Farage And GB News - Two Edged Sword

The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog had an alleged “exclusive” for their readers yesterday as they proclaimed “Farage Beat Sky And BBC’s Views Combined Last Night … Farage Continues Crushing BBC And Sky”. The presence of former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage had scored some ratings for Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”).

There was more. “Nigel has now beaten Sky News every night since launch, and the BBC five times”. Oh look, it’s “Nigel” now - all far-right pals together. But do go on. “Not content with merely beating his taxpayer-funded rival, last night Farage’s GB News show saw his highest ratings yet – averaging 145.1 thousand viewers. How does this compare? Farage: 145.1k … BBC News: 113.1k … Sky News: 29.1k”. How wonderful was that?

Well, one hates to rain on this particular parade, but, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here. One, Mr Thirsty, with his show’s sub-Partridge “Talking Pints” Feature, is only one hour of GB News’ day. And ratings for the rest of the day in question were, shall we say, at a rather lower level than 145k, as former BBC man Robert Coxwell has noted.

“Viewing figures. Farage on GB News for an hour had bumper numbers against the same hour on the BBC News Channel on 05 Aug. Average views at 19.00: GB News: 145k … BBC NCh: 113k … He’s a one-slot wonder for the channel when you look at the all day average … GB News: 24k … BBC NCh: 128k”. Fewer than 20% of the BBC average.

Coxwell had even worse news for GB News: breaking the numbers down over the 24 hours, they looked grim. “Viewing figures. Here's a snapshot of how much Farage is a one-slot wonder for GB News. Average numbers, 05 Aug: 06h - 09 … BBC NCh: 207k … GB News: 10k … 09h - 12 … BBC NCh: 149k … GB News: 5k (statistical 0) … 19h - 20 … BBC NCh: 113k … GB News: 145k … 21h - 0000: BBC NCh: 101k … GB News: 31k”.

And Two, Farage may have got the Gammonati tuning in, but there was bad news when it came to advertisers. The campaign previously joined by Stop Funding Hate and Ripples now has Led By Donkeys on board, and they announced yesterday “BREAKING Just got word that [Sainsbury’s] has pulled its advertising from GB News and Nigel Farage’s show. Amazing job everyone”. It certainly was. And there was more.

“After a couple of billboards, an advan at their HQ, more than 2.5 million views on films, and escalating pressure, Sainsbury’s did the right thing. (This tweet is careful corporate speak for ‘we’ve stopped now’)”. The Sainsbury’s Tweet had told that “We advertise across a wide range of outlets, including TV channels. Currently, we have no adverts scheduled with GB News. We had a campaign that has now ended”.

How many more will follow Sainsbury’s and drop not only The Thirsty Show, but GB News overall? If advertisers pass on Farage’s hour, GB News’ ratings for the rest of the day are so low that it isn’t worth them bothering. One headline presenter who is so, shall we say, “controversial” that he scares off the channel’s main source of income.

Can GB News handle any more of this kind of success? It’s still downhill all the way.

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Thatcher Green Fantasy BUSTED

Demonstrating his creative interpretation of modern history, and indeed his ability to talk well, but lie badly, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has attempted to reinvent the legacy of his most notorious recent predecessor as leader of the Tory Party. But this was a campaign that developed not necessarily to his advantage.

As the BBC has reported, “Visiting a Scottish wind farm on Thursday, Mr Johnson told reporters: ‘Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start and we're now moving rapidly away from coal altogether’ … He is reported to have laughed and added: ‘I thought that would get you going’”.

Yes, going straight to the nearest sick bucket. Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon put it succinctly. “Lives and communities in Scotland were utterly devastated by Thatcher's destruction of the coal industry (which had zero to do with any concern she had for the planet)”. Quite. But, with the certainty of night following day, came the right-wing defence.

Christian Calgie. Claims to be a journalist

This was typified by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, for whom snooty and entitled new teaboy Christian Calgie had already reminded the world what a Grade A Shit he was by whining “What is going on with bar/pub service at the moment? So many places are absolutely terrible. I’ve never had to ask so many waiters to remove the service charge from the bill”. Waitah! Waitah! You thyah!!

Calgie’s pro-Bozo wibble told readers not yet asleep “Labour Queue Up To Slam Climate Sage Thatcher … Boris Right About Maggie’s Climate Legacy”, going on to claim “While the left may refuse to acknowledge it, Thatcher was undeniably the first eco-conscious PM”. And so we come to point One: Mrs T often talked of taking action, but did not follow through, like claiming “We must do something about the inner cities”.

That was after her 1987 General Election victory. But little action followed. Likewise with point Two, “transitioning from coal”. Pits in the UK closed, but electricity generators kept on burning it: power stations in Yorkshire got their supplies imported to ports like Hunterston and then hauled by rail via Carlisle and Leeds. And then comes point Three.

Yes, it’s the old Tory Comparative Pit Closures Ploy, with Calgie sneering “For some reason, Labour is less willing to acknowledge Harold Wilson’s much greater role in closing British coal mines”. But in the late 60s and mid 70s, full employment was Government policy: those who had worked in the mines could walk out the pit and into another decently paid job. By the 1983-4 miners’ strike, unemployment was well above THREE MILLION.

There were no other jobs for redundant miners to walk into. Communities - those things that snobs like Calgie probably don’t understand - were badly hit. And communities is what those opposition politicians have been citing to rightly kick Bozo, whose early 1980s were spent lording it over the lower orders at Eton, before going up to Oxford.

All that was left for the sneering Calgie was for Tom Usher to bring him a dose of reality: “It says in your bio you’re a senior reporter for Guido Fawkes, but that can’t be right as you’re acting like a big stupid entitled man baby who looks like they willingly piss their pants in public for attention at the drop of a hat? Maybe some mistake?” He might wish to say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment. Another fine mess, once again.

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Spectator - Punked By Default

Two and a half weeks ago, footballer Marcus Rashford warned his followers “Just heard [the Spectator] are planning to run a story on me tomorrow about how I have benefitted commercially in the last 18 months”. Many passed severely adverse comment on the increasingly alt-right publication. Others waited for the article to appear. It did not.

Marcus Rashford

The Speccy still hasn’t published what was assumed to be another mean-spirited hit piece. And then yesterday came the story - not yet retracted - that the magazine had effectively been hoaxed. Punked. Duped. Not only that, but suckered at the highest level - right up to, and including, its routinely dishonest editor Fraser Nelson. You can read it HERE.

Fraser Nelson - saying nothing ...

It was claimed that the Speccy “had launched a new enterprise, Wokeyleaks, heralded as ‘A regular column by an anonymous whistle-blower operating deep within the Social Justice Movement’, asking for leaks of ‘classified information’ about ‘woke culture’”. The writer to whom the Rashford info was pitched called themselves “Edward Snowflake they/them”. Laugh? I thought I’d never start. But there was more. Rather a lot more.

... as is his boss

What was pitched concerned “Marcus Rashford and the talent agency he worked with at the time, Roc Nation”. But the hoaxer stresses at the outset “nothing in any of my emails was true, and I have had no contact with Roc Nation, Marcus Rashford, or anyone connected to them”. Yet it appears that the Speccy swallowed it whole. Almost.

No racism at this mag, though

After some delay, word came back “I'm so sorry this is taking so long to make happen. We've been waiting for Fraser [Nelson, Spectator Editor] to read and approve. He finally has today and suddenly he's extremely excited”, and including this gem: “Spec doesn't really do investigative stuff so this is all a bit new to them”. Journalism R Not Us.

Then came a conference call with Nelson and Freddy Gray, including this snippet of conversation: “‘But look if you were actually a wind-up, I think we would have worked it out by now’ - Fraser Nelson … ‘If you are, hats off to you!’ - Freddy Gray”. And that call allegedly took place AFTER the Speccy had told Rashford they were going to publish.

OK, you might say, this is just made up to fill the void caused by the non-appearance of the Speccy’s hit piece. But here a problem enters: the claim that a supposedly reputable publication would get to the brink of running a story, including notifying the subject, without first standing it up, could be construed as defamatory to its reputation.

So the Speccy might be expected to have the claims taken down. It hasn’t happened. Nor have either Andrew Neil or Fraser Nelson commented, not even to dismiss the claims as “Just something on Twitter”. And for as long as they decline to comment, the void will be filled by their critics, not least Owen Jones, whose response was “This is catastrophically humiliating for The Spectator”. LBC host James O’Brien was equally scathing.

“This is like Inception, no idea what's real & what isn't. But it's a rip-roaring read & the suggestion that The Spectator is populated by race-baiting imbeciles is, obviously, all too plausible”. But, as Mic Wright concluded, “The Spectator will take its usual approach to anything embarrassing to it which is to pretend it’s never happened. And Fraser Nelson, despite his long history of trafficking and enabling far right talking points, will continue to be welcome on every mainstream news show”. All too predictable. That’s not good enough.

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BBC, Tories, And Mash Reincarnation

Governments have been getting it in the neck from comedy shows, and individual satirists, on a more or less regular basis since the short but heady time of TW3 in the early 1960s. That includes all Governments, whoever the majority party. It is a fact that many out there on the right would prefer not to take on board, such is their uniform humourlessness.

Nish Kumar is bereft at his cancellation ...

Which brings us to the new dispensation at the BBC, in the form of DG Tim Davie, who was recently credited with axing The Mash Report, which, in the right-wing press’ retelling, was some ghastly hotbed of Rotten Lefties™ which said lots of horrible (if true) things about their political heroes, and to cap it all, was not even funny, honestly.

It had nothing to do with host Nish Kumar not being white, you understand, and nothing at all to do with contributor Rachel Parris mocking former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan for the latter’s sycophantic brown-nosing of Combover Crybaby Donald Trump. And nothing to do with Ms Parris calling out sexism and misogyny.

... and so is Rachel Parris

And what wound the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press up yet more was the suggestion not only that the Mash Report would see a new series commissioned, even in the face of all that knocking copy, but that the Beeb was considering running two editions of the show every week. But then, all the attacks paid off, and the show was canned.

The Murdoch mafiosi were in a state of rapture, with the Sun sneering “BBC director general Tim Davie axes Nish Kumar’s The Mash Report in victory in his war against woke lefties … Sources close to the director-general said he felt the genre needed a radical overhaul as it was too biased against the Tories and Brexit”. There was more.

From the bowels of the Northcliffe House bunker (well, the Rothermere press is full of crap, innit?), the Daily Mail thundered “BBC bosses finally address left-wing bias: The Mash Report is axed as new director-general overhauls comedy output after saying corporation must have 'no assumed point of view’”. Yeah, boo Mash Report!

But then, but then … only a few days after news of the show’s cancellation, free sheet Metro told its readers “The Mash Report could be revived as the satirical format is reportedly being eyed up by the channel Dave after being cancelled by BBC2”. Also, “Another insider added that it would be a ‘great fit’ for Dave: ‘As Dave tries to be less male-dominated and broaden its audience demographic, The Mash Report would be excellent for its diversity. Plus it is very funny’”. And so it came to pass.

The London Economic told last week “TV channel Dave has picked up Nish Kumar’s The Mash Report after it was axed by the BBC, for apparent ‘left-wing bias’ … The show will air on Dave later this year”. Early next month, to be more precise. So the BBC has sacrificed a popular show to appease the right-wing press. Or has it?

Well, of course it has, because Dave is owned by UKTV, isn’t it? Yes it is. But UKTV, has, since April 2019, been wholly owned by … BBC Studios, which was formerly called BBC Worldwide, and which is the commercial arm of the BBC. Which means the Mash Report is good enough to make money - as long as it doesn’t frighten too many right wingers.

Our free and fearless press scored a notable victory. Sadly, it was merely a Pyrrhic one.

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Carole Malone - The Acme Of Stupidity

Brexit. Some people find it difficult to talk about. Others find it difficult to accept. And one uniquely clueless pundit finds it difficult to understand: step forward Carole Malone, occasional fixture of small-audience TV, and pundit for hire to parts of our free and fearless press that didn’t see her coming. Ms Malone cannot understand why the EU is now applying visa charges to visitors from the UK, and doesn’t care who knows it.

Her latest appearance on the Channel 5 show hosted by Jeremy Vine included discussion of those visa charges, which, as the UK is now a Third Country and no longer a part of the EU, means its citizens will have to pony up a fee of €7 per person. That the ensuing discussion would not be in the intellectually taxing category was clear when Vine took his cue from an article in the Daily Brexit, sometimes still called the Express.

The headline howled “Britons charged to enter EU ‘in revenge for Brexit’”, with the quote marks performing heavy lifting way beyond the structural capacity of the supporting material. It was explained to Ms Malone that the rules were the same for all Third Countries, that this did not apply just to the UK. But this proved hard for her to grasp.

“Why do they need to do it now, when they didn’t do it before? Why is it necessary to impose a £6 charge?” Two things here. One, it’s being done now because the UK left the EU. And Two, the EU is a rules based organisation, and those are the rules when it comes to visitors from outside the Union. Rules the UK helped to make in the first place.

Sadly, Ms Malone was not listening, having already concluded that it was the rotten EU Wot Done It. “This is spite and divisiveness on the part of the EU. And it’s a very odd move, considering that a lot of countries within the EU are very dependent on UK traffic for holidays”. I think she means tourism. But it was still the EU at fault for the UK’s Brexit.

“It also reaffirms in a lot of peoples’ minds that they were quite right to leave this controlling organisation”. But she did approve of former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage’s idea that “we shouldn’t introduce the same charges to Europeans because we’re an open country”. This is total horseshit, and on more than one count.

The “controlling organisation”, to quote Ms Malone’s happy phrase, is, as I’ve already noted, merely applying its own rules. She wouldn’t try that smear on the USA, which also levies visa charges on international visitors, and nor would she quibble about paying them. Also, she seems to have forgotten that her own paper - the Express - was all in favour of visa charges back in May. Providing it was the UK that was doing it to EU citizens.

“Priti Patel's new border system charging EU citizens wanting to visit could bring in £300m … THE HOME Office is now considering charging EU citizens who want to visit the UK” cheered the headline. Clearly when their hero Ms Patel was doing it, it was just fine, as the piece continued in triumphant mood “The Home Office has said the new scheme is being planned to stop criminals from other nations from arriving in the UK”. Boo EU crims!

Many countries in the EU are dependent on tourism. But that tourism does not necessarily have to come from the UK. Once again, Ms Malone and her fellow Brexiteers insist that Brexit was someone else’s fault, when it was totally self-inflicted. Meanwhile, the EU has moved on, and has less and less time for its embarrassing neighbour. Sad, really.

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The Sad State Of The Jewish Chronicle

In another of those episodes that reinforces the impression that the publication is more enthusiastic about running hit jobs than journalistic standards, the Jewish Chronicle has gone after charity boss Hugh Jaeger for having an opinion on how the state of Israel gets on - or does not get on - with the Palestinians. But here a problem enters.

“Charity boss who wrote that ‘terrorists founded Israel’ is reported to watchdog” asserts the JC’s Twitter feed. The problem for the JC is that historical record suggests that statement is factually correct. Israel’s sixth Prime Minister Menachem Begin was the leader of the Irgun, the terrorist group that, among its other activities, bombed the King David Hotel, and was intimately involved in the Deir Yassin massacre.

Moreover, Yitzhak Shamir, seventh Prime Minister of Israel, was an active member of the Stern Gang. On top of that, the Irgun, in the aftermath of the birth of the state of Israel, was absorbed into the Israel Defense Forces. So the JC is batting on a seriously sticky track - and not for the first time, after another reverse was publicised last week.

Councillor Jo Bird, who represents the voters of Bromborough and New Ferry, told that “IPSO uphold my complaint against the JC … In the last three years, the so-called 'Jewish Chronicle' has breached the newspaper editors self-regulation code nine times and paid out in at least four libel cases. IPSO should launch a formal Standards Investigation”.

Councillor Ms Bird has, to accompany that summary, put out a statement where she notes “IPSO, the self-regulator of newspapers, appears unable to address discrimination. I am disappointed it has failed to uphold my complaint about racism, but I am not surprised. The JC erased my Jewishness in articles about anti-Jewish racism, even when the JC recognised other people as Jewish within the same article”. There was more.

“I believe the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ title itself is increasingly misleading and inaccurate. There are other Jewish chronicles such as the Jewish Telegraph and Forward. The publication is neither wholly owned or written by Jewish people. Jewishness is denied for some of the Jewish people who are chronicled”. And then came this coda.

“IPSO has found nine breaches by the JC in the past three years. In the same period, the JC has paid complainants in at least four libel actions, including Marc Wadsworth last week. Clearly, there are deep-rooted unaddressed problems at the weekly paper. I urge IPSO to launch a formal Standards Investigation”. Well, well.

That puts IPSO in what Spike Milligan might have called A Very Difficult Position. The alleged press regulator - which for most of the time means it wipes the backsides of our free and fearless press and does not even consider saying boo to them - had previously torn the JC off a strip over the publication’s cavalier attitude to complaints made over a previous Merseyside excursion - the smearing of Audrey White.

So IPSO knows all too well what the JC is like when it comes to accuracy and the prompt addressing of complaints over the lack of it. But IPSO is also loath to take any action that will involve it in actually being an effective press regulator.

The JC appears little more than a rogue newspaper. Can IPSO be arsed dealing with it?

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Wes Streeting’s Sun Shame

Andrew Devine died last week. He had suffered life-changing injuries when he was caught up in the crush at the Leppings Lane end of the Hillsborough stadium before the 1989 FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest and had needed round the clock care ever since. He became the 97th fatality of the Hillsborough disaster.

Wes Streeting MP

As the BBC has reported, “In 2016, inquests concluded those 96 fans had been unlawfully killed. Senior Coroner Andre Rebello said the 55-year-old was the disaster's ‘97th fatality’ and as such, the conclusion was the same”. And in the 32 years since Hillsborough, one constant has endured alongside the memory of those who went to watch a football match and never made it home, and that is the shunning on Merseyside of the Sun newspaper.

Hillsborough memorial at Anfield

It was, after all, the Sun, edited at the time by the deeply unpleasant and still unrepentant Kelvin McFilth, that smeared Liverpool fans in the aftermath of the disaster. So it might have been thought that, immediately after the death of that 97th victim, politicians would stop and think before paying fealty to the Murdoch mafiosi.

The paper with which Wes Streeting is doing business

Sadly, this thought was apparently missed by rodent-like opportunist Wes Streeting, who was only too willing to appear in the Sun, proudly Tweeting out “Poorest kids hit hardest after Tory cuts to policing. It’s time to get tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. This is the Tories’ record. They’re the party of crime and disorder - good for criminals, bad for kids. Me in tomorrow’s Sun”. No link will be provided to that article.

Was he serious? “Yep. Voters read the Sun and we absolutely want to talk to them”. To the paper that not only ran the infamous THE TRUTH smear, but also both blackmailed and deceived the parents of 14-year-old Lee Nicol, who died at Hillsborough. The Sun hack pestering the parents had “stated that without a ‘good’ photo of Lee, the paper would have to use the one taken on the pitch”. A photo of their dead son.

So “To prevent the publication of the photograph of Lee’s death, they provided a school photograph, only to find that the Sun used both, and gave the explicit photograph prominence”. That grim snippet is part of the report from the Hillsborough Independent Panel. It has been available for six years. One wonders if Wes Streeting has read it.

It’s a racing certainty that Ian Byrne has read it. The MP for Liverpool West Derby, whose majority in 2019 was just short of 30,000, has made this observation: “Any Labour MP writing in this rag [the Sun] defies belief but in the week the 97th victim of Hillsborough was unlawfully killed shows little understanding or worse indifference to victims & survivors. I will be asking to address the PLP on what solidarity to my city entails”.

Moreover, not talking to the Sun doesn’t seem to be too harmful to Labour on Merseyside, where their vote share has gone from 39.9% in 1983 to 65.2% in 2019, with only Southport of the 15 constituencies held by the Tories. Those concerned about supermarket shortages and problems travelling abroad might also note that, free from the malign Murdoch influence, the area voted to Remain in the 2016 EU referendum.

Far from needing to talk to the Sun - the paper that has trashed Labour relentlessly for the last four General Election campaigns - it is all too obvious that shunning the Sun and not talking to its singularly unprincipled hacks is the best course of action. Don’t buy the Sun.

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Israeli Oil Tanker ISN’T

Armed conflict, as anyone who has studied the build-up to the Great War will know, can begin with the most insignificant-looking actions and events. This may be exercising the minds of decision makers in London and Washington DC right now, after an attack on an oil tanker called the Mercer Street, which took place in the northern Indian Ocean.

The oil tanker Mercer Street

As the BBC has reported, “The UK and US believe Iran was behind a tanker attack that killed two people, and have vowed to respond, calling it a violation of international law. The MV Mercer Street, operated by an Israeli-owned firm, was attacked off Oman on Thursday. A British national and a Romanian citizen were killed”. There was more.

“The statements came after Israel's Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said there was ‘evidence’ that its longstanding foe Iran was responsible. Mr Bennett warned that ‘we know how to send a message to Iran in our own way’, while Tehran rejected what it called the ‘baseless accusations’. The attack on the MV Mercer Street appears to be the latest escalation in an undeclared ‘shadow war’ between Israel and Iran”.

Zodiac Maritime - only on Twitter since June

At this point, it might appear that this is an open-and-shut attack on an Israeli asset, and that the reaction of PM Bennett is proportional. But the thought also enters that this might be too convenient a distraction for a régime that is under increasing international criticism for the actions of its armed forces towards those who live in the occupied West Bank - an occupation begun in 1967 that has been declared illegal under international law.

For starters, there is this snippet from the Sky News report on the attack: “The UK and US have blamed Iran for an attack on an Israeli-linked oil tanker in which two crew members, including a British national, were killed”. So not Israeli owned, merely “linked”. Do go on. “The tanker is operated by Zodiac Maritime, which is based in London and owned by Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer”. “Operated”? So who owns the Mercer Street?

Not Zodiac Maritime, it seems. As the Independent has reported, “Zodiac Maritime is owned by Israeli businessman Eyal Ofer but its London-based office oversees the ship. The M/T Mercer Street is a ‘Japanese-owned vessel’, the company said, with shipping publication Lloyd’s List stating that the owner is Taihei Kaiun Co., which belongs to the Tokyo-based shipping company Nippon Yusen Group”.

So the Mercer Street is Japanese owned. It sails under the flag of Liberia. The company operating it is based in London. The two crewmen killed were British and Romanian. It had no cargo aboard at the time of the attack. It was sailing from Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania to Fujairah in the UAE. And despite all this, the Israeli Government is sticking its bugle in, using the attack as an excuse to have an escalatory pop at the Iranians.

And before the claims that Israel is the wronged party, consider this claim from, of all publications, the Jewish Chronicle: “The Iranian nuclear scientist who was shot dead near Tehran in November was killed by a one-ton automated gun that was smuggled into the country piece-by-piece by the Mossad”. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was, it seems, assassinated because Iran was alleged to be close to having The Bomb. By the Israelis.

Israel’s supporters brag about a terrorist act. Israel appoints itself the victim to pin an act of terrorism on the same adversary. It’s all a bit Heads They Win, Tails Iran Loses.

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Andrew Bridgen And Liebling’s Law

The unswerving defence of Brexit has, in the shape of Tory MP Andrew “HS2 ate my credibility” Bridgen, now met Liebling’s Law. This law, devised by A J Liebling of the New Yorker magazine, as J K Galbraith later recalled, “held that if a man of adequately complex mind proceeds in a suitably perverse way, he can succeed in kicking himself in his own ass out the door into the street”. The defence of Brexit shows Liebling’s Law in action.

Brexit was supposed to demonstrate that the UK was a great sovereign nation which had no need of EU membership. It has, instead, demonstrated the opposite, but this no Brexiteer can admit, and so Bridgen has constructed a suitable apologia for the Sunday Brexit, still called the Express, where he lays the blame for labour shortages elsewhere.

“TONY BLAIR'S push to get half the country's young people to go to university has contributed to Britain's shortage of HGV drivers and other skilled workers, according to Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen” claims the headline. And there is more.

“For many years I have been raising the issue of the shortage of lorry drivers, citing the lack of dedicated apprenticeship scheme as far back as 2015. In the intervening period, the shortage of drivers has doubled and only now have the Government acted and implemented a lorry driver apprenticeship” he claims, but this is total bunk.

There were no supply chain problems - like a shortage of lorry drivers - before the start of this year. But in the past, any shortage could be made up by hiring workers from elsewhere in the EU - as with harvesting all that fruit and veg that will soon be rotting in the fields. Those workers paid taxes, paid for housing, and spent money in the local economy. Some started up their own businesses, reopening shops that had been abandoned.

Now that bold, brave and sovereign UK has gone it alone and decided to be less welcoming, many of those workers are leaving, the benefit to the economy working in reverse. This, as with all Brexit benefits, is, in Bridgen world, someone else’s fault. Under appreciation of key workers, he claims “is one of the major contributing factors to the Brexit result that the metropolitan liberal elite didn’t grasp in 2016 and which they still don’t”.

Ah, that mythical “metropolitan liberal elite” once more. Worse, Bridgen, through his insular approach, is all for keeping out the rotten foreigners™, but manages to miss the Brits who migrated the other way - to other EU member states - under free movement rules. Their education may just have helped them on their way. Now that avenue is closed off.

But not to worry, this Tory MP is now backing higher pay for lorry drivers and other key workers. Perhaps he would care to be totally honest with his audience and admit that this will mean higher prices for goods and services, which would also have nothing at all to do with Tony Blair. His journey into honesty could also concede that all of the problems he highlights are down to the Tory Government of which he is a member.

Instead, he tells us “To deliver on its levelling up agenda, the Government has to highlight the value of skilled manual vocations and start an honest conversation on the worth of many degree courses”. Like doing a biology degree and becoming an MP, you mean?

Andrew Bridgen kicked himself in his own arse. But, sadly, he is none the wiser for it.

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