Corb Blimey!

[Lang Spoon]

Jason Cowley, Helen Lewis those fuckers are doing their best to make the rot terminal. Fuckers whose idea of radical is Tristram Hunt. Who dream of Miliband (D) saving us from leftist nonsense.

Only The Good Blairite Stephen Bush (I believe he identifies still as a New Labour type, despite being rational and humane) and George Eaton aren't completely shit. The mag stinks of horrible people being horrible and clueless about The Unwashed at a dinner party in a London gaff they bought for a song in the late 90s.

[Lang Spoon]

At least the Spectator had some decent book reviews during the Frank Johnson years. The NS was unreadable Blairite sludge twenty years back, cover to cover. The smelly toxic cunts Amis and Self as literature poster boys, scrap Clause 4 in the op eds, don't scare Mondeo Man with tax rises or being nice to Asylum Seekers (never refugees).

Former gak heads turned school run cunts who think the Blair years were the good old days need to be left to rot in a PFI hospital ward.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Stolen and paraphrased from Twitter - Derek Hatton's back in the Labour Party, the right wing have splintered off, the UK car industry is on its arse, and the Specials are at Number 1. They must be shitting themselves in the Falklands.

[E10 Rifle]

"Former gak heads turned school run cunts who think the Blair years were the good old days need to be left to rot in a PFI hospital ward."

I've been searching for a turn of phrase like that, about those sorts of people, for the last three years. Thanks LS. A curse on Nineties nostalgia.

[Nefertiti2]

Hatton rejoined last year. How convenient that the BBC decided it was newsworthy today.

[E10 Rifle]

Another example of the nostalgia-loopback afflicting British politics: the name Derek Hatton means fuck all to anyone under 40. And who cares?

[Nefertiti2]

Still I understand Winston Churchill has endorsed Theresa May.

[Tactical Genius]

The Tactical Genius would like to apologise to the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and northern Ireland for Umunna. I hope Dele Alli and Anthony Joshua somewhat balance the books.......

[Duncan Gardner]

Chukka and AJ support Spurs?

[Tactical Genius]

I doub't after this racism issue any Anti-Corbyn MP still left in the Labour Party would be thinking twice about joining this lot.

Umunna didn't feel comfortable running for leadership a couple of years ago due to the pressure on his private life (AKA Skeletons in his cupboard). He will get the same scruitiny now, so what's changed?

[Tactical Genius]

Chukka and AJ support Spurs?

Ha, he has the Look and demeanor of a Chelsea supporter.

To be fair, he hails from a different part of the country as myself Dele and AJ.

christine ohuruogu and Osi Umenyiora would be better examples.

[Duncan Gardner]

Didn't he claim that the meeja were harassing his girlfriend's then 90-year-old granny (the counter-claim being that he was really gay and the gf a 'beard')?

[wingco]

This announcement has caused swooning bouts of absolute hysteria on my Facebook feed. You'd think Stalin had risen from his grave, dusted himself down and been welcomed into the Shadow Cabinet Office. There can be no truck with socialism now, they say - true leftists like themselves must abandon the cause as a matter of conscience. A pox on Labour. Jesus Christ, I really don't care for Hatton at all, as an overall personality and don't want him in the party and don't think it was a good idea to re-admit him but the idea that this is a moment of fatal consequence for Labour which will resound throughout the populace . . . get a grip.

[Nefertiti2]

I’d have thought a former left winger from Liverpool who has now made a lot of money in the property market would remind them of Cherie Blair.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

From the Wiki page on Derek Hatton

"At the end of January 2017, in an article for the Liverpool Echo, Hatton wrote that he had voted against Britain leaving the European Union in the membership referendum in June 2016: "I can't believe Corbyn is arguing for Labour MPs to vote with the most reactionary and xenophobic Tory government we've seen for a long time. This shows a real lack of leadership on his part and does now make me have serious doubts about him".

I rather like Derek Hatton, 2017 edition. Never mind readmission to the party, he'd be a sounder leader than Corbyn.

[ad hoc]

This announcement has caused swooning bouts of absolute hysteria on my Facebook feed. You'd think Stalin had risen from his grave, dusted himself down and been welcomed into the Shadow Cabinet Office. There can be no truck with socialism now, they say - true leftists like themselves must abandon the cause as a matter of conscience. A pox on Labour. Jesus Christ, I really don't care for Hatton at all, as an overall personality and don't want him in the party and don't think it was a good idea to re-admit him but the idea that this is a moment of fatal consequence for Labour which will resound throughout the populace . . . get a grip.

Your centrist mates have been on a frenzy all round since yesterday. I note that Spearmint Rhino has in the space of the last 24 hours been threatened with being beaten up, and repeatedly called anti semitic, by two separate ex music journos.

[E10 Rifle]

What a radical, establishment-disrupting, enlightened business music journalism is eh

[Lang Spoon]

I'm guessing Bennun and Gittins.

[ad hoc]

You guess incorrectly

[Flynnie]

I wonder how much of these people's opposition to anti-Semitism comes from a place of genuine concern and how much is another way of expressing their fear and distrust of Islam and Muslims. I'd hate to be in a book club with them. They'd all fight each other for the only library copy of Houellebecq's Submission.

Or Corbyn. Berger absolutely faces antisemitism on social media, I have seen it with my own eyes, but Alex Sobel's CLP doesn't think he's an arsehole presumably.

[ad hoc]

Yes I think there is clearly an unpleasant anti semitic current that exists within certain elements of the left. If that alone was highlighted and condemned we'd be in a much better place. But this search for anti semitism in the words of everyone you don't agree with is really going to cause huge problems down the line. It's got to the point now where for some people, more or less every person and every utterance is anti semitic (which devalues the term completely and renders it meaningless, and eventually renders anti semitism as an entirely mainstream and humdrum act)

Hence people like David Quantick repeatedly throwing that allegation at SR is not just ridiculous but ultimately dangerous

[Nefertiti2]

the majority of them don't give a shit about antisemitism.

The Chakrabortty report - which was reported very positively at the time- is now apparently whitewash- whilst any Jewish person who supports Corbyn is now "a self- hating Jew"

https://twitter.com/marcus_bernard/status/1097897786299826179

Nothing makes me more furious than the smug self righteous gentiles standing proudly alongside the far rightwingers of the jewish Chronicle and the religious extremism of the "chief rabbi" to defend a very limited notion of Jewish identity which is being deliberately propagated by Fhe various "friends of israel groups, AIPAC, whoa rea quite happy to make common cause with antisemites. Fuck the lot of them. And if anyone's in touch with Spearmint Rhino - good on him for standing up to the fuckers who've bullied most opposition into submission

[Lang Spoon]

Bloody hell, Quantick. And SR had talked about being mates with him on the Chart Music podcast.

[Diable Rouge]

The MP for Enfield North has defected:

http://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/1097982646548905988

[Nefertiti2]

Wow. How will Corbyn cope?

Ryan with the culture of pro-Likud racism.