By Ben Pensant

As the Labour conference draws to a close – both the best one EVER and the only one I’ve been to – it’s becoming increasingly hard to pick a highlight from the weekend. Most delegates arrived in Liverpool still buzzing from Jezza’s crushing victory over PLP ponce Owen Smith, blissfully unaware of the iconic moments still to come – Len McClusky lying through his nose, Diane Abbott calling 17 million Leave voters thick racists and the unexpected appearance of Peter Kay’s brilliant new character, roly-poly militant Max Shanley. But by far the greatest overall highlight has been not so much a moment as a theme: unity. And not your common-or-garden unity neither – I’m talking about REAL unity, the type that’s only possible once we’ve shamed, ostracised and de-selected all those MPs we disagree with.

Because coming together is the goal now, and one that our Dear Leader rammed home in his triumphant closing address which I watched in my hotel room with a sense of awe and unbridled joy I’ve not felt since the Oldham West & Royston by-election (Note to self: when the next conference comes around best make a trip to Superdrug and stock up on extra towels, wet-wipes and Savlon just in case his speech is even more beautiful than this year’s). The reason I wasn’t in the hall witnessing St Jezza’s words to the wise is too dull to go into, but needless to say if it wasn’t for an over-zealous security guard searching my bag on Tuesday Tom Watson would have had left the stage with more than just a metaphorical shit-eating grin on his face. Ever seen Salo, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom? You have been warned, fatso.

But we had too much fun to let Watson spoil it with his deluded talk of trying to win elections instead of attending demos, waving placards and writing gushing poetry with all the poise and elegance of My Uncle Billy Had A Ten Foot Willy. And he won’t stop us from pushing for unity either, unity we’re willing to display by allowing those we’ve smeared, abused and threatened back into the Momentum Magic Circle just as long as they tow the line. And one person who appears to be on board with this is none other than Guardian columnist, saviour of the working-class and practicing homosexual Owen Jones.

You may remember the celebrity Marxist was cast out of the Corbynite bubble in July after taking the PLP pound and withdrawing his support for the Dear Leader. However, it seems he’s been working around the clock to claw back his left-wing street cred. Having been instructed by Momentum top brass to refuse to read anything by Owen after his shocking betrayal we all got used to not having to think about him other than to send him the odd death threat or call him a ‘Blairite bell-end’ on Twitter. But unbeknownst to us he was slowly but surely writing piece after piece explicitly designed to curry favour with the regressive left. And he appears to have pulled it off with a handful of Guardian columns that couldn’t be more regressive if they were stitched onto Michael Moore’s enormous back with hair plucked from the head of Noam Chomsky by a gang of Bolivian guerrillas.

Indeed, he’s spent his time in exile tackling hate crime, post-Brexit racism and Channel 4’s attempts to smear leading Momentum figures as far-left entryist wank-splats by secretly filming them admitting to being far-left entryists and acting like wank-splats. And what a joy it’s been to see him back doing what he does best; scaremongering, misrepresenting statistics and telling us how revolting and oppressive it is to live in one of the most tolerant liberal democracies on the planet. It’s just a shame he’s decided to remind us what he’s capable of this late in the game when we’ve already started planning his show trial, imprisonment and public execution.

But hey, when 2020 comes around we’re gonna need a gulag the size of Wembley stadium to house everyone who’s ever said anything bad about St Jezza so we’re always willing to negotiate. And as luck would have it Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson has recently put himself forward for internment by drawing rude pictures of the Dear Leader then taking a hissy fit when people attacked him for it. The last thing we’ll need in Corbyn’s Britain is an artist wandering around thinking it’s perfectly okay to depict the prophet so perhaps a one in/one out ethos may just save Owen’s bacon. It certainly won’t harm his chances if he keeps writing crowd-pleasing columns with titles like ‘Not All Men Commit Abuse Against Women. But All Must Condemn It’.

In which Owen set his stall out with this no holds barred opening line: ‘The Failure of men to speak out against male violence against women and girls renders us all complicit’. That’s right: me, you, your dad, your brother, Santa Claus, Paul O’Grady and that little old bloke who plays the keyboard downstairs at the Monument Metro station. Everyone of us are to blame for violence against women whether we’ve commited it or not, spoke out or remained silent. It’s refreshing that Owen is so willing prove his regressive credentials he thinks nothing of holding an entire group responsible for the actions of a small minority, despite the fact he’s spent most of his career telling the rest of us we shouldn’t do that. Indeed, it’s worth remembering this isn’t the first time Owen has bravely gone against his principles in order to rack up those SJW points.

Earlier this year after posh fop Zac Goldsmith was trounced in the London Mayoral election by Sadiq Khan, Owen took to print to vent his anger at the racist campaign ran by Goldsmith. Zac’s heinous crime was to smear Khan as someone who has defended, supported and associated with extremists by providing factual demonstrable evidence of Khan defending, supporting and associating with extremists. But Owen was having none of it as he raged against ‘a campaign soaked in racism’ and bemoaned the fact that London was offered ‘fear, smear and bigotry’ by Goldsmith for having the temerity to bring up Khan’s links to the ISIS-supporting anti-Ahmadiyya imam Suuliman Ghani and Yusuf al-Qaradwi, the Egyptian Islamic theologian with some delightful views about Jews, gays and women. Happily, Khan’s team managed to brush away the former by finding a selfie Gani took of himself and Goldsmith in the street which was deemed enough by the likes of Jones to put the matter to bed once and for all.

As for his associations with Qaradawi, it shows what a tawdry campaign this was that the best they could throw at Khan was the fact that in 2004 he claimed Qaradawi was ‘not the extremist he is painted as’ and issued a statement through the Muslim Council Of Britain – whose legal committee Khan was chair of at the time – alleging a smear campaign against the harmless scholar orchestrated by the Zionist lobby and the BBC. Surprise, surprise. Indeed, a few minutes of Googling reveals that Khan was bang on and Qaradawi is indeed no extremist: his support for suicide bombings and female genital mutilation may seem extreme to uneducated Brexiteers, but any decent liberal can see it is softened by his progressive belief that gays should merely be ‘lashed’ rather than killed and wife-beating is acceptable as long as the husband ‘avoids her face and other sensitive areas’. So ‘break her arms but don’t touch the tits’ seems to be the sensible rule of thumb and who but the most uncultured Essex Man could find fault with that?

In the current hysterical climate some may argue that Owen should also be condemning Khan for defending a man who appears to have a bit of an issue with Jews. But Owen has already done quite enough on that score by, in his own words, ‘confronting anti-Semitism on the left’. By ‘confronting’ he actually means ‘coming to the conclusion that anti-Semitism is bad but actually there’s not that much of it on the left anyway and ooh look at that Islamophobia over there!’. Much in the same way he bravely spoke out against Putin apologism earlier this year by urging liberals to condemn the human-rights abusing combover oligarch, even listing those who have defended and indulged him such as Trump, Farage, Le Pen and Blair. Curiously, this roll-call of shame framed Western support for Putin as a predominantly right-wing phenomenon, neglecting to include the names Corbyn, Galloway, Livingstone, Milne or any of the other left-wingers who have spent the last decade earning small fortunes appearing on Putin’s state-controlled propaganda station Russia Today. This was clearly a word-count issue though, and nothing to do with Jones living up to his reputation for ignoring stuff that destroys his narrative. And even if it wasn’t: Corbyn et al are allowed to be soft on Russia because they’re more wholesome than Trump and Farage. And if they did so it was obviously for reasons of principle and not just because they’ll align themselves with any repugnant regime that hates the West no matter how authoritarian it is. Jeez, have you been living under a rock?

Also, if people took the time to some research on the supposedly extremist Qaradawi they’d realise his views about the holocaust are remarkably open-minded: he doesn’t say it never happened, just that it was ‘exaggerated’. For Jezza’s sake, the bloke simply said Jews lied about their own genocide and suggested men should show a bit of chivalry when they’re assaulting women by leaving the kisser unmarked and the Islamophobes call him an extremist (?). Which is even more hypocritical as it’s common knowledge that non-Muslim wife-beaters think nothing of leaving their women with visible black eyes and bust lips. Perhaps it’s they who should be wearing veils instead of shoving their bruised noses in our faces. All of which sums up our prejudiced society to a tee. Khan was absolutely right when he said Qaradawi wasn’t the extremist he was painted as and no amount of lies, accusations and verified quotes will change that.

So having realised this tactic had failed, Goldsmith made further accusations by reminding the press that Khan once referred to Muslim reformers as ‘Uncle Toms’, appeared alongside Islamists at the 2004 Al Aqsa conference, received an award from and heaped praise upon the extremist group FOSIS and even utilised his skills as a human rights lawyer to selflessly defend Nation Of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a man who calls Jews ‘bloodsuckers’ and believes white people are a race of devils created six thousand years ago by a scientist called Yakub. Any idiot can see none of these claims hold any water whatsoever despite the fact they’re all true. But as Owen wrote, that didn’t stop Goldsmith and the Tories pathetically trying to ‘exploit anti-Muslim hatred’ by condemning a mayoral candidate for associating with people whose ideology has caused Muslims more pain and suffering than a hundred half-arsed mayoral campaigns ever could. And for that, as Owen writes, they are all culpable, whether they had anything to do with it or not. Indeed, even Tory MPs who condemned the campaign – such as Peter Oborne and Shazia Awan – get shirt shrift from Owen: ‘Over the coming days Tories will try to distance themselves from the campaign. They cannot get away with it’. Tories as a whole are ‘collectively responsible and it must never be forgotten’. Unfortunately for Jones it kind of has been but that’s what happens when you live in an MSM-dictated police state.

But Jones deserves credit for fighting the good fight nonetheless. And fighting it in the uncompromising, no holds barred manner which has become a hallmark of the regressive left. Because as we all know, a good liberal can’t simply point out that Goldsmith fought an off-putting, negative campaign which focused on his opponent rather than his own policies, or even that he is a deluded playboy with little connection to most Londoners who seems to have stole most of his ideas from the Green party. No, we have to do what we always do when anyone on our side is criticised: refuse to enage with the content of the criticism, point out it’s all lies then accuse him – and every other member of his party, most of whom had bugger all to do with his campaign – of ‘dog whistle racism’. And why not? The Sun, the BNP and those bigoted ex-Muslim anti-Sharia ‘campaigners’ have been doing it for years. It’s OUR turn to be shamelessly judgemental and blame an entire community for the actions of a minority.

Interestingly, given his equally principled views about the complicity of all men in allowing domestic violence and sexual assault to fester, at no point does Jones condemn Khan for defending and supporting Qaradawi, a man who endorses wife-beating. So while Owen passionately believes ALL men are complicit in violence against women whether they commit it or not, he’s paradoxically of the view that one man who defends someone who condones it has no complicity whatsoever and is not at all at fault for enabling and excusing a religious sub-culture that routinely treats women like slaves and punchbags. Because as we know, when that one man is a Muslim and a Labour MP all bets are off. The racism of low expectations, kids. It’s kept the regressive left in morally inconsistent murky waters for years and we won’t stop swimming in them for anyone.

Which brings us back to Owen’s column about violence against women, in particular the way he framed the argument to include all the other poor, vulnerable, oppressed groups at the mercy of the patriarchy in this godforsaken country: ‘Misogynistic hate also intersects with other forms of bigotry – take the targeting of Muslim women on the streets by white men’. Which we all know is a widespread epidemic that happens on such a regular basis Muslim women are terrified to leave the house. There is no evidence for this of course, and Owen doesn’t bother to expand upon the issue. Because when a liberal wants something to be right, it usually is right, regardless of the fact that it’s not. Indeed, he cares so much about Muslim women and how they are treated by misogynists that he completely ignores the misogyny they experience at the hands of Muslim men.

And so he should. It’s not for us privileged white males to point out when it comes to oppression and abuse Muslim women are far more at risk from the reactionary ideology of their own religion than they are the odd moron hurling abuse at them when they’re out shopping. And anyway, is Islam’s view of women really that bad? I’ve no doubt the average Muslim women would agree that being forced into a marriage, made to wear a veil, treated as a second class citizen or strangled by her brother for wearing lipstick is nothing compared to the horror of some racist idiot shouting ‘towel head’ at her on the Metro.

Warming to the hate crime theme Owen then expertly namechecks the Fawcett Society and how they are ‘calling for male violence towards women to be classed as a hate crime’. For those of us under the impression that violence against women was kind of already a serious crime think again; women can now sleep easier knowing the next time they are raped or beaten to death their attacker will also have to live with an extra year or two on his sentence for calling them ‘sweetheart’. Indeed, Owen is enthusiastically behind these new proposals whether horrific acts of violence are involved or not, lauding the approach recently adopted by Nottinghamshire Police. Deploying his usual trick, Owen omits to mention what this actually entails which is to theoretically criminalise misogyny in all its forms by outlawing everything from wolf-whistling to saying ‘cheer up’ to a barmaid. Because as we all know, women are such pathetic, vulnerable creatures they can’t be expected to react like adults when they hear something they don’t like. Ditto Muslims, blacks, immigrants, homosexuals, transgender folk and everyone else who the left have been treating like frightened children for decades.

As a resident of Newcastle I can understand why: there aren’t many Geordie women alive who aren’t more than capable of giving both barrels back to any hairy-arsed builder daft enough to implore them to get their tits out. And there are even some women who would actually laugh at and have banter with a group of blokes who invaded their safe space by buying them drinks and calling them ‘babe’. But the reason for that is they are too stupid, too uneducated, too downright working-class to realise they’re being violated. Like pop stars, lap-dancers and page three girls, their passive acceptance of rank sexism show the danger of women behaving like independent adults instead of eschewing free will, autonomy and all the other stuff modern feminism despises. And the fact that they don’t even realise how harmful these so-called ‘terms of endearment’ used all over the word are is a stain on the ignorant class that spawned them.

Because as anyone who saw the recent video of an American SJW being viciously assaulted by a man saying the words ‘Hugh Mungous’ knows, words can maim. Literally. Predictably, right-wing trolls and bearded bloggers accused the poor girl of over-reaction, hyper-sensitivity and utterly deranged bat-shit mental entitlement. Well, I’ve got news for them. Perhaps she is entitled. Entitled to pester and harass a man who not only had a different opinion to her but then rubbed salt into the words by practically anally raping her with an innocuous play-on-words that Bart Simpson would reject for being too juvenile. I suppose we can at least be grateful that when she demanded to know his name he didn’t say ‘Mike Hunt’ as that would have been such an aggressively violent attack he might as well have fired a shotgun up her fadge.

But this depressing and dangerous malaise is everywhere and the tolerant and diverse country I call home is as culpable as any other: ‘We have a very misogynistic culture in the UK. We tolerate the casualization of violence and objectification’ writes Sam Smeethers of Fawcett and Owen is on hand with some shocking statistics to prove her point: ‘Male violence is pandemic; 117,568 men were prosecuted for offences against women in Britain in 2015-16, a surge of almost 10% over the course of a year’. For those a bit confused as to how a figure which accounts for 0.3% of the male population can be put in the same category as a disease such as the Black Death which killed 200 million people, fear not; Owen then goes on to inform us that these convictions represent a tiny proportion, estimating that nearly 2 million more rapes, sexual assaults and instances of domestic violence occur and remain unreported. How he knows this or where he got the numbers from isn’t clear but as we all know, tiny irrelevancies such as proof and evidence are of little importance when there are narratives to maintain. And the narrative that Britain is a misogynist hellhole in which boys are conditioned to hate women and millions of rapists and wife-beaters roam the streets terrorising women is well worth maintaining: ‘Putting it bluntly, the men who commit violence think they are getting away with it. And devastatingly, they are right’.

Because the supposedly free country we live in is indeed infested with millions of rapists, wife-beaters and people who don’t realise shouting ‘wahey!’ at an attractive woman at a bus stop is as painful and traumatic as dragging her down the street by her hair. But even more ominously, since 17 million thick as pig-shit racist idiots voted to leave the EU, the streets are also teeming with people who’ve taken it upon themselves to attack immigrants and ethnic minorities with pansexual abandon, as the much discussed ‘huge increase’ in post-Brexit hate crimes illustrates. Which we should be grateful for as it gave Owen yet another chance to hold an entire group responsible for the actions of a minority of idiots who would have been merrily dishing out racism with or without the referendum.

Of course Owen provided no hard evidence for this post-referendum spike, such as, y’know, charges or convictions, which makes sense as there haven’t been any. However we don’t need some judge in a chalky wig dishing out prison sentences to convince us Brexit-induced hate crime is on the up: we’ve got eyes, we can see the hate increasing every time we leave the house. And not the good hate, such as we saw at the Labour conference, the kinder gentler hate which allows people who see themselves as tolerant liberals to talk of spitting in people’s tea and lynching Tory MPs. No, the type of hate I’m talking about is the kind that can’t be measured by demonstrable evidence, such as crimes that are actually investigated. This kind of hate can only be gauged by one website which logged 85 unverified allegations of racist behaviour for a four day period immediately after the vote, which just so happened to feature 31 more unverified allegations of racist behaviour than the corresponding period the previous month. No information was provided as to the nature of these crimes and as of yet no reports exist anywhere detailing any charges or convictions relating to them. Yet that hasn’t stopped the likes of Owen, Diane Abbot, the BBC, Channel 4, the vast majority of Twitter and Facebook users and thousands of BTL Guardian commenters quoting the 57% increase as damning evidence of a full-blooded wave of anti-immigrant hatred unleashed by the EU referendum result.

Consequently, die-hard Remainers took to social media courageously urging people to start reporting hate crimes and before you knew it everything from burgled restaurants to a photo of racists waving anti-immigrant banners in the same spot in Newcastle in which they had done so every weekend for the last two years were being used as evidence of a Brexit-influenced xenophobic crime wave. And what a glorious few months it’s been, proving that the middle-class bastions of the modern day left-wing establishment are every bit as adept at lying and fearmongering as the right-wing press of thirty years ago. George Orwell would be so proud.

Owen, of course, was keen to stress he wasn’t holding the knuckle-dragging fools who voted Leave responsible for the mythical spike in hate crime. No, his anger was directed at those who led the Leave campaign and the lies they fed to the public. Which in turn won them the vote and gave the bigots a licence to turn our streets into racist warzones. So in a roundabout way he is holding the knuckle-dragging fools who voted Leave responsible but only because they were too stupid to realise Nigel Farage was lying to them. ‘Their intolerance now had official sanction…for the first time they had a democratic mandate’. It shows Owen’s dedication to the big government socialist pipe dream that the world he inhabits is a bureaucratic bubble in which even bigoted buffoons demand to have their every prejudice officially recognised by the state. And you can tell Owen has met his fair share of racists too judging by his belief that it took the result of a referendum to embolden them to ‘yell abuse at strangers’ when a supremacist hatred of people with different colour skin has been doing the job for centuries.

Still, as Owen isn’t one for sensationalism or whipping up fear he was at great pains to point out that it was only a ‘small minority’ of people in this country who hold racist views. He doesn’t explain how a small minority have managed to be both small and cause a ‘tide of racism and xenophobia’, nor does he expand upon how this small minority have made migrants feel ‘besieged’. What he does say however is that we ‘can only guess at the true scale of hatred on our streets’, which is apt as he then spends the rest of the article quite literally guessing at the true scale of hatred the small minority have unleashed on our streets.

And with that sentence the prodigal son returned to his seat at the captain’s table with the speed of Max Shanley at an all you can eat buffet. Though despite his good work of the last few months Owen knows he can’t afford any more slip-ups; there’s as much chance of Momentum allowing him a third strike as there is of Owen ever writing another sentence about Venezuela. But a good way to earn some brownie points would be an appearance at the annual Stop The War Coalition conference in London this month, attended by the Dear Leader and Anas Altikriti of The Cordoba Foundation. For the uninitiated, Anas is a Hamas supporter who condones suicide bombings and said of the murdered Charlie Hebdo staff: ‘If you poke someone in the eye once too often, you have to expect a response’. In other words, exactly the type of Muslim who fits into Jezza’s Labour like a bloodstained glove. And exactly the sort of person Owen could do well to defend and support at every opportunity if he wants to convince us he’s in it for the long haul.

A word of advice though, Owen. If Anas or any other moderate Islamist asks you if you’d like to go up to the roof to see the view, politely decline. It’s a long way down and Stop The War will have enough on their plate deflecting accusations of anti-Semitism and ignoring the fact that Russia are bombing the shit out of Syria without having to scrape your mangled corpse off the pavement.

Welcome back, comrade!

 

By Ben Pensant

As the dust settles on Keith Vazeline’s forced resignation for committing the harmless act of impersonating a washing machine salesman, one barely publicised consequence is the future of the Home Affairs Select Committee and the gaping hole that now needs to be filled. Of course, as anyone who’s followed his career knows, Keith is more than capable of filling gaping holes. Indeed it’s common knowledge in Westminster that if you need a gaping hole filled, Vazeline’s your man (assuming Peter Mandelson is busy).

But his departure has left a question mark over the fate of the committee and it’s unlikely a replacement will be found with Vaz’s enthusiasm for taking on challenging roles – there’s a reason colleagues used to say he reminded them of a young Olivier. It’s laughable that our racist press are so desperate to smear the Labour Party they’re actually suggesting that his parliamentary role on issues such as legal highs and prostitution as being undermined by his use of legal highs and prostitutes. As is the dumb idea that offering to buy cocaine while chairing a committee responsible for reviewing drug laws represents something of a conflict of interest. Next they’ll be telling us St Jezza has no authority to talk about stamping out antisemitism given he’s spent his entire career defending and supporting antisemites.

Which makes it all the more galling that a man who served his country for nearly thirty years should be cruelly discarded over something as trivial as purchasing bugle, cheating on his wife, and spending 400 grand in cash on a flat to bone Romanian rent boys in. Indeed, it’s become clear Keith may not have even known what he was doing that fateful night. His claim that he was drugged holds plenty of weight when you consider he’d had several previous meetings with these young grifters. Who’s to say he wasn’t drugged and forced to pay for sex on those occasions too? And if he was then who better to spot the signs? Anti-Labour homophobes will pathetically ask why he didn’t go to the police and why he carried on texting one of the men days after being drugged by him. But that ignores the nuance and complexity of the situation, nuance and complexity I have no intention of explaining because if Tory trolls are too dumb to see it then tough titty. I’m not doing your homework for you.

So amazingly, he didn’t only do nothing wrong he probably did nothing at all, other than be in the wrong place (his own property) at the wrong time (a Saturday evening) with the wrong people (two blokes he invited over). All things considered it’s clear this was a cynical tabloid sting orchestrated by the Tories and the PLP, just like everything bad that happens to Labour. Just look at the disgraceful way Emily Thornbirds was humiliated by Dermot Moynahan on Skynet News for not knowing the name of a French politician who seconds earlier she’d said she was intending to visit. These plotting ponces expect the earth from Corbyn’s cabinet but when Keith Vazeline – a man who does give the earth, as well as a fair bit of muck – is shown to be human he’s hounded out of his job before you can say ‘Hitler supported Zionism’.

And the scariest thing is the establishment seem blissfully unaware of how important Keith’s role in the Home Affairs Select Committee was. His dedication to researching a subject was second to none, with no-one bar Charly Sheen as acquainted with the world of prostitution as Vaz. His penchant for making untrue allegations against police officers he doesn’t like was matched only by his tireless work in securing passports for corrupt businessmen. And let’s not forget his knack for casting a judgemental eye over those who failed to meet his high moral standards, such as journalists, coppers, and anyone else in a position to make life difficult for a married MP who enjoys buying property, fiddling expenses, purchasing drugs, and having unprotected sex with rent boys.

But by far Keith’s greatest contribution has been his solid work in reaching out to Muslim communities and their representatives. Of course, like most modern leftists, Vaz actively rejects the advice of ex-Muslims, liberal Muslims, or indeed any Muslims who don’t fit into the box the modern left have assigned them marked ‘victim’. No Uncle Tariqs for Vaz, something he made clear back in 1989 when he intervened in the Salmon Rushdie affair.

Younger leftists may struggle to remember the scandal of The Satanic Virtues. Indeed, many older leftists do too, though this tends to be because they choose not to in case it destroys their narrative, much like Shakira courts, forced marriages, female genital mutilation, and the child grooming gangs of Rochdale, Rotherham, Blackpool, Oldham, Sheffield, Skipton, Manchester, Newcastle, Bradford, Preston, Derby, Telford, Ipswich, Birmingham, Oxford and Barking.

But those not suffering from identity politics-induced amnesia will recall how Rushdie found himself under 24 hour police protection after the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomaniac issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because of offensive content found in a book he’d never read. Needless to say, none were successful in offing Rushdie, though Yusuf Islam AKA Wide World songsmith Cat Stephens proved himself exactly the kind of Muslim liberal commentators love by condoning the death sentence and offering to burn Rushdie alive. He subsequently apologised for these comments but has never retracted them, not even when appearing on liberal BBC programmes from The One Show to Late Night With Jools Holland. All credit to the Beeb for refusing to give in to Islamophobia and smear an innocent man by repeating stuff he’s said.

Sadly, it seems Cat may never get to experience the thrill of killing a blasphemer, though he’s only 68 and the way the French have been whining on the last few years you could hardly blame him for wanting to pop his cherry. Still, plenty of other offended followers of the Religion Of Pieces have had a bloody good try, with numerous murders and attempted murders taking place over the last 27 years. Indeed, it’s clear the West could’ve saved themselves a load of bother if they’d just accepted that the only way to combat Islamic extremism is to stop saying stuff murderous religious fanatics don’t like.

Thankfully, Keith was on the right page from the off. As news of the death sentence emerged Rushdie received a call from the 33-year-old new kid on the block. Vaz would get to know many new kids on many blocks over the following years but it was with this phone conversation that he cemented his position as the Muslim community’s greatest ally. Though when I say ‘Muslim community’ I don’t mean normal, peaceful Muslims who get on with their lives without wanting to kill novelists. Because as every modern liberal knows, a Muslim with no victimhood is as much use as a fish without gills. We spent years fixing the Premiership Table of Oppression to put Muslims at the top; the last thing we need is for them to start integrating, assimilating, thinking for themselves and rejecting their vulnerability. We gave them that vulnerability for a reason and if they want to see what happens to groups who stop being oppressed just look at the working-class. Can you see them? No, of course you can’t because they’ve been sliding down the table ever since they rejected socialism. They only clung on for dear life because we needed them during the Thatcher/Major/Blair years and finally got relegated after showing their true, uneducated colours by blindly voting to leave an unelected, anti-democratic bureaucracy obsessed with austerity and privatisation. The ungrateful wretches. So muslims might be top dogs for now, but think on this: so were Jews once and they’ve dropped so far down the league they might as well be in the Evo Stick Northern Premier First Division (South).

But back to Vaz and how he became someone whom the important part of the Muslim community – ie the Islamist part – could trust. But not before he’d told vile Rushdie that the Ayatollah’s fatwa was “absolutely appalling”, assuring the writer he had Keith’s “full support”. Which he did, until a fortnight later when the Labour MP attended a rally in protest at the publication of racist novel attended by 3,000 Muslims. Vaz called it “one of the great days in the history of Islam in Britain”. And it was too, though thanks to delightful events such as Kill The Jews Day this has now been surpassed, to the point where demos and marches organised by religious fascists and left-wing activists have been commonplace in Britain for years, usually attended by Jeremy Corbyn or Gorgeous ‘George’ Galloway. Though sadly not as often as they’d like, as Jezza has his hands full at the minute fretting about the violent misogyny of after-work drinks, while Galloway is busy focussing on hobbies old and new: suing people, modelling The Incredible Hulk’s contact lenses, and turning his head into a bust of Genghis Khan fashioned from an old lady’s sun-burnt tits.

But a joyous day it was and a vital in mainstreaming the left’s love affair with radical Islam, a romance which is still blossoming thanks to the tireless work of pretend moderates such as Tariq Ramadin and Mehdi Hussein, and useful idiots like OJ Jones and CJ Werlwoman. Of course, it remains a largely unrequited love affair as Islamists tend to despise liberals and everything they represent, such as supposedly left-wing values like equality, freedom, tolerance, democracy, secularism and human rights. Perhaps someone – maybe Charlotte Church? – should have a word with the Islamists and tell them they’ve got nothing to worry about because the modern left doesn’t actually share those values anymore: they were long ago sacrificed on the altar of identity politics and replaced with victimhood, puritanism, censoriousness and moral relativism. Allah forbid they start thinking we’re just a bunch of middle-class half-wits giving them free PR, laughing their beards off every time one of us says “nothing to do with Islam!” before thanking us for all our help once the caliphate arrives by cutting our heads off, setting fire to the corpses, and putting it on YouTube under the banner ‘LIBERALS ARE THE PROPHET’S BITCH’.

Predictably the Islamophobic media of the time revealed their bigotry and pounced upon the fatwa. By siding with a British novelist exercising the freedom to write whatever he likes without fear of being murdered – and ignoring the hurt feelings of a gang of middle-eastern theocrats who hang homosexuals from cranes – the British press set out their stall for years to come. And Keith Vazeline, the true liberal, has been fighting them all the way.

Indeed, only last November he was still building bridges with faith communities by pledging to the Muslim Council Of Britain he would have ‘no problem’ with the UK re-introducing blasphemy laws. Where such reactionary measures would leave a married man who sniffs amyl nitrate and has unprotected sex with male prostitutes is anyone’s guess, though I’m sure those Muslims he showed solidarity with back in ’89 would treat him with tolerance and forgiveness, two cornerstones of the Qu’ran. When I say ‘the Qur’an’ I don’t mean the proper one, I mean the Koran that only exists in the heads of apologists. It’s far nicer than the real-life version as it contains not one reference to jihadism, homophobia or misogyny, and zero calls to violence or exhortations to murder whatsoever. As a result it has no influence at all on the actual jihadism, homophobia and misogyny that is widespread in the Islamic world and is not in the slightest bit connected to any acts of violence or murder carried out in the name of Islam. You should read it. Or rather don’t read it, just convince yourself it exists, and repeat the phrases ‘religion of peace’ and ‘nothing to do with Islam’ over and over again until your brain is as ideologically fried as Jihadi Jim’s (PBUH).

Which brings us to Vaz’s crowning glory, the moment in March 2015 when he hauled the Metropolitan Police before the Home Affairs Select Committee and made them apologise to the parents of three Muslim schoolgirls for allowing their daughters to run off and join ISIS. This came mere weeks after JJ was unmasked as Muhammud Emwazi, a harmless jack-the-lad turned vicious killer after being victimised by MI5, suffering Islamophobic abuse in his adopted homeland, and having to face the horror of living in a country where bare-armed women are allowed to drive cars. It’s a stain upon this supposedly tolerant nation that we force Islamists to live in such conditions without considering how such abominations make them feel. And then we have the nerve to be shocked when they start decapitating people. Shameful.

Right on cue peaceful extremist organisation CAGE jumped to Emwazi’s defence, calling him a ‘beautiful young man’, casting doubt on whether he really was Jihadi Jim, and putting the blame for his decision to become a murderer squarely on the Security Services. Because when it comes down to who’s to blame – and for modern leftists, leftists, everything comes down to who’s to blame – the logic is simple: if a young man runs off to Syria to rape children and cut people’s heads off it’s the fault of the authorities for harassing him. When three schoolgirls run off to marry men who rape children and cut people’s heads off it’s the fault of the authorities for not harassing them. Got it?

A simple concept, and one that Vaz should’ve been knighted for highlighting. Yet the right-wing press were determined to ignore the truth and pass the blame onto such unconnected factors as the girls’ religion or the fact that the father of one of the girls had a habit of taking his child to Al-Muhajiroun rallies attended by Lee Rigsby killer Michael Adebayor at which American flags were routinely set on fire. Amazingly this was suggested by The Daily Fail as somehow influencing his impressionable daughter to harbour dark thoughts about Burkas and beheadings. Unbelievable. A man on a flying horse can see the main reasons were Islamophobia, Western foreign policy, and Islamophobic Western foreign policy, as well as the fact that the lazy Met apparently couldn’t be arsed to spy on these vulnerable kids just in case they ran away to join the circus, the Salvation Army, or a terrorist group who burn pilots alive and throw gays off buildings.

Still, as the girls’ father sat in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee clutching his daughter’s enormous teddy bear – in stark contrast to the footage of him chanting in Arabic flanked by black flags vowing to ‘avenge the prophet’ – few could fail to be touched and enraged at the predicament he found himself in through no fault of his own. Luckily, we have the honourable Keith Vazeline to thank for holding the police to account, shining a light on this terrible injustice, and scarpering sharpish when word got out that the stuffed toy-clutching marginalised Muslim wasn’t quite as cuddly as we thought.

Yet thanks to a cruel Fleet Street sting Keith’s position on this vital committee is no more. And he’s left a huge gap just waiting to be filled by an eager young buck. Which, to be fair, normally suits Vaz down to the ground. But we could be in for a rocky few years unless his replacement is every bit as ethical, dedicated, and keen to placate religious extremists as Keith. Who knows, they might appoint a successor with an equally dubious record of fiddling expenses, threatening landlords and purchasing luxury apartments. And they may even find a candidate who, like Vaz, has been splashed with more Romanian fluids than Dracula’s chin. But we need someone as adept at the hard yards as the fun stuff, someone just as comfortable entertaining businessmen as he is pandering to Islamists.

It’s not going to be easy to fill Keith’s gap but rest assured, the longer he stays out of frontline politics the bigger that gap is going to get.

 

 

By Ben Pensant

As the PLP continue their pathetic attempts to smear Jeremy Corbyn – next they’ll be saying he hates Geordies just because he’s never heard of Ant and Dick – it’s encouraging to see true Labour men like John McDonald refusing to be beaten by focusing on the stuff that really matters to the public, like fighting for the underdog, holding the government to task and trying to strip Sir Richard Branson of his title.

Some may question why anyone outside of the Labour Party gives two shits what the Virgin traitor calls himself, though it makes more sense when you remember Branson’s nephew changed his name to Ned RocknRoll. Let’s see how wacky Ned is when Labour seize power and ban deed poll as well as bearded billionaires – RocknRoll’s gonna look a right knacker shuffling around the gulag with ‘Abel Smith’ tattooed on his shaven forehead. And before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy: yes, I recently changed my name too. The difference is I did it to commemorate becoming a virtuous liberal who is right about everything. Ned did it because his uncle’s a cunt.

But in last week’s Sunday Mirror John honed in on the main issue that keeps traditional Labour supporters up at night. Well, apart from Blairite bastards and Leave-voting racists, that is: they are kept awake by guilt and shame for hating immigrants, smearing a principled man, and plunging the UK into a recession so brutal it still hasn’t happened yet.

Speaking of stuff keeping us up at night, it’s quite clear Branson is kept awake worrying about what will happen to his shitty privatised railway company when Jezza cruises to Number Ten. This entirely unfounded scenario would certainly explain Branson’s vendetta against Corbyn for telling blatant lies about his company. And Branson’s vendetta would certainly explain McDonald’s eagerness to strip the Virgin owner of his knighthood.

But as Corbyn and co. are never wrong about anything and nothing is ever their fault, it’s quite clear McDonnell’s campaign against Branson is based purely on ethics and not at all a pointlessly spiteful tirade that would have little impact if it came from a member of the government never mind a man who has more chance of growing a top lip than ever being called Chancellor (unless when the shadow cabinet’s annual fancy dress ball comes around he gets first dibs on Hitler).

But that’s the regressive left in a nutshell – we have no time for half measures. Just take a look at fellow traveller Michael More’s polemical masterpiece Fahrenheit 999. Moore couldn’t stop at simply criticising the invasion of Iraq; he had to go one better and depict Baathist era Baghdad as a delightful utopia where kids flew kites and played on slides and life was one long wedding banquet with not a torture chamber or mass grave in sight.

Similarly for St Jezza, if you’re a modern leftist you can’t merely point out the many problems with Virgin Trains. No, you have to live out your victimhood fantasy by pretending you were forced to spend a whole journey sitting on the floor. Until you get caught out and you and your lackies tie yourselves in illogical knots with contradictory claims and a web of deceit so unconvincing it makes Keith Vaz look like Keyser Soze. None of which matters because when you’re right, you know you’re right and little things like time dated CCTV footage matter not a jot if they get in the way of the narrative. And boy, is that narrative getting stronger by the day.

So no, John isn’t going to let it lie and frankly, why should he? This is a man of principle, remember. Just look at his brave stand against tax relief for unscrupulous pharmaceutical companies, clearly motivated by a belief in ethics and accountability and nothing whatsoever to do with Labour leadership rival Owen Smith’s previous career as Head of Policy for an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company.

To give Smith his dues, he has shown a shred of decency recently by pledging to ignore the democratic will of the people and call for a second EU referendum because he, Eddie Izzard, David Lammy and thousands of social media crybabies didn’t like the result of the first one. He won’t get the chance of course – Corbyn  wont let him – but it’s refreshing to know the Welsh wonder is just as in sync with traditional Labour supporters as our Dear Leader. So full marks for sticking it to the dumb racist proles with their piss-stained jeans and Pokémon Go. But we still hate you and all the other members of the Chicken Coup and look forward to hanging you from a lamp-post on Downing Street.

As it happens, Smith could learn a thing or two from McDonald about principles, plenty of which were on display in last week’s Sunday Mirror column which railed against the honours system. Because as we know, the only people John thinks should be ‘honoured’ are murderers, especially ones with a penchant for wearing balaclavas and knee-capping drug dealers.

As he pointed out in 2003, the IRA deserve high praise for ‘bringing Britain to the negotiating table’ a feat they pulled off by planting explosives in pubs and shopping centres that tore apart men, women and children. Though he’s not suggesting these principled killers should take all of the credit. No, he modestly reserves some of that for himself and staunch pacifist Jeremy Corbyn, both of whom played their own significant role in bringing about peace by voting against the Anglo-Irish agreement, attending the funerals of dead IRA members, editing a far-left fanzine that praised the Brighton Bombers, and actively supporting the ‘armed struggle’ for a united Ireland at every opportunity.

If there were any justice these two would be knighted tomorrow for putting their necks on the line in the name of peace, harmony, and siding with anyone who hates the UK. But fear not, comrades, for the day will eventually come when Jeremy wields the iron fist of the state and makes it a criminal offence not to address him as ‘Captain’, ‘President For Life’, or ‘Maximum Leader Of The People’s Republic Of New Britain (Peace Be Upon Him)’.

But McDonald’s nothing if not an equal opportunities terrorist sympathiser. He’s got as much time for extremists of the Islamist variety as he does their Irish catholic brethren. Indeed, when not defending privately educated rioters for throwing fire extinguishers from tower blocks, John has been known to hang out with members of CAGE, the delightful ‘human rights’ group set up by former Guantanamo detainee and Islamist dissembler Moazzam Begbie, which also boasts Mohammed ‘Jihadi Jim’ Emwazi as a former associate.

Earlier this year McDonald was pictured arm in arm with Mopazzam and Shakey Aamer as they protested the treatment they received at the hands of the US Army in Guantanamo Bay. This is a subject close to many hearts of course, including hard-nosed investigative reporters like Franky Boyle and Polly Joan Harvey who feel so strongly about Aamer’s plight they’ve penned articles, filmed videos and written songs dedicated to the hapless tourist.

Of course, being on the left and thus convinced of their own virtuousness, neither felt the need to spend five minutes looking at the readily available evidence which casts serious doubt on the narrative that Shakey and Moazzam were mere innocents abroad who only set foot in Afghanistan to help build schools and petting zoos for young girls and blind orphans. Because when you know you’re right your moral superiority allows you to ignore such irrelevant concepts as facts and proof. Especially if you’re a respected musician or an edgy Scotch comic. Either way and when you combine McDonald’s support for Begbie, Aamer, CAGE and the IRA with his admiration of propaganda-driven authoritarian regimes it’s fair to say our John has defended more murderers and bullshitters than Johnny Cochran.

Of course, there are some instances when gifting honours and titles to friends is perfectly acceptable, such as when the friend in question is Shami Chakrabbitslims and she’s awarded a peerage by St Jezza immediately after whitewashing an investigation into antisemitism, burying evidence and then lying about it. Which I’m sure Begbie and Aamer would approve of bearing in mind CAGE’s website has carried articles proposing such interesting ideas as the theory that 9/11 was an insurance scam carried out by Zionist billionaires.

Indeed, Shami once called Begbie “a wonderful advocate for human rights and human liberty”. Brave words indeed and kudos to her for risking the wrath of the right-wing press by making such a claim about a man who last year refused to condemn stoning women to death for adultery. It’s frankly mind-boggling that peaceful Muslims like Begbie and Aamer are still smeared as extremists. It really is a mystery.

Though hardly surprising given the hysteria of our Islamophobic media. Just look st the disgusting smearing of Shakey Aamer: these days you can’t even condone Shakira Law, visit jihadi training camps, or start an organisation that campaigns on behalf of convicted terrorists without being branded an Islamist. And woe betide any harmless British aid worker who gets captured in a warzone with a fake passport, an AKA47, and an acute strain of amnesia which forces him to spend the next 14 years trying to remember the name of the charity he was working for when he was captured in a warzone with a fake passport, an AK47, and an acute strain of amnesia.

With such prejudice aimed at two harmless moderate Muslims it’s no surprise someone like McDonald relates to their struggle. Indeed he knows all about being an outcast having grown up with no top lip. All of which no doubt fed into the rage of his incendiary Sunday Mirror column.

Needless to say, it’s blatantly obvious his piece was severely cut by Blairite editors, clearly terrified of the no-holds barred feather-ruffling within. However I have reproduced the entire article below with the redacted passages re-inserted in italics. When I say ‘re-inserted’ I mean I have accurately predicted what I believe John must have written using my extensive knowledge of a man I’d never heard of until he waved some dead chinaman’s diary about in the House Of Commons.

But as all good Corbynites know, a complete lack of knowledge about Labour politics is no barrier to spending all day talking about it. In fact it’s encouraged: the last thing our Dear Leader needs is his protest movement getting buggered up by people with a deep connection to the party and its history. So here, in its unedited glory is ‘Enjoy your millions abroad but don’t expect to take your gongs with you!’ by the redoubtable John McDonald:

“It’s time to take control of our honours system. We want to make sure all those who make a real contribution to our society get the recognition they deserve.

But when I say ‘a real contribution’ I don’t mean those who are kind to animals or look after the elderly. I’m talking about REAL heroes who whitewash enquiries into antisemitism then lie about it.

Because it’s not just about recognising the huge contribution our artists or sportsmen and women or other well-known figures make.

In fact, if I had my way any artist or sportsmen who hasn’t endorsed Jeremy by May 2020 will be stripped of their honours, titles, leotards ,and paintbrushes before you can say ‘JK Rowland’.

It’s about recognising unsung heroes who keep our public services running, or devote a lifetime to local communities. It’s our way of collectively saying someone has given back to society.

And what better way to give back to society than whitewashing an enquiry into antisemitism then lying about it?

But the whole purpose of the honours system is undermined when the rich and the powerful can collect their gongs without giving anything back. It’s even worse when the tax exiles are given honours.

Indeed, they could at least follow Ken Livingston’s lead by staying in this country and avoiding tax while giving something back by becoming Mayor of London, defending Islamic fundamentalists ,and spouting drivel about Hitler inventing Zionism.

Why should Philip Green, who ran BHS into the ground and paid his wife in Monaco £1 billion to avoid UK tax, be honoured with a ‘Sir’? The whole honours system is cheapened when freeloaders like Green are given awards.

We should treat the honours system with the same respect Jeremy treated the House of Lords by only awarding peerages to people who whitewash investigations into antisemitism then lie about it.

It’s time Parliament got to grips with this. We need proper oversight through Parliament of the honours system, not one where it is too easy for a Prime Minister to hand out favours to mates.

Leaders of the opposition on the other hand, should be able to hand out favours and peerages to anyone we like, particularly people who whitewash investigations into antisemitism then lie about it.

And tax exiles should not be allowed to keep the privilege of an honour or a title.

Unless they’ve done something particular virtuous, such as praising Islamist groups like CAGE, accepting donations from sons of murderous dictators, or whitewashing an investigation into antisemitism then lying about it.

It should be a simple choice for the mega rich. Run off to tax exile if you want. But you leave your titles and your honours behind you when you go.

And if the prospect of losing a pointless, empty title that only a handful of people in Westminster care about doesn’t keep you and the British public up at night then frankly, nothing will.”

As you can see, it’s clear McDonald’s column will have struck fear into the great, the good ,and the five people who bothered to read it. As with the other MPs rallying around Our Leader in this golden age of left-wing rabble-rousing, John has brought Kinder Gentler Politics to life by honing in on an issue that only came up because Philip Green is a Tory and Corbyn’s handlers don’t know how to pre-book a seat on a train.

But he follows a long tradition of principled Labour orators who’ve appealed to the public through a smart blend of progressive ideology, common sense politics and knowing what the hell they’re doing. Ramsay MacBolton, Clemence Attlee, Hugh Catskill…the new breed of Labour members may neither know nor care who these seminal figures are and it stands to reason all three would rather choke than attend a CND rally or an Al Qoods Day march. But rest assured, they’ll be looking down at the great work being done in their name by John McDonald and Jeremy Corbyn with tears in their eyes.

I think we all are.

 

 

 

 

 

By Ben Pensant

Much has changed in my day-to-day life since abandoning the white working-class and joining the white liberal elite. I’ve bought a bike, watched An Inconvenient Truth and swapped hobbies such as whippet-breeding and wife-battery for reading The New Statesman and pretending to care about refugees. (Not enough to put one up in my spare room, mind. There are plenty of council estates for that.) But by far the biggest change has been my decision to abandon vacuous pursuits like Tinder and TOWIE to focus on the big issues that actually matter. Such as children’s T-shirts with Einstein’s fucking face on the front.

Yes, you heard that right. And I apologise to anyone who just had traumatic memories of the wild-haired German physicist triggered by such a hateful concept as a T-shirt with his fucking face on the front. But that’s the way it is and I urge anyone of a sensitive disposition to go and find the nearest Safe Space: it’s about to get micro-aggressive in here. Because while I was busy writing about Brexit and the Labour Party little did I know this disturbing alliance of science and leisure wear was taking place. And it’s destined to have far greater consequences than the UK leaving an unaccountable neo-liberal bureaucracy or re-electing a fossilised Rick out of The Young Ones as leader of the opposition.

Not since finding out Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends was the most dangerous piece of racist propaganda since The Birth Of A Nation have I been so shocked by a Guardian article. But kudos to Chitra Ramaswamy for having the bravery to expose this grim development. In ‘How a sexist T-shirt harms us all’ she tackled the hot topic of gendered clothing, chiefly Gap’s problematic new range of kids’ clobber which includes a ‘Social Butterfly’ jumper for girls with a large pink ‘G’ emblazoned across it and a ‘Little Scholar’ one for boys with Einstein’s fucking face on the front. The fact that these ignorant jerks didn’t even bother with a transgender one speaks volumes. It’s not like it would have been difficult to come up with a design: a defiantly neutral yellow sweater, a random gender fluid icon on the front and a huge sparkly ‘XE’ on the back would have done the job. For the icon they could have gone for John Inman dressed as Widow Twankey and called it ‘Non-Binary Dressmaker’. The transgender community would welcome this respectful gesture but more importantly it would give us brave SJWs who get offended on their behalf another excuse to act smug on the internet. But no, a purely tokenistic move to placate the self-appointed representatives of roughly 1% of the population who never asked for their help in the first place is apparently too much effort for the cis-gendered slags at Team Gap.

Chitra’s fear is the assumption that boys are more intelligent than girls will continue to discourage the latter from pursuing interests in male-dominated fields: ‘Oh well’ she writes. ‘Her chambray shirt (with pink logo obviously) may not fast-track her into a science, technology, engineering and maths subject but it will be “the talk of the playground”. And what more could a girl want?’. Indeed, as I recall from my high school days, ‘talk of the playground’ is a sobriquet no young lady wants, as the amateur entrepreneur with cold-sores who got caught behind B-block exchanging special treats for tabs and Space Raiders would no doubt agree. Well, I imagine she would – I like to think the subsequent taunting and bullying she received led to years of drug-abuse, prostitution, suicide attempts and eventual incarceration for kidnapping her five illegitimate children from social services and drowning them in an oil drum. Not because she deserved such a harrowing fate but because one more victim narrative is always welcome in the world of the regressive left, especially if we can blame it on society or the patriarchy or something. Also, as a white male cis-gendered Leave-voter anything that makes me feel even more guilty is always welcome. And as she stares at the ceiling of her white cell I hope she harbours thoughts of revenge towards me for not coughing up the two Lamberts I owed her. Then scarpering when Mr Dungworth came around the corner just as Barry ‘Digger’ Barnes spunked all over her ski jacket.

But who could deny that such sad tales are a direct result of gendered clothing (or their ’80s and ’90s equivalent, his-and-hers shell-suits)? Perhaps the path to self-destruction began that Christmas morning her parents gave her a My Little Pony nighty as her younger brother stomped around in Spiderman pyjamas, aping the privileged white misogynist he would one day become by shouting, throwing cushions and playing guitar with his willy.

And the impact these T-shirts with Einstein’s fucking face on the front will have on learning can’t be underestimated. Though academic development is something the patriarchy has already done its best to hamper, as evidenced by the fact that girls have been out-performing boys at school and university for decades. Because as we all know, the modern child has no time for silly things like bikes, sweets and having fun: they’re fully-formed little Naomi Klein-reading adults who wake up in the middle of the night agonising over ice-caps and intersectionality. Well, the ones brought up by Guardian journalists are anyway.

As Chitra writes: ‘Watch any TV advert aimed at children and you will see girls in shiny princess outfits emoting into microphones and boys dutifully pushing fire engines’. Because the last thing a child needs is to be told it’s okay to enjoy whatever toys they happen to like. But as we all know, they don’t just happen to like these toys: they’ve been conditioned to believe they should like them because of the sex were assigned at birth by right-wing doctors. And these poor kids don’t know any better, despite the fact that middle-class liberals like to think kids are responsible little adults with deep anxieties about fair trade, as opposed to weird little sociopaths with deep anxieties about where their next ice cream is coming from. From birth they’ve been brainwashed by a patriarchal society into believing they should wear gendered colours and play with toys they like. We can only reverse this by brainwashing them into believing they should wear non-gendered colours and play with toys that we like.

‘Go to the children’s section of any clothes shop and you will encounter primary-coloured stripes for boys and pastel polka dots for girls. We are living in an age where even shapes are gendered’ laments Chitra. And she’s entirely correct, as anyone who spent the years following their first stolen glimpse of a lady bush giggling every time they saw a triangle will agree. But the serious issue of unscrupulous companies having the gall to cynically design clothes to appeal to particular demographics is one that will only be defeated when the likes of Gap forget about all that market research mumbo jumbo and start manufacturing clothes that value PC over profit. Just because a girls’ dressing gown emblazoned with trains and footballs would shift roughly the same units as a Princess Leia costume for boys is no reason not to stick two fingers up at capitalism and mass-produce a line of clothing no sod wants to buy.

But Chitra’s here to tell this dangerous company that disparate groups of people – from Guardian journalists to Independent readers – are simply not gonna take it any more: ‘The Gap ad designates boys as brainy and girls as sociable – gender stereotypes that have been around longer than pink Lego. And people are fed up with it’. By ‘people’ she means the small percentage of the population who believe Hamley’s abandoning their gender-specific pink and blue signs will reduce domestic violence. But fed up they certainly are, and it’s clear Chitra is so fed up of this T-shirt with Einstein’s fucking face on it she doesn’t even mention the two other two ‘looks’ featured in the advert, ‘Adventurer Girl’ and ‘Comedian Boy’. Clearly Chitra was too traumatised by the way they reinforced the stereotypes that men are funny and women have a habit of wandering off to mention them. It couldn’t possibly be because they didn’t fit in with her narrative that Gap are determined to keep women down by encouraging them to forgo science and technology and stick to stroking bunnies and baking fairy-cakes. She’s far too even-handed for that, as demonstrated when she admonishes herself for deploying gender stereotypes about her son:

‘Sometimes I’m the one dishing it out, such as when I find myself saying he is “such a boy” because he loves trains, hates arts and crafts and can’t sit still for a second’ she muses, before putting the blame for her son’s perfectly normal behaviour squarely where it belongs: ‘None of it makes him “such a boy”: we have society to thank for that’. Indeed we do, and due to ‘the insidious nature of gender stereotyping’ we also have the horrific spectre of kids wearing clothes that they like and feel comfortable in rather than ones that make their middle-class parents feel morally superior.

And there’s nothing more morally superior than sticking two fingers up at society and buying your son a toy pushchair to help him learn to walk. As Chitra explains, she ended up deciding against this as the sexist female shop assistant put her off. Fortunately her son learnt to walk perfectly fine without being forced to play with a toy he’d rather set ahad than push around in the name of diversity. But as she notes, we live in ‘a world in which dads push them around all the time, seemingly without shame’ yet repressed men are too embarrassed to let their sons do the same. ‘See what I mean about sexism being everywhere?’ she rages, brilliantly putting this sorry state of affairs down to prejudice rather than the fact that most little boys would sooner confess to the headmaster it was them who pumped during assembly than be seen pushing a girly buggy around. But for this we have society to blame. And while it’s perfectly fine to allow four year old boys to decide they want to wear dresses and identify as girls it’s categorically not okay to let them decide which toys they want to play with.

Predictably, Tory trolls and knuckle-headed Sun-readers tend to view these common sense measures as middle-class trivialities, paling into insignificance compared to the fact that, as Chitra states, ‘two women are killed every week in England and Wales by a current or former partner’. Or they evade the issue by pointing out people would have a lot more respect for modern feminists if they devoted as much attention to issues such as FGM and forced marriages as they do to the foul misogyny of doctor’s costumes and T-shirts with Einstein’s fucking face on the front. But Chitra has a stinging rebuke for such Islamophobic whataboutery: ‘The point is that all of it matters and all of it is connected. Whether gender stereotyping takes place in an email, on a T-shirt, in a toy shop or at a school, the effects are serious for all of us’. Privileged males will wince at the suggestion a T-shirt for kids with Einstein’s fucking face on the front has any connection whatsoever to men who beat their girlfriends to death. But that’s probably because they’re privileged males who secretly want to beat their girlfriends to death. Trust me, back when I was a privileged male I used to regularly daydream about murdering my girlfriend, Tina from ‘Corrie and the entire cast of Loose Women. Would I have harboured such dark thoughts if my mam hadn’t forced her 7 year old son to wear those A-fronts with Mr T’s fucking face on the crotch?  I think we all know the answer to that.

Ominously, Chitra continues the dark theme and leaves her most prophetic point until last with this chilling sign off: ‘After all, each of us should grow with the possibility of becoming a scientist, a social butterfly, neither or both’. The fact that this possibility is being denied to children all over the world – even those whose interest in science begins and ends with wondering if Reed Richards could wrap his cock around a lamp-post – is a stain upon Western civilisation. And most offensively it is all because some transphobic misogynist thought it would be a good idea to design a T-shirt for boys with Einstein’s fucking face on the front.

But the sad fact is, despite the rage of Chitra’s piece the only people who seemed to notice were those white privileged males below-the-line who took the piss out of it. As she wrote, gender stereotyping is harmful ‘not only to boys and girls but to women, men and every gender in between’. Quite how a T-shirt with Einstein’s fucking face on the front harms a pensioner from Birmingham or a  disabled war veteran isn’t made clear but that doesn’t matter. If they’re too selfishly wrapped up in playing Bingo and not walking to notice the damage done by a T-shirt with Einstein’s fucking face on the front then they’re welcome to their ignorance. And the uncomfortable truth that the social media outrage lasted a measly few days before the SJWs moved on to wishing death upon Clint Eastwood is a travesty.

But a wholly unsurprising one. Until I was mugged by reality the day after the EU Referendum I would have given Chitra’s story short shrift too: I was the type of deluded Neo-Con who dismissed pieces like this as ‘PC gone mad’. But in the immortal words of Stewart Lee, ‘PC hasn’t gone mad: it’s perfectly fine where it is’. And who better to look to for moral guidance than a comedian so comfortable with his intellectual superiority he proudly disregards such generic concepts as jokes and punchlines?

So perhaps we shouldn’t get too downbeat about the lack of interest in this appalling story. The fact that Guardian writers are brilliant enough to write about it, Guardian readers are brilliant enough to read about it and other Guardian readers are brilliant enough to write 2,000 words about how brilliant Guardian writers are for writing about it proves categorically that when you’re as brilliant as we are it doesn’t matter that the rest of the world couldn’t give two shits. And even if Gap stopped making their misogynist T-shirt with Einstein’s fucking face on the front they would only think of something else to stealthily turn little boys into gun-wielding astronaut-cum-CEOs while little girls are prepped for a future working in petting zoos and smelly soap shops. This may be at odds with data showing that on average girls receive better school grades than boys, take up more places in higher education and have just as many opportunities to forge successful careers and earn money in the Western world as any other autonomous human being. But as utopian as that sounds the house of cards collapses as soon as women are forced to have babies and take time off work by the bastardly patriarchy.

For now, let’s just console ourselves that while dumb working-class proles may be prime fodder for Gap to brainwash into believing women are only good for looking pretty, the regressive left are a much harder ethically sourced nut to crack. If you want to turn us bedsit militants into unthinking drones it’ll take more than a Barbie umbrella for girls or a boys’ bobble hat shaped like Galileo’s fucking beard.

Because yes, we DO mind the gap.

 

 

 

 

By Ben Pensant

‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’

Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963.

As any proponent of identity politics knows all too well, the above quote is a load of shit. Dreams are dangerous. Since joining the regressive left I’ve experienced a recurring one in which Jeremy Corbyn and I burst into the House Of Commons armed with Kalashnikovs and massacre the entire Conservative Party and PLP wearing onlY vests, underpants and matching black berets. Occasionally it climaxes with myself and the Labour leader whistling Ode To The Fattherland while spooning on a pile of blood-soaked Tory corpses. Sometimes a naked John McDonald patrols the back-benches stoving in the heads of still-breathing Blairites with the blunt end of the ceremonial mace. And one unforgettable version last September featured John wearing Theresa May’s head as a mask Jezza sliced the clothing from Tim Watson’s dead body with a penknive before carving an assortment of hammers, sickles and comedy penises into his enormous back.

Point being, as eager as I and most Corbynites are to carry out such brutality in the name of serving the Dear Leader, the whining from the Tory press would be unbearable if they found out Her Majesty’s Opposition had spent the afternoon murdering the entire British political class before mutilating, desecrating and drawing cocks on their corpses. The Maxwell empire already demonise Corbyn for praising dictators and religious fascists; can you imagine the outrage if they found out as well as being a psychopathic killer he also owned the same hat as Che Guevera? We’d never hear the end of it.

Which is why Dr King should’ve really let the people who know best decide what’s good for his four little children. As all good leftists know, only a simpleton would ignore the huge impact a person’s race – as well as their gender, religion, sexuality, political persuasion and opinion of Stewart Lee – has on the content of their character. To put it bluntly, Rosie Parks didn’t fight the equality wars so that ethnic minorities could be judged by the same standards as everyone else. And even if they did, well, things have changed. If minorities start being treated as autonomous human beings capable of independent thought as white liberals we might as well just give up and join Ukip. We worked hard to gift these communities the victimhood we decided they wanted. We’re not giving it up without a fight no matter how many gay chat-show hosts or black presidents you throw at us.

Which brings us to Linda West whose column in last week’s Guardian proved she’s au fait with the politics of identity in a blistering attack on not only the white and privileged but also the feathered. Titled ‘Jonathan Franzen’s lack of black friends is unsettling but it’s hardly surprising in white America’, West – best known for campaigning against the twin evils of rape culture and weight loss – launches a blistering attack on the award-winning novelist for having the gall to admit to Slant magazine that he doesn’t have many black friends. West is typically uninterested in the many possible reasons for this un-PC oversight but her remedy is simple: go out and find some, duh.

“Why don’t you take steps to cultivate some friendships with black people?” she asks, brilliantly reducing adult humans with brown skin to mere cultigens to be tended and modified in order to make white people feel virtuous. And boy, is West virtuous. This is a lady so confident of her virtuous-ness she spends her spare time campaigning against the public shaming of people who eat too much but has no qualms about publicly shaming someone for having less black mates than her. Virtuous.

She begins by admonishing the interviewer for asking if ‘in light of America’s weird year’ Franzen would ever write a book about race. The word ‘weird’ is, she writes, “a jarringly detached descriptor for a year of unrelenting xenophobia, white nationalism and state-sanctioned summary execution” then berates Franzen for not questioning it in the way someone with more black friends would have done. Someone like Linda West, obvs, whose horticultural flair for cultivating politically correct friendships has no doubt yielded a whole cabbage patch of ethnically diverse bezzies. Indeed, while anyone with half a brain knows it’s Not Okay to culturally appropriate music, food or moustaches, Lindy wants the world and his civil partner to know it’s perfectly okay to culturally appropriate human beings.

Franzen’s crime – to think differently to West – is further compounded when he says something she agrees with but she has a go at him about it anyway. Discussing his reluctance to write black characters, he notes: “I’ve never been in love with a black woman…I write about characters and I have to love the character to write bout the character”. West is overjoyed about this as like most regressive leftists she firmly believes white people shouldn’t comment on or write about race, despite the fact she is a white writer commenting on and writing about race. But like her kindred spirit, Saudi-funded intellectual Nathan Loon – a man who recently chastised the non-Muslim Sam Harrison for writing a book about Islam even though non-Muslim Loon has written a book and hundreds of articles about Islam – when you’re on the left you can forget about little things like intellectual consistency and your basic goodness will see you through.

Basic goodness that allows Linda to demonstrate how much she values free speech by applauding Franzen for not writing about race: “The boundary he senses there is a healthy one” she muses – brilliantly ignoring centuries of literary tradition to tell writers they should create and respect boundaries instead of pushing and ignoring them – before delivering her devastating body-blow: “White people should stay in our lane…Jonathan Franzen should not write books about the black experience in America”. If only acclaimed writers like David Simons had stayed in their lanes before putting white privileged pen to paper we could have been spared culturally imperialist trash like The Wiretap.

Because as West is keen to remind us: there are rules and they need to be followed. By everyone. But mainly white people. And those annoying black people who start getting all uppity by thinking for themselves and not staying in the lane that middle-class white liberals have kindly set aside for them. You know who I’m talking about: Harriet Madeleine Stowe wrote a bloody novel about them.

So let’s disregard Franzen’s admission that he feels embarrassed about his lack of black friends, or the multitude of possible reasons why he doesn’t have any, West is too savvy to worry about facts before accusing a perfect stranger of being a racist who cares more about football and winged beasts than ethnic minorities: “It’s particularly demoralising when compared to the tenderness with which he talks about bird conservation, his evening tennis routine or watching the NFL. In this interview he speaks with more warmth and familiarity about birds than he does about black people”.

One step ahead of the trolls, she pre-empts their inevitable whining by back-tracking on this sentence immediately: “To be clear, I highly doubt ‘less important than birds’ is Franzen’s genuine take on systematic racism and Black Lives Matter”. See, like most white liberals enchanted by BLM, Linda respects black people so much she’s happy equating them all with dodgy militants who misrepresent statistics, sing quirky songs about killing policeman, and recently published a ‘list of demands’ which calls for all black criminals to be released from jail and the introduction of education and welfare systems which treat everyone who isn’t African American as second class citizens.

She cuts to the core of what Franzen really thinks with startling clarity: “I don’t know these people, Franzen is telling us. These are not my people. I know enough to be embarrassed yet don’t care enough to change”. Despite the fact that she fails to provide any evidence that Franzen believes this – or that he deliberately set out to have as few black friends as possible – it’s clear this must be the case because, well, she says so. Witness how he pussy-foots around the exact number by saying ‘not many’, as if this excuses his failure to hit the minimum black friend-quota deemed acceptable by blue-haired feminists. Though by now Franzen has dug himself such a problematic hole he’d be lucky to get out of it even if it turned out he was on first-name terms with the entire cast of The Crosby Show.

And this is where West deals her fatal blow, asserting that Franzen’s ‘blithe’ admission is “a direct hindrance to black upward mobility, black safety and black humanity”. Because even the most deluded Republican couldn’t dispute that the grim statistics showing disproportionate numbers of young black men committing violent crime are less influenced by poverty or lack of education than they bare by an ornithology-loving novelist who doesn’t have many black friends. Based on such flawless logic, I hope for his sake Billy Oddie has plenty of POC pals because if not it’s only a matter of time before Linda exposes him as the Grand Goodie Wizard of Cambridge KKK.

Which I’m sure she will if it means proving to the world how ‘deeply segregated’ the USA is. Indeed, if West’s Best People Of 2015 Black Lives Matter had their way it would stay like that, as their recently published manifesto is virtually a love letter to segregation. Because any good liberal knows there are times when it’s necessary to promote segregation, such as when it’s done by a member of a group bestowed with that most prestigious honour in the modern left handbook: victimhood. Some may argue that segregation and victimhood were the last things Malcolm Luther King had in mind when he spoke of his ‘dream’. Well doc, I’m sorry but your dream will have to wait until privileged white men like Franzen learn that the best way to promote tolerance is not to treat people as equals but to collect ethnically diverse acquaintances like cub-scouts collect badges.

But all hope is not lost. In the same way post-Brexit pearl-clutchers brilliantly reclaimed hatred of the working-class from city bankers and the landed gentry, so West and her fellow regressives have reclaimed racism from knuckle-dragging bigots in Union Jack shorts. But with a simple twist – instead of fearing and despising people with different colour skin they patronise and dehumanise them. Holding minorities to a different standard and indulging in the racism of low expectations has long been a cornerstone of liberal thinking and it’ll take more than Jonathan Frangipane and his exotic pigeons to change that.

Needless to say, Linda has inspired me to confront my own shame at not having many black friends (though I know two Muslims, one gay and loads of gingers). The obvious explanation for this is that I live in the north-east where the black population is around 0.5%. But Ogden’s Razor be damned, it’s more likely to do with the fact that until recently I was a privileged white male who didn’t want black friends, like Jonathan but without the successful writing career and superior knowledge of Jamaican wildfowl.

However, after wallowing in my shame for a few days and applying paper cuts to various sensitive parts of my anatomy I realised how much I envied Linda for her warmth, bravery, and smug sense of self-satisfaction. But mainly for her impressive selection box of black friends. So I intend to fix this oversight once and for all over the next few weeks by visiting as many basketball games, Afro-Carribbean hairdressers, and Brixton food banks as possible. I look forward to meeting my soon-to-be soulmates and I’m sure when they find out I’m befriending them purely because of their pigmentation I’ll get the reception I thoroughly deserve.

Increase the peace.

 

 

 

By Ben Pensant

Since publishing a much-lauded apology for voting to leave the European Union, I’ve now completed my journey from bigoted moron to bigoted intellectual. And what a journey. Joining the regressive left has opened my eyes to cerebral experiences I previously thought were the preserve of the sophisticated, such as boycotting Israeli houmous or throwing fire extinguishers at coppers. However, while I intend to carry on shaming myself for past transgressions – like that time I agreed with Nadia Dorries or the fancy dress party I attended thirty years ago wearing offensive green face paint and a sombrero – I will also use this blog to educate working-class racists by celebrating principled politicians, intelligent left-wingers and Ken Livingstone.

(By the way I was dressed as Busquets, the cartoon jalapeno and Columbia World Cup mascot, and I’m deeply ashamed that even at the age of 9 I was thoughtlessly appropriating the heritage of both Latin americans and anthropomorphic moustachioed chilli peppers.)

But first let’s deal with the baddies. When you join a new group you quickly learn the importance of togetherness, especially when that group is full of people who’d pelt you with ethically correct quail eggs if you so much as hinted St Jezza’s beard could do with a wash. Which makes it all the more shameful when two high-profile group members turn informer, abandoning the all-important left-wing narrative in favour of that cowardly manoeuvre beloved by non-Corbynites: making their own minds up.

As is painfully apparent, I’m talking about former economic advisor to John McDonnell-turned-Blairite traitor Danny Blanchflower and former Corbynite Guardian journalist-cum-Neo Liberal turncoat Owain Jones. For having the gall to go off-message and speak their minds about the incompetence and unelectability of the current Labour Party the court of social media will judge them accordingly. Although word from Momentum HQ is that the top brass favour a more direct punishment involving gulags and ice-picks.

Blanchflower – so deep in the pockets of the PLP he might as well move into Tim Watson’s jockstrap –  joined the other New Labour quislings by turning on Corbyn in the back when he most needed him. Introduced to much fanfare in September 2015, Blanchflower – with one eye on the House Of Lords or a spot on Den Of Dragons – resigned this week, pathetically claiming Labour ‘does not seem to have a credible economic plan’ and have ‘no chance of winning a general election now, in 2020, or at any other time’.

Clearly Blanchflower had been radicalised by the right-wing media’s campaign to smear the Labour Leader by reporting his exact words on topics such as terrorism, man-hole covers and segregated seating on trains. Which – surprise, surprise – Corbyn was misquoted on. Though when he becomes Prime Minister he should perhaps take a leaf out of his ‘very good friend’ Ibrahim Hewitt’s book and make it law that any woman sexually assaulted on public transport is stoned to death for adultery. It’ll be popular with Corbyn’s more exotic supporters and do wonders for reducing the prison population.

But back to Blanchflower, about whom there was always something sinister. The signs were there last September when Corbynites lauded him and heralded his endorsement as proof of Corbyn and McDonnell’s economic nous. The fact that the intelligent mind we gushed about then has now become a government shill not worth listening to (for pointing out that the committee he joined with much fanfare probably should’ve met more than twice in ten months) tells you everything about the lengths my new friends will go to to protect the Cult Of Jezza.

But worm-that-turned Blanchflower has nothing on snake-in-the-grass Owen Jones. In a rambling, incoherent blog-post entitled ‘Questions All Jeremy Corbyn Supporters Need To Answer’, Jones has done what we always suspected he would when the going got tough: betrayed his comrades. We knew this would happen of course, even when we were cheering his speeches and forwarding his articles all over Twitter as unshakeable evidence of Jezza’s awesomeness. But despite Jones campaigning for Corbyn and writing endearingly deluded attempts to excuse everything from the Labour leader’s defence of Islamists to his Arsene Wenger-esque approach to antisemitism, it appears Jones ha spat the dummy and took the Blairite coin.

I won’t bore you with quotes from his spineless article because a) he doesn’t deserve the publicity and b) I haven’t actually read it. But as all contemporary leftists know, I don’t need to: since submitting to the Kinder Gentler Politics I’ve realised that listening to criticism and encouraging debate is way less satisfying than calling someone a ‘red Tory’ and throwing a breezeblock through their window.

However, during my skim-read I did notice Jones’ questions to Corbyn supporters: ‘How can the disastrous polling be turned around?’, ‘What is the media strategy?’, ‘How would we deal with people’s concerns over immigration?’. The fact he even asks speaks volumes, but as a devout Corbynite of four weeks and counting let me clear them up: there is no disastrous polling, we don’t need a media strategy, and the only people concerned about immigration are Ukip voters. Kapeesh?

Jones doesn’t mention if he plans to back Owain Smith but it’s clearly only a matter of time before his transformation from principled socialist to evil Blairite is complete, and I look forward him receiving more abuse on Twitter from angry liberals who hung on his every word until he started saying stuff they disagreed with. And I’m sure Smith and Jones will make a good pair. It’s just a shame that unlike their ITV comedy namesakes neither have yet had the good grace to die of a heart attack. Give it time. It’s the only way Jones could atone for committing the ultimate sin on the modern left: he admitted he was wrong. Scab.

Which brings us to Shadow Club Secretary Diane Abbotts, who has never been wrong about anything. Ever. And even if she was she sure as hell wouldn’t admit it. But luckily she never has been. Ever. Not even when she sent her son to private school despite spending years castigating anyone who isn’t black or female – such as Tony Bliar or Harriett Hartman – for doing the same. What the haters couldn’t grasp was that she was selflessly planting seeds for her party’s future. As Brexit proved, the chances of finding the next generation of socialist statesmen in the uneducated cesspool of the racist working-class are non-existent. Without left-leaning rich kids in private schools and esteemed universities where on do you think the next generation of Labour MPs, BBC executives and Guardian columnists are going to come from? Brigadoon?

As ever, Lady Di stuck to her guns and history judged her accordingly. As it did when she was smeared as a racist for tweeting ‘white people love playing divide and rule. We should not play their game’. Predictably, white privileged males reacted by crying into their Union Jack underpants, little realising that it’s only their white male privilege that allows them to criticise the assertion that ‘white people love playing divide and rule’. Which in turn reinforced the assertion that ‘white people love playing divide and rule’ which they did by abusing their white male privilege and crying into their Union Jack underpants. Thus proving Diane right. Again.

Because this is a woman of conviction. Not a conviction for failing to declare earnings of over 17 grand for sitting next to Michael Portaloo on the telly, you understand. No, I mean conviction as in belief, confidence, and an ability to say stuff like ‘Chairman Mao did more good than harm’ with a straight face. Because when you know you’re right it doesn’t matter how silly your claims are. Just as it doesn’t matter that that Mao quote only sense if you replace the words ‘did’, ‘good’ and ‘harm’ with ‘killed’, ‘people’ and ‘Hitler and Stalin combined’. The narrative must be protected at all costs and there are few more capable guards than our Diane.

Which is why it was so heartening last week to see her defending former fuck-buddy Jeremy Corbyn. Taking time out from holding meetings about Syria in which everyone is allowed to speak except Syrians and attending anti-Israel marches alongside Hamas-supporting Al Asda founder and Corbyn donor Ismail Patel, she selflessly jetted off to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia so we didn’t have to. Spending more time in Philly than she reportedly did in the refugee camps she recently visited in Turkey – where it’s alleged she donned a headscarve, shook a few hands and posed for a photo in 15 minutes flat before retiring to the hotel pool for some much-needed R&R – she detailed her findings last week in a Guardian column titled ‘Left Wing Insurgencies Led By Jeremy Corbyn And Bernie Sanders Won’t Go Away’.

A skilled communicator, Diane brilliantly wooed her audience with two masterstrokes. The first was her clever us of the word ‘insurgencies’, guaranteed to inspire a nostalgic grin among regressive leftists as they recall that halcyon war era when their beloved Iraqi insurgency was bravely upholding the traditions of democracy and socialism by bombing polling stations and murdering trade unionists.

Determined to humour the hard left, straight-talking Diane went on to draw parallels between a thunderstorm and the announcement of Hilary Clinton as the Democrat’s presidential nominee: “If you were a Sanders supporter and of a religious bent, you might well have wondered whether it was god herself making clear her displeasure” she wrote, sticking two fingers up at the bible and patriarchy by using the female pronoun when referring to an entity whose existence is entirely unproven. This bold use of ‘she’ sent a clear message to misogynists, transphobes and religious conservatives that their days of controlling the grammar narrative are OVER. I look forward to Diane defending the Religion Of Peace by referring to Mighty Mo as ‘xe’ and positing the theory xe was an early pioneer of non-binary sexuality (when xe wasn’t marrying children and committing genocide). I’m sure it’ll go down like a synagogue on fire with Labour’s friends in CAGE and The Muslim Council Of Britain.

But the main purpose of Diane’s article was to point the similarities between Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Saunders – ie they’re socialists, they don’t like wearing ties, and they’re both old enough to remember when fire was invented – while sidestepping foreign policy for the benefit of leftists who would be horrified to learn that Bernie doesn’t share the Dear Leader’s love of authoritarian regimes and religious fascists.

Indeed Saunders is a longstanding defender of the state of Israel. Luckily he cancels that out by making crowd-pleasing comments about how white people don’t understand poverty and how violence is never justified unless it’s committed by his supporters. But Bernie’s secret weapon is his growing band of middle-class devotees and their habit of starting fights, shutting down rallies, and shouting over speeches given by people they disagree with then screaming ‘micro aggression!’ when someone tells them to shut their cake-holes. In other words: Corbynites with nicer teeth.

And when it comes to the values of Bernie’s fanbase they couldn’t be more like their UK counterparts if they turned up to rallies singing The Red Rag in ethically sourced donkey jackets. “Many described themselves as Bernie or bust…In other words they had no intention of voting for Clinton. Some even went in front of cameras to say they would rather vote for Trump” wrote Diane. Indeed, it’s a testament to their principles that much like Labour have handed power to the Tories for at least nine years in the name of ideological purity, Bernie’s fans’ hatred of Trump is so strong they’re planning to make him President.

But the greatest similarity between the two men is the way they’ve mobilised youth: “The Labour Party is the biggest it has ever been, with more than 450,000 members” gushed Diane, and with good reason: the last time Labour had such high membership was in the late ’70s, when the aforementioned ideological purity was prioritised over winning elections, a key factor in going on to lose four of them in a row.

Similarly, Bernie has inspired the young despite losing the nomination, ensuring his lasting legacy will be, as Abbott puts it, “millions of people realising that a better way is possible and wanting to move beyond neo-liberalism”. It’s a shame that ‘better way’ didn’t involve taking control of the party like the far-left have with Labour. But inspiring a generation of political illiterates to wear masks and assault people while blaming their opponents for making them wear masks and commit assault people is a worthy consolation. I’m sure Bernie beams with pride when he sees what his cheerleaders have achieved.

But what Diane wants everyone to know is that Jezmania and Berniefever ain’t going away: “Like Sanders, the left insurgency Corbyn is associated with is not about one man or a cult of personality” she writes. Quite correct too, as all the column inches written about Corbyn’s warmth, decency and allotment can testify. Similarly, Bernie is held in such awe by his fans that they only agreed to pipe down during the convention after he texted delegates asking them to be ‘calm and respectful’. Combined with the ubiquity of ‘Jez We Can!’ T-shirts and flags urging people to ‘Feel The Bern!’ it’s clear that policy rather than personality is driving these movements and I’ll give you an example just as soon as I can remember one.

But the insurgency is here to stay, though with Saunders conceding to Clinton it appears that when Jezza becomes PM it may be an altogether more controversial figure he is forced to play golf with at Camp Daniel. Still, Corbyn has plenty of experience in talking to lunatics and there’s much that he and Trump have in common: privileged upbringing, obsession with Islam, dislike of NATO, admiration for dictators, and a subculture of fans with some strange ideas about Jews.

The future is bright and we should thank Diane for travelling halfway around the world on our behalf only to come back and write a column about how great her boss is. If OJ and Blanchflower had shown an ounce of the loyalty displayed by Abbott or Shami Chakrabbitslims perhaps they would be in receipt of a peerage rather than getting hammered in a leadership election or writing 7000 word blogs no-one can be arsed to read.

As it stands, Shami – the former director of Liberty who once described Islamist CAGE founder Moazzam Begbie as ‘a wonderful advocate for human rights’ – was deservedly given a peerage by Corbyn last week for making the enquiry into Labour antisemitism vanish. Her dedication was also apparent when she put her reputation on the line by quashing the damning Baroness Royall Report into antisemitism at Oxford then lying about it.

All of which shames rats like Blanchflower and Jones. Predictably the gutter press treated this harmless quid-pro-quo as proof of Corbyn’s hypocrisy just because he claimed he wouldn’t hand out peerages and was in favour of scrapping them. Desperate stuff but ultimately futile as the only people who believe these lies are treacherous Blairites, Tory smear merchants, and people who actually listen to what Corbyn says as opposed to swooning over his beard, daydreaming about show trials, and wondering how cool he’d look in military fatigues and a beret.

So thank god Shami and Diane know that fighting the good fight involves a lot more than writing columns and giving speeches. And it’s no surprise that it’s a pair of Womens of Colour who’ve stuck to their principles while two gutless white males turn Judas. As well as being both superior to and more oppressed than men (especially Abbott, as illustrated by that traumatic, unsuccessful attempt to flag a taxi in London a few years ago) women have always been integral to the British hard left, as anyone familiar with the Workers Revolutionary Party of the ’70s and its enigmatic leader Jerry ‘No Means Yes’ Healy would agree.

As Diane observed: this movement’s going nowhere. From campaigns to ban university speakers to petitions calling for people we disagree with to be sacked, the young and politicised are doing their bit in the name of social justice. Left-wing youths in the UK have even started their own versions of American movements such as Black Lives Matter, whose British branch recently staged protests outside airports to commemorate the death of Martin Duggan, killed by police in 2010.

As everyone who remembers that heady summer will recall, his death was the catalyst for hundreds of peace-loving Londoners to react as only peace-loving Londoners can in moments of stress: by setting fire to shops and stealing flat-screen TVs. Duggan’s tragic death was also a turning point for this wretched country, as his senseless slaying confirmed that you can’t even be a gun-wielding, drug-dealing career criminal without getting shot dead by the pigs. By blocking roads around Heathrow BLMUK brilliantly highlighted the issue of young black men turning to violent crime by making normal people miss their flights to Tenerife and Ibiza. Every little bit helps.

Which is why the Dear Leader and his allies are so important. Because since 17 million idiots voted to leave the EU, Labour are the only thing in Britain worth smiling about. And boy, is Britain smiling at Corbyn. But can we carry on smiling? Can we maintain our optimism in the post-Brexit landscape and endure the next four years until St Jezza ascends to his rightful place on the Number 10 throne? Well, call me a deluded optimist if you like but to quote a young, successful, charismatic head of state who shares much in common with the deeply unpopular, socially awkward, 68-year-old PM-in-waiting…

Yes we can.

 

By Ben Pensant

‘Now citizens, I think I can safely say after last night’s debacle, that we are all sick and tired of democracy’

Wolfie Smith, the ‘70s.

‘Shame…Shame…Shame…Shame…’

Her out of Game Of Thrones, the other week.

One month ago today I awoke in a cold sweat and realised the night before I’d made a grave and unforgiveable error: I had voted to leave the EU. This may strike many as odd, as the very existence of this blog would indicate I know how to read and write, two skills not often found in working-class Leave voting northerners with feet for hands. However, as everyone who has gazed in horror at the post-Brexit landscape knows only too well, it is precisely because myself and other dumb proles aspired to the same level of sophistication and involvement as our metropolitan betters that the UK now finds itself in such an apocalyptic pickle. (Don’t ask me what ‘apocalyptic’ means, I heard it in an Arnie film years ago and thought it sounded cool. I’m not even sure what a pickle is.)

Put bluntly, if simple folk like me had left all of this democracy and engagement stuff to those intelligent enough to understand it – civil servants, Guardian readers, craft beer enthusiasts – and stuck to what we’re good at – cleaning toilets, eating kebabs, murdering our own children – then it’s a knocking bet the referendum result would have gone exactly as the liberal elite hoped and far fewer social media tears would’ve been shed by parents of left-leaning toddlers called Rufus.

So ‘what’s your point?’ I hear you cry (and boy, do I mean cry). ‘You got what you want. Haven’t the 48% suffered enough without you taking time off from dragging your fat offspring around Aldi to traumatise us even more?’ Believe me, I share your pain. Which is why I want you to feel my shame. Because the events of the last month have brought home to me how wrong I was. About everything. See, I previously thought that, like most traditional working-class Labour supporters, I was intelligent enough to understand democracy and political engagement. I know, what on earth was I thinking? Because I’d been aware of the problems within the EU for years I kidded myself my opposition was down to it being an undemocratic, unrepresentative, unaccountable bureaucracy heading for political and economic disaster. I’d paid little attention to the grubby Leave campaign and smugly considered myself informed just because I’d made my mind up about the EU long before the words ‘Farage’ and ‘Gove’ entered the lexicon.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out I actually dislike the EU because I’m a thick, uneducated, racist, xenophobic Little Englander (with feet for hands). And thanks to the courageous work of writers like Polly Toynbee and Jonathan Freedland I also learnt the reason I voted Leave was because I’d fell hook, line and sinker for the lies and distortions of Boris Johnson and his band of right-wingers, cynically exploiting my small-town predilection for fear and hatred. Where on earth would people like me be without privately educated journalists to tell us what we really think?

The revelation hit me like a ton of bricks, the very same bricks I should have been laying on a freezing cold site in Dusseldorf instead of reading about grown up issues that only 22-year-olds with degrees in Art or Gender Studies could possibly understand. And in those first few days I watched the news and browsed the net, bursting with guilt. But it wasn’t the government’s cack-handed response or ill-timed back-stabbing that swung it. It wasn’t Farage and co’s predictable backtracking on outlandish campaign promises. It wasn’t the plummeting pound or inevitable economic instability. It wasn’t even the delay in offering assurances to EU nationals that they would be able to remain in Britain.

No, it was the tireless work of one of the most misunderstood groups in society. Not the majority of normal Remainers who voted accordingly while respecting the views of others. Not those who mistrusted the EU but wanted to stay in because they feared the consequences of leaving. Not the millions who were eager to remain due to personal or financial circumstances. And not even those who passionately believed in the EU but accepted the decision with grace and a desire to see the country united through a period of era-defining upheaval. Because they’re all traitors and pussies.

No, the people I’m referring to are the sturdier, more educated souls, the ones willing to go that extra inch, to stand up on the parapet and demand the country ignore such flimsy principles as democracy and equality in the name of what is right. Some call them ‘the regressive left’. Some call them ‘generation snowflake’. Some call them ‘social justice warriors’. Some call them ‘virtue-signalling self-righteous moral relativists’. I used to simply call them ‘cunts’. But now I call them ‘heroes’. Brave heroes who have energised Twitter, Facebook and the Guardian comments section and upheld the principles of liberalism by sneering at people they disagree with. That tens of thousands heeded their message of hate and marched through London last month – joined by assorted talented actors, musicians, and Bob Geldof – only goes to show their sterling work has paid off.

It’s often said in times of conflict you see the best of people. (Not that I know who said it. The only source I’ve ever verified came in a polystyrene cup.) And mark my words, the behaviour of huge swathes of the modern left these last four weeks has certainly proved that maxim. (Not that I know what a ‘maxim’ is either though I think it’s got something to do with cars and tits). Indeed, it’s a mark of how moral, progressive and downright better than everyone else the most vocal contemporary liberals are that they have no qualms in being massively intolerant and making huge generalisations about 17 million people they’ve never met. Because as I’ve learnt during the course of my conversion, intolerance is tolerance. And the sweetest triumph of the pro-EU movement has been the moral victory in reclaiming hatred and disrespect for the working-class from ‘80s Thatcherites in red braces. Stick that in your laminated pipe and smoke it, Michael Gecko.

Indeed, the most satisfying facet of the New Intolerance is that unlike the old one it gives progressives a free pass to be as irrational and bigoted as the people they castigate for being irrational and bigoted. Despite the fact that Leave voters – much like Remain voters if they were less intelligent and more racist – include people of all ages, ethnicities, genders and political persuasions, the New Intolerance allows us to see beyond that and view them as one shell-suit clad, corned beef guzzling mass. This in turn helps to unite people, particularly Leave voters united by the fact that they’re all uneducated, racist xenophobes. And for this recovering uneducated racist xenophobe it’s been a pleasure and a privilege to watch. (A proper privilege, mind. Not that white male version enjoyed by Leave voters, such as notorious white male right-winger Dreda Say Mitchell.)

Much like the aftermath of the 2015 general election – in which tens of millions of people who voted Tory were dismissed by the Twitterati as selfish neo-cons with shit for brains – the tidal wave of snobbery and abuse washing over social media has been a joy to behold. Imagine the climax to a Ronan Emmerich blockbuster written by Lorry Penny, in which Will Smith’s principled president is forced to drain the Atlantic with inter-galactic technology discovered by Joan Cusack’s nerdy scientist before unleashing a tsunami upon the members of the human race deemed problematic, such as Israelis, ex-Muslims, white men with dreadlocks, black women with straight hair, and anyone who doesn’t know the correct pronoun for six-year-old girls who like playing with Action Men. (I’m not sure if the dog dies in this one but rest assured if it does it was probably a Sun reader.)

From the tear-stained Facebook post enquiring ‘How can 17 million people be so hateful?’ to the outraged English Twitterer begging Nicola Sturgeon to take ‘those of us who can’t live with the stupidity’ as refugees. From the below-the-line Guardian commenter stating Leave voters have ‘shafted the country with bigotry and racism’ to the Remainer who informed me ‘52% of the country are idiots’. From those who spoke of their relief that they barely know anyone who voted Leave to others who detailed the horror of having one on their timeline. All things considered, it’s not hard to see how I was easier to flip than Henry Hill’s mattress. Indeed, it’s testament to how insightful the most vociferous Remainers are that they know so much about how working-class Leave voters think despite not actually knowing any working-class Leave voters. You don’t get insight like that from watching The X-Factor and shopping in Primark’s.

Absorbing this mood made me realise how utterly wrong I was about everything. Pre-referendum I was under the silly impression that lack of knowledge about the EU could be found on either side. While believing that most people were intelligent and informed enough to make up their own minds, I was amused by the occasional examples of ignorance in both camps. From the Leave voter who was doing so because he couldn’t wait to see the look on Man Utd fans’ faces when they found out they were banned from the Champions League, to the campaigning Remainer who ‘couldn’t remember’ how many European Commissioners there are (my cryptic clue that the answer was the same as the number of member states failed to jog her memory), it was clear that being uninformed about how the EU works wasn’t confined to one tribe.

Except it wasn’t clear. Because this girl afflicted with temporary amnesia had one thing in her favour that those ignorant fools obsessed with funny-shaped bananas didn’t: goodness. Simple, old fashioned morality which cancels out even the most extreme cases of ignorance and intolerance. Because as we all know, the more good you are, the more right you are. About everything. Forget the staunch Remainer who believed that being in the pro-privatisation EU would help future Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn nationalise the railways. Or the anti-Brexiter who thought the austerity and unemployment the EU forced upon Greece post-2008 had ‘saved their economy’. Such nonsense can be excused with impunity when the person spouting it is of superior moral stock. Put simply, a Remain voter could believe in the Tooth Fairy and they would still be more moral, knowledgeable and just damn right than your average Leave voting xenophobe. As I’ve been asked several times by butt-hurt Leavers over the past four weeks: ‘Why do you think you’re better than me because I disagree with you? I don’t think I’m better than you’. To which I always reply: ‘Of course you don’t. You voted Leave’

As, of course, did I. Which is why we’re here. (Apart from the sensible Remainers who stopped reading after the first sentence. Or the die hards who spat all over their smartphones then had a good cry before starting a petition to boycott Apple for allowing me to infect the iPads of delicate flowers nationwide.). But for those brave enough to stay this is a frank admission you won’t want to miss. Like most dumb, uneducated, working-class racists, my first though was to put this on Facebook where all the other dumb, uneducated, working-class racists hang out to talk about Bounty bars and post lists with titles like ‘Top Five Mosques To Bomb In Bradford’. However, knowing how traumatic Brexit has been for the moral guardians of Facebook and Twitter, I decided a one-off blog post was the most suitably ego-free platform in which to prostrate myself. I’m already struggling to sit down after the wire-brush-assisted thrashings I’ve subjected myself to since casting my vote: I’d never walk again if I knew I’d accidentally driven a passing millennial to suicide by invading their web-space with a point of view they don’t like.

But it would be far less than I and millions of people I don’t know deserve. To put it into gutter language my fellow working-class ignoramuses understand: we’re due a fucking good hiding. And from the Twitter talk of never letting us forget what we’ve done to the dark threats about the penance we’ll suffer for destroying their children’s futures, I couldn’t welcome it more. The reckless arrogance with which I cast my ill-informed vote was such an act of hubris that nothing less than a public hanging will suffice. So like Chuck Rose out of Bullions I’ve decided the only way to deal with the terrible moral choice I made is to embrace self-loathing, masochism and women pissing on my face. (Not that I know what’s going on in that show, mind. I only watch it for the kinky bits. Dumb working-class xenophobes can’t be expected to understand attorneys and stock markets. Oh and I’ve no idea what ‘hubris’ is. I think it’s a bit like kismet. Though I’ve never tasted either. Or fennel.)

But boy, does this self-flagellation feel good. However, before anyone thinks that the post-Brexit social media backlash has focused exclusively on uneducated working-class racists, it’s important to remember that the criticism has held to account all the other groups responsible for the mess we’re in. Which is my way of saying old people deserve a good fucking hiding too. Happily, Brexit has allowed the left-wing tastemakers of social media to add pensioners to the ever-expanding list of people it’s okay to hate, alongside Germaine Greer and Jews. And like the targeting of the working-class, the manner in which the liberal media has adopted ageism has been a thing of beauty.

First out of the traps was politically astute food critic Giles Coren of The Sunday Times, a man who knows all about winning over the sceptical masses having spent his career trying to convince the world his entry into Fleet Street was down to raw talent and nothing to do with his  well-connected father. ‘The wrinklies have well and truly stitched us up’ he raged, passionately informing his readership that ‘old folk can’t be trusted with big decisions. They’re always wrong. About everything’. A Brexiteer would probably insert a weak joke here about the average age of people who buy the Times and like Coren’s column. But they’d be wrong, as those elderly readers are probably too busy getting lost in their own gardens to read his cultured reflections on food that doesn’t come in a tin.

Elsewhere Charles P.Pierce of Esquire told us that ‘some of the oldest and whitest people on the planet’ had destroyed young people’s futures by having the nerve to vote in huge numbers while over 60% of 18-24 year olds exercised their democratic right to sit at home posting pictures of cats wearing ear-muffs. He brilliantly wrote that the electorate had ‘chosen to hock a big old loogie at everyone from international bankers to scary brown people who they apparently believe are preparing to launch Operation Sea Lion’. How many British pensioners Boston native Pierce knows isn’t made clear, though his familiarity with UK politics and the EU certainly is as he cheerily admits to knowing sod all about either. Which just goes to show how correct he is. As I wrote earlier, when you’re on the side of right you don’t need to worry about such silly fripperies as knowing anything about millions of people before generalising them all as paranoid, racist idiots. (Not that I know what ‘fripperies’ are but I’ve heard it’s culturally insensitive for anyone other than Bulgarians to wear them.)

Closer to home, the reliably edgy Vice lived up to its edgy reputation with a truly edgy piece by Joel Golby edgily titled ‘Old People Seem Intent On Fucking Us Over Forever’ which edgily went straight for the blue-rinse jugular in a way only edgy Vice writers can – by swearing. Edgily. ‘The next time one of you fuckers asks me for help with something on a high shelf in a supermarket I will put it on a higher shelf where you can’t even get at it with your stick’ he blasted, striking fear into the hearts of all those diminutive pensioners who regularly shop at Hoxton’s latest Palestinian Solidarity Pop-Up Mini Mart. Later, Golby edgily bursts the right-wing myth that people over 60 are capable of autonomous thought and may even know a thing or two about the EU by edgily putting the blame squarely at their door in one succinctly edgy takedown: ‘Old people…who want to vote out of Europe for no particular reason but who fucking cares anyway because by the time the changes come into effect they’ll all be gone to the void’. Edgy.

Golby’s colleague Heath Pickering went one step further, demanding the referendum is repeatedly repeated until he gets a result he likes and arguing that ‘Brexit proves Baby Boomers should get less of a vote’. His progressive plan to destroy decades of democracy and equality for the greater good proposed an authoritarian utopia in which only 18-24 year olds would be allowed a ‘whole’ vote, 35-49 year olds would be entitled to 60% each and anyone over 70 would see their democratic right to play a part in the running of their country so reduced it would take five of them to muster one vote. (That’s 20% of a vote each just in case any Leave voters are having this read to them by their carers.) Understandably, this pioneering suggestion was greeted with much enthusiasm on Twitter by fellow liberals who had already suggested equally bold laws to take away the vote from anyone without a degree, an au pair, or a second home in Florence.

But while Vice was proving itself just as comfortable ironically picking on pensioners as it is dishing out post-modern racism, the strongest statement of intent was The New European – a ‘pop-up paper for the 48%’ set up to maintain the Remain campaign and provide a safe space for those most hurt, betrayed and downright cross with 17 million morons for ignoring the expert guidance of  Eddie Lizard and him out of Dr Sherlock. Editor Matt Kelly calls his publication ‘a paper for the Zeitgeist’ – which explains why it’s only available in regions that voted Remain as we don’t get a signal for the Zeitgeist up north – and hopes to kick against ‘a lack of representation for people who are dismayed and disenfranchised with Brexit’. It shows how marginalised they truly are that they had the backing of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky News, most of social media, half of Fleet Street, virtually every British actor, musician, comedian, TV presenter, reality star, performing dog and whatever-the-hell-Charlotte-Church-is and they still feel under-represented.

As for the paper, its unavailability in areas that opted to leave the EU gives it freedom to discuss important issues without dumbing down for people whose only experience of voting is nominating someone from TOWIE to climb into a vat of hippo-piss and retrieve a gold star from a piranha’s anus. Hence the biting satire of the front cover cartoon depicting a cross-eyed couple in their living room pondering that age old question ‘I wonder if dogs think?’. The liberal and clearly university-educated pooch then speaks for us all – and by ‘us’ I mean the liberal and the clearly university educated – when it replies: ‘These idiots. Voting to leave the EU, creating a future of uncertainty and instability that will have a knock-on effect for generations to come, leading to isolation and beleaguerment for this once great nation’. It’s hard to think of a more powerful example of appealing to the prejudices of your readership, at least until The Aryan Alternative start giving away free Klan masks and Hitler ‘taches.

However, where The New European really comes into its own is its unpredictable line-up of columnists, particularly former Nuts editor James Brown and ex-Melody Maker scribe Miranda Soya, bravely risking their reputations as working-class northerners by writing for a publication whose front cover alone contains more contempt for working-class northerners than the combined works of AA Gills and Virginia Woof. Let’s just say that the presence of these two ‘90s icons has made those of us in our ‘30s quite literally mad for it. Should I ever venture outside my coal-black, gravy-stained North Tyneside shit-hole I look forward to stealing a copy and reading the thoughts of other political giants such as Donna out of Sleeper and Jason ‘Pineapple Head’ Leigh.

Its publishers hope that during its four-week run the £2 paper will be carried by readers like ‘a badge of honour’, brilliantly tapping into the mind-set of the modern social media liberal for whom being seen to be on right side of an issue is far more important than actually knowing anything about it. Also, as a professed platform for the disenfranchised, I’m in no doubt it will provide space for those most affected by Brexit. I look forward to reading the scores of opinion pieces written by actual immigrants as opposed to comfortable British journalists speaking on their behalf.

Even MPs won’t get a look in as the paper is so dedicated to giving a voice to the little people that it has a strict ‘no politicians’ rule. Luckily this gap has been more than adequately filled. Not by those with concerns and worries about life outside the EU, such as immigrants and business owners, but a salt-of-the-earth assortment of CEOs, digital directors, venture capitalists and Westminster lobbyists. With such anti-establishment cojones on display even uneducated xenophobic racists might be swayed by this radical new paper, though whether they’ll have two pound left by Friday after squandering their giros on chips and poppers is anyone’s guess. And the lack of input from principled politicians shouldn’t be too worrying as they’ve been busy spreading the anti-democratic mantra elsewhere. Nick Clegg has been banging the drum relentlessly since that fateful Friday morning and as the five people who read his column in the Financial Times are painfully aware, he’s mad as hell, like Peter Finchly in Broadcast News but without the good grace to prove how mad he is by offering to commit suicide on national television.(Not that I’ve ever seen Broadcast News. Or indeed any film that doesn’t feature sharks, fannies, or The Stath.)

But boy, was Clegg angry. Angry that his children’s future has been ‘put at risk by a needless referendum’. Angry at ‘the betrayal that Brexit voters will feel when they realise – too late – that a land of milk and honey outside the EU does not exist’. Angry that ‘three quarters of young people voted for a future – to remain in the EU – denied them by their seniors’. It’s refreshing to know that the petulance of the social media crybabies is alive and kicking in our elected representatives too. From the quietly cutting way he reiterates the anti-equality meme that a young person’s opinion is worth more than that of someone older, to his skewed approach to mathematics which allows him to believe that 34% and three quarters are the same thing, Clegg has done himself proud. Not least with his self-aware lament for those poor souls forced to accept a democratic result they don’t like. As someone who voted for neither the Tories nor the Liberal Democrats in 2010 yet ended up with both I share their pain.

Elsewhere Alistair Campbell proved that even the most rabid anti-Blairite will happily give their arch enemies the thumbs up if necessary when he tweeted his plans to pursue legal avenues to overturn the referendum result. It’s a mark of how moral the modern left have become that those who’ve spent years demanding Campbell be strung up next to Blair will happily dish out the ‘likes’ and re-tweets when he joins them in saying how ‘gullible’ Leave voters are. And as for tweaking legal proceedings to suit your own political agenda, well, to say ‘Campbell’s your man’ would be an understatement on par with pointing out that Charles Kennedy was partial to the odd brandy at Christmas.

His Labour colleague David Lamby went one step further though, taking to print and social media urging people to sign the petition calling for a second referendum (and presumably a third and fourth one if need be). Issuing stark warnings about the result unleashing ‘resentment and prejudice reminiscent of 1930s Europe’ he pleaded with Guardian readers to ‘stop the madness’ and demand the will of the people be ignored. Heroically brazen in his belief that a vote different to his doesn’t count, he used emotive language and hypothetical predictions to justify tearing up democracy and equality for the greater good, as I’m sure he will if he wins a majority of only 52% the next time his Tottenham seat is up for grabs.

A resounding success his words were too, judging by the 3 million or so signatures the petition garnered. Even taking into account the possibility of duplicate email accounts, made-up names and the problematic fact that almost 70,000 of the signatures apparently came from North Korea and Vatican City, it still proves emphatically that Britain has a substantial number of liberals so bruised by Brexit that the only way to make their voice heard is to throw democracy under the bus. Along with women’s rights, gay rights, human rights, freedom of speech and everything else the contemporary left have sacrificed at the altar of identity politics.

Much like President of the Liberal Democrats Baroness Brinton, who made no attempt to conceal her loathing of the democratic process on Question Time. ‘Unfortunately democracy means you’ve got to go by the rules that are played at the time. But many of us feel extremely concerned that people voted for something not understanding what it was’. The key word is ‘unfortunate’ because as any principled leftist knows, there’s nothing more unfortunate than living in a world where a Professor of Contemporary Thought has the same rights as a lowly binman. Where people who never went to University are allowed as much of a say as someone with a 2.2 in Media Studies. Where era-defining decisions are made not only by establishment ‘experts’ but also by 17 million nuggets, all of whom routinely attend EDL marches and wank themselves to death watching I’m A Celebrity Juice.

And I’m as guilty as every one of them.

Yet hopefully my last minute conversion and willingness to flagellate myself will earn me a smidgeon of redemption. To put my mental state in a context only the most sophisticated will appreciate, think of me as the sinful Hugo Loras to the modern left’s noble Faith Brown Militant, with the combined heft of Twitter, Facebook and the entire liberal commentariat functioning as one multi-limbed, all-sneering High Gary Sparrow. (That’s a Game Of Thrones reference in case any Leave voters are wondering. Though frankly I barely know who these people are as I fast-forward through all the bits where no-one’s getting murdered or sucked off by a dragon.)

In conclusion, I hope and pray that my contrition will inspire others to realise the error of their racist, uneducated, Leave-voting ways. However, I’ve learnt that breaking the habit of the uneducated racist Leave-voter is easier said than done. Indeed, my old beliefs have taken to taunting me, trying to force their way back in like some brown-shirted lager-swilling demon. Luckily, a simple thought experiment has kept such dark forces at bay. By conducting hypothetical conversations between the former, uneducated, racist me and the current, judgemental, New European-reading one I’ve been regularly demolishing his arguments with the grace and force of a wrecking ball. And as a by-product I’ve also managed to purge several other problematic opinions such as my ridiculous aversion to Jeremy Corbyn just because he’s spent his entire career defending and supporting murderers. Because now, having absorbed the consensus of modern left-wing opinion, I realise it was actually because I’m a Blairite-Neo-Liberal-Red-Tory-Illuminati-Lizard-Person. With feet for hands. Conclusive proof that, contrary to what Blairite-Neo-Liberal-Red-Tory-Illuminati-Lizard-Person Nick Cohen once said about the Guardian comments section, the brave new world of social media is more open university than open sewer. Though Cohen voted Remain so we can let him off. For now.

See for yourself:

Old Me – When Nigel Farage suggested he would push for a second referendum if Remain won he was rightly lambasted by many for being a potential bad loser.

New Me – Of course he was lambasted. What he was proposing was undemocratic.

Old Me – I couldn’t agree more. So surely it’s equally undemocratic for Remain voters to do exactly the same thing?

New Me – Don’t be daft. Nigel Farage was wrong. Remainers are right. That’s why we’re called Remainers. Anyway, the issue is not who won but the fact that the system is wrong. Anyone can see that in a referendum the winner should have at least a 60% majority.

Old Me – So why didn’t millions of people sign a petition to change the rules before the referendum?

New Me – Because we thought Remain were going to win.

Old Me – So would you have called for a second referendum if Remain had won by an equally small margin?

New Me – Why would I do that?

Old Me – Because you just said the system needs changing so that the winner must have a 60% majority.

New Me – Shut up.

Old Me – Okay. Moving on to the voters. Many people I know voted Remain. I assume all of them were familiar with how the EU works, and if not did some research and made their own minds up without the help of politicians or journalists.

New Me – Of course they did.

Old Me – Much like many of those who voted Leave.

New Me – Horse-shit.

Old Me – Sorry?

New Me – Horse-shit. You know, nonsense. They voted Leave because they hate immigrants.

Old Me – I’m sure some did, but many others live among, work alongside and are good friends with immigrants. Several polls have found that over three quarters of Leave voters want all EU migrants to remain in the UK and over half voted Leave because they wanted all British laws made here. It’s news to them to find out the real reason was because they hate foreigners.

New Me – They shouldn’t hate foreigners then.

Old Me – Quite. But concern about immigration isn’t the same as hating immigrants. Depressed wages, the NHS, housing and class-sizes come much higher on most people’s list of worries than a dislike for folk with funny accents. But none of this is relevant to Remain’s roster of sloganeering celebrities and well-off journalists, the majority of whom invariably have private health care, own their own homes, and send their kids to fee-paying schools.

New Me – So the working-class are all lovely, tolerant liberals who hug foreigners all day long?

Old Me – Not at all. But we’re not all thick racists either. Myself and millions of others made our own minds up about the EU years ago and it had nothing to do with immigration.

New Me – Balls. You voted Leave because Nigel Farage and Rupert Murdoch told you to.

Old Me – Even the ones who don’t read The Sun?

New Me – You ALL read The Sun. Even the ones who can’t read. You were all too stupid to know anything about the EU and believed the Leave campaign’s lies. I should know – I used to be you.

Old Me – Okay, let’s discuss Jeremy Corbyn.

New Me – Peace be upon him.

Old Me – Erm…okay

New Me – Say it.

Old Me – Say what?

New Me – ‘Peace Be Upon Him’. Say it.

Old Me – Okay, which brings us to Jeremy Corbyn. Peace be upon him.

New Me – And don’t you forget it.

Old Me – So Jere…the current leader of the Labour Party. Is he an ignorant, uneducated, racist too?

New Me – Take that back.

Old Me – They’re not my words. I don’t actually think he’s an ignorant, uneducated racist. I think he’s an incompetent, unprincipled, anti-Western apologist for murder but that’s another story.

New Me – Ah, I see you’ve bought into the lies spouted by the Tory press.

Old Me – No I’ve bought into the words spouted by him. Unless all the evidence proving categorically that he’s an incompetent, unprincipled, anti-Western apologist for murder was invented by The Daily Mail. Such as the video of him stating an anti-Semitic terrorist group who imprison homosexuals, shoot protesters and fire rockets at civilians are ‘dedicated to peace and social justice’. Or the time he took part in a minute’s silence commemorating eight IRA members killed trying to bomb a police station. Or the speech he gave calling a man who supports suicide bombing and believes Jews make bread from the blood of children ‘an honoured citizen who represents his people very well’ before inviting him for tea and cake? Or the footage of him appearing and speaking at an event ‘celebrating’ 35 years of Iranian theocracy in all its fatwa issuing, women subjugating, trade-unionist imprisoning, freedom of speech supressing, homosexual hanging splendour. I can go on if you want?

New Me – Yeah well what about Saudi Arabia?

Old Me – Cheers, I just won a little bet with myself. Anyway, I only asked because the narrative that yourself and other Remainers push is that opposition to the EU is synonymous with the far-right, racism, and xenophobia.

New Me – Because it is.

Old Me – So in which case you must have a pretty low opinion of JC, as he’s spent virtually his entire career opposed to the EU.

New Me – No he hasn’t.

Old Me – Well, he has, it’s no secret. Indeed, for much of the time the UK’s been in the EU it was common among left-wingers to be against it.

New Me – Source please.

Old Me – Will ‘historical fact’ do? Tony Benn – Corbyn’s mentor – campaigned against Britain’s membership in 1975, and remained a fierce critic up until his death. Corbyn ally Dennis Skinner has long been actively opposed to the EU, as have Labour MPs past and present such as Kate Hoey, Frank Field, John Mann and George Galloway.

New Me – So now you’re a fan of Galloway?

Old Me – Not in the slightest. I think he’s a far-left apologist and egomaniac who’s shook hands with more terrorists than the chaplain at the Maze prison. But that’s another story. My point is, far from being an exclusively right-wing position, it used to be common to find opposition to the EU on the left.

New Me – Yeah, among Blairites.

Old Me – I imagine most Blairites voted Remain.

New Me – Zionists then.

Old Me – Obviously. It’s funny you mention Blairites though as it was Tony Blair who initiated Labour’s love affair with the EU in the first place, not long before the British left forgot what it’s supposed to stand for and became consumed by identity politics. Pre-1997 it was common for Labour MPs and members to be against the EU. Indeed the 1975 referendum campaign was largely fought between right-wingers in favour of staying and left-wingers against.

New Me – Yeah well that was 40 years ago, things have changed.

Old Me – Indeed they have, in 1975 the British public were voting on remaining in what was perceived as a mere trading bloc. In the following years the EU became something else entirely as it gradually stripped away power from governments and people to create an undemocratic European super-state, which is why the likes of Benn, Skinner and the TUC continued their opposition to it.

New Me – So you say. Anyway, what do a load of crusty old MPs know?

Old Me – Well, it’s not just them. Across Europe it’s not unheard of for the left-leaning to be against the EU, especially in countries whose economies and workforces have been shafted by them, such as Greece, Hungary and Italy. Places where loving your country and other countries but disliking the union they are members of isn’t viewed as tantamount to fascism. Unlike in the UK where intelligent people have a hard time grasping that the EU and the continent of Europe are two different things and smear anyone who doesn’t see the former as a shining example of internationalism as a dumb, racist Little Englander.

New Me – They’re allowed to: they’re not British.

Old Me – I see. So any British person opposed to the EU – apart from Jeremy Corbyn, PBUH, obviously – is a dumb racist Little Englander?

New Me – Yes.

Old Me – You mean like notorious dumb, racist Little Englander Irvine Welsh? The pro-Brexit socialist recently called the EU ‘anathema to democracy’ and a ‘fundamentally undemocratic institution’, he has written articles attacking its commitment to privatisation and globalization and this year said ‘you can’t defend something that’s led by commissioners’.

New Me – Duh. He’s Scottish. And he’s written books and stuff.

Old Me – So not everyone in favour of Brexit is an uneducated racist xenophobe?

New Me – They’re all to blame. But some more than others.

Old Me – Thank god Owen Jones changed his tune. I don’t think the social media left could bring themselves to hate him.

New Me – What are you talking about? He voted Remain. 

Old Me – He did but a year ago he wrote a column entitled ‘The left must put Britain’s EU withdrawal on the agenda’, in which he detailed how the ‘increasingly pro-corporate EU’ had driven Greece into ‘an economic collapse unseen since America’s great depression’. He went on to condemn it for driving elected governments from office and blackmailing Portugal and Ireland then issued dark warnings about the danger of TTIP – ‘negotiated by the EU in secret with corporate interests’ – enabling the government to ‘expand the privatisation of the NHS’, much like they enabled them to do to Royal Mail by ‘enforcing the liberalisation of the natural monopoly of postal services’. Stirring but unsurprising sentiments from an anti-capitalist socialist in favour of state intervention and nationalised industries. Luckily, his call to arms received a lukewarm response so he changed his mind sharpish and within months was back to writing pieces about how working-class proles were in danger of being duped by the Leave campaign unless someone from their Remain campaign duped them first. Thank god – I don’t think his adoring cheerleaders could handle the horror of finding out he was just another uneducated racist xenophobe like me.

New Me – I’ve never read the article so I can’t comment. He made the right choice in the end so who cares. And since when have you been Owen Jones’ number one fan?

Old Me – Since never. I think he’s a deluded moral relativist  and a rank hyopocrite but that’s another story. What his previously held opinion shows – as well as those of Welsh, Benn, Skinner, Hoey, Mann, Field et al – is that it’s possible for people of a left-wing bent to be passionately against the EU, just like it’s possible for those with right-wing views to be in favour of it. In other words the social media consensus that everyone who voted Leave did so because they are ill-informed right-wingers who hate immigrants is demonstrably untrue, as these brief examples and the millions of others that exist in the real world prove. Most people on either side cast their vote and made an informed judgement on the European Union and how they wanted their country run. It wasn’t a judgement on Europe or Europeans and it certainly should not have been a judgement on the morals and integrity of the other side.

New Me – Oh, fuck off.

 Piece of piss, isn’t it? As you can see, the Old Me is an awkward bastard but when it comes to debating with fictional versions of yourself, little things like historical facts and political arguments are no match for being on the side of justice, morality and old fashioned self-righteousness. As evidenced over the last month, which has been so outrage-packed that social media has barely had a chance to call Slutty Spice an evil cow for kissing her child before the next major news story/excuse-to-look-superior-on-Twitter has hurtled into view.

We had the induction of a female Prime Minister, which will save Momentum members valuable time as we can recycle our threatening emails to Angela Eagle by simply swapping ‘Blairite Dyke’ for ‘Kitten-Heel Cunt’. On the opposite bench were the ongoing attempts by the treacherous PLP to oust a man of principle from the Labour hot-seat, ably assisted by the press continuously smearing the Dear Leader by reporting things he’s said and done. And at long last the publication of the Chilcott Report, which gave us all the chance to remind Blairites who voted for the Iraq war how much blood they have on their hands. Unlike Jezza and Seumas Milne who along with the other leading lights of the Stop The War Coalition bravely put aside any solidarity with Iraqi democrats and left-wingers by cheering on the ‘resistance’ as they bombed polling stations and murdered trade unionists.

Across the channel there were shocking scenes in Nice where once again western foreign policy caused death and destruction on a huge scale in a vicious but justified Islamist terrorist atrocity which – like every other vicious but justified Islamist terrorist atrocity committed around the world by vicious but justified Islamist terrorists – had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. In the States Black Lives Matter was given a huge boost when two black men were tragically shot dead by police officers, giving the go-ahead for 8 police officers to be rather-less-tragically shot dead by two black men – an encouraging chain of events which shows people are finally listening to BLM and their supporters, in particular to the chants often heard at their rallies such as ‘WHAT DO WE WANT? DEAD COPS! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW!’. And finally, the military coup in Turkey which I’m afraid I’m yet to form an opinion on because I’ve been too busy writing this to check out what people are saying on Twitter. Though I’ve heard that prime minister Ergowan’s an Islamist so I guess he’s the good guy, right?

All things considered that equals an awful lot of bullying and attacking people to be getting on with. Rest assured, after destroying the future once already I’ll do everything I can to stay on the right side of the argument where these hot potatoes are concerned. And while I neither want nor expect forgiveness for the catastrophic, morally bankrupt decision I made four weeks ago I am eternally grateful to my social media comrades for making my conversion as painful as possible. I thank you all for ensuring that one overriding emotion will Remain in my heart as long as I draw breath…

Shame.

Shame.

Shame.

Shame