On LBC this morning Boris hit out at a “codswallop” story alleging he is somehow taking advice from Steve Bannon, who he hasn’t met since he met the then Chief of Staff to the President of the USA on an official visit as Foreign Secretary. The much reported ‘texting’ later on was just Bannon trying and failing to secure another meeting…
“This is the biggest load of codswallop I have ever heard.”
Carole is basically the Bannon of the left, churning out whatever she likes without regards for basic facts while her fanatical online following pile in with the retweets…
Carole Cadwalladr and David Lammy have been spluttering furiously into their cornflakes all morning after Nick Clegg told the Today Programme that there was “absolutely no evidence” that Russia or Cambridge Analytica influenced Brexit. Clegg said “we have a duty to explain fact from some of the allegations that have been made”. Clearly not a duty that Carole has ever felt bound by herself…
“Much though I understand why people want to reduce that eruption in British politics to some kind of plot or conspiracy, some use of new social media through opaque means, I’m afraid the roots to British euroscepticism go very, very deep…”
Never mind the fact that the official report from the Information Commissioner’s Office already crushed all of Carole’s grand conspiracies about Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Brexit, raising questions about her pet whistleblower Chris Wylie instead. Clegg hasn’t triggered anyone this badly since tuition fees…
If she wants to start addressing disinformation on social media she could start with her own Observer ‘scoop’ over the weekend in which she deliberately mistranscribes a video of Steve Bannon talking about Boris. Bannon says “we went back and forth over text”, instead Carole transcribes this as “back and forth over the text” which then forms the crux of her story. The same people who’d be the first to say Bannon is a pathological liar are now taking an entirely unsubstantiated boast from him as the gospel truth before distorting it even further themselves…
The Economist is celebrating it’s 175th year of publication with a paen to liberalism in the form of an essay. It is a bit of navel gazing combined with dollops of self-justification. Editor Zanny Minton Beddoes admits in her essay that The Economist has become the in-house journal of the liberal elite, what Steve Bannon calls “the party of Davos”. No institution is immune to intellectual fashions, the newspaper has in Guido’s lifetime championed Keynesianism, then neo-liberalism, and now the ‘Washington Consensus’. It has of late become overly preoccupied with climate change and whatever else concerns the faddish Davos crowd. The irony of The Economist, which was founded in 1843 to champion free trade, free markets and limited government, being on the wrong side of the argument on Brexit, in thrall to the EU and the thousands of tariffs that protectionist bloc enforces, is striking. Never mind the ambitions of those in Brussels for a pan-European super-state rigidly regulated from the Black Sea to the Atlantic.
On immigration Zanny admits for liberals “it is not too wide of the mark to caricature their views on migration as more influenced by the ease of employing a cleaner than by a fear of losing out.” Not a single democracy has escaped pain from uncontrolled mass migration, no politician can ignore the votes of those who have to compete with newcomers, the so-called “deplorables” in America and working-class Brexit voters in Britain. Almost all Western democracies have tired of fast migration. On this Zanny recognises reluctantly that “in the short run, liberals risk undermining the cause of free movement if they push beyond the bounds of pragmatism.” She proposes reform of the rules for refugees, despite accepting that in reality most immigration is driven by economics.
How adrift the current editor of The Economist is from the founding principles can be seen with her support for Universal Basic Income – putting everyone on the dole, disincentivising work. She cites a modest proposal for America to introduce a “UBI of $10,000 a year” which she admits “would require a tax take of at least 33% of GDP”, to be paid for by more disincentivising wealth taxes. So much for limited government.
One could go on, Steve Bannon did at their recent shindig. Judge for yourself how Zanny fared:
Happy birthday to The Economist…
Trump’s former right hand man has produced a pro-Trump documentary to try to rile up Trump’s base in the lead up to the mid term elections. Bannon said that “If you’re a deplorable, you’ll literally standing on your chair with your pitchfork saying: ‘I’ve got to get people out to vote.'”
The film will be released as the culmination of a day long “Deplorables Conference” in New York on 9th September, the two year anniversary of Hillary Clinton’s famous ‘basket of deplorables’ remark, and less than two months before voters go to the polls. Former UKIP man Raheem Kassam now a movie star in the States, apparently…
With Heat Street now at a dead end, Louise Mensch has a new online enterprise called Patribotics, strapline “Exposing Vladimir Putin’s War on America”. Her latest story headlines that Fox News Under FBI Counterintelligence Investigation:
Specifically, Sean Hannity is on signals intelligence co-ordinating his pro-Trump message with organs of the Russian state, such as RT, Sputnik, Wikileaks and Julian Assange
Her sources also tell her that Trump’s White House chief strategist is facing the death penalty for espionage. Guido admittedly hasn’t been following the whole Trump/Russians thing that closely. So this is shocking news given he hasn’t even been charged. The site has a lot of other conspiracy theories which Guido has not had the will time to read. Guido has his own conspiracy theory – her whole site is actually a Russian false flag operation to discredit all the Trump / Russia conspiracy theories as crazy…
UPDATE: Co-conspirators point out that Louise reckons President Trump too faces the executioner. Huge if true…
I have not heard that name yet. Nor is anything set in stone. Team is considering. @realDonaldTrump may also be looking at execution.
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) July 19, 2017
Donald Trump on Steve Bannon’s infighting…
“Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will.”
