when ur press accreditation for labour conference gets declined cos the cops think ur a security risk 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/uWoGs9p7aV
— Michael Segalov (@MikeSegalov) September 20, 2017
Michael Segalov is a Corbynista journalist from Vice, best known for ruining a Tim Farron photo op. That moment when your party is taken over by nutters and the police won’t let them attend your conference…
Over in the Corbybnista alternative reality Chris Williamson has again claimed there is “no evidence” of online abuse or anti-Semitism from Labour members. Speaking to Julia Hartley-Brewer on TalkRadio, Williamson said:
“I know some people have expressed anxiety, and the abuse online is unacceptable, but that isn’t from Labour party members. There’s no evidence as far as I’m aware [that] any of the abuse online is being perpetrated by them.”
There were stories on Guido yesterday and in all the papers today about yet more hard-left anti-Semitic abuse. Will Williamson even be backing the new rules to combat anti-Semitism at conference?
Last month Guido told how Labour MP Barry Sheerman has become the first serving MP to register as a lobbyist. Sheerman’s activities, conducted through his firm Policy Connect, caused industry groups to write letters of complaint to Parliament’s Standards Commissioner over the perceived conflict of interest. How can you properly serve your constituents and simultaneously be a registered lobbyist?
Yesterday the Huddersfield MP tweeted a picture of himself alongside the quote:
“Smart meters are a great way of using technology to help save money and make an environmental impact. It is great to hear so many homes in Huddersfield embracing smart meters and I would like to encourage more people to learn about the benefits of this technology.”
It must be a coincidence that Sheerman’s Policy Connect has put out a report on energy policy which, you guessed it, promotes smart meters. Contributors to the research included British Gas, EDF and Agility ECO: all firms in the smart meter business. Sheerman advising his constituents to use products directly linked to his lobbying activities…
Research by Women in Journalism has found that between 5 June and 22 July the Independent and the Mirror were the worst news organisations for gender byline equality. 91% of Indy front-page bylines during the period were male, just 9% of stories were written by women. The Mirror wasn’t much better, their gender byline ratio was 90% was 10%. The Mirror might be bro-cialists but the Indy spends its whole time lecturing on gender equality, so this is pretty damning for them. In the same period covered by the survey the Guy Newsroom was 25% female, a similar result to The Times…
Labour Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones digs as deep as a Rhondda Valley miner during a debate in the Welsh Assembly yesterday afternoon. Tell you what’s really snot on: he then ate it. To be fair to Carwyn, he didn’t go as far as the finger and thumb public double nasal evacuation made famous by Ed Miliband…
The Telegraph went all in with the claim that Boris Johnson was set to resign at 1pm yesterday, something both Boris and his team denied within minutes of the story being published. The original copy was swiftly and quietly deleted and replaced with the news that Boris was in fact staying and had “dismissed suggestions” he was about to quit. (Suggestions from, er, the Telegraph.) The unchanged URL address suggests it was the Telegraph rather than Boris that came back from the brink…
Theresa May’s Brexit supremo Olly Robbins is a former Soviet sympathiser who opposed capitalism, praised Soviet leaders and lamented the demise of Communist Russia, Guido can reveal. As as a student at Hertford College, Oxford in the nineties, “Red Robbins” wrote an article in praise of Soviet Russia for the Oxford Reform Club magazine. In a rewriting of history that would have made Seumas Milne blush, the PM’s new star Number 10 hire wrote:
“The Russian state has endured more than any other major nation in the twentieth century, and has achieved more too… I would never disagree that some of the deeds done in the name of communism were evil, but it is as well to look at the era’s aims and achievements. First among these were the aims of free and fair education, housing and healthcare. These were also the main planks of the post-war consensus here in Britain, and could hardly be described as evil. What is more, they were achieved. More Russians can read than Britons, there are almost no homeless people in Moscow, unlike London… Another achievement was the making of a state, a world power indeed, and one that its people could be proud of. The Soviet leaders changed Russia from a backward peasant autocracy, despised by the West, into a technological giant at whom the world cowered in fear for half a century.”
Red Robbins then lamented the fall of the Soviet Union as meaning there is no longer an alternative to the real baddie: capitalism.
“The demise of the Soviet experiment means that for those growing up in the world today, especially western Europe, there appears to be no alternative to the mad excesses of modern capitalism. To the thinking man and woman, Soviet Russia may not have been ideal, but it was food for thought in the “greed is good” climate of the 1980’s.”
The article concludes that it is unfair to say communism failed because the ravages of Russia’s Tsarist past meant “the experiment was hardly conducted in fair conditions”. A friend of Robbins confirmed he wrote the article but declined to comment on his past views.
So the top civil servant in charge of Brexit is only a former Soviet fanboy who defended Stalin and implied communism was preferable to capitalism. We knew Olly was a Remainer, but we didn’t think he’d be such a keen supporter of the crowning principles behind Juncker’s democracy-hating EU super-state speech last week. On the plus side, Red Robbins will get on famously with Seumas if Corbyn makes it to Number 10…
Alastair Campbell and @OwenJones84 have a bit of a The Thick of It moment. Watch the full encounter: https://t.co/0FONZmHiuR pic.twitter.com/gd66pNgOr7
— The Guardian (@guardian) September 19, 2017
Owen Jones channels David Brent in the cringe-inducing first 30 seconds of this interview with Bad Al Campbell. “You’ve gotta plan for things have you? Like Iraq?”
Compare and contrast Rachel Sylvester’s drive-by shooting of Boris two weeks ago – branding him an “international joke”, a “wally”, an “irrelevance” – with today’s piece coming to BoJo’s defence: “It is legitimate for the foreign secretary, who has been criticised for his lack of seriousness, to express his opinion on the biggest diplomatic dilemma facing the country in a generation”. What could possibly have caused such a sudden change of mind? Surely nothing to do with the fact that Rachel’s husband, Patrick Wintour of the Guardian, is off to New York to interview Boris…
Labour’s NEC has approved the Corbynista plan to reduce the threshold of MPs required for leadership nominations to 10%, which equates to just 26 MPs when MEPs lose their jobs after Brexit. The vote is all but certain to be won at conference. The threshold could fall again to 5% next year. Blairite MPs don’t have a hope of keeping a left-wing candidate off the ballot. They’re screwed…
Corbynistas are bullish:
Pete Willsman, of the Campaign for Labour Democracy, just told party NEC meeting: “Some of our MPs deserve to be attacked.” Lovely.
— Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor) September 19, 2017
Sign of things to come…
Get your hands on the booze here…
The pre-briefed version of Vince Cable’s LibDem conference speech included the line:
“If Jeremy Corbyn sits on the fence any longer, he is in danger of being sliced up the middle by the serrated edge.”
The line was cut from the speech on delivery, perhaps after they saw how it went for Osborne talking about chopping up his opponents.
This is the most interesting thing to come from this week’s LibDem dross. Sky News cut away from Vince’s speech after a few minutes to hear from the President…
President Trump says if forced to defend itself or its allies, the United States will “totally destroy” North Korea https://t.co/m9GcTNUO6J pic.twitter.com/R600QL2YXK
— Bloomberg (@business) September 19, 2017
Trump calls Kim “Rocket Man” in his speech at the UN…
Corbynistas are launching a power grab at Labour conference by seeking to pass a rule change giving them the right to suspend NEC elections in the event of an “emergency“. At present the rules dictate that NEC elections take place every two years. Guido has been leaked a draft of the recommendations the NEC are set to make for this year’s conference vote (if the NEC recommends delegates vote a certain way it tends to be a done deal). Included in their suggestions is a clause proposing to allow the NEC to suspend elections if they declare an emergency:
“The term of office in each of the five NEC divisions shall be two years starting immediately after the close of Party conference to which the election result is reported except where the NEC issues procedural guidance otherwise on an emergency temporal basis.”
This is being described in non-Corbynista circles as a “Venezuela amendment” – a naked attempt by Corbynistas to have the right to suspend NEC elections, under the guise of an “emergency“. What constitutes an “emergency” is unspecified, it would appear it can be declared on a whim by the Corbynista-controlled NEC. President Maduro would be proud of this one…
In his Standard leader today George Osborne all but admits that he did make that infamous “chopped up in a bag in my freezer” comment about Theresa May. This evening’s editorial praises May on modern slavery, suggesting her critics should now refrain from OTT language about her:
“In the battles over Brexit, and over the future direction of the Conservative Party, some harsh words have been said about the Prime Minister. Her advisers created a poisonous atmosphere among senior Tories. But they are now gone, and a much more consensual team has recently replaced them in Downing Street. Mrs May’s critics in her party will want to respond in kind. We can reflect that strong differences of opinion do not need intemperate language, even when said in jest.”
So he did say it then. Think “sorry” is the word he’s looking for…
Telegraph’s pol-ed Gordon Rayner is claiming that Boris will resign if Theresa May goes soft on Brexit.
Boris denies it…
In the OBR’s February report there was a table, unnoticed at the time, which includes an OBR forecast on EU budget contributions up to 2021 based on Treasury information. They show the gross contribution soaring to £22.227 billion by 2021/22 – or £427 million per week. If, as Remainers and statisticians insist, we use only the net contribution – subtracting the UK rebate – then even that soars from £13.952 billion in 2016/7, to £17.405 billion in 2021/2. That is a massive 24.7% increase in 5 years…
But most importantly politically, even the net contribution of £17.405 billion works out at some £335 million per week in 2022. So even using the contested Remainer methodology, Boris would basically be right in four years if we don’t leave the EU…
The Policy Exchange report on online extremism released this morning is getting a huge amount of pick-up. It concludes:
“The government should consider stronger action to try and limit the demand side of the extremism equation. One potential vehicle for this would be the creation of new legislative offences against the aggravated possession and persistent consumption of extremist material.”
A call for more regulation and a new quango with a helping of censorship on top. Ostensibly, the report focuses on online content that incites terror. The polling, however, canvassed public support for the removal of many different kinds of content. What exactly would the removal of “extreme politics” content involve? Likewise, pornography? Where is the line drawn and by whom?
Ironically, the report confirms that the public think extremist preachers in places of worship are actually a bigger problem than online extremist content:
Nothing proposed by Policy Exchange will stop determined terrorists communicating. Even if terrorist propaganda is driven off mainstream platforms it will still be found on elsewhere on the internet. That is the inherent nature of the internet, unless you want to go down the Chinese commanded and controlled internet path.
Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission is suggesting ‘banning internet trolls from voting’ for making negative comments online. That’s right, the voting regulator is seriously proposing disenfranchising citizens as a punitive measure designed to police their behaviour. This is near totalitarian hysteria…
Being discussed over coffee in PCH this morning: Mark Field’s researcher Lettie Egan’s star appearance on Channel 4’s First Dates last night. Lettie proudly flew the flag for Brexit, despite the Remain protestations of her date. You can do better Lettie…[…] Read the rest
Top Corbynista Cat Smith on the general election:
“…we didn’t lose it…”
