Michael Gove’s Empty Confession

One attribute shared by many of those vying to become the next leader of the Conservative Party, and thereby Prime Minister, is that they are utterly devoid of trustworthiness. One look at Dominic “cash-flow problem” Raab, Sajid Javid, London’s formerly very occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Jeremy Hunt (the former Culture Secretary) and Matt “press stooge” Hancock is all you need.

The impression of serial villainy is inescapable. In the case of one allegedly leading candidate, it has extended to a vomit-inducing confession before the Daily Mail’s deputy editor Simon Walters. Michael “Oiky” Gove has clearly had words with Mrs Gove, otherwise known as Sarah “Vain” Vine, who has in turn bent the ear of Geordie Greig in a way that she might not have managed with the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre.

This has resulted in the front page splash “GOVE: MY COCAINE CONFESSION … Leading PM contender: ‘I took drug on several social occasions. I deeply regret it”. And although the Mail has the exclusive, the story has also made the front page of the Murdoch Sun (wonder who tipped them off, eh, Mike?) which tells readers “Top Tory Bombshell … GOVE: I TOOK COKE … Wannabe PM confesses … Used drug ‘several times’”.

And while some readers may see this as an honest confession, many will smell the rank whiff of bullshit. Because Gove is full of it. He is only confessing because of two impending events: one is the Tory leadership contest, and the other is the certainty that his past use of cocaine was gong to be exposed in a manner over which he had no control.

As the Guardian has noted, “The environment secretary’s declaration comes ahead of the publication of a book about him by the journalist Owen Bennett titled Michael Gove: A Man in a Hurry. According to the book, he admitted to having used cocaine to his advisers during the 2016 Tory leadership contest  … An inside source reportedly said Gove replied: ‘Yes, cocaine,’ when he was asked if he had ever taken drugs”.

The article adds “The former news editor at the Times was never asked the question publicly after May beat him in the second ballot of the race … ‘Gove was instructed not to give that answer in public, and told to fall back on the words David Cameron had used when he was running for leader, namely that politicians are entitled to a private life before entering politics,’ the book claimed”. So he intended to bluff his way out of it.

All that Gove’s confession tells us is that the Tory leadership contest is going to be a very dirty contest indeed. It is totally unconvincing: we know that those who work at the Murdoch titles include significant numbers of Charlie’s pals, and it is widely suspected that many MPs, and indeed Tory MPs, are habitual cocaine users. The idea that “Oiky” suddenly stopped using the stuff is not even slightly credible.

Did he suddenly change his social circle completely, avoiding at a stroke all those gatherings where things went better with Coke? And if he took it regularly when a “Young journalist”, why the pretence that he now “deeply regrets” it all?

And to think our free and fearless press got so worked up over Pa Broon allegedly smashing his Nokia. But then, Gove is one of their own. Can you smell hypocrisy?

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Simon Danczuk Labour Attack BACKFIRES

Former Labour MP Simon Danczuk may not be back in the news - yet - but he’s certainly angling to get himself a little more attention, perhaps even to get a gullible enough tabloid editor bung him a few bags of sand for a column or two. His problem is that his lamentable track record is still there for all to see. So sit back and get the popcorn in.

Spanker has decided to garner a little more attention by laying into the Labour Party, of which he was happy to be a member until they suspended him for behaviour I’ll consider later on. The problem with his rant at Labour is that everything he accuses the party of doing, he’s done himself. But first let’s look at his attack.

Grooming, Asian vote dependency and anti-Semitism, eh?

“One reason Labour are quiet on anti-Semitism is because it plays strongly in the Asian Muslim vote, just like they wouldn't be critical of the grooming perpetrators. It's all about votes. These are facts” he Tweeted yesterday morning. So that’s accusations on the subjects of Grooming, dependency on the Asian vote, and anti-Semitism.

Grooming ...

Grooming. Spanker must have forgotten his being caught “sexting” a 17-year-old girl in late December 2015. She was no more than a year older than many victims in the Rochdale grooming scandal. His then girlfriend Claire Hamilton didn’t forget it: she dumped the SOB on the spot. He’s got no room to talk about grooming.

Dependency on the Asian Vote. Danczuk must have forgotten something else - his assiduous courting of Rochdale’s Bangladeshi community, which went way beyond merely knocking on doors and doing a few photo-ops. He appeared at a male-only local gathering under the auspices of the Bangladesh National Party. He even met Khaleda Zia, the leader of the BNP. And he met Khaleda Zia’s son in London.

... Asian vote dependency ...

The BNP has “been accused of turning a blind eye to the growth of militant Islamic extremism in the country and for allying itself with Islamic fundamentalist parties, such as the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, which had also opposed the independence of Bangladesh". Worse, Khaleda Zia’s son has featured on an Interpol “red corner” notice: he is wanted by the authorities in Bangladesh on terrorism charges.

Anti-Semitism. Spanker has no room to so much as peep about anti-Semitism; he is on record indulging in a deliberate anti-Semitic smear against a Jewish journalist who had got the better of him in a Twitter argument. David Rose of the Mail on Sunday had declined to indulge Danczuk’s demands to know if he’d paid informants for interviews.

... and anti-Semitism

Also, Rose began to question him about his association with the Bangladeshi BNP. Then, after Rose pointed out that he had not interviewed Danczuk’s first wife Sonia Rossington ahead of her serious allegations against the former MP, he snapped “I know that David. Tell us all if you're friends with any of Lord Janner's family?”. Busted.

And to put the lid on it, Sayeeda Warsi has called out his deliberately divisive tactics: “your tweet is as racist, divisive & wrong as saying one reason @Conservatives are quiet on #Islamophobia is because it plays strongly to Jews. Those that claim to fight antisemitism by promoting anti Muslim bigotry are no defenders of minority rights”.

Spanker reminds us why he was such a complete tosser. Because he still is one.

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Tommy Robinson Reverts To Type

[Update at end of post]

After the campaign for the European Parliament elections, and the pretence that he was some kind of serious political figure, it has not taken long for Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, to revert to what many people already knew he was like - a bully, a thug, and a dispenser of casual and gratuitous violence.

When England played the Netherlands in a Nations Cup match in the northern Portuguese town of Guimarães yesterday, it was on the back of two nights of bad behaviour by so-called fans in nearby Porto, where the Praça de Liberdade saw bottles thrown at home fans, Police goaded, car windows broken and abusive chanting.

And there at the England match was Lennon, smirking that there was “no banning order in Portugal”. Soon afterwards, in an incident clearly captured on video, he violently assaulted another England supporter, striking him from behind. The remonstrations of the victim and his pals are countered by Lennon and his pals telling his target that he should take his punishment like a good little boy if he doesn’t want more of the same.

So much for The Great Tommy who only wants to have “Polite conversations” with his chosen fall guys, then. But, with the press now reporting on the latest in a long line of Lennon violence, it was then necessary for The Great Man to address his adoring public and tell them that, in fact, it was he who was the real victim.

You think I jest? Sadly not. “I see there’s a video doing the rounds of me” he smiles, before bringing forth the full range of excuses. “I was there with my wife. On four separate occasions things happened, with people trying to be abusive and get aggressive towards me … That man … I’ve already had to tell my wife to move and walk away because he’s come up to me twice being rowdy, in my face, being abusive, being aggressive”.

Bit like Lennon did with the bloke who milkshaked him in Warrington, then. Or the way he called the odds at the cops in that Cambridge pub when they told him he had to leave. Or the way he behaves on folks’ doorsteps in the dead of night. But do go on.

“I said to the man’s friends, keep that man away from me … people get physical with me a lot. I’m not going to wait for him to attack me. Twice I warned him. Twice I warned his friend [but somehow this is missing from the video] … He’s come back, next thing, come back towards me again, you’re the one coming towards me … that’s the context of the video. The man should keep his opinions to himself, and his mouth to himself”.

And he was “walking along” with his wife, except she is also absent from the video. Perhaps that’s because he’s told her to “walk away”. But the upshot is that, for the heinous crimes of “coming towards me in a funny way” and “having an opinion”, Lennon has waded in and violently assaulted someone. Now he expects to get away with it. Again.

He’s now telling anyone who will listen that “I did what I had to do”. No. He didn’t have to do anything. He chose to violently assault someone. But now that the video is out there, perhaps the local cops will do what they have to do. Fair’s fair and all that.

Stephen Lennon is still a violent thug. And the excuses ain’t making it.

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[UPDATE 8 June 1055 hours: the man whom Lennon assaulted has now spoken to the Mirror on condition of anonymity, clearly fearful of reprisals from Lennon's not-at-all-violent-honestly fans.

What caused The Great Man to lose it and punch him - from behind - were the comments "You don’t represent us all, Tommy. You definitely don’t represent me" and "I didn’t think fascists were allowed at the match", which caused Lennon to throw his drink over him.

And for afters, to assault him violently. Hopefully that banning order that Lennon smirked about will be heading his way very soon]

Fawkes Attacks Cadwalladr - Oh What A Giveaway

When someone is on your case, and closing in on the evidence, the last thing you should be doing is sounding off about it and thus drawing attention to yourself. But that level of intellectual rigour has clearly passed the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog by: while the Zelo Street post on Carole Cadwalladr getting ever closer to nailing them was in preparation yesterday, they went after her again.

The Great Guido wanted his adoring audience to know all about “Carole’s Obsession”, because the last thing you want the opposition to know is that you are so short of ammunition that all you can do is echo their attack back at them. So what had new teaboy Tom Harwood, on behalf of his boss, have to say in his defence?

Donal Blaney

As so often, sadly, the latest Fawkes attack on Ms Cadwalladr means talking well, but lying badly. “Carole Cadwalladr is tweeting about Guido’s lawyer having another client, Cambridge Analytica. This is evidence of something she has yet to explain”. She doesn’t have anything to explain, because she has not Tweeted about that. She didn’t say Staines’ pal Donal Blaney was acting for CA. He couldn’t be. CA no longer exists.

While it’s par for the course for Harwood to get his facts wrong at the off, what is extraordinary about his latest snark is the dead giveaway he provides. Straight after the blatant falsehood, he snipes “We’re not the ones who have had to make endless corrections on this subject though are we, Carole?”

No, Tom, and there is good reason for that. Let’s take this nice and slowly, shall we? One, the Fawkes blog doesn’t work to the same standards a newspaper does. The latter can’t just publish a whopper and hope they get away with it, and nor can they slyly delete the offending post and hope no-one notices the climbdown.

And Two, it’s not the Fawkes blog that is calling out powerful vested interests with lots of dark money behind them. So they don’t have all those high-powered lawyers on their case. As Ms Cadwalladr rightly says, The Great Guido is “a cornerstone of the right-wing propaganda machine that dresses up disinformation as ‘journalism’”.

Yet on blunders Harwood, closing with the magnificently delusional “Next time she wants to injunct Channel 4, Guido recommends she use Donal Blaney’s firm, he tends to win”. Tends to win, does he? Let’s do a little case study on that claim, shall we?

In February 2015, when Staines threatened legal action against this blog, his campaign progressed not necessarily to his advantage: one letter of rebuttal from my legal team was enough to send him on his way (post HERE). And it gets worse.

Later that year, when his then tame gofer, the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, had Blaney’s gang send me a legal threat, it didn’t even need a lawyer’s response to end the matter. I did it myself. So that’s for some value of “he tends to win”, then.

All that the Fawkes blog has done is to confirm to Ms Cadwalladr that she is on the right track. And that she is causing them considerable discomfort. Another fine mess.

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Peterborough - Thank You Donald Trump

In his last years commentating on Formula 1, Murray Walker would very deliberately not tell viewers that the driver leading on the last lap of a race was going to win. He had cursed so many over the years by announcing the winner, only for them to suffer some kind of mishap. So it was always “he is on his last and po-tentially victorious lap”.

Squeaky you lost get over it finger up the bum time

If only those commentating on the Peterborough by-election had listened to Murray. Last weekend, and indeed well into this week, the talk had been only about how Nigel “Thirsty” Farage’s latest political vehicle, the Brexit Party, was going to secure its first MP, especially given the area voted 63% Leave in the 2016 EU referendum.

Leave area, Leave party, it was a no-brainer. Wasn’t it? Well, it might have been, until last Sunday morning, when US Ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson let slip in an interview on The Andy Marr Show™ that, in a post-Brexit trade negotiation with the USA, what he called “healthcare” would have to be on the table. “Healthcare” for most means the NHS.

Donald, where's yer hairspray?

Then, on Tuesday, in a press conference which was extensively publicised by every broadcaster - although the right-leaning press kept his remarks off their front pages on Wednesday morning - Combover Crybaby Donald Trump confirmed that the NHS would have to be “on the table” in a post-Brexit UK-US trade deal.

The Donald then tried to row back on that in a softball session with Piers Morgan, but the damage had been done. The Brexit Party’s leader was Trump’s big buddy. Voters in Peterborough now knew that voting Brexit Party meant, however indirectly, endorsing a future in which the NHS was up for grabs, perhaps to disappear for ever.

Lisa Forbes - the winner

And so when they came to vote, 63% Leave area or no, they voted Labour in sufficient numbers to ensure The Red Team’s majority actually showed an increase over the 2017 result. The Brexit Party had a plum by-election opportunity dangled in front of them, and their bestest buddy from the USA blundered in and fouled it all up.

But instead of facing up to the fact that voters were beginning to see through the non-existent policies and hollow rhetoric, the Brexit Party pulled out the race card in order to excuse its failure. The Guardian reported that “Brexit party insiders said Labour’s reliance upon a mainly Pakistani vote in inner-city wards had been the difference between the parties. ‘Some of these houses had 14 people in them registered to vote. It would be interesting to see what proportion voted Labour,’ said one”.

The racist bigot party is gracious in defeat

And there we see the true colours of the latest incarnation of the Farage Falange: blame failure on OTHERS. It was down to the FOREIGNS. People who were NOT WHITE and DON’T DRINK took YOUR DECISION away from you. For Nige and the Brexit Party, it’s explained away by saying British citizens are really PAKISTANIS. Racist SOBs. 

The reality is that people have now seen what Brexit will mean for their everyday lives. They’ve seen though Nigel Farage. They don’t want what his pals are offering. And they don’t want to take a leap in the dark with a selfish rich spiv.

Thanks to Trump’s gaffe, Peterborough has seen off Mr Thirsty. Just rejoice at that news.

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D-Day 75 - Brexit Party MEP Insults Veterans

It was 75 years ago today that tens of thousands of troops landed on the beaches of Normandy in the first phase of what was called Operation Overlord, the campaign to establish a Western front against the Nazis and their allies and thereby assist the Russians, and those fighting their way northwards through Italy, to roll back the Third Reich and hasten the end of the war in Europe. That first day was D-Day.

Newspapers and broadcasters have commemorated the event; some of those still alive who went ashore on that day have been telling today’s teenagers what it was like to wade up the beach with Allied shellfire whistling overhead, and German machine-gun fire coming straight at you. Many not yet out of their teens did not make it away from those beaches. It is not an experience that anyone should have to face ever again.

Alexandra Phillips - claims to be an MEP

Sadly, though, there are still some of what Robin Day so memorably - and correctly - labelled “Here today and gone tomorrow politicians” all too ready to exploit those veterans’ experiences for their own ends. To no surprise at all, one of those is new Brexit Party MEP Alexandra Phillips, who has shamelessly milked the occasion for personal gain.

After her namesake, who is a Green MEP for the same area (South East England) told “We can beat Trumpism. But only by creating a politics which both faces up to the far right and builds an economy and society where everyone can live and prosper” she snapped “STOP SAYING FAR RIGHT! It’s not cool for my grandparents’ generation who fought against it, lost friends and family and know the meaning of that word. Using it as a casual insult, against those whose politics you disagree with, degrades THEIR service to our country and continent”. There are, though, several problems with her observation.

One, Trumpism IS a far-right phenomenon. It endorses and emboldens white supremacists and degrades anyone not white. Two, the Brexit Party has a leader who has used far-right tactics to demonise people who are not white (pace “Breaking Point”).

Three, her party leader’s far-right tendencies extend to demonising those who do not speak English as a first language. Four, she was involved in abuse of the democratic process in the Kenyan Presidential election recently as part of her role with now-defunct Cambridge Analytica. Five, her own party’s campaign chief just got sacked after he was discovered to have stood as a BNP candidate at a local election.

And worst of all for Ms Phillips, Six, the nailed-on batshit far-right, as in the local representative for Alex Jones’ Info Wars operation, is using exactly the same tactic. Paul Watson has claimed “The biggest insult to these heroes is left-wing outrage mobs pretending they are on the same level by ‘fighting Nazis’ when they’re actually enforcing ideological conformism through intimidation and censorship - something that was foundational to the spread of Nazism”. Projection through dishonesty.

Alexandra Phillips (the Green one) had it right. Because Alexandra Phillips (the Brexit Party one) is using her “Grandparents’ Generation” as cover. That generation swore loyalty to (then) King and Country. The only loyalty of her party leader is to whoever is prepared to pay his drinks bill and keep him in the style to which he has become accustomed.

The Brexit Party is an insult to our veterans. No surprise there, then.

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Carole Cadwalladr Finds The Missing Link

While the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr painstakingly exposed the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Aggregate IQ connection, and the involvement of the various Leave campaigns during the 2016 EU referendum, there was, building up in opposition to her research, a push-back emanating mainly from the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog. Why this should be is now coming clear.

She's still sleuthing, folks

Back in 2009, and continuing right through to 2011 when the late and not lamented Screws was finally put out of its misery by the Murdoch mafiosi, The Great Guido railed against the phone hacking revelations, pretending it wasn’t happening and hoping it would all go away. But that was based on little more than Staines’ rank ignorance. His opposition to phone hacking Mark 2 is based, it seems, on his involvement.

We already knew that Staines, along with Matthew Elliott, Jag Singh and Andrew Whitehurst, had back in 2013 founded WESS Digital, which promised “Digital politics reinvented”. At the heart of the WESS operation was a database called METIS. This contained “Data on the supporters of issues based campaigns”. And there was more.

METIS was also having “aggregated census records, social media profile data and online political advertising response data” fed into it. The Spectator talked of “The mighty Metis machine that could save Cameron’s bacon in 2015”. But little more was heard of WESS, although the Tories’ digital operation in 2015 remains mainly unexplored, a subject to which I’ll return later in the post. Because it requires further investigation.

He may be involved ...

We also know that CA is no more, but that a spin-off called Emerdata has since become established. But then yesterday, Ms Cadwalladr made a significant discovery. “Julian Wheatland, ex-Cambridge Analytica chairman, resigned today from Emerdata, the CA spin-off. And look what else is new: company's registered address now Griffin Law. Firm owned by scandal-prone Brexiteer & founder of Thatcher Centre, Donal Blaney”.

Donal Blaney. Now there’s a name to conjure with. Former head man at the now-moribund Young Britons’ Foundation. Giver of all those Golden Dolphin Awards, including one (later rescinded) to Mark Clarke of Tory Bullying infamy. Advocate of dismantling the NHS. And as Ms Cadwalladr rightly notes, pal of a whole host of villainy, including Raheem “call me Ray” Kassam, and the serially litigious Matthew Richardson.

... and he's almost certainly involved. Somewhere

But one name has been missed out, and as the photo confirms, that name, seen deep in conversation with Blaney, is Paul Staines. So what Ms Cadwalladr has unearthed is the link which brings the story arc back round to the source of all that knocking copy. It was the Fawkes blog that went after her, and after Staines’ long serving teaboy Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham departed for BuzzFeed News, they went after her too.

And now that all those links are in place, along with the knowledge of what CA got up to in their various endeavours, we might usefully consider the purposes that the METIS database may have served. So much is still unexplained about the 2015 General Election and how certain groups of voters were influenced. One avenue of influence we know well, another we have some knowledge, and a third is as yet a blank canvas.

What we know well is the Road Trip 2015 campaign, and the involvement of Mark Clarke. This was a straightforward enhancement of canvassing capability in a number of selected, and potentially marginal, constituencies. But remember also the fiasco of the Eastleigh by-election campaign of 2013? The local Tories had lost track of where their supporters lived, so when Bozza visited, they couldn’t find him some Tory voters to chat to.

The idea that the Eastleigh shambles was a one-off does not stand serious analysis. And somehow, between 2013 and 2015, matters were turned around sufficiently well for Mark Clarke’s Road Trippers to be deployed effectively. So where did the Tories get their potential swing voter information in the intervening two years?

While that one is being considered further, we come to the second avenue of influence, which is the targeting of Lib Dem voters, mainly across the South West of England. There was some targeting of Labour seats, but the big prize was to go after the Tories’ then Coalition partners. Here, Mark Wallace of Conservative Home gives us a hint of how this was done, without revealing where the data came from.

“The importance of getting the research right cannot be overstated, either in terms of the eventual election result, or the subsequent media confusion. The majority would be won by campaigns targeted directly at a relatively small number of groups, each composed of a relatively small number of people in a relatively small number of seats”. Do go on.

Look who's conferring ... Donal Blaney and Paul Staines

“The Conservative approach was, in effect, a rather secret war, carried out below the radar of the watching national media, which had no means of assessing the quality of the information gathered in the databases, or all the ways in which it was duly exploited”. He also acknowledges the wake-up call that was the Eastleigh campaign.

So that’s two avenues of influence with Road Trip 2015 and the under-the-radar targeting of often Lib Dem voters, both of which would have needed significant amounts of data on the targeted electorate. But what of the third? That is the influencing of Labour voters, and that, I would suggest, was worked in two different ways.

One, the more obvious approach, was to get some voters to vote for another party. If not the Tories, then moving them to the Lib Dems or Greens would blunt Labour majorities, or even shift seats to The Blue Team. Two was to somehow persuade Labour voters not to bother turning out, or what is more correctly called Voter Suppression.

And there has to be a spiv in the mix

Now, this blog is not going to make accusations, but consider this: in the run-up to the 2015 General Election, every opinion pollster somehow managed to underestimate the Tory vote, and overestimate that for Labour. Moreover, pollsters reported that if there was any last minute movement they could detect, it was towards Labour, not the Tories.

So how does that translate into a Tory majority, other than a combination of encouragement to switch away from Labour, and a campaign of voter suppression? From all the abuse Carole Cadwalladr has been getting, it’s clear that some of those vested interests would rather she not delve too deeply. But now we can see the missing link in the chain, she may know where to look. And she isn’t about to give up and go away.

It’s becoming clear that what was done during the referendum campaign was not the first outing for all those voter databases. This story has some way yet to run.

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Rachel Riley Conned By Fawkes Corbyn Lies

The old adage that something which looks too good to be true may actually be too good to be true seems not yet to have gained the attention of Countdown numbers person Rachel Riley, who has seen an attack on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and taken it on trust. But the attack has come from the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, and I have to tell Ms Riley that it is a pack of lies.

Stick to the numbers next time

Under the pretentious heading “Guido Investigation”, which should more correctly read “Guido Fabrication”, and claiming an “Exclusive”, because no-one else was as shameless as the Fawkes massive, we see the title “We Should Have Appeased Hitler And Disarmed During WW2, Corbyn Argued”. Except Corbyn didn’t. But do go on.

You put your trust in HIM?

“Since we are dwelling on the Second World War today it is relevant to note that Corbyn has previously praised Hitler-appeaser George Lansbury, and quoted his call to disarm during the Second World War as a ‘lesson for today.’” Was Neville Chamberlain also a “Hitler-appeaser”? In a Britain where the horrors of The Great War still lingered, why is someone wanting to avoid war automatically cast as bad, if not evil?

But it gets worse in very short order. “Unbelievably, Corbyn wrote in a 2003 article titled ‘Lansbury’s lessons for today’ that Lansbury’s call for Britain to give up its weapons after World War II had already started was ‘wonderful’.” No he didn’t. But carry on digging.

Ah, now we have a quote from Jezza: “As war broke out in 1939 [Lansbury] wrote ‘I am also quite certain that the first great nation that declares its willingness to share the world’s resources, territories and markets and also disarms will be the safest in the world’. I hope Tony Blair, on his travels on behalf of George Bush, reads at least that part of this wonderful work”. Want to see the actual context?

You see, Corbyn is reviewing the book “George Lansbury, At the Heart of Old Labour” by John Shepherd. In it, he observes “George lived out his years in frenetic activity for peace travelling across Europe and the United States preaching pacifism and calling for a world conference on economic justice. He controversially met both Hitler and Mussolini in this effort, to no avail. The dogs of war were already out”.

That doesn’t sound like Jezza approved of Lansbury meeting Hitler, although from the way the Fawkes attack is structured, that would be the lasting impression. And as to that quote above … this is what Corbyn actually said, and in its correct context.

“As war broke out in 1939 he wrote ‘I am also quite certain that the first great nation that declares its willingness to share the world’s resources, territories and markets and also disarms will be the safest in the world’”. So that’s talking about what is in the book.

New paragraph. “I hope Tony Blair, on his travels on behalf of George Bush, reads at least that part of this wonderful work”. Corbyn is referring to the biography of Lansbury - NOT to his remarks about disarmament. It’s another Guido whopper.

Tom Harwood - the creep who made the whole thing up

That did not stop Ms Riley trilling “You’ve got to hand it to Corbyn, if we had have rolled over for Hitler back then, Labour wouldn’t be having all these problems with Jews right now”. Her Bezza Tracy Ann Oberman was also suckered (not difficult, it seems).

“Ha! Stopped myself from tweeting that two hours ago. At least his ‘Jewish Problem’ would be gone” she snapped. We have reached the stage where both these minor Slebs are prepared to take the Fawkes rabble on trust. It might give them a nice warm feeling, but no-one else will notice - except to move further in the direction of away.

Sad when someone is so desperate to attack Jeremy Corbyn that they are prepared to resort to streams of abuse and endorse packs of lies. Whatever will Channel 4 think?

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