters’. In fact, the picture is from Manchester, sources confirm, and thus the officers pictured are from Greater Manchester police and not the London force”. Telegraph journalism at its finest.

And yet more. “The implication that the Muslims pictured are antisemitic and supporting Hamas is undermined by the green and maroon flag they are holding. The flag is used by supporters of the Pakistani political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). It also, rather clearly, has the word ‘Pakistan’ written on it”. Ms Pearson eventually deleted the Tweet.

So let’s summarise. She claimed it was the Met. She was wrong. She claimed that those depicted were “Jew Haters”. She was wrong. Moreover, as the complainant pointed out, “Each time an influential person makes negative comments about people of colour I, as a person of colour, see an uptick in racist abuse towards me and the days after that tweet are no different”.

But, as the Guardian points out, “The Telegraph and Pearson castigated police and said the visit was an affront to free speech and freedom of the press. Their disbelief was shared by senior lawyers, the former Telegraph journalist Boris Johnson and other leading Conservatives, as well as Elon Musk”. Bozo and Muskrat. Who can’t bother checking their facts first.

At no time has Allison Pearson had her right to free speech curtailed or otherwise restricted. What she and her pals at the Tel have now discovered is that actions can have consequences, even in the asymmetric world of the media elite, who are all too used to shitting on the little people and getting away with it. This time they got a nasty shock. A shock called reality.

Ms Pearson might just think twice next time. So might her supporters.

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So Farewell Then Paul Staines

Of all those asymmetric worlds out there, none compares with that inhabited by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog. The Great Guido has claimed in the past that he doesn’t resort to such things as legal threats, but here on Zelo Street we know that this is total crap (see HERE). Then comes Staines’ claim that suing him is a nightmare.

The Great Guido as thirsty as ever

Why so? Well, his defence is that the Fawkes blog is hosted somewhere offshore of the UK, that it’s registered likewise, and that he lives in Ireland. But the inevitable question then enters: as the blog’s contents are directed almost exclusively at a UK audience, and the Fawkes “newsroom”, such as it be, is believed to be in London, why shouldn’t he be sued here?

At which point Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, enters the scene. What he said in a radio interview on the subject of Gaza, Israel and Hamas has been repeated, and indeed creatively reinterpreted, by a number of media outlets, not least the Daily Mail. Vince, one of those people with the means to go to law, has already secured an apology and damages from the Mail.

Now he has the Fawkes massive, as well as former London Mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey, and Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice (he’s not very nice) in his sights. And his action against The Great Guido has proceeded to a meanings hearing, which happened earlier this week. Staines claims he decided to stand and fight, as if he had any choice in the matter.

Given that even the Mail, not usually given to being an easy pushover in legal matters, has decided to settle and say sorry, one has to ask if Staines’ decision to resist such a way out is wise. Nonetheless, he’s launched a fundraiser, claiming “We’re going to make a stand and defend free speech and the reporting of the actual words he said”. FREEZE PEACH!

No-one, of course, is trying to restrict Staines’ freedom of speech. But that freedom can have consequences, and those have, on this occasion, led to where he is now. So far, so predictable, but now into the mix has come the announcement - via Press Gazette, and not thus far reported on the Fawkes blog - that Staines is stepping down from his position as Fawkes editor.

Ross Kempsell, sorry, "Lord" Ross Kempsell

Here’s what PG has to say: “Guido Fawkes owner Paul Staines is stepping down as editor this week after 20 years leading the political blog. Staines is passing the reins over to Lord Ross Kempsell, Guido contributing editor and former chief reporter. Kempsell has been appointed to the role of publisher”. Note Staines is described as Fawkes “owner”, which will not change.

There was more. “Staines will become founding editor, no longer involved in the day-to-day running of the site. The news was announced ahead of Guido’s 20th anniversary dinner being held this week”. Another reminder that the Fawkes blog, far from being outside the media establishment, is very much a part of it. And what of Kempsell, sorry “Lord” Kempsell?

Anyone unsure of just what a nasty piece of work “Lord” Ross Kempsell, ennobled via the recommendation of disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, really is, may usefully be referred to this blog’s analysis of his modus operandi from October 2017. When it comes to unpleasantness, Kempsell’s past form is nothing to sniff at.

But his praise for Staines is risible. “Paul’s decades of hard work has built an extraordinary media brand with unparalleled influence inside Westminster and beyond. Paul did nothing less than single-handedly revolutionise political reporting in Britain. Loved by its readers and feared by its competitors, Guido is constantly growing in reach and impact”. Hard work? Paul Staines?

Staines wouldn’t recognise hard work if it jumped up in front of him and kicked him in the undercarriage. Feared? That’s a straight-A Fuck Right Off. And “revolutionise political reporting”? Would that be the lying, the calculated smearing, the constant favouring of increasingly far right views to the exclusion of all else? So all will change, but nothing will change.

Except that Dale Vince might just clean Staines out. If he weren’t so eco minded, Vince might find himself renamed Cillit Bang.

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Robert Jenrick - Dutch No Master

Last week, there was a Europa League football match hosted by Ajax Amsterdam; their opponents were Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv. So far, so procedural, except that after the match, accusations of anti-Semitism were made, together with talk of a modern-day pogrom. Supporters of the visiting side were portrayed as victims. And then those accusers fell silent.

Why that should be was not hard to see: as Ian Fraser put it, “A pogrom is an organised massacre of an ethnic group e.g. of Jews in Russia and eastern Europe in the late 19th & early 20th centuries. The photo shows an Israeli football hooligan tearing a Palestinian flag off a Dutch person’s home in the 21st century”. It was not the only piece of bad behaviour by those supporters.

Ori Goldberg summed up the mindset that led to talk of pogroms: “Israeli football fans go on a rampage in Amsterdam, tearing down Palestinian flags and shouting racist slogans … Then, of course, we are surprised. How is it that when we do such things we suffer the consequences? How is it that we are attacked? How is it that the Dutch police doesn't recognize that we are on a mission for peace, that we are good while they must be bad?”.

There was more. “Events last night in Amsterdam are presented as a ‘pogrom’ here in Israel. We do not occupy the same plane of existence as the rest of you. Our actions have no implications. We can never be the cause of anything. Everything happens to us. Only we are real. Murderous solipsism”.

Ben Sellers pointed out that supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv had been involved in violence in Athens a few months ago. Rafael Shimunov confirmed “They're engaging in [the] theater of ‘victimhood’, supporting a historically violent, racist fanbase who came to [the] Netherlands to assault and incite violence against Arabs, then flipping it to claim the reprisals and anger in return are simply targeting Jews”. And then came Robert Jenrick.

Jenrick, a deeply immodest individual with much to be modest about, had already tried his luck as he dribbled “Meet Jason Hoganson. Jason was jailed for hitting his ex-girlfriend. Keir Starmer let him out early. Within hours of his release, the police got another call, saying he’d assaulted her yet again. Now he’s on the run. Who could have seen that coming?” Maybe Jenrick could.

Especially as the Labour “40% of sentence” early release excludes crimes such as that described. Hoganson had been released after 50% of his sentence had been served, a move introduced by the previous Tory Government, of which Jenrick had been an unswerving supporter.

Having demonstrated his less than consistent relationship with reality, Jenrick then turned to the disturbances in Amsterdam, claiming “These weren’t ‘clashes’. It was a modern-day pogrom. And another warning to the West about the consequences of mass migration and failed integration. Wake up before it’s too late”. The BBC’s report was not good enough for him.

That’s the same BBC report that resorts to using the infamous phrase “on both sides”. The responses to Jenrick’s crude Islamophobic opportunism showed that this was a campaign destined to not necessarily to his advantage, with comments such as “You’re an idiot”, “You’re a nutcase”, and “You lost to Kemi Badenoch. Best sit this one out” standing out.

No use waiting for Robert Jenrick at Barking. He’s beyond there already.

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So Farewell Then US Democracy

We may not like the verdict passed by voters in the USA, but it is their right, their call, and their majority preference that Combover Crybaby Donald Trump be returned to the White House for another term as President. What creative propaganda was fed to the electorate we may never know. What we do know is that Trump is not fit to serve a burger and fries, let alone his country.

His all too recognisable mental decline has been on view for some months. His mind is failing him, and those who have backed him to the hilt with their millions know it. They know he is not up to the job. Yet they supported his re-election; Trump is easily flattered, and his business empire almost bust. He gets some praise, some money, and his backers bend the USA to their will.

It is easy to look two years forward to the 2026 midterms, and reason that all will be corrected as the GOP loses waves of House and Senate seats, thus bringing into play those checks and balances for which the Constitution is rightly famous. But Trump has also told his fans that they will not have to vote ever again. He showed you who he was; believe him the first time.

For those in the USA who will suffer the bigotry, the misogyny, the uncaring authoritarianism, some did warn us, like Mehdi Hasan: “People - including top US journalists, perhaps especially top US journalists - don’t quite get how bad it’s going to be. How beyond term one it’ll be. How bad the Musks and RFKs will be. I don’t think even I fully accept how bad it’s going to be and I have been shouting how bad it’s going to be for years”.

Here on the other side of the North Atlantic, though, the problems will be very simply trade and defence. Trump is threatening swingeing tariffs on anything coming into the USA. Maybe NAFTA will not survive. So countries in Europe, inside the EU or not, will have to learn to do without that market.

That is, of course, easier said than done. But it must be done. It will not be easy to do, especially as, more or less at the same time, European countries that had seen the USA as The Great Protector, the one country that underpinned the NATO alliance, will have to learn to look after themselves, singly or, more likely, collectively. Which probably means via the EU.

Those countries will include Ukraine, as Trump has repeatedly voiced his backing for the gangsterist régime of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, and his disdain for the Government in Kyiv. US aid for Ukraine will wither away; either Europe allows the country to be annexed by Russia, or does something to prevent that. Trump’s USA will not ride to our rescue this time.

So where does that leave the UK, with its Government, headed by someone formerly so enthusiastically pro-EU, but now implacably opposed to closer ties with the European Club? Keir Starmer has to realise two things here: One, there is no point cosying up to Trump, who couldn’t give a crap about him. And two, he can’t ride the European Club horse and the Special Relationship horse at the same time. He has to choose one, and only one.

He must also learn to shut out the howling of our free and fearless press at even the mention of closer ties with the EU. Because he has little choice, when faced with an isolationist USA, but to mend fences with the EU, and forget his repeated refusal to countenance rejoining the bloc. In this, Trump and his gang have unintentionally done the UK a great service.

In the meantime, he will fulfil his promise for the USA to engage in no more wars, and instead keep those wars within his own country - a war on women’s rights, a war against ethnic minorities, a war against anyone opposed to his power grab, and a war against the freedom of speech he falsely promotes.

And those countries that have embraced neoliberalism can, in the meantime, reflect on its failure to deliver Trump’s opponents the White House. We might usefully consider re-reading The General Theory Of Employment Interest And Money, whose embrace saved the West from revolution after World War 2, while The New Great Dictator gets on with laying waste to the USA.

Europe needs to look after itself. And the UK has to choose - wisely.

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