Katie Hopkins IS An Apology

Yesterday’s meeting of our not at all unelected Prime Minister with Combover Crybaby Donald Trump was just as toe-curlingly embarrassing as could have been imagined: Trump insisted on taking Theresa May by the hand, the PM clearly ill at ease in the company of an ocean-going creep, an appallingly vain, ignorant and intolerant being, a master of sexual molestation. But for the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre and his obedient hackery at the Daily Mail, it had all gone wonderfully.

Viewers may want to look away now

All, that is, except for BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, who, no longer distracted by domestic politics, took her opportunity to question The Donald in both hands and did her job - holding him to account. No-one should have had a problem with that. Trump did: Ms Kuenssberg was insufficiently idolatrous, she had questioned the wisdom of The Donald, and to make it worse, she was a mere woman. Trump was not best pleased.

But for the Mail, this was manna from heaven: an ideal opportunity to put the boot in on the hated BBC. “Challenged about his controversial views on torture, Russia, stopping Muslims entering the US and punishment for torture by Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Trump joked to Mrs May: 'This was your choice of a question? There goes that relationship!’ … Ms Kuenssberg's loaded question was met with a mixed response by viewers, with some calling it ‘offensive’" told the Mail Online report. And there was more.

The baton was then picked up by pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins, who proclaimed “Even Laura, the little killjoy from the BBC, couldn't ruin Donald and Theresa's DC love-in. Now I can't wait for the return visit - let the hating commence!” In the looking-glass world of the far right, anyone who does not share their opinions is a “hater”.

So far, so intellectually deficient, but it soon got worse: “the BBC's political correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg WAS there to ask a question having apparently been nominated by the PM's press team to ask the first question. What were they thinking … Squealing like a true liberal she did her best to rip apart all Theresa May's good work thus far”. Do go on.

“Throwing in pretty much every insult anyone had ever levelled at the Donald, she said Trump had 'alarming beliefs' and many people in Britain were worried about his role as leader of America and the Free World; she asked how he could reassure the people of Britain”. There were, unlike a Katie Hopkins column, no insults.

Laura Kuenssberg

You think I jest? Here it comes: “my toes curled in shame that she was the voice of Britain on the world stage … The only consolation was that she did not have an English accent. Actually, Laura, you little Scottish twerp, many of us are delighted about this presidency and need no reassurance at all. In fact, I would suggest we will need more than reassurance to pay our licence fee next year. At least North Korea gets its propaganda for free”. Anyone she doesn’t like is “little”. She’s borrowed Piers Morgan’s nervous tic.

But she wasn’t finished: “Luckily Donald made a gentlemanly joke of out of it”. First name terms already! “I can only hope Trump refuses the BBC any press passes or Security Clearance for his visit here. And bans Kuenssberg from his presence”. Won’t be down to him. It’s us he’s visiting. And it won’t be down to motormouth Katie, either.

Not that she’s about to listen to that: Ms Hopkins is clearly away with the fairies - hence telling her readers that Trump is “To accept a state visit to meet the Queen and to keep speaking up for the forgotten, hardworking people who want the very best for the country”.

The only people The Donald will speak up for are the rich and greedy, plus of course Himself Personally Now. The kinds of people that Katie Hopkins aspires to be, but never will. That, though, does not stop her from grovelling in any way she can find - like pretending to speak for Britain as she Tweets “On behalf of a place called the 'rest of the UK'...I apologise for @bbclaurak”. As if anyone who matters cares what she thinks.

Katie Hopkins IS an apology. An apology for a pundit, an apology for a journalist, an apology for a political analyst, an apology for someone able to engage brain before mouth, and above all, an apology for a human being. But she has performed one useful function: to confirm that on this occasion, Laura Kuenssberg was right.

Paul Nuttall - Waterboarding Volunteer

A subject that is back in the news, if only because Combover Crybaby Donald Trump claims to favour its reintroduction, is that of what are euphemistically called “Enhanced interrogation techniques”, or as most other people call them, torture. The form of torture that the new incumbent of the White House particularly favours is waterboarding. And so his admirers in the UK would like to see it reintroduced, too.

Ullo Don, gorra new waterboard?

Prominent among those admirers is UKIP’s leader, comedy politician Pauil Nuttall, who has taken time off from gracing the portals of the Athenaeum Club in London’s fashionable Pall Mall to pretend he is a man of the people in order to try and con his way to victory in the Stoke on Trent Central by-election. The “Bad Bootle Meff” wants to follow the example of his predecessor Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, and suck up to The Donald.

So when he was quizzed about waterboarding while pretending to be on the campaign trail yesterday, he decided that torture was fine. As Politics Home has told, “Mr Nuttall, who is standing as his party’s candidate in the Stoke Central by-election, told Sky News that he would ‘probably be OK’ with using the method in a bid to foil terror plots in Britain … He said: ‘I think sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, and I think these people are incarcerated because they are bad people … And they want to do us harm’”.

Nuttall went on “If someone admits that a terrorist attack is going to happen and saves the lives of innocent individuals then I think maybe it's a price worth paying … if a British government was elected and said it was required to ensure it saved innocent people's lives then sometimes you have to go that extra mile”.

There is only one problem with this approach - it has been banned in the UK, our armed forces and intelligence agencies are prohibited from indulging in the practice, and accepting intelligence that has been gained that way is illegal. Theresa May, Boris Johnson and David Davis have all been quizzed on the subject this week, and all have passed severely adverse comment on the idea that it might be revived.

But Nuttall is happy with the use of waterboarding, and equally happy to have others subjected to it. So I’m sure he’ll be happy to follow the example of the late Christopher Hitchens and experience the technique himself. After all, if he’s going to speak with any authority about how he’d be happy to inflict it on others, it’s the least he could do.

Back in 2008, Hitchens volunteered to be waterboarded. The title of his Vanity Fair article describing the experience tells you all you need to know about it: “Believe Me, It’s Torture”. Waterboarding is not merely a term for glib politicians to throw around like so much confetti: it is the simulation of drowning. To be subjected to such a technique could, and often does, prove fatal. It is utterly inhumane. It almost guarantees answers to questions: the only problem is that they are unlikely to be of any use.

But Paul Nuttall is OK with inflicting simulated drowning on others. So let’s see him follow in Christopher Hitchens’ footsteps. OK by you, Paul? No, thought not.

Tinker Tailor Traitor Trump

The concept of moles within a country’s intelligence services is well-known: it was the subject of John le Carré’s seminal Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Indeed, the technique of source-betrayal-by-stalling-for-time used by the mole within MI6 was the same ploy used on at least one occasion by Kim Philby. But the idea of it being the USA having its intelligence capability thus compromised is a new one.

But that is the inescapable conclusion from the latest insight out of Talking Points Memo, which tells “a top Russian spy who is the number two person in the FSB department which allegedly oversaw the US election hacking operation had been arrested and charged with treason … Well, now we have reports that Sergei Mikhailov is suspected of being a US asset at the heart of Russian intelligence”. We have a mole, Jim.

TPM added this from the Moscow Times: “According to the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the FSB believes Sergei Mikhailov tipped off U.S. officials to information about Vladimir Fomenko and his server rental company ‘King Servers,’ which the American cybersecurity company ThreatConnect identified last September as ‘an information nexus’ that was used by hackers suspected of working for Russian state security in cyberattacks”.

And then comes the thought that it may be rather more serious than “We have a mole, Jim”: “if Mikhailov was a US asset, how was he compromised? Did the information put out by US intelligence somehow lead to his exposure? Without putting too fine a point on it, a number of close advisors to President Trump are being scrutinized for ties to Russia. Some of them participated in the intelligence briefings the President receives”.

We have a mole. Bad sadly we do not have George Smiley

Before anyone claims that TPM has added two and two and got an answer rather larger than four, let’s stop and think for a moment. If Mikhailov had been a US mole working within the FSB (the successor organisation to the KGB), he would not just have appeared there overnight. Moles, by their very nature, burrow themselves deep into enemy security networks. The process takes years, rather than months and days.

If Mikhailov was indeed a US mole, he would have been there for years. And for almost all of that time, he remained free of compromise, not betrayed by anyone. Then along comes the Combover Crybaby Donald Trump and his entourage, already rumoured to be potentially compromised by its Russian connections. And within a matter of weeks, Mikhailov is unmasked, undone, and facing prison - or even the death penalty.

TPM also tells of the Moscow Times piece “The article goes on to say that four others have been arrested in connection to the treason case against Mikhailov”. So he may have established a network of contacts, which the Russians now appear to be rolling up. And just remember, this has all happened since Trump, thought by many to be the real-life Manchurian Candidate, fetched up with his pals at intelligence briefings.

When TPM asks “Do we have a very big problem?” the answer, on the basis of what my Occam’s Razor is telling me, is Yes We Do. And if the US’ intelligence agencies want to prevent it happening again, they have one very obvious course of action.

Private Eye And Daniel Morgan

The still unsolved murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan, which took place almost 30 years ago, has recently received an increasing amount of publicity, not least via the top-rated Untold Murder podcast. But now Private Eye magazine has also taken up the case, which at first seemed like A Very Good Thing - until Master Emmanuel Strobes and his team declined to publish a letter correcting their copy.

Daniel Morgan - case still unsolved

The Eye ran an item titled “Judge Dread” in Issue 1433, which pins the blame for the 2011 collapse of the trial of those suspected of involvement in the murder on former Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook, telling readers “Eye readers may recall how the resulting prosecution collapsed in 2011, in large part because of Cook’s repeated mishandling of key supergrass witnesses. He had apparently ignored warnings from his boss, Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates, to stop all undocumented contact with them”.

Note use of the tell-tale “apparently”. This was too much for the Untold Murder team, who put the Eye straight by correcting what they called “three widespread myths about the collapse of the trial of the five murder suspects in March 2011”. These were:

“1 The Supergrass Gary Eaton was dropped as a witness in February 2010 because a ‘sterile corridor’ had not been maintained between the debrief team and the murder squad. This obviously did not collapse the trial as hearing continued for another 13 months.

2 There is no evidence of DAC John Yates warning DCS Cook about contact with the Supergrass. Cook warned Yates that Eaton was constantly calling him.

3 The trial collapsed not because boxes of evidence were withheld by the investigation team from the defence. The trial collapsed because cleaners in an old Met building found boxes of evidence from a completely different department, the DPS, that they had abandoned and forgotten years before. On discovery, the defence was immediately notified. In total, there were over a million documents involved in the trial, covering five investigations over 25 years.”

The Eye might have taken issue with one or more of those points, but the magazine is well-known for allowing those of dissenting view to have their say in the letters column. On this occasion, though, it declined to publish the letter containing those three points.

Why that should be has not yet been adequately explained. But the effect of maintaining the line established by the article in Eye 1433 can be put plainly: it has been to suggest wrongdoing on the part of former DCS Cook, at a time when it is in the interests of one party to the Daniel Morgan case to be able to shout “look over there”.

And that party is none other than Daniel Morgan’s former business partner Jonathan Rees. As the Guardian has reported (as so often, very little of the press establishment will touch this story), “Rees and three other men charged at the time are suing the Metropolitan police, alleging officers were so determined to get them that its pursuit was malicious”. The problem in their doing so is that their status as prime suspects gets aired.

So the Guardian report also tells, “The alleged conspirators in the unsolved murder of Daniel Morgan have been named in court … The high court heard allegations from lawyers acting for the Metropolitan police that Glenn Vian struck two fatal blows with the axe having been paid to carry out the killing by Jonathan Rees”.

Why would Rees have his business partner murdered? Well, Daniel Morgan was believed to be on the verge of exposing Police corruption, and “Rees carried out extensive work as an private eye for the News of the World, and earned up to £150,000 a year for the tabloid by providing it with information and stories, despite claims of him having links to police officers suspected of corruption”. That nice little earner would have been finished.

Instead of that corruption being exposed, in the wake of the killing, it ensured that inquiries into the case were perpetually stymied by the intervention of a succession of bent and inept coppers. Former DCS Cook was leading an effort to get the case cracked, and to court. Former DAC Yates, on the other hand, became known mainly for having to leave the Met as a result of his behaviour over the phone hacking scandal.

The Eye’s source for its article, whomsoever he be, knows full well that Rees has previously confessed to targeting Cook. It looks for all the world that not only is he doing it again, but that someone who should know better is aiding and abetting him.

There will be more Untold Murder podcasts later in the year. There will also be more posts on Zelo Street covering the Daniel Morgan murder and its aftermath. Stay tuned.

Popbitch PWNS Piers Morgan

The fall-out from Good Morning Britain host Piers Morgan’s meltdown at finding that Ewan McGregor - that would be A Real Star, as opposed to just another of those clever people who talk loudly in restaurants - did not want to share the sofa with him has continued, to the point where Morgan’s pals in The Old Media have decided - purely by coincidence, you understand - to rally round and defend his allegedly principled stance.

A clever person who talks loudly in restaurants

Strangely, most of the defending being done on Morgan’s behalf consists not of telling the world what a great bloke he is, but attacking McGregor. Typical of the genre has been the deeply unpleasant and disgraced former Sun editor Kelvin McFilth, who has today told his readers “If Ewan McGregor is so moral why did he work for paedo director Roman Polanski?” Yes, Kel is taking a highly moral tone over the issue.

A real star

Quite how the person who dropped the Sun in the mire over Hillsborough, and who left a litany of defamation, racism, misogyny, and other minor forms of intolerance and bigotry as his legacy to journalism, gets to occupy the moral high ground is an interesting one. But Kel is not alone: Eamonn Holmes, the allegedly slimline radio and TV host, has also weighed in - as noted by the Sun’s Bizarre column.

A bellend

Adding his contribution to the established part of the Old Media has come one of its sadder wannabes, the loathsome Toby Young, who has told “Why my sympathies are with @piersmorgan in his spat with @mcgregor_ewan … What is it about left-wing virtue signallers like @mcGreggor_ewan that's so irritating? My latest @Spectator column”. It’s certainly irritating when you can’t get someone’s Twitter handle straight.

Tobes has no room to talk about virtue signalling, having done little else since he went on his crusade to tell the world how crap state schools were, and only the intervention in the sector by Himself Personally Now, bankrolled by well north of £20 million of taxpayer funds, could save the day. In any case, all this support has been no use at all.

That is because, in the latest Popbitch email, under the heading “Piers review … Shepharding star guests”, it has been revealed that Ewan McGregor was not alone in concluding that he did not wish to be interviewed by Breakfast TV’s most shameless self-promotion artist. Morgan and his fans may want to Look Away Now.

“If you enjoyed Piers Morgan filling his nappy to the brim when Ewan McGregor declined to appear on Good Morning Britain earlier this week, just wait until he finds out that talent bookers for GMB have been having exactly this same sort of discussion with celebrity star guests for months now … Bookers have literally been asking agents directly if they mind their clients appearing on air with Piers and will try, wherever possible, to move guests over to a morning when Ben Shephard is hosting instead”.

I WONDER WHY SHE MIGHT NOT BE KEEN

Truth be told, it’s not just about Piers Morgan’s views on Women’s Marches, celebrities who won’t give him the time of day, or the kinds of questions he might ask during interviews. It’s about someone who wants to make the whole shebang about Himself, constantly push the idea that he’s a star, turn the exercise into a great big festival of self-promotion. Ewan McGregor’s mistake was not to be available on Thursday or Friday.

I look forward to seeing Morgan and his pals’ response to Popbitch. If there is one.

Canary Out Of Tune AGAIN

[Update at end of post]

Corbyn-backing website The Canary has been the butt of jokes from right-wingers and the more mainstream media of late for its more than occasional over-egging of the pudding, but here on Zelo Street such sources are treated strictly on their merits, as is their hero Jezza. When others slag them off on the flimsiest of pretexts, they get called out. But when they get it wrong themselves, they get called out too.

It is not giving away any trade secrets to tell that The Canary is prepared to stand behind the current Labour leader whether his performance is good, bad or indifferent. Thus when Jezza had a bad PMQs yesterday - something that does not happen often nowadays - they were first out of the traps telling readers how he had bossed Theresa May. He hadn’t. Likewise there has been a staunch defence of Jezza on the Article 50 debate.

“Did you get duped by The Guardian’s ‘three-line’ Brexit farce?” asked The Canary last Friday, claiming “On 19 January, The Guardian reported that Jeremy Corbyn had ‘signalled’ he would impose a three-line whip on his MP … But the problem is that neither Corbyn nor his team have spoken of imposing a three-line whip … The fact that Corbyn’s team has not yet issued a statement does not give The Guardian the right to make up their minds for them”. So the Guardian had been wrong, had it?

Well, maybe not: today, in its coverage of Labour’s Article 50 controversy, and under the heading “What Corbyn said about a 3-line whip”, the Guardian tells “Jeremy Corbyn recorded a short clip for Sky News about the article 50 bill. Asked if the party would impose a three-line whip telling its MPs to vote for the bill, he at first replied ‘It will be a clear decision that we want all of our MPs to support the article 50 vote when it comes up next week’ … Then, when pressed on the question of whether it would be a three-line whip, he went on ‘It’s clearly a three-line whip’”. So the Guardian had not been wrong, after all.

This makes The Canary’s conclusion in its Guardian bashing article that much more telling: “The Guardian can be a superb and informative news source. But that cannot excuse journalism which plays fast and loose with the truth. We need news sources like The Guardian which do great investigative work. But every time they do something like this, their readers lose a little bit more faith in them”. You don’t say.

What is far more pressing right now for the Labour leadership than how the Guardian might have worded a headline is the potential revolt among the party’s front bench over whipping the Article 50 vote. Clive Lewis and Tulip Siddiq are said to be considering voting against, and may therefore have to resign their front bench positions.

There may be others following that lead. On top of that, some Corbyn supporters are dismayed at his stance on the issue. George Monbiot has concluded “I was thrilled when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, but it has been one fiasco after another. I have now lost all faith”, while Andrew Bowie has concurred: “This makes no sense, and I am a Corbyn supporter. Equivalent to voting to be tax haven”.

And Ian Dunt of Politics.co.uk has put it bluntly: “Corbyn's Brexit policy, from demanding A50 was triggered on June 24 to whipping it today, has been a triumph of monumental stupidity”. The Canary, though, is arguing the toss over a headline that turned out not to be wrong. One has to wonder if and when they will get their priorities in order.

[UPDATE 1800 hours: as the BBC is now reporting, Tulip Siddiq has indeed resigned from the Labour front bench. Bit more significant than arguing over Guardian headlines, eh?]

Theresa May’s Trump Delusion

Our not at all unelected Prime Minister is off on her travels once more, this time to the USA where tomorrow she will meet the Combover Crybaby Donald Trump, a meeting at which many observers who dislike both of them would still like to be the proverbial flies on the wall. As befits the occasion, the right-leaning part of the Fourth Estate has talked up the meeting, oblivious to the very real prospect that it will serve no useful purpose.

Theresa May has staked the house on showing that she alone can leverage meetings like this to improve Britain’s standing in the world, that pressing on with leaving the EU is nothing to be afraid of, and that no tainting of her reputation will take place merely because The Donald is suggesting the USA might bring back torture, exclude visitors who might be followers of The Prophet, and is still regarded as an ocean-going sex pest.

Many in the press are not troubled by this, with the Murdoch Times being particularly keen to tell “Bullish May tells Trump they can lead the world”. There would, it has to be conceded, be the advantage of stroking Trump’s vanity with such an approach. Even the Guardian is happily proclaiming “May on US mission to seek special deal with President”. At least the i has cautioned “May’s tricky trip to the US”.

The BBC has confined itself to the more prosaic detail: “Theresa May is to vow to renew the UK's special relationship with the US ‘for this new age’ as she prepares to meet Donald Trump for the first time … Mrs May has said her goal is to build on the historic relationship between the two nations, underpinned by their shared values and common interests”. There will be straight talking, we are promised.

But then, what does Trump need to give the UK? We hear that he is an Anglophile, as his mother was Scottish, but he has already prioritised renegotiating NAFTA. Under this Presidency, the USA is set to become both protectionist and isolationist. He tells anyone who will listen that we will be at the front of the line for a trade deal, but he won’t be negotiating it, and nor will he care what it contains.

Let’s put this plainly: Donald Trump is not only a deeply unpleasant man, but a deeply ignorant one. His fans say his ability to do deals will be the key to a successful Presidency - yet many of the deals he has made in the past have resulted in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He spends much of his time alone, watching the TV, and all too often believing what he is served up by Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

In this he resembles not a great and successful businessman, but a latter-day Chauncey Gardiner, an empty being spewing out simplistic platitudes which the easily led - and the less principled shysters with whom he has surrounded himself - interpret as the product of great wisdom, patriotism, business acumen, and a new and original take on today’s realpolitik. Those shysters will decide what he gives Theresa May.

And then it will all have to pass Congress, which might look rather different after the next mid-term elections. Once again, our Prime Minister’s magical ability is being talked up, but with no rational expectation of success. Trump will not be our post-Brexit magic bullet.

Rod Liddle - Racist Hypocrite

As if we haven’t had enough coded racism aimed at campaigner Gina Miller from those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet, the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun have summoned Rod Liddle, the saddest of has-beens, to indulge in not just the more straightforward kind, but mix it up with a little blatant hypocrisy, just to give all those hard-working Sun readers a little variety.

I've only had one glash, honeshtly

His predictably tedious column starts, well, predictably, telling “It’s time for Remainers to accept it doesn’t matter who tries to block Brexit next… they’ll never win … The Supreme Court may have sided with Gina Miller and against the will of the people, but Article 50 will still be triggered and the UK will leave the EU”. On the question of an unelected Prime Minister by-passing Parliament, the “will of the people” is thus far unknown. But hey ho.

Liddle, never one to duck the chance to patronise his audience, isn’t interested in mere reality, and simply doubles down. “WHAT a surprise, huh? Their eminent lordships of the Supreme Court have voted against the democratic will of the people”. Wrong. The Justices of the Supreme Court were asked, as were those at the High Court before them, to interpret the law. This they have done. I suspect Sun readers can grasp that one.

Still, details, eh? Do go on. “Eleven of their gilded, ageing eminences heard the case at enormous public cost - and the result was eight to three”. So says a gilded and ageing pundit well past his shelf life. Then, after telling his readers that they probably all voted Remain (no citation), Liddle overreaches himself: “So, eight very well-orf white judges can thwart the will of more than half the country”. “White judges”.

That’s staggering hypocrisy from a pundit whose contribution to diversity is not unadjacent to zero, and who tinged his column with just a little Islamophobia today, as witness “Iraqi soldiers have been filmed torturing IS fighters … What lovely, lovely, people they all are. With such a respect for human life and a sense of moral decency”. Does the name Abu Ghraib ring a bell, Rod? But he’s not done with brown and black people yet.

Liddle turns his attention to gun violence in Chicago: “It’s also reported that four of every five victims are black people. But the horrible campaigners Black Lives Matter only care when it’s white cops killing black people”. Got a statement from BLM, did you? No, thought not. Perhaps it’s because they’re “horrible”, instead of being concerned about the way that white people don’t consider the deaths of black people to be so important.

And the not-really-racism continues: “WELL done to the Birmingham school which has banned a four-year-old Muslim girl from wearing a headscarf … some local Muslims are getting arsey. They say it contravenes equality laws … Good. I hope it does. Then we can get rid of those laws, too”. Then the column shows not a woman, or a child, wearing a headscarf, but a full veil - not that he wants to give readers a false impression.

But he does want them to know that he’s all in favour of turning the clocks back to the days when it was legal - and, sadly, acceptable - for landlords to openly advertise “No blacks, no Irish”. Yes folks, this is the pundit who sneers that the Supreme Court is too white - then puts the boot into, er, people who are not white.

Rod Liddle is not just a racist bigot, but a hypocrite with it. No surprise there, then.

Guido Fawked - Piers Morgan U-Turn

As I noted back in 2014, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog had, by throwing a tenth anniversary celebration for Themselves Personally Now, demonstrated that they had become part of the establishment they claimed to despise, no longer able to go after its members for fear of having their sources of funding summarily cut off. That establishment included most of the press.

At the time, Staines was still prepared to bluster that he and his pals were ready and willing to kick over the odd table to show they were still strong, but over time, fewer and fewer people believed him. One who knows The Great Guido is all wind and piss is former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan.

Back in 2011, as the phone hacking scandal was being burst open by the efforts of Nick Davies and his colleagues at the Guardian, the Fawkes blog was trying to take the heat off the Murdoch goons at the Screws by suggesting not only that Morgan had been an active participant in hacking, but that his team would find the evidence and hand it to the Police. “I’ve taken cabinet ministers down, Downing Street’s toughest operators, they were smart people. Not boastful idiots like you” ranted Staines at Morgan. It didn’t work.

The Fawkes rabble tried to pin the Sven’n’Ulrika-ka-ka-ka hacking on Morgan and the Mirror. They could not have been more wrong. They then turned to the Paul McCartney voicemail left on then wife Heather Mills’ voicemail. Morgan didn’t do that, either - and they got the dates wrong. Part of their evidence, courtesy of (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch, was undermined when she retracted her claims about Morgan.

Still, on they ploughed, telling anyone who would listen “We’re taking our evidence to the Metropolitan Police”. As I said at the time, they should have gone right ahead, as the Met needed something at that point to give them a good laugh.

Eventually, the CPS put the lid on The Great Guido’s conspiracy theory when it declined to take any further action against Morgan. But Staines and his pals were still people of the highest principle, weren’t they? Er, no they weren’t, and no they aren’t: yesterday, missed by many as Morgan was drawing attention to himself over his attempts to turn Ewan McGregor’s no-show on Good Morning Britain into more publicity for Himself Personally Now, the Fawkes blog was completing a 180 degree U-Turn.

It seems like only yesterday

Putting out a post titled “‘Feminist’ Ewan McGregor Defended Child Rapist Polanski”, The Great Guido echoed the main theme of Morgan’s Mail Online meltdown which was published at about the same time. Morgan even Re-Tweeted the Fawkes folks to his legions of followers. Once more, “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which”. Paul Staines and his pals wanted to have Morgan nicked. Now they praise him.

Thus another example of a craven, grovelling establishment sellout: The Great Guido has gone from wanting to hold the rich and powerful to account to becoming a simpering fanboy, hoping they will throw him a biscuit. Another fine mess, once again.

UKIP Boosting Stoke Poll BUSTED

The Europhobic part of the Fourth Estate has entered the rapture today over the news that Labour is apparently set to lose the Stoke on Trent Central by-election to UKIP, and by a double-digit margin. This is, of course, proof that Paul Nuttall, the Kippers’ new leader, is actually a credible political figure, and not a flip-flopping, unprincipled, dishonest, fantasist loudmouth with a seriously dodgy political past.

Ullo Stoke people, gorra new motor?

One look at the “Bad Bootle Meff” and his recent less than stellar media performances, together with the EU fraud unit being hot on the heels of his expense claims, should have caused the press pack to stop and think. But stopping and thinking is not part of the modern tabloid lexicon, and so they have not. Typical of the frankly hysterical reaction has been the contribution of the Murdoch mafiosi at the Sun.

“STOKED FOR VICTORY Ukip’s Paul Nuttall predicted to trounce Labour and win Tristram Hunt’s Stoke Central seat by TEN points … Labour is on course to come second on 25 per cent - despite Hunt's large majority - and the Tories third on 10 per cent” screams the headline, going on to tell “Brexit-backing campaign group Labour Leave said it believe UKIP would take the seat with 35 per cent of the vote”.

Er, how does a “belief” translate into a credible opinion poll? The Express seems to have the answer as it triumphantly announces “ANOTHER POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE: Ukip leader on track to EASILY win Stoke by-election … A NEW poll has revealed that Ukip leader Paul Nuttall is on track to easily win the Stoke Central by-election and cause a political earthquake”. Ah, so there is an opinion poll.

So who carried it out? “According to the poll 30 per cent of the Stoke Central voters who indicated ‘Don’t Know’ for the upcoming byelection previously voted Labour while 10 per cent voted UKIP and 46 per cent for the Lib Dems … Meanwhile 81 per cent who intend to vote Ukip are former Labour voters … The results have been taken by leading Brexiteers in Labour to call on the party to stop dithering over Article 50 and pick a pro-Brexit candidate in Stoke”. We don’t get to find that out.

That no reputable polling organisation has been cited, along with the marginally inconvenient fact that Labour is yet to choose its candidate, should have been other reasons for the press pack to stop and think. But the ever-reliable Mike Smithson at Political Betting has the most likely answer. And it’s not a good one for the Sun and Express.

“How the Express is reporting the Stoke central ‘poll’ which wasn't. I'm told it was Facebook survey of 179 people”. The sample size, and the fact that the poll by its nature would have been self-selecting and therefore open to abuse, means it should never have been even considered by the press. But such was the desperation of Labour Leave, and the Europhobic press to hear news that fitted their agenda, that they went ahead anyway.

This is how Fake News gets a foothold in the UK - because the established press spews out so much of it already. Murdoch and Desmond goons duly busted.

Sarah Vine Gina Miller Hypocrisy

The legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre and his obedient hackery at the Daily Mail have reacted to yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in the only way they know how: petulant tantrums and mean-spirited hatchet jobs. Thus it is that Daily Mail Comment, the authentic voice of the Vagina Monologue, proclaims that “This was not a good day for democracy”. The upholding of a democratically elected body’s supremacy. Yeah, right.

Sarah Vine ... unprincipled hypocrite

But this is as nothing when put alongside the attacks on Gina Miller, whose legal challenge against the Government’s attempt to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty using the Royal Prerogative and thereby sidelining Parliament led to High Court and then Supreme Court rulings which incurred Dacre’s displeasure. “The Daily Mail leads the way in Brexit bile” opined the Guardian’s Jane Martinson. She did not have to wait long for the proof.

First has come a sneering attack piece by Ruth Sunderland headlined “What's the truth about Gina Miller? A loss-making company. False claims about a law degree. And critics who say she's a shameless self-publicist”. And then, demonstrating the Dacre doggies’ total lack of self-awareness, comes a hit job from … Sarah Vine.

Mrs Michael “Oiky” Gove is the epitome of shameless self-publicity, and she has not disappointed. “Gina's no martyr: She's a pushy Posh Mum” she trills, not telling Mail readers that Sarah Vine is the archetypal pushy posh mum. But she does know how to smear her targets: “She is almost Mitford sisters-like in her ability to misunderstand and patronise ordinary citizens [Ooh Nazi reference!]. To her, only the hopelessly non-U would vote to leave the EU, as Nancy Mitford might have put it [and another!.

“She just doesn’t get it … She has no concept of what life is like for those who have not thrived under the yoke of Brussels” says someone who has no concept of what life is like for ordinary people (Ms Vine insists on driving everywhere in London. Not for her the slumming it on public transport. And you can forget the idea of cycling).

Gina Miller ... principled campaigner

But on she drones: “Nor, quite frankly, is she telling the truth when she claims her case is about ‘process, not politics’ … In fact, that statement confirms how little regard she has for the intelligence of Leave voters”. Sarah Vine can go one better than that - she has no regard for any voters, Leave, Remain or undecided. That’s how her husband shamelessly got to claim for a £7,000 kitchen for their London home.

How? “Oiky” had been “flipping” his main residence to take advantage of the then Parliamentary expenses régime. But he then had to pay the £7,000 back. And now his wife is lecturing Gina Miller, who hasn’t sponged off the taxpayer, on regard for voters.

And she’s not finished yet: “It’s hard to imagine a case that’s been more about politics than this one, about the attempt by those who see power and privilege as their entitlement to wrestle it back from those who have dared to exercise the only real power they have: a democratic vote”. Power and privilege, eh? Let’s just check that one out.

This is Sarah Vine recalling her wedding day: “Sixty or so of our good friends gamely schlepped to the South of France for a knees-up. There was George Osborne chatting to, of all people, feminist author Caitlin Moran, and Ed Vaizey, now the longest-serving-ever culture minister, delivering his brilliant best man speech … And Samantha Cameron, radiant and pregnant with her first child; she and David laughing on the coach back from the church”. Power and privilege as an entitlement? She’s got it.

And that’s before the six-figure salary she gets from the Mail for her weekly drivelfest. And the six-figure retainer paid to Gove by the Murdoch mafiosi, to whose ranks he has returned after Theresa May rightly dispensed with his services as a minister. And his MP’s salary. And the MP’s pension that will come later. And the expenses that he still claims.

Sarah Vine is the worst kind of stinking hypocrite. So no change there, then.

Piers Morgan - Bang Out Of Order

Fresh from causing embarrassment over the Women’s March to the people at ITV for whom he works on three mornings a week, co-hosting breakfast show Good Morning Britain alongside the unfeasibly tolerant Susanna Reid, former editor and one-time CNN host Piers Morgan has today gone into full mardy strop mode and penned a rant for Mail Online which he may come to regret. His meltdown is over actor Ewan McGregor.

It's "Don't you know who I am?" ...

McGregor was due to give an interview on GMB, but after arriving at the studios and discovering that Morgan would be involved, declined to take part in view of the host’s comments about the Women’s Marches over the weekend. ITV bosses declined the suggestion that Morgan be removed and the interview conducted by Ms Reid alone. So McGregor departed the studios and the interview failed to materialise.

So far, so routine: sometimes there are arguments, and schedules have to be changed. Stuff happens in live TV shows. But Morgan then decided to use his Mail Online column to launch a vicious and totally unprovoked assault on McGregor for insulting not merely his co-host, ITV and the viewers, but impugning the reputation of Himself Personally Now.

“Memo to anyone who voted for Trump or Brexit - pedophile-loving hypocrite Ewan McGregor holds you in utter contempt. So why on earth would you want to see any of his movies ever again?” screamed the headline. What did this have to do with Combover Crybaby Donald Trump or Brexit? Er, nothing. Zilch. Zero Nil. Nada. Not a sausage.

Morgan pretended it was not about him: “First, there’s a shockingly unprofessional aspect to this. The hard-working GMB team had spent several days producing the segment. These things just don’t pop up on screen … The interview had also been extensively trailed since yesterday so our viewers were also let down. They include many of the same people who pay good money to see McGregor’s movies”. Yeah, right.

It was because Ewan McGregor didn’t want anything to do with someone who had been shooting his mouth off just for the self-promotion. Worse for Morgan, it was McGregor who had it in his power to say yes or no. McGregor was the big draw. Morgan was not as big a name as he thought he was. But he could not bear to admit it.

... versus "We don't need to ask who HE is - we know"

So out came the smearing iron, thus ensuring that rather more actors than Ewan McGregor will not be seen on GMB any time soon. McGregor “quit the EU years ago to go and live the life of a pampered millionaire movie star in Hollywood” (so what? Morgan has a place in Los Angeles which he talks about, loudly and frequently).

Readers are told about “Foul-mouthed Madonna”, another real star that won’t be appearing with Morgan any time soon. Then there are “The luvvie lemmings”, Morgan not noticing that the Mail’s editor Paul Dacre effectively condemned him as being part of that club many years ago when he decried the cult of “celebrity editors”, noting “The more Piers Morgan appears to television, the more his circulation seems to go down”.

We hear about “Meryl Streep’s extraordinarily pompous and elitist anti-Trump speech” (she didn’t mention The Donald), and are then told “it’s worth remembering the words of Elvis Presley … ‘I want to remain apolitical,’ he said”. Anyone who wanted to know had no doubt where The King stood on politics - way out on the paranoid right.

Then Morgan shows he has lost the argument when he whines “But by refusing to be interviewed by me simply because I have a different opinion about a political march, McGregor revealed himself to be a narrow-minded, stupendously self-aggrandising, anti-democratic little twerp”. I have no idea how tall - or wide - Piers Morgan is, nor how those measurements compare to those of Ewan McGragor. But I do know one thing.

And that is that this is a sign he has lost it: when he had his meltdown with Evan Harris of Hacked Off - and Ms Reid had to intervene and cut short the argument - he deployed the same insult. Anyone who Morgan gets Pwned by is “little”. It’s like a nervous tic.

But even then, he could not resist one last petulant kick at someone whose stature eclipses his own: “Had we done the interview, I might have asked him how his heroic support for women justified him working for director Roman Polanski, a self-confessed and convicted child abuser, on the film, The Ghostwriter”.

That’s a magnificently cheap shot. McGregor did not speak in support of Polanski’s past conduct, but merely to pass positive comment about how he had got on with the director, and that he admired his directorial ability. There is a parallel with Piers Morgan here.

Morgan has spoken positively of people like Jimmy Savile. He has had no trouble appearing alongside the likes of Max Clifford, Gary Glitter and Rolf Harris. The difference between what Ewan McGregor has done, and what Piers Morgan has done, is as nothing. And that’s before his palling up to a self-confessed practitioner of sexual molestation.

One has to ask just how much embarrassment he has to cause ITV, before the ratings benefit he is perceived to bring is overridden by the reality of his prima donna petulance. Or advertisers begin to wonder if there might be some more deserving cause on which they might care to spend their budgets. Or both.

Piers Morgan’s puerile and petulant meltdown is bang out of order. The reality is that Ewan McGregor is a star. And he isn’t. Being nothing more than another of those Clever People Who Talk Loudly In Restaurants is no substitute for star quality. Boring but true.