In the Labour selection showdown no one was expecting, Paul Mason is reportedly going up against Eddie Izzard for the safe seat of Sheffield Central. Michael Crick’s seminal Twitter account keeping track of selection battles has just announced that the former Corbyn stalwart supporter is going for the constituency.
My former colleague PAUL MASON has applied to be the LABOUR candidate for the very safe seat of SHEFFIELD CENTRAL.
— @Tomorrow'sMPs (@tomorrowsmps) October 17, 2022
This week’s Twitter Bitch Fight is a left-wing box office blockbuster. In the red corner, it’s reformed Trotskyite Paul Mason. In the even redder corner, it’s literal communist Ash Sarkar. A fight for the ages…
The opening bell rang when Sarkar mocked a Redcar Labour Party campaign video which claimed “Tory cuts” had unleashed rampant crime on the local community. For uber cool online commies, streets rife with antisocial behaviour is the sort of thing only home county, pearl-clutching Tories should get het up about…
Kids on quad bikes, doing wheelies? Call Scotland Yard!
Fortunately Paul Mason was on-hand to point out that the footage clearly showed illegal behaviour, and was probably worth stopping:
Here you go: from the Northern Echo - and it's a problem in numerous working class communities, as this Walsall Police leaflet shows...oh, and age is a HRA protected characteristic for a reason: try getting out of the way if you're elderly or infirm pic.twitter.com/mK3HGGYYSf
— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) August 9, 2022
Sarkar was having none of it. She returned with a (far) left jab about Mason’s alleged leaked emails, which appeared to show him referring Novara and other left-wing outlets to the Foreign Office’s Counter Disinformation Unit for producing pro-Putin talking points. Awkward…
Shopping young people to the cops for riding quadbikes is nearly as risible as shopping leftwing media organisations to the security services.
— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) August 9, 2022
Mason is still claiming the contents of those leaks, including his brilliantly designed McCarthyite organogram, “may be edited, distorted or fake“. “May be”…
It was a Russian hack and leak operation that produced content that may be edited, distorted or fake. I was the victim of a serous crime. You are the victim of Russian disinformation. Read more about "tainted leak" operations here: https://t.co/mqMTlJ40Fz
Mason then tried changing the subject back to policing. To no avail…
1) I wrote an article criticising the police policy at the time.
— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) August 9, 2022
2) Answer the question – did you make a map which had an arrow pointing from Novara Media to the black community, yes or no?
At the time of going to pixel, Mason still hasn’t confirmed or denied whether he made the mind map. All in all, another entertaining bout. As always, Guido leaves it to co-conspirators to determine the winner…
Paul Mason is officially running to be a Labour MP at the next election. Confirming rumours, he today announced he’s standing to be Labour candidate in Stretford and Urmston, currently the seat of ex-Shadow Education Secretary Kate Green who’s confirmed she’s standing down in 2024. A letter to local members today confirms his intentions on a typically Corbynite platform of high taxes, high spending and “fighting racism, fascism and anti-semitism”.
Let’s see if the years of sucking up and new found pragmatism have paid off with an endorsement or approval from Labour’s moderates. It will be quite some journey for the Workers Power supporting Marxist-Trotskyite who still speaks fondly of Karl Marx. Unsurprisingly he emphasises his support of Sir Keir’s 2020 leadership bid over his affiliations with the far left…
Paul Mason has finally had enough of Comrade Corbyn. After years of publicly defending Jezza (albeit trashing him behind his back), Mason has at last seen the light and admitted that maybe, just maybe, Corbyn’s Stop the War lunacy is a bit much. In a lengthy thread this afternoon, Mason took aim at Jeremy over his latest think-piece on Ukraine, calling it a “catalogue of platitudes designed to mislead people about [Stop the War]” and a “a bunch of genocide deniers and Putin proxies.” All it took was a war on European soil…
He adds, however, that he doesn’t regret backing Corbyn for the Labour leadership, albeit with the caveat that he had to fight Corbyn internally “to keep Labour pro-Trident and pro-NATO:
11/ Postscript: I do not regret supporting him for Labour leader. Internally we fought and decisively won a battle to keep Labour pro-Trident and pro-NATO. I've supported calls to let him back in the PLP - but he would have to disavow StW, and that looks unlikely now, sadly.
— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) April 8, 2022
The odds of Corbyn denouncing Stop the War are practically zero. On cue, Owen Jones showed up in the replies to call Mason an “unhinged McCarthyite” for daring to attack the dear leader, with Mason punching back by claiming he doesn’t want to share a platform with “Russian disinfo merchants.” A disinfo merchant he still doesn’t regret supporting throughout his tenure as leader, apparently…
Tory MP Tom Hunt didn’t hold back when confronting Paul Mason over his new book’s claims that Priti Patel is facilitating fascism. Hunt challenged the Trot over a quote from a Guardian interview:
“The interests of fascism are being represented in government by right-wing populists and authoritarians” he goes on to say “sadly Boris Johnson”. I’m sorry I think that’s absolutely unacceptable to say that, and please tell me what specifically are what the government or what I’m doing as an MP are promoting/supporting a fascist agenda?”
Mason also ignorantly repeated the canard that references to “cultural Marxism“ echo Nazi language and thinking – when in fact the term has been long and widely used by sympathetic sociologists. All Mason could offer in support of his argument was Priti’s drive to clamp down on illegal immigration…
Former Momentum boss Laura Parker’s endorsement of Keir Starmer last night perhaps shouldn’t have come as a big surprise. The more Guido looks, the more comrade Sir Keir QC seems more and more like Jeremy Corbyn in a proper suit and a done-up tie…
Sir Keir QC has:
Guido is surprised more of the Corbyn outriders haven’t jumped on the Sir Keir QC train…