Last night’s statement from a Labour “spokesperson” on the Douma gas attack – no wonder no one wanted to put their name to it – was a textbook case of Corbynista equivocation in the face of evil committed by a regime opposed by the West. Corbyn’s record on Syria speaks for itself.
He accepted a free trip to meet Assad paid for by a Palestinian group which blames Jews for the Holocaust, posing with the Syrian leader alongside Jenny Tonge, and writing afterwards that the junket had shown him evidence that “the Israeli tail wags the US dog”.
He was the chair of Stop the War when they compared Assad to Churchill and repeatedly promoted Assad apologists, and he continued to back the group when they were condemned by Peter Tatchell for silencing victims of the Assad regime, and accused by Syria Solidarity UK of tacitly supporting Assad.
Following the Khan Sheikhoun gas attack, Corbyn refused to blame Assad despite Britain, the US and France all agreeing there was no doubt the regime carried it out. He did however appear on Russia Today to immediately endorse Russian reports of Syrian rebels using chemical weapons. He called for an “independent UN investigation“. When such an investigation later found the Assad regime responsible, Corbyn said nothing.
He received a briefing from Declan Hayes, a notorious Assad apologist who has denied that the regime has used chemical weapons. He dined with Marcus Papadopoulos, who claimed “there was no massacre at Aleppo“.
Corbyn’s chief aide Seumas Milne has repeatedly apologised for the Assad regime, writing that warnings of chemical attacks by Assad were a “reprise of the falsehood that paved the way for the invasion of Iraq”, praising Russian intervention in Syria as a “check to unbridled US power” and criticising Nato for working against the Assad regime.
Milne’s deputy in the leader’s office Steve Howell is even worse – he’s repeatedly openly sided with Assad and accused the West of spinning the Aleppo slaughter.
Corbyn’s favourite newspaper, the communist Morning Star, actually backed Assad’s slaughter in Aleppo as “providing aerial support to troops fighting to drive extremists out”.
Corbyn famously said that “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”. On Syria he doesn’t even pretend to be neutral.
The hottest of hot takes on Mugabe’s resignation from Corbyn’s ex-spokesman Steve Howell, who compared the outgoing Zimbabwean despot to Her Maj:
Much of British media coverage of #Mugaberesigns is downright patronising – and so hypocritical from a country with an unelected Nonagenarian head of state who Parliament can’t impeach and whose empire gave white settlers the land Mugabe tried to restore to African ownership.
— Steve Howell (@FromSteveHowell) November 22, 2017
They know Zanu PF are socialists right?
Following Guido’s story yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn gets a lot of criticism in today’s papers for his links to an Assad-supporting genocide denier. Of course it should come as no surprise that the Labour leader’s office is sympathetic to people with such views. Take Steve Howell, Corbyn’s deputy director of strategy and comms, one of his most senior aides (and a former colleague of Seumas Milne at the Stalinist newspaper Straight Left). His Twitter feed is full of tweets promoting Assadists, siding with Assad and Putin, accusing Western media of spinning the Aleppo slaughter, blaming Ukraine on the West, defending Russia Today, and even spinning Russian hacking of the US election in support of Putin.
These views are commonplace at the very top of Corbyn’s Labour…
Jeremy Corbyn’s new spin doctor Steve Howell is the author of a sex-laced thriller about a fictional drugs scandal, Guido can reveal. Howell claims his racy page-turner Over The Line “anticipated the doping crisis in sport and exposed the over-lapping epidemic of steroid abuse for appearance-enhancing body-building.” Guido doesn’t remember Lance Armstrong getting up to the following…
“Without thinking, I started stroking her hair with my left hand, and after a few moments, she began kissing my chest with moist open lips, moving slightly higher with each one until she reached my neck and then the dimple in my chin. Our lips met, and we kissed in silence for a very long time, tongues reaching deep into each other’s mouths, hungry and feral. I sensed she could feel how aroused I was. I was embarrassed and surprised by my lust. It had been a long time.”
“I think we would have made love then and there if I hadn’t been so bruised and battered, but it was hopeless. Each time I tried to hold her more closely, stabs of pain would ricochet through me like electric shocks. Kissing and caressing were one thing, but I needed a body in much better working order to go any further…”
“I was completely naked, and I sensed Mimi looking closely at me. The cuts and bruises on my torso were less inflamed now, but it had been as comical as it was painful earlier when we tried to manoeuvre our way round them to make love for the first time. Mimi had lived up to her claim to be a good coach — a great one, in fact. I’d felt inhibited and self-conscious by the time we reached the room, over-thinking what was about to happen and wondering if I’d live up to expectations, whatever they were. But she seemed to have no such inhibitions, undressing almost before the door was closed and then helping me along. I had forgotten how exhilarating sex could be — or possibly I had never known. The anaesthetic and soporific effect was so intense it sent me into the heaviest sleep I’d had for days.”
Surely a contender for a Bad Sex Award…
Members of the Lobby beware: the book contains a chilling passage about an assault on a journalist for asking an awkward question:
“My fuse had burnt out in the press conference, and none of it was left to stop me exploding. I grabbed the Argus journalist by his jacket collar… I pulled him towards me so that my chest — which is fairly chiselled for a forty-something — was pushing up into his chin. I was ready to throw him across the nearest car bonnet, and he was looking strangely smug as if he was enjoying the whole thing. Mimi was quick to intervene… The adrenalin [sic] was still pumping, but my saner senses prevailed. Tempted though I was, I realised Meg’s coach beating a journalist up would not help matters at this point. I released my grip and stepped back as he made a show of straightening his jacket.”
The book’s flyleaf reveals it published in February 2015 by “Quaero Publishing”. A search of books index WorldCat fails to return any other work ever published by Quaero, and the publisher’s address is linked to Howell’s other businesses. Seems like Howell’s book was self-published, not that he mentions that on his promotional website. Steve could give McDonnell’s late night typewriter a run for its money…
Jeremy Corbyn’s new spin doctor is a lobbyist whose firm works for the Cumbria Success Regime, the controversial NHS programme which Labour said would kill babies in Copeland. Steve Howell, Jezza’s new Deputy Director of Strategy and Communications, is founder and director at PR company Freshwater. Their latest company accounts lists the Cumbria Success Regime among their top ten clients:
The Cumbria Success Regime was appointed by the government to overhaul healthcare services in Copeland. It recommended moving maternity services away from West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven, provoking outcry from Labour and inspiring the party’s infamous “babies will die” posters during the by-election. And now Corbyn has hired the man whose firm did their PR. Spin that…
