Labour Useless And Now Clueless

So the dust has settled after a round of local elections - plus a Parliamentary by-election - last Thursday. The Tories continued their slide towards irrelevance by losing two-thirds of the seats they contested. But, as Robert Peston might have put it, here’s a thing - Labour also lost two-thirds of the seats they contested, too. And they lost that Parliamentary by-election.

Morgan McSweeney - la la la, he can't hear you

That last, in the constituency of Runcorn and Helsby, was gained by Reform UK, the domain of its self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, by a mere six votes. Labour should have had the ground game to hold on to the seat. But here is, instead, the key to where the insular and tone-deaf cabal who run Labour found their past catching up with them.

Just a few more activists helping out, a few more pairs of hands to do the drudgery of leafletting, knocking doors, a few more smiling faces to show the voters, would have given Labour the edge. But it has been made clear to anyone who needs to know that, while those activists were taking a shed-load of abuse during the 2019 General Election campaign, those who now run the party were working against their leadership to throw the contest.

The question those activists asked, and for which there was no credible answer other than to treat them as mugs, as so much cannon fodder, with not so much as the slightest apology, was “Why the fuck should I put myself out for this bunch of shysters?” There has been no credible answer.

So the party was always short of activists. It managed to hold off the likes of George Galloway in Batley and Spen, but that was before the revelation that those not unadjacent to Morgan McSweeney and his Labour Together pals - there’s a name with the ultimate contradiction in terms - had worked to lose the 2019 campaign to the Tories. And we know where that led.

Those same sources then sneeringly briefed their favoured media outlets that party leader Keir Starmer was not really in charge - “we’ve sat him at the front of the DLR” - but they can’t grasp why the voters would choose a party whose leader is a congenital liar. Perhaps it’s because their own party leader does rather too much lying of his own, so what’s the difference?

Instead, we read “Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, will pore over the results … and it likely to conclude that he is right to pursue a ‘blue Labour’ strategy to address the populist threat - a policy which is already starting to be deployed”. This is beyond wrong headed. One need only consider the decisions already made, and which have already failed with the voters.

Winter fuel allowance abolished, changing Inheritance Tax rules for farms, cutting disability benefits, all creating so much negative reaction for so little saving. And all the decisions that could have been taken to benefit the less well off and create economic growth have been ignored.

Taxing the very well off a little more to give those at the bottom of the pile a break - money going from those with a propensity to save, to those who have a propensity to spend - no, can’t do that. Rejoining the EU single market and customs union to get back some of that £100 billion a year Brexit hit on the economy - no, can’t do that. VAT refunds for tourists - er, um, er, um, er, not really. Abolish the two child cap - ooh no, what will the press think?

Nor will the inane catchphrases work without some actual action to back them up. “Further, faster”. Further than what? Faster than what? “Plan for change”, “Delivering change” - the electorate doesn’t see any change. And anyone showing empathy for the plight of the Palestinians is either ignored or told that they are an anti-Semite. So voters go elsewhere. And will go elsewhere.

The Greens gained council seats. So did the Lib Dems. Reform UK gained massively. The Tories lost big time. But Labour did too. The idea that voters would just obediently return to Labour is for the birds. Heck, they didn’t even do that last year: the Labour vote was down on 2019, but turnout was down even further. McSweeney and his pals are alone in La-La Land.

Farage may be a con artist. But voters are not being listened to by a ruling Labour cabal that is very good at smearing, infighting, and damaging their own party as if it were some kind of game. They falsely smeared The Canary as anti-Semitic and Fake News Tee Hee Hee! They shut the left out of power Tee Hee Hee! They got rid of Jeremy Corbyn Tee Hee Hee!

But the lives of millions of folks at the bottom of the pile are not a game. And those millions have the vote. As one Labour MP put it, “It’s all very well for No 10 to say we’ve got to keep delivering. The problem is that it’s the stuff we’ve delivered that people hate”. Labour’s ruling cabal is devoid of ideas, and as a result, the party they claim to rule resembles a dead man walking.

McSweeney and his pals could solve this problem. By packing their bags and leaving the stage - to those who actually give a damn about the voters.

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So Farewell Then Elon Musk

The BBC has quoted George Ell, “who knew Musk and was director for Western Europe at Tesla” in its article on The Great Man “scaling back” his time spent at the misnamed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE): “I think Elon is not someone who surrounds himself with a great diversity of opinion to challenge his thinking”. No-one stands up to him.

No-one tells him that he maybe shouldn’t do this or that. No-one tells him that he got something wrong, should not intervene so much in his companies, or that his political stance might just not be as neutral as he thinks. There was no-one to tell him not to perform a Nazi salute - and yes, ADL people, it was a Nazi salute - an act which poisoned his brands, maybe beyond redemption.

In Musk’s mind, his failures are someone else’s fault. Like Combover Crybaby Donald Trump, someone else did it. With Trump it is usually Joe Biden getting the blame, despite him having been out of power for some months. With Musk it is The Left. As if The Left could have caused the more than 30% decline in Tesla’s share price this year. Musk is deluded.

Nonetheless, we heard earlier this week that “Musk wants to leave politics because he’s tired of ‘attacks’ from the left”. He’ll still be blaming The Left if the Tesla share price falls so far that he gets margin calls and has to either stump up some collateral sharpish, or liquidate part of his holding. He’s either deluded or paranoid. Or, most likely, a combination of the two.

But, some out there on the right might argue, Musk’s contribution must be worth seeking out because he’s been so successful. To which I say, as Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe said in response to demands by the Wehrmacht that he surrender the city of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, Nuts. Musk was ridiculously wealthy, even as a child.

Moreover, he did not stump up the full cost of his best-known investments, those in Tesla and Twitter, X, or whatever he’s calling it this week, and hence his vulnerability to a precipitous fall in share value, which would spark margin calls, a prospect with which those who have studied The Great Crash of 1929 will be familiar. Add to that his inability to listen to dissenting views.

So it should be no surprise to read Seth Abramson’s commentary on Musk’s stewardship of DOGE: “Elon Musk has cut somewhere between 0% and 3% of what he promised - and most of what was cut was not waste or fraud or abuse, but simply expenditures Mr. Musk did not personally favour for partisan reasons”. Remember that the next time Tufton Street speaks.

So his conclusion is equally unsurprising: “DOGE is the biggest program failure in the history of American government”. And what of Tesla? Back to the BBC report: “On Tuesday, Tesla reported a 20% drop in car sales for the first three months of the year, compared with the same period last year, while profits fell more than 70%”. Oh dear! And there is more. Much more.

“The company warned investors that the pain could continue, declining to offer a growth forecast while saying ‘changing political sentiment’ could meaningfully hurt demand … Musk blamed the boycott of Tesla cars on people who would ‘try to attack me and the Doge team’”. Someone else did it. Nothing to do with him giving a Nazi salute. But do go on.

“Dan Coatsworth, investment analyst at AJ Bell, called expectations ‘rock-bottom’ after the company said earlier this month that the number of cars sold in the quarter had fallen 13% to the lowest level in three years … The firm faces fierce competition, Mr Coatsworth said”. He also drew this ominous conclusion: “Tesla's problems are mounting”. Not a good look.

Elon Musk’s empire is heavily dependent on US Government funding - for ventures such as SpaceX - with Tesla mired in a customer backlash to his infamous Nazi salute and tendency to smear genuine American heroes. Many have departed Twitter after he turned it into a sewer of right-wing abuse and a venue for promoting conspiracy theories. He is not a genius.

Remember Denis Thatcher: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt”. All Musk’s own fault.

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Party Like It’s 1929

They thought he really knew what he was doing, that he was not out of his depth. They thought he would back off at the last minute, that he didn’t really mean it. They thought that wise counsel would prevail, talk him out of it. They thought that Donald Trump was intelligent enough not to proceed with his tariff plan. They were wrong: another 1929 moment now stalks the markets.

It's the economy, Mr Stupid President

The key difference between The Great Crash of October 1929 and today is that the latter is a direct consequence of deliberate acts by the US President. Trump is indeed out of his depth. He is a monumentally stupid individual embarked on a personal mission of vindictive retribution against the foreigners who he believes have ripped off the USA over many years.

By imposing sufficient tariffs on the rest of the world, he believes goods will be manufactured in the USA, rather than elsewhere. Like the iPhone, perhaps? Except to manufacture that device Stateside would, by one estimate, raise its cost price to at least $10,000. Yet his supporters talk of American workers screwing screws into iPhones. What screws?

You use an iPhone? Check the casing. Maybe look at a rather larger example: where does US plane maker Boeing source all those parts that get assembled into best selling aircraft like the 737? They don’t all come from the States. Tariffs will mean vastly more expensive planes. Or a change in the supply network taking years and costing more. Or a bit of both.

Yet away he went with his tariff plan, which, whisper it quietly, is still with us. The market reaction was as predictable as it was sudden: massive falls in stock prices, beginning on a Thursday, an ominous day to start, given the 1929 precedent. There would, claimed The Donald, be no turning back; moreover, he told anyone who would listen how well it was going.

Markets continued their fall. Even after the weekend, the falls went on, until the 1929 parallel came again. Then, the bankers had sent Richard Whitney to ostentatiously buy up blocks of shares; the market turned around. Now, a fake social media account claimed the tariffs were to be paused, and sparked a rally before being rumbled. Then came the flagrant and open corruption.

The Whitney comparison is instructive: as Galbraith noted, he was “a hero, his achievement was widely celebrated, and he was made President of the Exchange. Not long thereafter, he was off to Sing Sing for embezzlement”. This time, no-one will be off to jail, despite the corruption. Despite Trump telling his followers to buy stocks, four hours before finally pausing tariffs.

Those buying included, according to reports, rabbit hole occupant Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. From the Democrats’ side of the House, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mused “Any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now … It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress”. Trump was, meanwhile, celebrating.

There he was in the Oval Office, pointing to two of his guests and telling “He made $2.5 billion today and he made $900 million. That’s not bad”. One observer noted “Speaker Mike Johnson was ALSO caught on camera saying it was a good day to buy stocks. This is text book market manipulation”. There should be an investigation. Will there be one? Don’t bet on it.

And then came the dénouement: as ITV political editor Robert Peston put it, “We just learned that the world’s most powerful person, Donald Trump, has a boss: the bond market”. Not only were tariffs paused, he had to row back on them for smartphones and other electronic devices coming from China. But the Chinese Government is not making any tariff exemptions for the USA.

If anyone had been in any doubt as to Donald Trump’s fitness for public office, the tariff fiasco has exposed his shortcomings. The USA is having its economy trashed by a shambling old fool, an inept and failed businessman, an amateur human being. He took on the real world, and the real world won. The MAGA cult might not believe it, but they are now just an irrelevance.

The EU and China have begun talks to reduce electronic vehicle tariffs. Tesla EU sales were down 45% year on year to January. Art of the deal my arse.

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Trump Tariffs - The Art Of The Stupid

To great fanfare, and applauded by all the wrong people, Combover Crybaby Donald Trump has announced the imposition of tariffs upon imports from most countries outside the USA, although not, for some reason, Russia or North Korea. There had been much talking up of the move beforehand by those out there on the right. But the markets have not been persuaded.

The tone struck as propaganda was disseminated was noted by the BBC’s Faisal Islam: “President Trump cheered on by auto-workers and oil and gas workers in Rose Gardens as he proclaims ‘Liberation Day’, decrying ‘foreign scavengers’ with expected universal and reciprocal tariffs on every country in the world”. Today, 900 of those auto-workers were laid off.

But back to Faisal Islam. “President says tariffs will raise ‘trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and national debt’… which rather suggests a somewhat universal character to these ‘reciprocal’ tariff”. It also suggests that Trump is more stupid than had previously been thought. Meanwhile, the “tariff” against which Trump was reciprocating had been figured out.

One Tweeter put it directly. “The supposed ‘tariffs charged to the US’ are just the total trade deficit as a % of US imports by country, with a floor of 10%. Just laughably stupid”. So all those countries he has singled out are not necessarily imposing tariffs. Worse, some of those who might have been expected to side with Trump were horrified by the whole exercise.

Like Dan, Dan The Oratory Man, who denounced the move. “The policies just announced are batshit crazy. They will cause a recession. And, when they do, the people who backed them will blame foreigners or globalists or some such, and double down”. Or blame something Joe Biden did or didn’t do. Or Hillary Clinton’s emails. Or perhaps the Fake News Media will have done it.

As for the UK only being hit for 10%, while the EU gets slapped with twice that percentage, Jim Cornelius had a caution. “The reason why Trump's UK tariff is 10% and not like EU's 20% has absolutely NOTHING to do with Keir Starmer being a brilliant negotiator, or Trump loving an invite from the King. It's because we're not as good at selling stuff to the USA as the EU is”.

So how did the markets react? The BBC brought bad news: at 1520 hours, “After opening down sharply, the main US indexes have continued to edge lower. The Dow Jones is now down 3.6%, the S&P 500 is 3.8% lower while the Nasdaq has dropped 4.8%”. MAGA cultists are, unsurprisingly, trying their best to slag off the markets, as if they don’t matter. Except they do matter.

But they weren’t important enough to tempt any of Reform UK’s MPs, and certainly not self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, to turn up to the Commons for a statement on UK-US trade and tariffs. Maybe the great Farage will be able to explain Trump’s reasoning to us all.

Like “the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon made it onto [Trump’s] tariff hit list… but [not] Russia". Another Tweeter expanded on that finding: “Neither Russia nor North Korea got even Donald Trump's 10% minimum tariff. But he did tax [two] islands that have only penguins, and another one that contains ONLY a US military base”. Well, well.

And in the wake of the devastating earthquake that hit Myanmar recently, Dara Ó Briain mused “These is something particularly crass and callous about announcing a 44% trade tariff against Myanmar, this week, of all weeks”. Meanwhile, the idea that sanctions mean no US-Russia trade was debunked: the USA imported around $3 billion of Russian goods last year.

This move is down to Trump, and Trump alone. He has not sought the approval of Congress. He will blame others when it fails, as it will with the certainty of night following day. He should not be allowed to get away with any move to deflect or deny: he had ample opportunity to take advice from those who understand these things. He chose not to. His actions are about to screw over the lives of many who were foolish enough to vote for him.

Sadly, many of the rest may also be casualties. Donald Trump is not a serious politician. As Cloughie might have put it, “he’s a clown, young man”.

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Donald Trump - A Fart Of A Deal

With the possibility increasing daily that his “diplomacy” on the Russia-Ukraine conflict will prove to be Dead On Arrival, more and more citizens, along with increasing numbers outside the USA, are realising that Combover Crybaby Donald Trump was only a successful businessman for the purposes of The Apprentice and its various spin-offs. Reality is somewhat different.

This is, after all, someone whose, to quote the Wikipedia entry, “over-leveraged hotel and casino businesses in Atlantic City and New York filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times between 1991 and 2009”. A casino should be a license to print money, so how Trump’s businesses had to file for Chapter 11 protection should tell you something about his abilities.

Or lack of them. Most major banks wanted nothing to do with him following those corporate bankruptcies. Yet this was the individual whose signature book is all about the Art Of The Deal. And this is what he no doubt wanted the world to think about when he waded into the conflict between Russia, the aggressor, and Ukraine, the country that repelled them for three years.

He, the great Donald J Trump, would show his detractors that he alone could secure a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Maybe his peacemaking efforts could even secure him the Nobel Peace Prize. Joe Biden never won that! Those Fake News Media channels and papers never won it either!

And so it came to pass that the Trump Gang let the world know that continuing the conflict in Ukraine was pointless, which is true, but also that the bad guys were, at least by implication, those headed by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which was a pack of propagandist lies, except in pro-Russian talking points, something that only fuelled the suspicion that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his gang in the Kremlin had Kompromat on Trump.

But not to worry, The Donald then showed the world his superior diplomatic ability by inviting Zelenskyy to the White House, and with his monumentally stupid Vice President J D Vance, ambushed the Ukrainian President, following that by having the visitors’ delegation thrown out. He stopped aid and intelligence sharing for Ukraine. As if Russia was pulling his strings.

Then he made sure that the word got out: Ukraine could have had a deal, although what kind of deal was not told. European leaders reaffirmed their support for Ukraine; Trump became enraged and claimed the EU was “very, very nasty”. He then rambled at length about the EU having been formed in order to screw over the USA. Not much Art Of The Deal on view here.

Nor was there much art in Trump’s next move, reported by Kyiv Post: “Trump reportedly won’t restore military aid or intelligence sharing with Ukraine - even if Kyiv and Washington strike a deal on mineral resources - NBC News … He wants Zelensky to cede territory to Russia, take steps toward holding elections, and possibly step down”. Some deal he’s offering, or maybe not.

As for his understanding, or lack of it, of actions having consequences, as he rambles, threats, and blusters, orders for F-35 fighter aircraft are being cancelled in favour of alternatives built not in the USA. More jobs lost, more momentum for the economic downturn. His Ukraine ceasefire proposal was effectively ignored by Putin. But then came the fruits of that diplomacy!

“THOUSANDS OF UKRAINIAN TROOPS ARE COMPLETELY SURROUNDED BY THE RUSSIAN MILITARY, AND IN A VERY BAD AND VULNERABLE POSITION” he told. But not to worry, “I have strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared”. Except this was very obvious Kremin propaganda. And that Peace Prize was not getting nearer.

Maybe he could get the press to be a little nicer to him. Not after ranting “These newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative. And it has to stop. It has to be illegal ... it just cannot be legal”. The one who brought back free speech, eh? Trump’s deal making wizardry is just a sham. The Russians are laughing at him. He’s crashing the economy.

But he is good at rambling incoherently. So that’s all right, then.

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Labour - A Study In Cowardice

Once more we are informed that Rachel Reeves is asking spending departments of Government for cuts. There have been tax rises, but little investment. Pensioners, the disabled, those on or below the poverty line, and most recently WASPI women, all have been turned away. They will have to make do with less. It does not have to be this way, and well she knows it.

Someone bereft of ideas, versus ...

The Starmer Government has itself stuck in what Simon Fletcher called a “Right wing doom loop” in a recent Byline Times article (read it HERE). Ms Reeves has pinned her hopes on growth, but growth is not forecast to occur any time soon. Her embrace of economic orthodoxy means more needless austerity, more wasted years of poor economic performance.

That it does not need to be this way has been known for more than 85 years, since the first publication of The General Theory Of Employment Interest And Money. John Maynard Keynes’ ideas, and, indeed, his prediction of where over-reliance on economic orthodoxy would lead, were not lost on a new generation of economists, as J K Galbraith later observed.

He later put this directly in The Age Of Uncertainty: “In 1937, recovery from the Great Depression was slowly under way; production and prices were rising, although unemployment was still appalling. The men of sound judgment now asserted themselves. They moved to cut spending, raise taxes and bring the federal budget into balance”. There was more.

“The few Keynesians protested; our voices were drowned out in the roar of orthodox applause. As the budget moved towards balance, the recovery came to a halt. Presently there was a new and ghastly slump, a recession within the Depression. It was entirely as Keynes had predicted. The men of sound judgment had made our case”. Pages 219 and 220 in my edition.

What is Ms Reeves doing? It looks very much like “cut spending, raise taxes and bring the … budget into balance”. And the forecast result, no growth in the foreseeable future, or even a recession, is, once again, exactly as Keynes would have predicted. The mistakes made in the USA in the late 30s were only countered by increased spending, this time on war.

... someone who was never thus constrained

The Keynesian remedy - running a deficit when the economy needs supporting - is known to any economist, or economic thinker, in the UK, Europe and elsewhere. It is available to any economy with control of its own currency - like the UK. For a country whose infrastructure is in such a run down state after fourteen years of Tory neglect, it seems a no-brainer.

Yet Starmer and Ms Reeves appear unable, or unwilling, to embrace the approach that served the Labour Government of the immediate post-war years so well. Britain was virtually bankrupt by 1945, yet Attlee and his team brought the Welfare State into being, along with a series of nationalisations, and of course the NHS. Plus, yes, more or less full employment.

Instead of actually taking action, though, we are assailed by a deluge of press releases masquerading as policy. One day it is the deeply dislikable Wes Streeting telling how he is transforming the NHS; today has brought Lucy Powell claiming, and as Treeza might have said, I am not making this up, “We're turning the tables to put ordinary people at the front of the queue”.

One slice of meaningless drivel after another. What does Powell’s assertion even mean? And all the while, there is a daily slew of bad faith knocking copy emanating from our free and fearless press. In a routine show of hypocrisy, they slate anyone they deem to be “talking the country down”, while they constantly talk the country down. But only when Labour are in charge.

As Simon Fletcher has observed, Labour is “relying on an argument that growth in the future will deliver a resolution to the country’s problems”. But what they are doing is not bringing growth, and in the timescale required, is most unlikely to bring growth. Thus they are talking themselves towards defeat, and worse, enabling the far right con men of Reform UK.

Keynes had the answers. His legacy still has them. Hello Rachel Reeves.

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Behold Lord Tobes Of Bellend

And so it came to pass that the time of year meant party leaders nominating a variety of the undeserving and otherwise underemployed as new members of the House of Lords, the Other Place that the current Government was so keen to abolish, but now, seemingly, isn’t. Labour has put forward thirty names, but most of them will escape scrutiny, thanks to Kemi Badenoch.

As ever, at times like this, the opposition rides to your rescue: Ms Badenoch, not content with making herself and her party look less credible with every week’s PMQs, has put forward one name guaranteed to put those of Charlotte Owen and Ross Kempsell, ennobled at the behest of disgraced former occasional PM Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, in the shade.

Because the latest name in the Tory prospective peerage frame is none other than the loathsome Toby Young, who has for many years been full value for his nickname of Captain Bellend. I first observed the deep and sincere affection his peers in the media held for Tobes some years ago.

At the launch event for the HuffPost UK, Zelo Street was there in the auditorium, sitting in the back row as the launch presentation and debate began. Some 20 minutes later, the entrance door to my left opened, someone walked through it, and a chorus of booing ensued. What, I asked the bloke to my left, was all that about? “It’s OK, it’s only Toby Young” came the reply.

It got worse: Tobes was apparently having difficulty finding a seat. The disruption was brought to a swift end when Arianna Huffington recognised The Great Man, and no doubt also knew about all the snarky abuse that he had dispensed in her general direction. “Would you like to join us?” she asked, at which point Tobes thought better of making an even bigger arsehole of himself, and found himself a seat with remarkable swiftness.

That is the memory coming to the fore every time our free and fearless press attempts to polish the turd that is Captain Bellend: the foot-soldiers of this industry have a rather lower opinion of his munificence than their bosses. So most of the crap being spoken about him in reaction to the peerage nomination can be taken with one gigantic piece of salt.

Pride of place in that department goes to the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph proclaiming “Free speech champion Toby Young awarded peerage”. As Billy Connolly once said, there’s going to be some swearing … FUCK OFF. Anyone and everyone has the right of free speech. But all too many on the right don’t like actions having consequences.

It gets worse, as a perusal of Tobes’ Wikipedia entry demonstrates: “Young has admitted using cocaine at the Groucho Club in central London, and also supplying drugs to others. He was subsequently expelled from membership of the club in late 2001 for writing about the cocaine use of friends he had supplied with the drug during a 1997 photo shoot for Vanity Fair”.

Any more minus points? “Young has come under criticism for comments he made on Twitter … These included what an Evening Standard editorial called ‘an obsession with commenting on the anatomy of women in the public eye’”. And how’s this for vanity? “Young is reported to have edited his own Wikipedia page 282 times over the course of six years”. Modest with it, eh?

Maybe this comment from Dawn Foster sums up Tobes’ true place in the establishment pantheon: “Young seems to think he is held in high regard by free school advocates. When I mentioned his name in the course of interviewing a former Department for Education employee for the piece, my interviewee headbutted the restaurant table in exasperation. I have found the sentiment, if not the gesture, to be common among his ideological comrades”.

That is merely reinforced by the knowledge that he was taken on, and then sacked, by the Times, under the editorship of Charles Wilson. This part of his career trajectory he shares with Bozo The Clown, someone else who is full of crap and gobby with it. He’s called Captain Bellend. Because he’s a bellend.

Lord Tobes of Bellend, of the borough of Leering in the county of Misogyny. Because they couldn’t find a horse called Incitatus.

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Reform UK - A Hundred Thousand Mugs

Reform UK’s self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage last week used his season ticket for BBC Question Time, a show whose currency has been fatally debased under the watchful eye of Robbie Gibb, who should never have been let in the door, and host Fiona Bruce, whose determination to “both sides” anything and everything is tedious in the extreme.

Farage’s appearance was despite his assertion some time earlier that he was boycotting the Beeb, a claim which turned out to be yet another flat-out lie, to go with all the other flat-out Farage lies. But one claim that appears to be true is that Reform UK now has a membership in excess of 100,000. Or perhaps that should be worded “for some value of membership”. Why so?

Ah well. Reform UK is not a political party in the same way that Labour, the Lib Dems, and even the Tories are. It is a limited company, and as a visit to Companies’ House confirms, those with “significant control” are Farage and his deputy Richard Tice (he’s not very nice). You pays your membership fee and you takes … no control whatsoever. No vote. Nothing.

This is despite Mr Thirsty telling anyone not yet asleep that he was going to give up control of Reform UK by divesting himself of his shares. That was at the time of the party’s, sorry, limited company’s, conference back in September. Press and broadcasters alike swallowed the Farage propaganda, with the BBC’s example being particularly good on the grovelling.

Under the headline “I'm giving up ownership of Reform UK, says Nigel Farage”, readers are told “Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has revealed he is giving up ownership of the party ahead of its conference this weekend”. Ownership? Indeed. “Unlike most political parties, Reform was established as a private limited company, with Farage holding the majority of shares”.

There was more. “He said this was done to fast-track the creation of the Brexit Party, now Reform UK, in time for its victory in the 2019 European elections. The company structure also allowed him to ‘to stop the party being hijacked by bad people,’ he told BBC Radio Kent”. Or, as most political parties call such things, representative democracy. But do go on.

“The Clacton MP will continue to be Reform UK's leader but said: ‘I no longer need to be in control of Reform so I'm surrendering all of my shares’ … Reform UK is planning a major overhaul of how it is run at its Birmingham conference, with Farage claiming he was ‘giving ownership of the party and the big decisions over to the members’”. Which meant what, exactly?

“For the first time, members will be able to vote on policy motions, including to adopt a new constitution, which sets out party rules and the responsibilities of the leadership”. And to that I call bullshit. Why so? Just one question, Sir … how much control has he given up, as at December 9th? Have a guess, Reform UK members. It’s a nice round number. A very round number.

Let’s mosey over to the Companies’ House website, and bring up Reform UK Party Limited. That’s the one with registered number 11694875. Then “People” and “Persons with significant control”. This reveals that there are “2 active persons with significant control”. One is Nige’s deputy Tice, who owns “More than 25% but less than 50%” of shares. And the other?

That would be Farage himself. He owns “More than 50% but less than 75%” of the company’s shares. Which means either he is taking a very long time to surrender that control, or he was just lying back in September, and the media establishment amplified his whoppers accordingly. That’s why I consider him to be a congenital liar, as well as a racist bigot and a con man.

Which leaves those 100,000 plus “members” of Reform UK where? Exactly where they were before: unable to exercise any control over the party’s, er, sorry, limited company’s, leadership, handing their money over for very little in return. And that’s why I conclude that every one of those “members” is just another mug, another mark, being played along by the Farage flannel.

What our free and fearless press chooses not to tell you. No change there.

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Speccy Goes From Nelly To Oiky

And so the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine was sold for a cool £100 million to Paul Marshall, the main benefactor of hugely loss-making Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”). Former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil was first out the door, apparently voluntarily. He has now been followed by long-term editor Fraser Nelson, perhaps not voluntarily.

Out goes Fraser Nelson ...

The BBC has reported on Nelson not being sacked at all, to be succeeded by former failed politician and alleged journalist Michael “Oiky” Gove, telling its readers “Former government minister Michael Gove is to be the new editor of The Spectator, after the magazine was bought by hedge fund tycoon and GB News-backer Sir Paul Marshall”. We are reminded of Gove’s past.

“Mr Gove, who stepped down from Parliament at the general election, was a journalist before he became a Conservative MP”. And his appointment will be waved through. “He will start the job after final approval from Acoba, the advisory committee on business appointments which advises former ministers when they take jobs after leaving the government”.

There was more. “Mr Gove replaces Fraser Nelson [who] will continue to write for The Spectator and will become associate editor … Mr Nelson called Mr Gove ‘the clear successor’ to replace him … ‘He’s a first-class journalist who took a detour into politics and not (as so often happens) the other way around,’ he wrote”. And then came the Oh What A Giveaway moment.

“There's never a good time to leave a job like mine but, after 15 years and a new owner with big ambitions, there is an obvious time”. Which is code for I Got Sacked. New publisher Freddy Sayers let us know that "the magazine's non-executive Chairman would be Charles Moore, a former Spectator editor [who] would have ‘the specific brief of safeguarding editorial independence and the soul of the publication’”. His soul is indeed our soul.

Charles Moore will do Sweet Jack to get in the way of whatever direction the new owner chooses for the Speccy. Which brings us to the question of why Nelson - whose tenure as editor has been a financial success story, whatever one might think of the content - should be binned in favour of Gove.

... and in comes Oiky

Were I a betting man, the money would be going on the answer to that question being Scary Muslims™. But, one might ask, why? Nelson has published some serious Islamophobic bigotry over the years, from the likes of Doug Murray The K, Rod Liddle, Mark Steyn, and indeed the aforementioned Charles Moore. All this is true. But here, Gove is in a class of his own.

He is, after all, the author of Celsius 7/7, for which the Wiki entry notes “Although, according to [Damian] Thompson, Celsius 7/7 provides a useful analysis of Western 'appeasers' of militant Islam, by and large comparing the war on terror to a war against a totalitarian ideology is ‘misleading’, and even dangerous”. Author and critic William Dalrymple went rather further.

He “has attacked the book as a ‘confused epic of simplistic incomprehension’ and pointed out that contrary to claims on the book's jacket that Gove was an authority on Islamist terror, he had in fact never lived or travelled in any Islamic country, knew little about Islamic history or theology, and showed no sign of having met or talked to any Muslims”. So who would defend “Oiky”?

He was “vigorously defended” by none other than Melanie “not just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips, and Stephen “Vicky” Pollard, the latter serving with less than total distinction as editor of the Jewish Chronicle, which has managed to attract several defamation suits and even the annoyance of sham press regulator IPSO for its occasional relationship with accuracy.

All of which suggests very strongly that, although Nelson published plenty of Muslim bashing copy, it may not have been enough for Marshall. Also, Gove has acquired the attribute of Very Clever Person during his time in politics, whether that is justified, or, more likely, not. A Muslim basher with the backing of other Muslim bashers is more likely to be what the new owner wants.

So farewell then Fraser Nelson, fired for not being Islamophobic enough.

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Labour - Tone Deaf In The Bubble

The Labour leadership should not need reminding of the promise brought by all those poll leads, only to result in an apathetic electorate giving them half a million fewer votes than in 2019, and a percentage increase in vote share of a measly 1.6%. Thus the reality of the party that had been transformed from a supposed basket case into an all-conquering electoral machine.

Had it not been for Reform UK Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his pals eating into the Tory vote share, Keir Starmer’s magnificent landslide majority would have been rather more modest. But at Labour’s Conference, held this year in Liverpool, no such consideration was allowed to enter. Nor were the latest and not at all favourable poll numbers.

So, given that fewer voters chose New New Labour than Labour as led by Jeremy Corbyn, how would Starmer and his pals approach their first Conference since the General Election? What would a pragmatic, sensible and indeed listening party have done? What would a party supposedly of the left have done? What would Nietzsche have done?

Sadly, it soon became clear that it was not about thinking of the poor, of a new left-leaning tide raising all boats, of making the obscenely overmonied begin to pay their taxes. Instead it was about another obscenity, that of freeloading on an industrial scale, with Starmer as chief culprit, scoring supposedly free clothes, specs, and a private box over at The Arsenal.

Others were on the take, too, with the lamest of excuses proferred in response to questioning. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson had accepted “free” tickets to see Taylor Swift earlier this year, excusing herself with "It was a hard one to turn down ... one of my children was keen to go”. Fine. So open yer wallet. Pay for it yerself. For one obvious reason.

To paraphrase Milton Friedman, there is no such thing as free clothes, or indeed free specs, free boxes at The Arsenal, or free Taylor Swift tickets. Someone, somewhere, has to pay for them. And what Milt may not have said, but I will, is that there is inevitably a Quid Pro Quo: that someone, somewhere is not practising altruism here. The gifts are all about leverage later on.

And it’s no good pointing at disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and reminding us that, in the 2019 Parliament, he managed to rack up more than six million notes’ worth of supposed freebies. We know Bozo was irretrievably bent, but it’s not good enough to be a little less bent. Labour should not be bent at all.

Nor should it be intolerant of dissent: as Rachel Reeves was delivering her speech, one young man stood up and heckled her, calling out “Stop selling arms to Israel”. Again the tone-deaf response: “This is a changed Labour Party. A Labour Party that represents working people, not a party of protest”. If you won’t listen to those in the real world, protest is all they have.

The young man was dragged out of the auditorium, with obvious marks on his neck to show for his trouble. Labour MSP Richard Leonard mused “Grabbing this protester by the throat was an unnecessary and disproportionate use of force. When Walter Wolfgang was manhandled out of the conference hall in 2005, the Labour Party apologised to him. We should do the same now”.

Walter Wolfgang was from the left, Bevanite, tradition. Would New New Labour have even let him remain in the party? After all, they’ve managed to expel an awful lot of Jewish members in pursuit of allegedly tackling anti-Semitism. Added to all of that, our free and fearless press is on Labour’s case as never before. Because New New Labour gave them an excuse.

Jeremy Corbyn would never have accepted all those freebies; he still sits with the rest of those ordinary paying fans at The Arsenal. But, in the looking-glass world of New New Labour, he is The Bad Guy and Keir Starmer is The Good Guy. So why d’you think Labour’s poll numbers have dropped like a stone in a very deep pool? D’you think the freebies have something to do with it?

You might conclude that they most certainly do. I couldn’t possibly comment.

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Jewish Chronicle BUSTED

The old adage that something that looks too good be true probably is too good to be true may not have been in the thoughts of Jake Wallis Simons, currently editor of the Jewish Chronicle, when he made his fateful decision to publish several articles by Elon Perry. Much of their content was, it seems, what Wallis Simons wanted to hear. The problem was that it wasn’t true.

Jake Wallis Simons, a suitable candidate for resignation ...

As the BBC has reported, “The most contentious was a piece he wrote claiming a document showed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning to smuggle himself and some surviving Israeli hostages out of Gaza and to Iran, via the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land on the Gaza-Egypt border”.

There was more. “The article's claims appeared to be similar to talking points used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to justify the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) presence in the Philadelphi Corridor. The story was followed up by media in Israel, and later shared by Netanyahu's son. According to the Times of Israel, the IDF subsequently said it had no knowledge of such a document existing”. And then it got worse.

Long-serving columnists decided they had had enough. “Jonathan Freedland, Hadley Freeman and David Aaronovitch announced they were quitting their columns over what Freedland described as a ‘great disgrace’ at the London-based newspaper. It comes after the JC said it conducted a ‘thorough investigation’ into one of its freelance journalists, Elon Perry, ‘after allegations were made about aspects of his record’”. Press misbehaviour redux.

At which point it has to be pointed out that, for the JC, this is not a first offence. As Hamza Yusuf reminded us, “The Jewish Chronicle was found to have breached the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practise 33 times in 3 years”. IPSO was asked to open a standards investigation into the JC. They declined.

As Alan Rusbridger noted, “Lord Faulks said this was partly because the paper had new owners … Not that he or anyone else knew who they were”. He also pointed out “Robbie Gibb’s BBC declaration of interest form registers that he is still 100 per cent owner of the [JC] though he claims to have resigned this summer”. Gibb is still a member of the BBC board.

Freedland, Aaronovitch, and Ms Freeman, though, remained with the JC when the title libelled Marc Wadsworth, claiming “that he was involved in an initiative to track down Jewish Labour activists at their private addresses in order to intimidate, threaten or harass them into silence”. Wadsworth instructed Carter Ruck. So it was expensive. And the JC lost.

... and Robbie Gibb, likewise

Rapper Lowkey remembered “I did a Fire in the Booth on BBC Radio 1 in 2017 in which I used the words ‘cosa nostra.’ The Jewish Chronicle lied that I used the phrase ‘kosher nostra’ and then lobbied the BBC relentlessly on the issue. Eventually the JC withdrew the lie from the headline and article”.

The JC’s Islamophobia has also been blatantly obvious, a recent example being “Imagine Corbyn with around 12 million Muslim votes to play with - that’s Mélenchon”. And then we come to Wallis Simons’ time at the Mail, where he was Associate Global Editor. There, he libelled Lord Sheikh.

Headlined “Top Tory peer’s appearance at Corbyn’s ‘hate conference’ in Tunisia comes after years of rubbing shoulders with Islamists, hate preachers and Holocaust deniers”, the article ended up with Associated Newspapers having to make an apology in open court. And Wallis Simons is still at it.

Last year, he Tweeted “Palestinian Muslims launch Ramadan attack on Church of the Annunciation in Beit Jala near Bethlehem”. The story was not true: he deleted the Tweet soon afterwards. There should be no questioning the assertion that Wallis Simons must resign. Or that Robbie Gibb should do likewise from the BBC board. Meanwhile, it should be borne in mind that Wallis Simons was the Mail’s main man for kicking Jeremy Corbyn.

So how much of that copy was partially, or wholly, untrue and/or defamatory? The JC was also in the vanguard of smearing Corbyn, kicking off its campaign in no style at all by proclaiming the then Labour leader to be “Anti-Semitic and a racist”. Jezza was neither of those things, but the mud stuck, not least because, as we now know, a significant part of his own party was briefing against him in an effort, ultimately, to throw the 2019 election.

Maybe the Jewish Chronicle was for a time, but not for all time. One thing is for certain: its best chance of survival is without Jake Wallis Simons.

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Grenfell - Westminster’s Shame

“The simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable, and those who lived in the tower were badly failed, over a number of years, and in a number of different ways, by those who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupants”. Thus the words of Martin Moore-Bick, who chaired the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire. There was more.

“They include the Government, the tenant management organisation, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, those who manufactured and supplied materials used in the refurbishment, those who certified their suitability for use on high rise buildings, the architect, the principal contractor, and some of its sub-contractors”. 72 deaths, and every one avoidable.

Worse, deputy PM Angela Rayner has noted that “Of 4,630 buildings identified with dangerous cladding, 50% are in remediation works”. However, “only 29% have had the remediation completed”. Moreover, there is a “culture in this country where [tenants] are considered lesser people, and that's disgraceful”. So one might think the Government is taking this seriously.

But one would have thought wrong, if the scenes in Parliament immediately prior to Keir Starmer’s statement on Grenfell are anything to go by. This came after Prime Minister’s Questions; for this event, the Commons chamber is packed out. But then, after PMQs concluded, the Commons began to empty.

In fact, it was more of an exodus: scores, if not hundreds, of MPs from both sides of the House making themselves scarce before Starmer made his statement. Some commentators recoiled at this display of indifference, one of those being ITV political editor Robert Peston, who was simply aghast.

“I was genuinely a bit upset, actually, when I looked at the chamber. Actually, vast numbers of MPs simply left after Prime Minister’s Questions, that was not … I thought, for this statement, it would be bursting at the seams with MPs - it wasn’t. There were lots and lots of empty seats there, and I was quite shocked by that, actually. I mean, this was one of … Grenfell, for I think anybody … who’s not a child, was one of the defining moments in this country’s history, of the last thirty years”. He was not alone.

Over on BBC Newsnight, Vice-Chair of Grenfell United Karim Mussilhy told “The Prime Minister’s about to give [his statement] … you just see a flourish of bodies in Parliament heading out, leaving … that room was more than half empty. This is the culture we’re talking about. How are we supposed to get justice when they don’t even care”. Even some new MPs walked out.

Easily identifiable by his gait, his appearance, and indeed his walking stick, was Labour’s “spreadsheet overlord” Luke Akehurst. Those no longer welcome in a Labour Party where Akehurst and his pals wield power were reduced to making their voices heard from outside the Commons. One of their number was former MP Emma Dent Coad, who did not mince her words.

“What we want is very clear lines of accountability ... we need to know who is actually accountable, who made the decisions ... and who can be pinned down and charged. Most people, when I talk to them, they want to see people in jail”. But she’s a Rotten Leftie™, and they get the blame dumped on them.

As I noted at the time, the assembled idiocy of the Tory right blamed her, Sadiq Khan, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour councillors, and definitely not anyone who had anything to do with The Blue Team - people like Eric Pickles, who wanted the Grenfell Inquiry to know that he was a very busy man, and had had to work terribly hard to fit his visit to that inquiry into his diary.

Corbyn said in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire that it “should never have happened. Every single one of those deaths could and should have been avoided”. Now, the game playing faction of Labour’s NEC just walks out of the Commons before Starmer makes his statement on the inquiry. Anyone might think that they didn’t give a flying foxtrot about ordinary people.

Who is it MPs are supposed to represent? Looking at the Commons scenes, one might think some of them would have a problem answering that one.

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Israel Arms Row - Labour Clueless

Labour, now the party of Government, has had almost eleven months to formulate a coherent response to what the IDF is doing in Gaza, and increasingly, in the occupied West Bank. Instead, Keir Starmer has come over as yet another rabbit caught in the headlights, even agreeing that imposing collective punishment on the Palestinians was acceptable.

Yesterday, after months of mass gatherings in solidarity with the Palestinians, and knowing that Israel is likely to be committing genocide as it bombs, rockets, shells and snipes its way across Gaza, Foreign Secretary David Lammy at last declared that some export licenses for arms to Israel were being suspended, as it was suspected international law had been breached.

But 30 out of 350 licenses bing suspended won’t stop the IDF routinely blowing women and children to pieces, and summarily incinerating others, although it has induced a ridiculously overdramatic response. The increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph howled “Israel furious as UK ‘rewards Hamas’ by halting arms sales”. This is total drivel.

The real story here is that Labour is bereft of the ability to actually take action, on whatever front. This row comes hard on the heels of the economically illiterate claim that leaving pensioners with their winter fuel payment would have induced a run on Sterling. Economics is, surprise, surprise, not the only area where Labour is proving bereft of ideas, now that it’s in Government.

How have we come to this? To no surprise at all, the signs have been there for several months, if only anyone had focused on them, rather than looking where the new, shiny, centrist, low-risk, not even slightly left, honestly, Labour power brokers want them to look. Once again, our free and fearless press has been absent elsewhere, with broadcasters faring little better.

It is the Guardian, unswerving friend of Newest New Labour, that has provided the clues as to why the Government is so utterly clueless, in two fawning articles covering two leading figures in the party. First, master organiser Morgan McSweeney, and “his long crusade to expunge Corbynism from the Labour party”. We know what he’s against. But what is he for?

Make decisions? Er ... 

Whatever. Also, “He has shown little sentiment for those candidates and activists pushed aside in his pursuit of that aim”. We won, you lefties lost, tee hee hee, aren’t we brilliant? There was little difference in the profile of “Spreadsheet Shitlord” Luke Akehurst, “wrest[ing] control of the [NEC], conference agenda and [CLPs] from the Corbynite left”. We won. Hee hee!

During the General Election campaign, we saw what that meant. The Gaza cluelessness translated into independent candidates either frightening the crap out of Labour incumbents who thought they were home and hosed, or in some cases defeating them. And a paltry 33.7% of the popular vote.

The Guardian piece on McSweeney tells us a little as to why there is this vacuum in Government policy. “Starmer was earmarked as a prospect early on. At a Labour Together dinner for journalists shortly after the 2015 election, [Steve] Reed, Lisa Nandy, McSweeney and others were holding court when it became clear that a special guest was about to be introduced: Starmer. ‘It felt like he was the heir apparent. He was their best prospect and they had chosen him rather than the other way around,’ one source said”.

There is more. “McSweeney’s critics on the left say he and Starmer essentially came to positions of power through a mission to deceive Labour members, to ape the popular parts of Corbynism with 10 pledges they never intended to enact and then to wage a factional war”. And replace them with?

The result is that vacuum, an inability to actually respond to voters’ concerns, to Supermac’s “events, dear boy, events”. When Owen Jones said “The truth is the Labour Right haven't had any coherent ideas for a very long time, and they just used Starmer as their frontman”, he was right, and had the media looked in the right place, they would have seen it all coming.

But Maggie’s painting! Oasis tickets! Strictly! We have a governing party better at playing factional games than governing. And a useless media.

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Oh Tommy Tommy - Phantom Arrest

And so it came to pass that Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, called his faithful followers to London, where those able to stay the course without falling asleep and/or drifting off to the nearest source of LAWGAH, GINNIS or maybe SMOOV were given a screening of his latest attempt to portray himself as a journalist, a documentary called SILENCED.

However, and here we encounter a significantly-sized however, there was a problem with this magnum opus: there is a High Court injunction out there, banning his or indeed anyone else’s screening of this film. This may not be unconnected with Lennon, as he presents his talking points, talking well, but lying badly. Lying very badly indeed, in fact. And there is more.

The Great Man is due at a court hearing tomorrow in connection with his allegedly having committed Contempt of Court. Should this be considered proven, he is looking at a custodial sentence of up to two years. Over at Hope not Hate, Nick Lowles was in no doubt what the result would be.

“Tommy Robinson is currently screening the film Silenced in Trafalgar Square, just 48 hours before he appears in the High Court accused of breaking an injunction preventing him from releasing the film.. He’s heading to jail”. Which would be his fifth custodial sentence. In the meantime, his passport needs to be seized. Because he’s a nailed-on flight risk.

Lowles had more. “The Attorney General’s office have been made aware of Tommy Robinson screening a film he was banned from showing. Such a flagrant disregard for the law could well see him facing the maximum two-year sentence. Only himself to blame … Questions have to be asked of [the Metropolitan Police]. Did they know that Tommy Robinson was going to screen a film that contravened a High Court order? Why did officers stand by and allow a film, banned in the U.K., to be shown?”. Why indeed?

It’s possible that the cops made the judgment call on the basis that lifting Lennon yesterday may have resulted in significant unrest - because his followers, for whom The Great Man’s word is gospel truth and not a stream-of-consciousness pack of lies, would have kicked off. But now that they have all dispersed, the Rozzers have moved in and caused Lennon to be nicked.

Or so it seems: Stephen Yaxley Lennon has this morning been arrested. His Twitter feed says “We can confirm that Tommy Robinson has been detained by Police using powers afforded to them under the Terrorism Act 2000 … Tommy is being held by Police using counter terrorism legislation”.

But then came a problem: Lennon’s Twitter feed claimed he’d been nicked, but that of Urban Scoop, which promotes the message of Himself Personally Now, had said nothing. Worse, while our free and fearless press were reporting on the alleged arrest, they were hedging their bets.

Like Mail Online, who told “MailOnline has been unable to independently confirm that Robinson has been arrested … The Metropolitan Police has told MailOnline is 'does not recognise' the claims made in the post and that if he had been taken into custody there was 'no Met involvement’”. Even GB News added the caveat “according to his social media account".

And guess what? The Lennon Twitter feed has also told his followers “ADMIN POST - PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TO PRESSURE THE ATTORNEY GENERAL TO PUT A STOP TO THE POLITICAL PROSECUTION OF TOMMY ROBINSON. GO TO [truthontrial DOT co DOT uk]". What a coincidence - Lennon needs lots of signatures on his petition to the AG, Lennon gets arrested, Lennon’s useful idiots sign up in support.

But why would Lennon lie about getting nicked? Well, for starters, we don’t know if he has been lifted or not. But it’s another of those embarrassing chains of events. As Louise Raw, who you can tell as she’s a doctor, puts it, “what we call arrests, HE calls PAYDAYS!” The event to keep an eye out for is his hearing tomorrow. And what happens as a result of that hearing.

One thing you can believe about Stephen Lennon is not to believe him at all.

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Reform And The Phantom Menace

Hardly has the General Election result been reported and picked over, than suspicion has been aroused as regards some of the candidates who stood for Reform UK, the domain of self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his pals. It was put to his side-kick Richard Tice (he’s not very nice) that some Reform candidates may not even have existed.

This was put to Tice by Robert Peston on the latter’s ITV show, causing the Reform man to lose it in no style at all. “It is a total fabricated lie that is nothing short of defamatory, libellous and totally outrageous. We’ve proved it to people like [the Lib Dems] and the Guardian and still they print this utter trash and garbage. I’m steaming mad about it”. Steaming, Goon Show fans!

There was more. “To suggest that we put forward false names and candidates - one of whom was in hospital at the count with pneumonia, nearly died for heaven’s sake. People need to get a grip”. Tice’s problem was that people were indeed getting a grip - like those asking questions getting a very firm grip of the narrative. Peter Walker of the Guardian had a correction.

“Reform have *not* as yet provided details to prove the identities of some candidates. We emailed them yesterday at 11am with three names (not mentioned in the story) asking for evidence. We are yet to get a reply”. Meanwhile, the candidate who had “almost died” took just 96 hours from that moment to be videoed dancing around his kitchen.

Mark Matlock had used a clearly doctored photo, for which he made a variety of excuses - it had to be edited so his tie could appear to be in the Reform UK colours, or that the photographers had all been booked up. He then appeared with apprentice gobshite Patrick Christys on Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) to show he was a real person. However.

He looked nothing like the photo, and also appeared to have problems with his use of English. “Unfortunately I will not be attending the count tonight as I have pneumonia. The hospital I visited was closed before it’s [sic] closing time. I said to the nurse on a buzzer I am struggling to breath [sic] and she said call a number”. 96 hours later and he’s bopping around his house.

They seek them here, they seek them there, they seek Reform UK candidates everywhere

And on the subject of defamation, Peter Jukes of Byline Times noted "While Tice rages about ‘defamation’ he should remember Farage admitted there was no proper vetting of the candidates, and this is a matter of high public interest (and therefore has a public interest defence) given Reform are seeking public ‘short money’ dependent on votes cast”. Quite.

Furthermore, Byline Times had discovered more Reform UK candidates who were absent elsewhere when their counts happened. “Now Mark Matlock has been verified (with quite an amazing recovery from the pneumonia that kept him away from the count) we have at least 30 other Reform candidates who have not been identified or have other potential issues with their declaration”.

There was more. “Overnight the number of unverified candidates with no official photo or presence at the count has risen to 50. At best, these may be ‘paper candidates’ - but it is still bizarre that they require no photo ID or verification, unlike voters”. We have also seen one reliable right-wing shill site trying to put journalists off asking all those inconvenient questions.

The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog told anyone not yet asleep “Some dark corners of the sanctimonious left’s presence on Twitter have been frantically trying to come to terms with the fact that Reform did so well at the election. Their chosen conspiracy? That Reform’s ‘paper candidates’ in unwinnable seats aren’t real people at all”.

So that’s an admission that Reform UK fielded “paper candidates”. Spend a few thousand notes on online ads, and add the rest of the £55,000 per candidate spending allowance to the pot for pushes in winnable seats. Not illegal. But if any of those candidates aren’t even “paper candidates”, that’s different. And the Fawkes folks don’t want anyone going there.

All of which means investigations will continue. Questions, questions, eh?

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