All is not well on that great ship of British journalism known as The Guardian. There is dissent in the ranks…
The newspaper has been deeply embarrassed by being caught up in the Labour Together ‘smeargate’ scandal – now imploding as one of the many disasters Starmer is currently fighting. The paper’s political editor, Pippa Crerar, approached left-wing writer Paul Holden and Labour Together critic to accuse him of being investigated by MI5…
As lefty magazine Tribune puts it today:
“Holden has stated publicly that in February 2024, he received an email from Pippa Crerar of the Guardian, informing him that the paper had seen information that he was being investigated by the security services and that the Guardian intended to run the story. Holden stood firm and told Crerar that the claim was defamatory and warned that he would sue if it were published. The story then evaporated, and Holden heard nothing whatever from the NCSC. One can only speculate how the security services regarded these attempts to draw them into political disputes.”
“This is a total ****show“, one Guardian reporter crowed to Guido, complaining that the paper should have had nothing to do with the now infamous ‘smeargate’ document provided to Labour Together by consultancy Acpo. The paper’s journalists – who consider themselves paragons of moral rectitude – are now asking how it can continue to cover Starmer at all. Would never have happened under former Guardian associate editor Seumas Milne…
Starmer was read out a list of his 13 U-turns on BBC Radio 2, to which he responded:
“Well, I am a common sense merchant.”