A two-minute video by Alastair Campbell mocking Boris and Dominic Cummings is so tasteless Help for Heroes has intervened and asked the supposed master-spin-doctor to delete the “offensive” clip. Doubly tasteless given many soldiers will only have medals because of wars Campbell and Blair sent them to…
Although we're sure it wasn't the intent, this video is offensive to those who have proudly served this country. We respectfully ask that @campbellclaret removes the post as quickly as possible.
— Help for Heroes (@HelpforHeroes) May 28, 2020
The video sees Campbell ‘playing’ Boris pretending to be a “war hero” and wearing medals won for Brexit and defending Cummings, before coming up with new national anthem lyrics to distract from current bad press. Campbell hasn’t earned the right to wear a medal or a regimental tie, he’s a disgrace. Being controversial to seek attention is one thing, Campbell’s badly misjudged this one, is he having some kind of episode?
Bad Al Campbell is one of Dominic Cummings’ fiercest critics in the media, popping up on all channels to argue that even small breaches of the rules were unacceptable and merit sackings. Guido would therefore have thought Campbell would be extra careful to stick to those rules given his censoriousness. Not so.
Blair’s former spin doctor and remainiac campaigner tweeted out a a selfie this morning at 07:25 with Speedo Mick, an Everton fan who attends matches wearing only speedos, whom he swam into in the Serpentine in Hyde Park. The grinning selfie shows the two men shoulder to shoulder, a world away from the two metre distance rules. The tweet, perhaps once Bad Al realised he was self-incriminating, was then swiftly deleted. Alastair Campbell claiming the title of Britain’s biggest hypocrite.
UPDATE: Piers Morgan has put his tuppence worth in, telling Campbell “Practise what you preach.” Bad Al Campbell has apologised:
“Yes. Hands up! Too slow as fans flocked around taking pics of pecs as I went for my swim. Definite breach of social distancing. I apologise unreservedly for this lapse. If I still held a public position I would offer my resignation to the PM immediately.”
As if he has “fans”, as disingenuous as we have come to expect from him, his vanity in posting the selfie he took matched only by his fabulism.
The cheeky move by CCHQ to rebrand themselves as a fact-checking account during last night’s debate may have got everyone talking, but could backfire as Twitter have said “Any further attempts to mislead people by editing verified profile information – in a manner seen during the UK Election Debate – will result in decisive corrective action”. Judging by the backlash this wasn’t so much a dead cat as a dead elephant…
Even right-wingers like Julia Hartley-Brewer and Susanne Evans called on CCHQ to reverse the rebrand, calling it “plain wrong” and “very stupid”. As Emily Maitlis then later pointed out, Boris was, in fact, answering questions in the debate on integrity at the same time as CCHQ was pretending to be something it wasn’t…
.@maitlis: “You were misleading the public. You were trying to coat your propaganda as hardened fact.. You dressed up party lines as a fact check service: that is dystopian.. You know that people do not trust you, so you have to put something out and call it a fact check instead” pic.twitter.com/UOyLgCx7hi
— Damon Evans (@damocrat) November 19, 2019
Still, not the worst interview performance Emily’s sat through this week…
Guido’s still waiting for the commentariat’s reciprocal outrage towards Labour’s own ‘fact-checking’ account, which, even worse than CCHQ’s stunt, doesn’t mention its Labour origins in either its name or its handle.
CCHQ’s Twitter backlash wasn’t the biggest faux pas on the social media site last night, however, as Alastair Campbell rebranded his account as ‘Boris Johnson’ and posted a number of misogynistic tweets, with one particularly distasteful one directed at Carrie.
When he changed his name back it kind of backfired:
He really didn’t think that through did he?
In an hour-long interview with an ultra-liberal, pro-EU, left-winger, Alastair Campbell covered a range of topics, not least Bercow’s impressions, his decisions in the chair and Labour’s antisemitism scandal.
Bercow’s socialist ABCs delivered in a prolonged Tony Benn impression stood out to Guido, but you can watch the full interview here. At least now you have to volunteer to put up with an hour of Bercow’s chuntering…
Tom Watson has been making a full-throated case for remaining in the EU this morning at the sycophantic pro-EU think tank Centre for European Reform. Guido couldn’t help but remember this memorable clash between Watson and Alastair Campbell just last May. Watson tears into Bad Al for not respecting the Brexit vote and repeatedly mocks the fact he no longer decides Labour policy:
“We have to listen to the whole of the British people on this Alastair and we’ve got to make sure that we honour them by saying we’re coming out of the EU…”
“What I’m saying is: you no longer decide Labour Party policy… I know you’d like to, I know they don’t pay you a lot of money as the editor of the New European…”
Campbell might have been unceremoniously shown the exit door from Labour, its Deputy Leader doesn’t seem to mind him setting the agenda again…
Jeremy Corbyn’s wife Laura Alvarez keeps a notoriously low profile, in an era of wannabe PMs flaunting their spouses Alvarez is almost invisible. However her usual discretion hasn’t stopped her sharing her views about Alastair Campbell’s expulsion on Facebook. Under a post shared by a former John McDonnell adviser greeting Campbell’s demise with “Good riddance!” Alvarez commented:
And in a Corbynista Facebook group she commented under an unrelated Skwawkbox article (attacking Tom Watson):
Not surprising Bad Al believes his expulsion was more about ideology than just enforcing the Labour rulebook…
