Is George Galloway A Serious Candidate?

He was once a Labour MP. Then he got expelled from the party and joined the Respect party, for whom he won Bethnal Green and Bow from Labour in 2005. Later, he scored a memorable by-election triumph in Bradford West, again defeating a Labour opponent, but when his constituents were given the opportunity to re-elect him in 2015, they voted him out. Now, George Galloway is standing for election at the Batley and Spen by-election.

George Galloway

This time, Galloway is standing for the Workers Party, and has wasted no time targeting the constituency’s sizeable Muslim vote. There are, though, some commentators who have also wasted no time - in passing severely adverse comment upon him. Former Panorama man John Sweeney is one of them, citing Galloway’s closeness to dictators.

Sweeney cites the Romania of the immediate post-Ceausescu period, when he first encountered Galloway. He also mentions Saddam Hussain, whom Galloway addressed in January 1994, telling The Great Man “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds [until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem]”. But that was a long time ago.

So voters may give him a pass on that. What they may find more relevant is Galloway’s record as an MP, and especially his voting record, which is readily available on the They Work For You site. Here’s how he voted on Taxation and Employment.

“Voted against allowing employees to exchange some employment rights for shares in the company they work for” (4 absences out of 5 votes), “Voted against lower taxes on fuel for motor vehicles” (5 absences out of 6 votes), “Voted for a banker’s bonus tax” (7 absences out of 9), “Voted against higher taxes on plane tickets” (7 absences out of 8), “Voted for increasing the tax rate applied to income over £150,000” (8 absences out 10).

There was more. “Voted against raising the threshold at which people start to pay income tax” (11 absences out of 13 votes) and “Voted for higher taxes on alcoholic drinks” (8 absences out of 9). On a further seven categories of taxation vote, he did not vote at all.

On a further twenty-one categories in other areas, Galloway did not vote at all. So how does this compare with Naz Shah, who succeeded him at Bradford West, and Tracy Brabin, who he is looking to succeed at Batley and Spen?

They Work For You records Ms Shah as not having voted in a total of 14 categories. That’s just half the total of 28 categories in which Galloway cast no vote. Ms Brabin is recorded as having not voted in just ONE category. And as They Work For You has noted that all those MPs, and former MPs, mentioned did not vote in one or more category of votes, it has to be assumed that there were occasions where they could have done so.

It must be stressed at this point that Galloway’s Parliamentary voting record does not mean that he was not a diligent and hardworking constituency MP. It is, however, a subject on which he should be willing to put prospective voters’ minds at rest.

It is also a subject where other candidates might be expected to discuss, or even challenge him. The workers he would represent, after all, would be paying, were he to win.

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Paedo Smears - Don’t. Just Don’t

Some out there on the right - a few of whom claim to be left-wing, but in reality, aren’t - who enjoy slagging off their opponents by resorting to a variety of malicious and unfounded smears have been skating on the thinnest of legal ice for some time now, and for four of their number, the moment of truth arrived last weekend.

What happened can be put directly: Jay Beecher, a creep of no known intellectual ability, tried to pull the “Yah boo you’re a Paedo” smear on Byline Media main man Peter Jukes. He later went into some detail, but, sad to say, the claim was not only totally untrue, but was clearly malicious and, given Jukes’ standing, was seriously defamatory.

Piling in on the back of Beecher’s unwise excursion came James Bembridge of Country Squire magazine (hello Dominic Wightman), Jordan James of Politicalite, apologist for the likes of Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, and another opportunist creep, James Melville. All republished Beecher’s defamatory claim.

Still live on Beecher's Twitter feed this morning. Not clever

The pile-on left Jukes with little option but to call in the lawyers. So it was not a surprise when he told “Left with no choice, I’ll be setting up soon a legal crowd funder against former UKIP leadership campaign manager and Tory councillor candidate Jay Beecher, Jordan James (Kendall/News Worldwide), James Bembridge and James Melville”.

Melville’s opportunist streak was confirmed by Mic Wright: “James Melville retweeting absolutely unconscionable libel of [Peter Jukes] is no surprise whatsoever. Melville is one of the most opportunistic dangers on this entire social network. He’s endlessly intoxicated by the retweets and likes he receives from the credulous and corrupted”.

And then came the half-hearted attempts from some of those by now in receipt of an emailed Letter Before Action to row back. The bad news for those attempting the rowing back is that it is too little, too late, something that others who think using Twitter to call “Paedo” on those with whom they disagree is in any way justifiable should bear in mind.

James Bembridge was one of those rowing back. Brian Moore, who used to work in the legal profession, had bad news for him. “If he thinks this is a sufficient apology to stave off a defamation claim, I can tell him - it isn’t. If he had been brave enough to allow anyone to reply he'd have got this advice earlier”. Melville also tried to not totally apologise.

This effort told his followers that he “apologised unreservedly”. Moore gave him higher marks than Bembridge, but not enough for a pass. “This is better but still insufficient. When will these people learn?” As for Beecher, his prognosis was not good. “To [Jay Beecher] - I’ve now been shown your tweet. Up to you, but I'd suggest you get yourself a lawyer who you haven't blocked ASAP”. Lying maliciously on Twitter is not a game.

Indulging in smears such as the one pulled by Beecher can spiral out of control to the point where it is not merely reputational damage that can result. It is the kind of smear that no rational or sensible person should be even contemplating using. It is A Good Thing that Peter Jukes and his lawyers are calling time on this little Wild West Show.

Abuse and smears can come back to bite their authors. You have been warned.

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Tory GB News Backing - It’s Official

As new media marketplace entrant Gammon Broadcasting News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) opened for business last weekend, there will have been some in and around the Government of alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson who were relishing the prospect of seeing the Overton Window shifted even further to the right. There would be no official backing, though: that would be a little too obvious.

Oliver Dowden

But as viewing figures have declined over the week, and the shortcomings of the new operation - technical foul-ups, total lack of research, poor guest selection and occasionally clueless presenters - have led to it becoming a new comedy genre, thanks to the Twitter feed called @GBNewsFails, the Blue Panic Button has been pressed.

The minister being given his orders to go out and make a futile gesture - and a complete idiot of himself - is Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, who has been dutifully reported by the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph going over the top in no style at all, declaring that advertisers choosing of their own free will not to be associated with GB News, and those freely advocating such action, are “A threat to democracy”.

Oh what a giveaway! Would Sir like to be properly even handed and tick off all those people who have been urging advertisers to withdraw their product placements from sites like The Canary or Novara Media? Benjamin Cohen was thinking along those lines as he responded “Hi [Oliver Dowden] I’ll be writing to you as a constituent and the CEO of [Pink News] to see how you could help increase the advertising sales of other media too”.

As for the idea that organisations deciding not to advertise with one or other broadcaster heralded the end of democracy, Jolyon Maugham mused “Not sure it quite compares with proroguing Parliament”. Steve Peers added “Or breaking electoral law, curbing judicial review, restricting public protest, making the electoral regulator (more) powerless, or encouraging public hatred of judges, lawyers, foreigners and political opponents …”.

Some expressed concern at Dowden’s apparent partiality, and Nuwan Dissanayaka was one of them: “Do you really think it’s your place to intervene like this? Isn’t it entirely up to the brands themselves to choose who they think is appropriate? If it’s not your bias then please point us to a similar intervention you’ve made on behalf of a left wing concern”.

He could be in for a long wait. But this is all so revealing: especially in the wake of the Chesham and Amersham by-election shock last week, the right-leaning part of the media establishment has become spooked by the idea that Bozo may be rather less popular than they had led their readers, viewers and listeners to believe. Interventions by the campaigners at Ripples and Stop Funding Hate have spooked them yet more.

As the people at Ripples have concluded, “Culture secretary Oliver Dowden is defending GB News again, this time in the Sunday Telegraph. He intervened earlier in the week as well. They have had a parade of cabinet ministers on air all week too. The support for this project is coming from the top of the government”. GB News isn’t an insurgent or outsider operation. It’s the same establishment piss in a differently labelled bottle.

Hence the establishment panic at the thought that GB News might just expire in a chorus of derisive laughter. Free market upstart my arse - another Trojan Horse more like.

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Lib Dem Triumph - Not Down To HS2

The right-leaning part of our free and fearless press has spent the past 36 hours in shock, after the Tories lost a by-election in one of their - supposedly - safest seats. The contest, in Chesham and Amersham - in the heart of Betjeman’s Metro-Land - had been called following the death of sitting MP Cheryl Gillan. Her majority at the 2019 General Election had been 16,000. But cometh the contest, cometh the Lib Dems.

And it was not just a few hundred votes that decided the result, but a whopping 8,000. This should not have been such a surprise, given that in nearby St Albans, Daisy Cooper, now the party’s deputy leader, emphatically ousted the sitting Tory MP recently. How would the press report the shock result, which none of them had managed to foresee?

Simples. There are, in this morning’s editions, lashings of hindsight, with a side order of pointless deflection as the collapse in the Labour vote is celebrated: the idea that Labour voters switched to the Lib Dems, along with some Tories, while other backers of The Blue Team declined to turn out, could not be allowed to enter. Meanwhile, over at the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, another excuse had been found.

Teased by the front page “By-election backlash” banner, the Tel had lined up has-been Charles Moore, hopelessly over-promoted Camilla Tominey, routinely dishonest Fraser Nelson and plain wacko Tufton Street insider Allister Heath to let readers know that the reasons the Tories lost had to include HS2. It was the railways Wot Done It.

Ms Tominey led off: “HS2 is basically a swear word in that part of leafy Buckinghamshire, having transformed swathes of the beautiful Chilterns into a building site. Residents have become much more opposed during the pandemic, when the shift to home working has made the multi-billion pound rail project seem like even more of a white elephant”.

What say the man from the Spectator? “Voters, it seems, have had enough of … seeing their constituency carved up by an HS2 train line that won’t even stop in their patch”. Nelson’s take was as nothing, though, compared to Heath’s. “The only message you hear from the Government is that it believes in levelling up the North. That sounds sensible, as far as it goes. But you don’t live there”. No shit, Sherlock. But do go on.

“And as you watch your tax bill, and that of your business, shoot up, it feels awfully like the real agenda is to tear down Southern tall poppies: Neil Kinnock-style class warfare, dressed up in Tory garb. Even HS2, which you hate, won’t use and are paying for, is entirely designed to buy votes in the Midlands”. Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Crewe, Chester, Liverpool … Al’s geography is as accurate as his analysis.

Moore concluded that voters in Chesham and Amersham “may not be devoted supporters of the Liberal Democrats, but they know they do not want HS2. Their revolt on Thursday was perfectly rational”. Funny way to make HS2 go away - by voting for a party that backs it. Perhaps the Lib Dem campaign, added to alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson rocking up sans face covering and shaking hands, had more impact.

Rail guru and professional photographer Paul Bigland has come to much the same conclusion: it wasn’t HS2 Wot Won It. Paper that has campaigned unswervingly to bin HS2 now has HS2 hindsight consensus. Reality is that Bozo ain’t as popular as they think.

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Daily Mail Hearts GB News

What a difference a year makes: last September, the Mail was giving a platform to Defund The BBC, telling readers “Defund the BBC, founded by Brexiteers, began crowdfunding in June and aims to decriminalise non-payment of the TV licence fee … The group is using the money to create campaign material including billboards, merchandise and advertisements across social media”. November brought more uncritical publicity.

Nothing wrong with damaging the Beeb - not in the minds of the inhabitants of the Northcliffe House bunker. But all has changed with the appearance on the media horizon of Gammon Broadcasting News (“Bacon’s News Channel”), which has attracted the attention of the people at Stop Funding Hate. Suggesting to advertisers that they should not have their brands associated with GB News has sent the Mail apoplectic.

So much so that yesterday brought this classic Daily Mail headline: “The hatred of the Stop Funding Hate fanatics: They vilified GB News even before it launched and claim to fight for tolerance - but foul-mouthed trolling is par for the course, writes GUY ADAMS”. Adams finds a series of social media users who have aggressively targeted GB News advertisers and declared them to be the same as SFH, even though they clearly are not.

In support came “Revealed: The hard left Corbynista zealots campaigning to cancel GB News include vegan professional cat-sitter, a gender and sexuality studies teacher and an ex-BBC executive … Stop Funding Hate insists it 'not linked to, or aligned to, any political party’ … But its leadership appear to be left-wing pro-Labour and pro Jeremy Corbyn”. The Mail appears to be an unprincipled crock of crap, but hey ho. And there was more.

That targeting of SFH was an organised Mail hit job was confirmed when talentless churnalist Richard Littlejohn, so British that he has lived for decades in the USA, declared SFH to be a protection racket, like that run by the Kray twins and their pals. “SFH has been stoking up a tedious Twitterstorm to bully advertisers into boycotting the station. Their message is clear: advertise with GB News and we will destroy you” he blusters.

As opposed to the Mail telling Slebs and Royals to cooperate with them, or … you get the picture. SFH has been the target of vicious press hit-jobs more or less since it started. But the latest twist shows that the Mail is not only worried about the potential effect of an advertiser exodus on GB News’ continued viability, it gives the impression that it is not a disinterested party. Like being invested in shifting the Overton Window rightwards.

The Mail, and all the other parts of our free and fearless press that have been shilling for GB News, have good cause to be concerned: the new channel has thus far demonstrated poor production values, the dark and austere sets are hardly welcoming, viewer numbers - despite former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil’s claims - are gradually subsiding, and flagship presenters like the deeply unpleasant Dan Wootton come over as worryingly inept.

Moreover, content is already being recycled - this evening sees a Brillo highlights show, so it appears The Great Man only appears four evenings a week. As does Wootton, who’s not “Live” this evening. Meanwhile, those the channel might have been expected to poach - think Nick Ferrari, or even Julia Hartley Dooda - have wisely stayed put.

If GB News is any good, it won’t need the Mail to shill for it. I’ll just leave that one there.

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Daniel Morgan - Don’t Mention The Screws

The power of our free and fearless press, now as ever, depends not only on what it chooses to publish, but also on what it does not. In a world of changing narratives, this is a rock-solid certainty. And nowhere has this been more starkly illustrated in the past 48 hours than the response to the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel’s report.

Daniel Morgan

After the Panel’s findings were at long last published on Tuesday last, the press identified one target for its ire: the Metropolitan Police. The Murdoch Times told readers “Met accused of corruption over murder investigation”, while the Guardian was more or less on the same page with “‘Institutionally corrupt’: Daniel Morgan inquiry condemns Met”.

Looks like the Met is to blame ...

... yep, it does look that way ...

And the Daily Mail went full Dacre as it thundered “ROTTEN TO THE CORE … Met branded ‘institutionally corrupt’ over infamous murder … Cressida Dick fights for job after blocking key evidence from inquiry … Savage report greatest crisis for Yard since Stephen Lawrence affair”. But this was a highly selective reading of the report.

... in fact, the Met is DEFINITELY to blame ...

It is selective because it - rightly - castigates the Met, but omits any mention of the press, especially the late and not at all lamented Screws. The key paragraph of the Panel’s report is 458: “The Panel has found evidence of corruption in the linkages between serving Police officers and private investigators, and in particular with Southern Investigations … at the time of Daniel Morgan’s murder and afterwards. The Panel has also found corruption in the linkages between Southern Investigations and former Police officers … who continued to obtain information and assistance from former colleagues within the [Met]”.

... so don't look over here ...

... or at her. Or else

That’s the bit the press is telling you about. Here is what they aren’t: “The documentation indicates that these linkages were used in an illegal trade in confidential information, much of it Police information, via private investigators to the media. In particular, the information was sold to the News of the World, the media organisation named in the panel’s terms of reference and which accounted for an increasing proportion of Southern Investigation’s business by the early 1990s. The involvement of serving Police officers in trading in confidential information obtained illegally is a form of corruption. It was also a breach of the rules of professional conduct for editors”. Former Guardian man Nick Davies had more.

“Daniel Morgan panel [report] (par 169) says evidence ‘strongly suggests’ that [a] News of the World journalist worked [with] a suspect for [the] murder to ‘discredit and/or intimidate’ [a] senior detective ‘and thus disrupt’ [the] murder inquiry. NoW knew about this and did nothing”. Which sounds like the surveillance of Dave Cook and Jacqui Hames.

Steven Barnett of Westminster University has reminded us “This was precisely what Leveson Part 2 was designed to investigate. It was cancelled by the government”. Brian Cathcart of Kingston University added that the report “says her company took part in a plot to sabotage a murder inquiry. She was told in 2003. Did she really do nothing?”.

At the time the Screws was closed, Ms Brooks, by that time CEO of News International, told staff “there were worse revelations to come in the hacking scandal”. Add to that this revelation from Untold Murder: “Our understanding is that Rupert Murdoch and News UK have not co-operated with the [Daniel Morgan] panel”. Oh what a giveaway!

Seems the “worse revelations” may have been this case. Why we still need Leveson 2.

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GB News - Ultimate PR Fail

UK Broadcasters who are not the BBC depend, in part at least, on advertising revenue for their income. Getting big name brands on board, and keeping them sweet, is the name of the game, whether those broadcasters like it or not. So when your content makes some of those advertisers a little, shall we say, nervous, what would be the sensible course of action? What would a sensible person have done? What would Nietzsche have done?

This thought has not yet been allowed to enter at new broadcast entrant Gammon Broadcasting News (“Bacon’s News Channel”), where the efforts of campaigners such as Stop Funding Hate have resulted in the channel - just three days into its tenure of the airwaves - losing several high profile names from their advertising portfolio.

But GB News are not even considering stopping and thinking why this might be: they, and their pals in our free and fearless press have gone on the attack, full of aggression, bluster and just a hint of menace. This “spend with us or my mates will trash your lousy brand” strategy unfolded as soon as the first dominoes began to fall.

As Press Gazette has reported, “Drinks companies Kopparberg and Grolsch, skincare company Nivea and the Open University have all distanced themselves from the new channel … They were later joined by Swedish retail giant Ikea and Ovo Energy”. So the main man at GB News, former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil, went on the attack.

“IKEA has decided to boycott GB News because of our alleged values. Here are IKEA’s values - a French CEO who is a criminal with a two year suspended jail sentence for spying on staff”. Who did Brillo work for when he edited the Sunday Times? His attack was later joined by former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan, who declared that IKEA were “pathetic virtue-signalling twerps”, and that he would now be boycotting them.

This became popular with the less savoury part of the right-leaning punditerati, with Brexiteer floor-crosser Kate Hoey claiming “I certainly will not purchase anything from IKEA until they lift their boycott of [GB News]”. Washed-up has-been Tony Parsons added “[IKEA] happily do business in a country where there is the death penalty for being gay and yet the pious flat-pack furniture merchants clutch their pearls at the idea of doing business with [GB News]”. Deeply unpleasant former Sun editor Kelvin McFilth joined in.

“Despite global protests Saudi Arabia has just beheaded a young man they arrested for rioting when he was 16. Ikea's local management kept quiet but over here the firm pulled ads from anti-woke [GB News] saying the station didn't meet their ‘humanistic values’. Hypocrites or what?” None of these less than totally august individuals stopped to think that many would rather like a visit to IKEA if it meant not encountering any of them.

The result has been all that a free marketeer could have wished: Vodafone and Octopus Energy have joined the exodus, with insurer LV considering its position and Deliveroo being lined up by campaigners who point out that the brand is an England football team partner - and GB News hosts claim taking the knee is “waging a culture war on fans”.

The latest response from the media establishment is the Spectator (chairman - guess who) getting a droid from the planet Spiked to attack campaigners. But it won’t work. Brillo and his pals don’t have the clout they think they have. The slippery slope has already arrived.

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Daniel Morgan Panel - Tory Inaction

At noon today, the report of the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel was finally published: this signalled the start of the process by which Morgan’s family continue to seek justice after all these years, while those who would rather they stop asking questions and just go away try and spin, bully, project, gaslight and just lie to put them off.

Daniel Morgan

Silent thus far have been the Metropolitan Police, whose commissioner Cressida Dick has been on the receiving end of a significant amount of criticism, not least over the claim that she obstructed the Panel’s work, and the wider conclusion that the Met is (note present tense) institutionally corrupt. So one suggestion is now being widely made.

And that suggestion is that Part 2 of the Leveson Inquiry, done away with by the Tories as part of the deal they have struck with the devil that is our free and fearless press, should be revisited. It was suggested to Priti Patel, inexplicably made Home Secretary by alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, in the Commons today.

SNP MP Stuart McDonald “asks if Patel will make a statement about the implications of the report for the media. And he says the report backs the case for phase two of the Leveson inquiry to be allowed to go ahead” told the Guardian politics live feed. She declared “The government formally consulted Sir Brian on whether to proceed with part two, decided that it was no longer appropriate, proportionate and in the public interest to proceed given the potential costs and the amount of time that had been spent on part one itself”.

This suggests Brian Leveson was in some way agreeing with the decision, but he was not: Matt Hancock tried to make that claim and his flagrant lying was called out, including to his face by now former Labour MP Ian Lucas. Leveson Part 2 remains the only way of being as certain as we can be as to “who did what to whom”. And, indeed, on whose behalf.

You're not getting sacked in the morning

Former PM Theresa May was in no doubt about the significance of the panel’s conclusions, especially those on the Met and potential corruption. She “says the report provides yet another example of ‘an organ of the state, whose job was to protect the public, prioritising the reputation of the institution over the delivery of justice’”.

So the question had to be asked: would someone not unadjacent to the top of the Tory Party like to give us some small hint of action, perhaps putting in motion the process by which Cressida Dick is moved rather closer to the exit door? Sadly, “Asked if the prime minister still had full confidence in Dame Cressida Dick during a Westminster briefing, his official spokesperson simply replied: ‘Yes’”. In Bozo world, no-one resigns.

Smugtastic, politics pickers

So the Tories are already circling the wagons, in the process creating yet another holder of high office who owes them for their continuing hold on that office, at least in part. Cressida Dick could of course head off any accusation of being dependent on Bozo and his cronies by doing the right thing, admitting her conduct fell short of that required, and resigning.

Priti Patel is writing to lots of people in the wake of the Panel’s report. She says its conclusions are “deeply alarming”. But don’t expect her to do anything about it.

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