GB Views

It is not unheard of for the nominal right to engage in a touch of hyperbole. Having lived through the closest we actually came to British Communism in Harold Wilson’s union-dominated government and seen the lust for power in Michael Foot’s rheumy revolutionary eyes, we have occasionally been a tad over the top in our accusations of red flagism. The more honest of us know that a little bit of thoughtful socialism can only be a good thing. But those who repeatedly claim that they alone possess the moral purity to rule society make our exaggerations look unambitiously modest.

I say ‘the nominal right’ because unlike the battalions of card-carrying, hard left warriors for the cause, righties tend to be more taciturn and far less likely to bother with pointless things like membership, or constantly redefining what we are for or against. This is largely because we know what we stand for and that is family values, tradition, and giving a man a fair go. We are, in fact, the majority and the fat cats the left always point at are nothing to do with us any more than Sir Keir Starmer can be said to be typical of Labour voters.

One of the defining traits of the organised left appears, irrefutably, to be a level of hypocrisy that would astonish the most ‘agile’ mind. The holding of two contrary views is said to induce the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, which can only be resolved by an effort of ideological subversion of logic. So the claims that trying to ban an alternative view news channel in the interests of ‘free speech’ comes as no surprise at all. Let’s face it, if they can champion women’s rights while simultaneously insisting they admit women with cocks and beards into their exclusive spaces, pretty much anything is possible.

This is, of course, the story of Andrew Neil’s nascent GB News channel, which has yet to air a single broadcast and whose fairness and balance has yet to be tested, and the extremity of the opposition. The usual voices are raised in banshee wails of woe and the most ridiculous claims of bias. Woke slebs across the land – and especially on Twitter – are demanding that their acolytes boycott advertisers who dare to try and find a market via a channel which will likely appeal to people with more spending power than, say, Novara Media… or Owen Jones’s hobby echo chamber.

So finely tuned to offence and ‘hate speech’ and ‘far right’ themes are the usual lefty suspects that they can actually see future offence. Somewhere in the bowels of Labour HQ, you can imagine a trio of precogs channelling their predictions into the left’s own Minority Report, all the better to prosecute the crime before it has even been thought of. That they cannot see the sheer nonsense of all this is a mirror of how they will not condemn the violence directly caused by BLM yet froth excitedly over supposed ‘terrorism’ at the US Capitol on January 6^th.

Labour's new Policy Unit

How much further can the left fall before they finally see their reflections staring soullessly back up at them from the void they are creating? How many times can you excuse an action on your side while condemning a much less intense version from the other side? How can they rally support for physical intimidation of Conservative figures, yet be enraged, offended and wounded by merely hearing their voices? Hypocrisy used to be a criticism... I think they now take it as a badge of honour.

The left dominate media, the world of entertainment and, increasingly, the world of sport. But not at the grass roots level they imagine. People who would once have unquestioningly voted for left-wing parties must now be embarrassed to be associated with them and their ridiculous crusades and feel uneasy at the clamorous readiness to cancel voices yet to be heard. So we await GB News with anticipation, and if Andrew Neil can cause the explosion of a few lefty heads, then all the better.

Last Week

I just watched the very last This Week with the incomparable Andrew Neil. What a loss to everybody this is. It will be missed by its devotees and its demise makes the BBC significantly poorer in terms of political balance. Complained about by ardent lefties as being driven by Neil’s aggressively right-wing agenda it was, of course, nothing of the sort. Rather it was a last bastion for independent thought and free expression without taking itself too seriously.

The last show was a masterclass in self-effacement and the willing participation in the kind of ritual embarrassment the show claimed as its own as commentators and politicos from left, right and right-on made utter tits of themselves, then showed up to be shown up in front of a live audience. Forget the ‘reality’ shows where former back-benchers pose as ordinary human beings for the edification of a thoroughly non-discerning public, This Week’s pastiches had none of the dignity of the bush tucker challenge or ‘real housewives’; they were amateur hour personified and what better portrayal of the frailty of the position of those with power or influence.

Naked under the Andrew Neil spotlight, This Week allowed for the widest possible set of views and woe betide those without the depth to back up their claims. Nobody was safe and many a pomposity was pricked as the expounders of lies and bent truths spluttered and stalled before the master interrogator’s inquisition. Neil was uniquely well-prepared and attacked all false claims, from either end of the spectrum, whenever falsehoods were being promulgated or out-of-context ‘facts’ used to support false theses.

To the left, Neil must have seemed like a right winger but ask any right winger who has been placed in those thumbscrews how much mercy was shown and they may well shudder at the recollection. Legion are the social media clips showing the evisceration of the high and mighty and the self-proclaimed champions of unworthy causes. Livid were the bruises and scars of battle as hypocrisies were exposed, bullshit batted away and crap countered. And he did all of this with a smile and a cheery, cheesy line.

We may never see its like again, yet we have never needed a sense of perspective so much. The opening monologue alone was worth tuning in for – a catalogue of catastrophic, comically inaccurate predictions, forecasts, earnest proclamations and plain dodgy prophecies presented earnestly over the years. If only some of those just as earnestly forecasting doom and disaster over Brexit could see just how foolish they appear to the rest of us. If only the never-Trumpers could give just an inch of grudging ground.

Let's face it, Jonesy, you're a bit of an arse...

But the fight goes on and Andrew Neil’s spirit will still stalk the corridors of power. Political discourse may have lost one of the few people keeping it grounded, but there are plenty of we amateurs on social media. Keep taking the piss, keep knocking them off their lofty pedestals. Before we can clean up politics we need to sling a whole lot more mud.

Owen Knows

The other day Andrew Neil had a pop at Owen Jones, the pipsqueak polemicist. Unlike everybody else Neil probably won’t get blocked; Owen earns far too much from being ridiculed on air by the master to cut off his nose like that. But after a few years of everybody saying “Oh bless, the wunderkind is saying complicated stuff on the tellybox” even the left is starting to get fed up of him.

He does still have fans, of course, but then delusion runs strong in the more gullible sectors of the general population. But nobody deserves the endorsement of a proven liar: Mehdi Hasan tweeted on Sunday that “@OwenJones84 has more intelligence and integrity in his fingernail than most of his British media critics put together”; this on a typically whiny thread about his journalistic expertise. So I imagine it rankled when Jennifer Williams at the Manchester Evening News questioned his actual credentials. Hey, if the left can denounce Katie Hopkins, who has written for many fine organs as not-a-journalist... sauce for the gander.

But then if the left has ever been supreme at anything, it has to be hypocrisy. Yes, we are all guilty of it, but people like Jonesy take it to a whole new level, Denouncing anybody who dares mention uncontrolled, mass immigration in a negative way as indulging in ‘dog-whistle’ politics, Jones and his bedfellows whip up their flock into a frenzy of outrage via a knee-jerk necessity to invoke the spectre of Nazis rising from the past to sweep across Europe and bring darkness to the land.

To OJ the BBC is a tool of the ‘hard right’ ‘cruel Tory’ establishment, denying left wing voices and trampling on free speech. Owen, who is never off the box, blocks anybody on Twitter who disagrees with him, then uses his many media appearances to simply tell lies. Of course, they’re not lies to him, in much the same away as fire and brimstone preachers must either believe every image of hell and damnation they foretell or else be barking mad... or malevolently duplicitous.

But Owen does it from a self-identified position of loveliness. By sounding reasonable - we should be fairer, we should be kinder – look at me, see how kind I am... I’m adorable! How could I possibly advocate harm to anybody? But them; they are the enemy and as much as we abhor their methods – look at them, the far right, just look at them with their... their... tattoos, and their... their jobs! To the left the ends have always justified the means, but to assuage their dissonance they tell themselves they must resort to using what they believe the right’s methods against them because nothing else will work.

But when we slaughter, we do it in the name of kindness. Did you know that Jeremy Corbyn’s middle name is kindness? Well it is, and if that doesn’t tell you something... I’ll find something which will. And this, of course, is Squealer’s job, to make the message fit the events, to make words written after the fact appear to predict the fact; to re-purpose outright lies as inviolable truths. A famous person in history – and one whom Jones would denounce – used exactly the same tactics Owen uses every day.

The political compass of Owen Jones

Here is Owen – Goebbels – Jones performing to the gallery and attacking Frank Field in the Guardian. Really, Owen? Frank Field is now a Tory? In his final paragraph he kindly, gently absolves Momentum from any part in a forthcoming general election defeat for Labour. It’s the media, he says; the media is against us. We are the victims; we are the good guys. Yes, Owen, you keep telling yourself that.