Fair to say @johnmcdonnellMP and @campbellclaret are not quite on the same page when it comes to @UKLabour‘s approach to Brexit… #Peston pic.twitter.com/ATDMY1Z2A1
— Peston on Sunday (@pestononsunday) February 11, 2018
Top trolling…
For the past few months it has become clear that certain members of the politico-media bubble have been undergoing a Brexit induced breakdown. The Remainiac bug is spreading – even some Remainers who were previously worth listening to have started to sound like tin-foil hatted conspiracy theorists. It falls upon Guido to stage a public intervention for their own good. Our list does not merely include ultra-Remainers who might be irritating but have kept their marbles. These are the 10 people who have been truly driven off the deep end by Brexit…
- AC Grayling – Where else to begin? Grayling has become Twitter’s nutty professor, every day pumping out increasingly unhinged anti-Brexit diatribes. Some highlights include labelling Brexiteers “vermin“, seeking a general strike to oppose Brexit, claiming “90% of informed opinion” is against Brexit, alleging other ultra-Remainers were being “silenced” by forces of the state, and arguing that the Tory government is “alt-right”. Grayling is alt-reality.
- Andrew Adonis – Every day he tweets about “stopping” or “halting” Brexit, which he calls “self-mutilation”. Some of his more vitriolic attacks are reserved for fellow Remainers who he reckons have sold out, he claims for example that Brexit is being driven by a “David Davis-Keir Starmer axis”. Peak Adonis was when he wrote to Lord Hall demanding the BBC sack Andrew Neil. Remarkably he still has a government job…
- Ben Bradshaw – Bradshaw has taken to tweeting out Louise Mensch blog posts citing “multiple sources with links to UK intelligence” who apparently say the referendum should be voided due to Russian intervention. Yesterday he tweeted that it was time for the Tories “to come clean about extent of Kremlin’s reach into heart of Government”. Friends don’t let friends retweet Louise Mensch.
- Carole Cadwalladr – Cadwalladr appears to genuinely believe Brexit was a Russian plot, she has claimed the Leave campaign used psy-ops to hoodwink voters and doesn’t appear to realise she is being elaborately trolled by Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore who have christened her “Carole Codswallop”. Last night she suggested lifelong Eurosceptic Michael Gove only backed Vote Leave on the orders of the Legatum Institute, who she reckons are agents of Putin. It’s so ridiculous even Newsnight have taken the piss. The Observer’s continued indulging of her conspiracy theories seems almost exploitative.
- Tim Walker – The waspish former diary columnist delights in dishing out snark, but thin-skinned Tim can’t take it when his conspiratorial babble is called out. The former Telegraph man turned freelancer and New European contributor reckons “Putin will continue to govern this country through stupid, weak, vain, greedy politicians so long as we, the people, are prepared to sit back and let him”. Cuckoo.
- Jolyon Maugham – Twitter’s most attention-seeking QC once said he considers it an honour that he is known as “the biggest c**t at the English bar”. Brexit has turned him mad as well as bad. Just read how nasty Maugham was to the genial Danny Finkelstein about Article 50. And who can forget the time he decided to set up a new political party to fight Brexit. Always a telltale sign of a Brexdown.
- Jeremy Cliffe – Talking of which, the Economist’s Berlin correspondent started The Radicals, seriously pledging to reverse Brexit, join the Euro, join the EU army and make Ken Clarke the next European Commission president. He quit the party after 12 hours following an all-staff internal email bollocking from his bosses. The Economist’s embarrassment was the happiest the FT newsroom has been all year.
- Liam Byrne – Byrne is partly responsible for setting off the Russia conspiracy theorists (and the Mail on Sunday), demanding a “US-style judge-led inquiry” in response to a Louise Mensch blog. He’s tweeted out crank articles quoting intelligence “sources” saying the referendum will need to be re-run. He’s in danger of going the full Bradshaw. And Liam, we really need to talk about the beard.
- Tom Brake – There has always been something of the night about Tom Brake, and the mood of parliament’s most humourless MP has not been helped by Brexit. When he’s not complaining to Bercow about Guido, Brake is making a fool of himself about Legatum. LibDem press officers play a game where they compete to put the most OTT lines into his press releases, knowing Brake will never tell them to tone it down.
- Alastair Campbell – Okay so he always was a few billion short of a trade deal, but Bad Al is really not taking things well at the moment. He calls Leavers “Brextremists”, compared them to jihadists and even launched into a xenophobic rant against Gisela Stuart. He’s not gone in for the Putin stuff to be fair. Though that’s possibly more to do with his own Russia Today appearances.
Guido wishes them well and looks forward to their post-Brexit recovery in April 2019…
.@GiselaStuart takes on Remainer @campbellclaret over Brexit. “You want a bad deal to prove you’re right?!”#bbcsp pic.twitter.com/ogsoVa0iuW
— BBC Daily Politics and Sunday Politics (@daily_politics) November 19, 2017
Polite machine-gunning of Alastair Campbell by the ace Gisela Stuart. Killer line: “You want a bad deal to prove you’re right…”
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?”
Labour have boarded the outrage bus over the Tories doing a deal with the “bigots and terrorist-sympathisers” in the DUP. They have some nerve…
In 2010 Labour tried to do a deal with the DUP. Gordon Brown wrote a letter to the DUP leader trying to buy his support. The then Northern Ireland Secretary Shawn Woodward worked on an “economic package” to secure DUP support. This morning Alastair Campbell said a deal with the DUP could undermine the peace process. On May 7, 2010, Campbell sat in a meeting where a Labour-DUP deal was proposed. Glorious hypocrisy from Bad Al…
Ed Miliband last night blasted the Tory-DUP deal as a “coalition of chaos”. Yvette Cooper this morning says it is “troubling“. Owen Jones says: “If Labour had ever done a deal with the DUP I would have been out there protesting it”. According to the DUP’s Ian Paisley Jr, Miliband’s Labour also tried to do a deal with the DUP in 2015:
Don’t buy the rank hypocrisy of Labour’s faux outrage this morning…
H/T @wallaceme
UPDATE: Caroline Flint slaps down Yvette Cooper over her hypocrisy:
Alastair Campbell tweeted and deleted this earlier:
In a crowded field, the stupidest take of the last 12 hours.
It’s all kicking off with @campbellclaret and @piersmorgan heckling each other about @realDonaldTrump! #Peston pic.twitter.com/fs1gkDI7L1
— Peston on Sunday (@pestononsunday) January 15, 2017
When Alastair Campbell attacked Nigel Farage for attending an “elitist party” at the Ritz on Wednesday night it was tempting fate. Guido wondered aloud, where was Bad Al that night?
@campbellclaret And where were you having dinner last night? 📷
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) November 24, 2016
Turns out that Campbell was dining at the Michelin starred River Cafe restaurant in Hammersmith, attending an elitist establishment party of his own with fellow Remain campaign losers Peter Mandelson and Sir John Sawyers, the former boss of MI6, BSE chairman and tycoon Sir Stuart Rose as well as billionaire Remain donor Sir Charles Dunstone.
The River Cafe menu offers slow-roasted veal shin for £37, wood-roasted grouse for £40 and wines at over £2,000 a bottle. The very next day Campbell had the gall to call out Farage for attending an “elitist party” – hypocrisy at its most delicious…
In the Question Time green room, Alastair Campbell tells John McDonnell: “You and yours are going to destroy the party.”
McDonnell replies: ‘”You’re a f****** a*******.”
John McDonnell and Alastair Campbell clashed over the Labour Party #bbcqt https://t.co/UIIoNQ5DmG
— BBC Question Time (@bbcquestiontime) September 15, 2016
The visceral loathing between John McDonnell and Alastair Campbell finally surfaced at the end of Question Time. McDonnell eyeballed Campbell and told him: “You’re the person above all else who created an environment where no one believed a word a politician said”. Great telly…
Watching from home was Corbynista cheerleader Paul Mason, who called on the Momentum hordes to deselect Labour MP Anna Turley:
They aren’t even pretending anymore…
Even an old cynic like Guido had something in his eye after the tribute to Jo Cox from Rachel Reeves today.
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 20, 2016
After yesterday’s genuinely tear-jerking tributes in parliament, a media event has been organised tomorrow in Trafalgar Square in memory of Jo Cox. Corporate lobbyists Freuds are organising broadcast coverage and Alastair Campbell’s Portland are doing the press, after Bad Al spent the last three days making it about the referendum:
The freedom Britain needs is freedom from a nasty Brexit Lie Machine run by tax dodgers and multi-millionaire liars fuelling anger and hate
— Alastair Campbell (@campbellclaret) June 18, 2016
An emotional pull on the heart-strings on the eve of the referendum…
UPDATE: Portland ask us to point out that Bad Al is not involved in tomorrow’s event.
Bad Al seems to be having trouble remembering which stories he made up and which were true…
The cracks are beginning to show…
Alastair Campbell risks the ire of the Corbynistas:
“With Corbyn, I’m afraid I can see only the route to defeat, and much, much worse. I wish it wasn’t so. But it is. And it is horrible to watch, unless you’re David Cameron, or George Osborne”
Paxman and Bad Al Campbell feature in this heavily as do rudimentary graphics showing Labour winning. Kelner pontificating, Heffer pessimistic, pundits pessimistically shaking their heads at the Tory campaign. Where did it all go wrong is the theme of Paxman on Newsnight.
Hmmmm…
Hat-tip: Ed Stradling for digging out the video.
This tweet by Andy Burnham’s favourite Labour fantasist, “Dr” Eoin Clarke, has been shared over 750 times, including by a host of Labour MPs, Eddie Izzard and Alastair Campbell. Unfortunately for Bad Al, it’s a little sexed up.
“Dr” Eoin cunningly cropped his screenshot of the Times article so it looked like an editorial. In fact it was comment piece written by one Richard Layard. The Times helpfully explains: “Richard Layard is professor of economics at the LSE and a Labour peer”.
So “The Times” didn’t call anyone out. It isn’t proof of “something big” happening. Despite what hundreds of Labour supporters have been telling their Twitter followers. “Dr” Eoin Clarke, PhD History of Irish Feminism, strikes again…
The Minister for the Today Programme gave as spirited a defence as humanly possible of the PM’s decision to rule out a third term in this lively exchange with Alastair Campbell last night.
“It was a statement of the bleedin’ obvious,” insists Gove…
Alastair Campbell, today, on why David Cameron is a coward for ducking the TV debates:
“How well I remember David Cameron proclaiming how marvellous the TV leaders’ debates were and, more importantly, how vital they were to the democratic process in the modern media age. And how pathetic it is, five years on, to watch his wriggling and weaselling to avoid them… I can see why one on one, policy v policy, plan v plan, he might want to duck this. But it is morally cowardly and democratically wrong.”
Alastair Campbell, in 2001, on why Tony Blair was not a coward for ducking the TV debates:
“The UK is not electing a president and our political and constitutional positions are entirely different. [We are not taking part because of] all the blah and the ballyhoo that would surround it… four days of build up to every debate, this is where they’ll stand and this is what they’ll do, and this is the people advising them and this is what they’ll wear, and blah blah blah.”
What was that about “pathetic”, “weaselling”, “morally cowardly and democratically wrong”?
UPDATE: Bad Al responds:
Won over by David Cameron’s argument? Or just self-serving spin from the spinmeister? You decide…
The CCTV footage above shows the moment Alastair Campbell was allegedly involved in a punch up with a passerby. Bad Al is walking down a road (despite being out for a jog), when he is approached by a man coming in the opposite direction who appears to recognise him. The man claims Campbell then “punched and spat” at him, allegations he strongly denies in a statement this morning:
“I was walking down Perrin’s Lane last Monday after a run in Hampstead when a man walking towards me began shouting in abusive and aggressive terms as he approached. As I passed him I did not look at him, did not respond to his insults and put my my arm out to his shoulder to stop him coming any closer. If there was any contact at all it was minimal. I walked on a few steps, thought he was doing the same but he turned back, followed me, continued to abuse me and when I turned around he came towards me and aimed a kick at me which came into brief contact with my leg. He then moved back but came forward again and spat at me, most of the spit landing on my shirt, some on my face. I then turned and walked away.”
Unfortunately the footage is inconclusive. Though the fact the supposed victim went to George Galloway rather than the cops might be an indicator of where the truth lies…
“Labour will tackle scandal of cancer patients denied life-saving treatment” screams the press machine this morning. “Labour will create a new annual Cancer Treatments Fund to improve access not just to the latest drugs but also to the latest forms of radiotherapy and surgery that are too often not available for thousands of people with cancer.” Worthy stuff.[…] Read the rest
