the brilliantly leaping gazelle

If it wasn’t for the fact that there’s the suicide involved, the whole Jason Arday affair would be a grotesquely comic morality tale. But it does, and the reaction to that tragedy  serves only to highlight the rank hypocrisy that has been a constant throughout this appalling farrago. And where there is rank hypocrisy, its almost certain that shameless opportunism is sure to be involved. 

I’m not going to dwell upon the many inconsistencies, fabrications and outright lies that brought about his very public humiliation and eventual suicide. I’m not concerned about that. We’ve all lied about our pasts, have massively exaggerated our accomplishments or taken credit for unearned triumphs. Most of us do it to impress potential sexual partners, occasionally to amuse our friends, and always on our CV’s. He just took it to absurd level thats all.

But it is precisely because many of his claims were so absurd, so preposterous and so risible that one wonders why so many otherwise intelligent people believed them. They were almost so overt as to be covert. But people believed what they wanted to believe. That’s why he got the job as Cambridge University. They wanted to insulate themselves against any accusations of being institutionally racist by appointing him as their youngest professor of sociology.

This is where rank hypocrisy comes in. Because in wanting to prove that they weren’t institutionally racist, they proved that they were. And other than the the colour of his skin, he also possessed a few other characteristics that protected him from deeper scrutiny. He was neurodiverse. He’d recovered from cancer, childhood autism and two brain tumours. A narrative quickly embedded itself around the fact here was a vulnerable man. Accordingly, any expressions of doubt as to his claims, let alone criticism or demands for his sacking, would have had unforeseen consequences. And therefore anyone expressing those doubts would then be responsible for these unforeseen consequences.  

But then I think of J.K. Rowling. She has been subjected to a sustained campaign of death threats, obscene vilification and social media hatred for years. But no-one is the slightest bit concerned as to what effect this might have on her mental health. I also think of Graham Lineman. He too has been subjected to a similar campaign of demonstration. His marriage has ended. Most of his friends have abandoned him. His career is in tatters. A lesser man might succumb to the pressure. But no-one is too concerned about that.

There were two vigil’s to mourn Jason Ardays death. One took place in Cambridge, was organised by his academic colleagues and was attended by a few hundred. By contrast, the one in London and organised by Stand up to Racism (SUTR), attracted over 30,000 people. This is where the shameless opportunism appears. I don’t doubt their individual imagining of themselves as being all kinds of right. But as a collective, they are exactly the sort of people, who would post, share and amplify the kind of hate the Rowling and Linehan are regularly subjected to.

And to simply view any criticism of Arday as evidence of racism is itself racist, because it suggests a lesser level of scrutiny be applied to him based on his skin colour. That by dint of that fact, coupled with the additional factors the deemed him vulnerable, that he should’ve been left alone with his fantasies. If that dangerous nostrum becomes widely accepted reality – that the less white and more vulnerable one was, then the more one was shielded from press scrutiny – it would inexorably create yet another hierarchy of privilege. The kind of privilege that SUTR and the 30,000 at the vigil would be theoretically opposed to. 

Theoretically.

I do like a good survey. Not as much as I like a bad survey though. What helps to differentiate the two? Well a large amount of people surveyed certainly helps. So to does the manner in which they were surveyed; which questions they were asked, how they were asked, that sort of thing. Above all, how easy is it for me to check the findings. To see if the claims made because of the survey hold true. 

What first piqued my interest in the notion of there being good and bad surveys were make-up adverts on television. Those big, expensive production numbers, usually featuring an of the moment film star or ‘celebrity’, and a voiceover making all manner of preposterous claims. Preposterous because of the small print, the very small print that appeared in a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment right at the end of the advert. The incredible sounding 92% of women who thought something, or the 87% of people who thought something else was indeed incredible. For the simple reason that those percentages, whilst true in and of themselves, were based on an incredibly low number. 

Most times, less than a couple of hundred people tried something and were then asked what they thought. Essentially it was the make-up company’s marketing department, all of their friends and some of their friends friends. It always baffled me how this could happen, how it was possible for such expensive adverts could get away with making such bold claims based upon so little actual evidence. My favourite one was for a female beauty product. Over four million of them had been sold the advert claimed. A huge percentage agreed with some claim I can’t remember. But I can remember how many actual people that huge percentage turned out to be. 87.

But it was only make-up. So did I care? Not really. It seemed fitting that the claims were based on nonsense, Did anyone really think that ‘healthy looking hair’ was the same thing as healthy hair? That ‘reversing the signs of ageing’ was actually doing anything? That ‘leaves you feeling with fresher, younger looking skin’ was anything other than meaningless when the model in adverts was no older than 25. I just quietly snarked.

Then I began to notice how political option polls were doing the same thing. Making big claims to generate even bigger headlines. One of the themes of this blog has always been the way in which polls and surveys flatter to deceive; to give the impression that a majority of people think something, when actually its what the people who commissioned it the first place want it to show.  In politics this matters. Its called ‘the bandwagon effect’; everyone wants to back a winner and if all the polls are predicting the same person is going to win..

This is all a long-winded way of writing that I don’t trust polls. Surveys are no better. They both depend not just on on the questions asked but equally, how they are asked  This clip from ‘Yes Minister’ illustrates this much better than I ever could.

So a survey can easily be skewed to give the desired outcome. If a pressure group wants to prevent this, for example. Or maybe charity wants to that to be allowed. Most times I don’t care. But then I saw this headline in ‘The Daily Mirror’ the other day, ‘’I came to the UK to help the NHS — but I instead face racism at work’

It went on, ‘Staff have seen a disturbing rise in racism from patients over the last 18 months, which emerged in a poll by theSociety of Radiographers (SoR). Workers who moved to the UK to help the NHS are forced to deal with daily abuse, which they blame on the rise of the far-right movement.’ Unfortunately, aside from a couple of testimonials from two radiographers, there was no other evidence, no other details relating to the survey. So once again, I saddled up my hobby-horse and headed over to the SoR website to try and find out more. As you’ll have no doubt guessed I was disappointed. A page mentioned the survey, but provided no other details. It was little more than a press release. 

Until this morning, when magically all was revealed. Or not so ‘all’ as it turned out. ‘The Society of Radiographers has garnered national attention from national news media following its report about a rise in racist incidents within hospitals. Following the release of results from the SoR’s ‘Racism in the Workplace’ survey earlier this week, media organisations including ITV, The Guardian, Sky News, The Independent and The Telegraph have reported on the findings. The survey, which ran from January to February this year, collated personal experiences of racism from SoR members and received 382 total responses.’

Hang on? 382? But you have over 33,000 members, most of whom work in the NHS? If anything, the survey proved the opposite, that the overwhelming majority of its members had not suffered racism at work. Or more plausibly, put whatever abuse they had suffered down to misdirected yet understandable frustration at long delays, both in getting the appointment itself, and then on the day.  

The link to the survey contained in todays story only took me back to the press release I mentioned earlier. But now that didn’t matter.  The SoR got the story out there. Well done. It wanted to prove that racism was on the increase and the survey did. Bravo. The SoR wanted the blame to be levelled at the increasing support for ‘right-wing’ populist parties in the UK and it did. Hats off. The SoR also wanted to raise its profile, to reassure its members that it was fighting on their behalf, and it did. Pay rises all round.

Just one question though. Exactly how many of your senior staff previously worked for make-up, shampoo or face cream  companies?

Repulsion has been oddly quiet of late. By that I mean that his Twitter account has been its usual mix of pseudo gravitas and performative virtue, but odd in the sense that what normally irks him no end, so, he’s been uneasily reticent about. No posts, no press releases, just nothing. Given his fondness for using social media to use to highlight just how much the Greens differ from the other mainstream political parties, and no other issue differentiates them quite as much as their approach to asylum seekers and refugees. 

So one might be forgiven then for thinking that he’d have strong opinions about 50,000 or so of them crossing over from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. Of the ‘treat them with respect’ variety. ‘Give them safety’, ‘give them shelter’ – basically just give. One might expect him to have equally forthright views about the response of the Spanish authorities, who have already deported most of them back to Morocco. 

Because whatever he posted would be the wrong thing. Far better for him to post nothing, to portray his unusual reticence as ‘an unnecessary distraction from the awful situation currently unfolding in Ceuta.’ Something that reframed his silence as the act of a dignified statesman, rather than the altogether more correct interpretation of him fervently hoping that no-one was able to spot the various hypocrisy’s he was avoiding.

First off, the most obvious one. The Greens have no problem whatsoever with plunging into complicated international situations by providing asininely simplistic solutions. By either issuing statements, demanding actions be taken by for the UK and other governments or calling for a plethora of highly unlikely happenings to happen, their performative outrage is manufactured for one purpose. To better embolden their own sense of moral superiority and, if possible, lambasts Israel.

Because Israel is the gift that keeps on giving so far as the Greens are concerned. If one were so minded, one could chart the surge in membership of the Greens directly with its pivot away from traditional Green issues – global warming and the environment – to focus instead on Israel and the war in Gaza. It has served them well. The more that they criticise Israel for the appalling crime of defending themselves against the fanatical death cult that is Hamas, the more the media love them. The more that they peddle the nonsense of there being a genocide in Gaza, the more that their credulous membership grows.  

Secondly, the sight of wave upon wave of people emerging from the sea before clambering up the beaches in Ceuta should cause the scales from the eyes of those who believe in open borders to finally fall. Aside from the fact that almost all of them were men, it was like time-lapse footage of what’s going on with the small boats. I imagined that each of the figures in Ceuta had a number; the one-time only cost involved in policing them prior to their deportation. I don’t feel bad for thinking this way. Our welfare state is near collapse. We can’t afford to be profligate. But our costs is on-going. We can’t deport the people arriving in small boats.  

Quite how any why Spain was able to do this matters less than the fact we can’t. Even though we voted to leave the EU over 10 years ago, inexplicably, we’re still beholden to their laws. I know I’m brain damaged and everything but this seems utter madness. Morocco isn’t in the EU either, yet Spain can somehow deport them back? Make the pain in my head stop! 

These offer a far more plausible explanation of his unusual reticence than anything Repulsion might claim. But he knows that most of the membership don’t really care, so why should he? 

Here we are again. This time, this ‘here’ is in Manchester. But whilst there will be many future ‘here’s’ all around the country, the claims made, the impassioned declarations and the earnest promises of the the winner will remain essentially unchanged. And here I go again, once again saddling up my hobby horse, reflecting that while it may well be grim up north, at least that was an ironic dance track. The only dancing they should be doing in Manchester right now is on the grave of democracy.

Yes, the Labour candidate in the Manchester Mayoralty election, was victorious. Addressing the count centre after being declared the new Mayor of Greater Manchester, she said: “I am honoured, I am humbled, and I stand ready to serve the three million people that live across this fantastic city region.” She could almost be a modern day Uriah Heep, she has so much to be humble about.

Yes, at first glance her victory seems impressive. 47.1% of first preference votes, later adjusted to 66.3% when the second preference votes from the disqualified candidates were added. But those percentages mean very little, not when viewed against the percentage of people who actually bothered to vote. Which was 25.1%.

Bear in mind that this was not some inconsequential election of no account that the national press had largely ignored. The election only happened because Andy Capp had triggered it by resigning as mayor so that he could be elected as an MP, prior to him becoming our fourth unelected PM this century.

So no, it wasn’t only of interests to those in the Westminster bubble, political anoraks and saddos with hobby horses. This was news. Had been for weeks. And only a quarter of the people who could vote bothered so to do. This isn’t new. The figure is shockingly low, but it highlights a growing trend in our politics, the politics of apathy. A decision taken, for whatever reason, not to participate, to have nothing to do with the whole thing.

One of my most frequent gripes following any parliamentary election is the turnout; the total amount of eligible voters who actually did so. I’m aware of the logical inconsistency of this argument, because if it means anything all, democracy means being able to choose not to take part in it. But be that as it may, it nonetheless annoys me no end that so many people choose to exercise this anti-democratic version of democracy so often, so blithely and so self-destructively. 

By self-destructively, I mean that by not voting those people that choose not to vote are effectively giving power to those that choose to. By choosing not to vote, as the electorate has done with remarkable consistency long before the Brexit betrayal ‘legitimised’ voter apathy, what was once seen as problematic has now become predictable.

I’m not going to bore you with more facts and figures of previous elections. I know what they mean and ultimately what they prove is that the Manchester turnout of 25.1% is the lowest in a series of voter turnout lowlights; until that is, an even lower lowlight claims that title.

If I break the law, I can reasonably expect that the law will take action against me. That, as I understood it, was part of the social contract; that individuals cede some of their liberties in the pursuit of the collective good. That everyone was expected to obey the law and that no-one was above it. However, it seems I was wrong. 

The very people who are charged with upholding and enforcing the law are breaking it. As reported last week, Staffordshire Police says its custody policy means “detainees may be placed in accommodation consistent with their gender identity”. One of the problems I have with this policy, apart from the obvious one of prioritising mens rights above women’s, is the fact that it is a revised one. Introduced the the wake of the 2025 Supreme Court ruling that sex in equality law refers to biological sex, which has been widely interpreted as meaning that biological men cannot use female single-sex facilities.

It wasn’t a ruling that wasn’t publicised. Anything but. The implications were widely discussed in the press both before and after the ruling. In fact, even the Courts ruling in 2017 that the then government couldn’t trigger Article 50 and set in motion the process leaving the EU wasn’t nearly as controversial. Because, in that instance the right verdict had been given, and the wrong people had been bested. However,  ruling that sex, in a legal sense, meant biological sex and thus wasn’t based on an individuals feelings wasn’t the right verdict 

This was abundantly clear in the reaction, or more accurately, lack of reaction, that followed the ruling.  Any UK entity which had policies determining how they provided services based upon accepting a persons self-identity, had long been in thrall to the nonsense that trans-women were women, and were not happy about it. For years, they’d assumed that they had garlanded moral superiority and unimpeachable virtuous probity because of their enthusiastic support for trans rights. To a greater or lesser degree, all of them believed that part of their identity was predicated upon how robustly they enforced that support. Now they were acting illegally and no matter how much they pretended to welcome the law, most were quietly working out ways to either circumvent it or ignore it all together.

The civil service, the NHS – both nationally and locally, schools, trade unions, have all defied the law and persist in believing in someones gender identity over biological reality. So is it really such a surprise that Staffordshire Police have done the same? Not really. It’s nothing more than a modern update on the ‘I was only following orders’ excuse so beloved of Nazi concentration camp guards to absolve themselves from the horror that they perpetrated. 

Because thats what ‘the correct procedures and policies were followed’, essentially means. As long as the rules were followed, it matters not how illegal those rules are, the important thing is that they are followed. Process, procedure and policy, becomes the law. The Equality Act ruling exists far away from the places where people actually work, its enforcement is dependant upon people who imagine that trans-women are women. The defence of single-sex spaces rests with people who believe that sex is a choice.

If the law becomes like a buffet, where one can choose which laws to abide by or ignore depending on personal preference, then is it really the law? If the people who are charged with enforcing it can flout it so brazenly does it cease to be applicable to everyone? Or has it become optional? Which would be weirdly appropriate, seeing as how now individual choice has now become more important than any notion of objective reality. 

I know its June but today feels like Christmas. I was pondering upon how exactly I would weave two recent news stories into the same post, when another one appeared a couple of days ago morning that did the job. It was so perfect, it could’ve almost been gift-wrapped.

The first story concerned the Reform UK’s candidate for the Manchester mayoralty. She said some things that really angered the sort of people who always angered by anything Reform UK says. ‘Greater Manchester candidate says non-Reform voters should house ‘migrant rapists’, screamed an outraged headline ‘The Guardian’. Barely able to contain its incredulity it added ‘Sian Astley doubles down on stance that ‘people who vote for open borders should house criminals and rapists who enter UK’

I mean, I know I’m brain damaged and everything but to me this makes total sense. If people really believe in the notion of  ‘migrants welcome here’ – as the hordes of virtue signallers placards loftily claim – then shouldn’t they be willing to prove the courage of their convictions? The Greens should be enthusiastic supporters of what is has been official Reform UK policy since May. Its democracy in its rawest form. Reform UK are just letting people know that price of their good-intentions will be borne by them. That a Reform UK government would prioritise placing migrant detention centres in areas where the Green party had an MP or controlled the local council. 

However, when people claim ‘migrants welcome here’ they don’t mean ‘here’ as in next door, down the road or even in their town. They mean ‘here’ in a vague sense. Unspecific but essentially, the further away from them the better. But still welcome! Proof of this hypocrisy is provided by Piddlington, a small village in Oxfordshire and its 400 residents. Furious at government plans to convert the the nearby Bicester Garrison into a camp to house 1,250 male asylum seekers, they’ve responded with a pathetically futile gesture. 

The outraged residents have decided to hold a referendum on whether to declare their ‘independence’ from the United Kingdom. Laugh? I nearly shat. It’s the equivalent of a toddler throwing her toys out of her pram. Utterly meaningless. But according to one resident ‘There is no crime at the moment, but what happens if there is crime?’. So the rapes and murders committed by asylum seekers are better committed elsewhere, is that the thinking? That housing over 1000 men, the vast majority of whom don’t speak English, and bring with them cultural practices at odds with what we accept as given, should be someone else’s problem? That someone else’s community can be affected, just so people can loudly proclaim ‘migrants welcome here’ before whispering ‘ just as long as it’s far enough away not to inconvenience me or my family in any way’

Then, with perfect timing, arrived this story in ‘The Daily Telegraph’ the other day. ’Iran smuggling agents into UK as Channel migrants’. Who saw that one coming? Who could possibly have foreseen that allowing huge numbers of undocumented migrants into this country might be used by those with ill intent? This is not theoretical. The head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, has repeatedly warned of Iran-backed terrorist atrocities in Britain, with “more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots” foiled in just one year.

The government is only aware of the migrants who have claimed asylum but not those who have chosen to quietly slip away. Not only is there no way to know how many of them have done so, we also don’t know why they have done so. The final word goes to Sian Astley, who said, ‘If people are attacking me for being angry about that, [housing asylum seekers in places that have a Green MP] and for suggesting that – a little bit of tongue in cheek ‘well if you voted for it why don’t you have it?’ – comment, then really they’re getting angry about the wrong thing.”

Thinking about the reactions of the three main political parties to the recent donation of £5 millions to Farrago, one might be forgiven that theirs was a past wholly unsullied by such grubby goings-on. That they conducted themselves with unimpeachable moral probity at all times. And as such, were ever vigilant to avoid even the merest whiff any financial impropriety. To this end, were careful to avoid any association with anyone whose own financial affairs were not as blameless as their own.

Of course this isn’t true. Wherever there is power, there are those with the power but no money, and those with the money but no power. Power in the political sense. Power to influence legislation. To ban something, make something else harder to do or to relax and even abolish some other legislation.

There are numerous examples. So many, in fact, that to even mention a few of them would be to avoid mentioning countless others. One thing is a constant though. Which is when it is made public knowledge they that are the recipient of a large donation from a hitherto unknown business person, it’s all injured innocence. Allegations of a politically motivated smear campaign by their rivals, a trial by media, rumour and innuendo, blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard it all before and no doubt we’ll hear it all again.

The most blatant example of this is of course the one that is hardly ever seen as problematic; the money that the trade unions give to the Labour Party. Not a surprise. The Labour Party was created by the trade unions to give the working class a political voice in parliament. However when trade unions threaten to withdraw some of their funding, only for massive pay increases to be awarded by this Labour government to end strikes called by the same unions, then the £5 millions some bloke gave to Farrago seems wholly irrelevant. Teachers, junior doctors and tube drivers unions have all tried it on. Have demanded – and been given – pay deals that will only encourage them and other unions to make even more outrageous demands.

But there’s no hypocrisy at all when ‘Labour calls on Sunak to return Frank Hester’s £10m Tory donation.’ Or when the ‘Lib Dems (were) under pressure to return £2.4m donation from fraudster.’ Especially when none of the money was returned.

They’re all at it. Well they were. Not anymore. Donations to all three main parties have collapsed. In 2025 Reform got more than all of them combined.

Again, I’m no Farrago fanboy. He really did himself no favours at all when questioned about the donation, he tetchily replied, “I can spend it on Ferraris if I want. It’s entirely up to me.”

Not when his girlfriend is Laure Ferrari…

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And here we go again! There is yet another poll in ‘The Guardian’ today about Farrago, and as all like every poll that ‘The Guardian’ publishes about Farrago, this one is equally as s damming.

‘More than half of voters view Farage and Reform as ‘very sleazy’ Wow! More than half? Tell me more!

‘YouGov has published polling today suggesting that more than half of voters regard Nigel Farage as “very sleazy”. On this measure, he scores far worse than any of the other party leaders. Even 40% of Reform UK voters regard him as “sleazy”.’

Mmm. That would be the same YouGov that pays people to its surveys. People that want to surveyed and have signed up to be. People who are incentivised. And the more surveys they do, the greater the rewards. People who tend to be younger and spend more time online. Just so we’re clear.

So I saddled up my hobby-horse and rode on over to YouGov to find out more.

They handily summarise the findings, the nice ‘Guardian’ friendly ones, at the top of the page. This saves anyone bothered enough to look the trouble of scrolling further down down the page, past all of the coloured bar charts and the boring explanations as to what it all means, until they find this;

‘Additionally, 31% of Reform voters see the party they backed in 2024 as sleazy, a similar number to the 29% of Tory voters who say the same of their party’s record since the last election (although 55% brand the Conservative governments from 2019 to 2024 as sleazy). Four in ten Labour voters (42%) likewise deem the Labour government since 2024 to have been disreputable.’

Hang on! Shouldn’t that be the headline in ‘The Guardian’. ‘More than half of all Conservatives voters think that the Conservative governments since 2019 were ‘sleazy’ Or how about, ‘ Over 40% of Labour voters think Labour is ‘disreputable’

That is, after all, what the survey says. But how many people did YouGov ask? Being a sad sack I checked. Had to open another page to find out though. 2083, thats how many. Or few, depending on your point of view. ‘The Guardians’ point of view though is abundantly clear.

It’s true, inasmuch as the being factually correct. People really did say that. But not that many people were asked. But clearly, as long as they can use the poll to attack Farrago, ‘The Guardian’ doesn’t mind.

Before we get started, I just want to make it clear I’m no fan of Farrago. To me, he’s little more than a snake-oil salesman in a double-breasted jacket. He’s great at saying the things that people – now – want to hear. But for quite a while, no-one did. Fair play though, he still kept on saying them. 

The problem for me is that whilst he’s busy banging on about this and that – and while other politicians and the media are busy amplifying the ‘controversy’ they create – all of the other topics he doesn’t talk about aren’t talked about. 

He deals in soundbites – pithy, direct and spoken in ‘human’ to be sure – but soundbites nonetheless. And don’t go looking on the Reform UK website for details. There aren’t any. I’ve just checked. Imagine if Hallmark made political greetings cards. That’s essentially it.

I voted to ‘Remain’ in 2016. Only because I believed that European regulations to slow down the amount of greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions released into the atmosphere, and thus decrease the speed of global warming, would be more effective than if we left. Turns out, I was right.  

But putting all of that the one side, I can’t help but feel that Farrago has essentially called everyones bluff and they’re none too happy about it. How is the fact that neither Labour, the Conservatives or the Lib-Dems, are going to contest the by-election that his resignation as MP has triggered any different to an angry toddler throwing all her toys out of the pram? 

This is in no way related to the election of 2024, when Farrago won the seat comfortably. So comfortably, in fact, that he got almost as many votes as three main parties combined. No. It is a matter of principal for them; the principal of not wanting to be associated any democracy in which they’ll all lose. 

Perhaps then, their thinking is this. That the voters of Clacton will follow the examples of the voters of Caerphilly and of Gorton and Denton who abandoned them, preferring instead to vote for the candidate most likely to beat Reform. To me, this thinking is inherently flawed. 

If he wins the election, he can claim to have a mandate from the people of Clacton, a mandate which he can say Andy Capp doesn’t have from the people of Britain. But if he loses, he also wins. He can point to the fact that because all the main parties didn’t take part – leaving the way clear for a novelty candidate to win instead – and then allow him rage against what he’ll see as an establishment stick up. He knows his supporters will love that. They already think that shadowy forces are conspiring to thwart them at every turn. To do the all things that they imagine shadowy forces do.

So he wins either way.

Remember the good old days when the Green Party was actually the Green Party? Was made up of ex-hippies, cranks and the sort of people who were proudly on the fringes of the political mainstream. Those Greens combined the idealism of Tom and Barbara Good with the relentless optimism of a ‘Blue Peter’ charity appeal.  Wherein the foil from milk bottle tops could turned into guide dogs in Britain or drinking-water wells in Africa 

Probably not, because the Greens have betrayed most of their principles in much the same way that Labour has done. But Carolin Lucas does. ‘Focus on the environment, former Greens leader tells Polanski’, ran a headline in ‘The Daily Telegraph’ last week. It was wonderfully ironic that even when the old Greens are berating the new Greens for not being Green enough, the old Green mantra of ‘reuse and recycle’ was still be used to fight the Good fight. Not only had ‘The Telegraph’ lifted all of Lucas’s quotes from an interview she’d given to ‘Politics Home’. Its that her idea of what ‘environment’ means differs greatly from what Repulsion understands it to mean. He’s not just ‘reused or recycled’ it. He’s totally reimagined it.

His idea of ‘environment’ is a narrowly political one, as opportunistic as it is short-sighted. An environment in which disaffected Corbynista’s, transgender ideologues and anyone else that hates Israel can can call home. An environment in which him being both Jewish and gay are used as political cover.  The fact that numerous Green Councillors and parliamentary candidates have been suspended after social media posts praising the October 7 massacre, calling Jews ‘cockroaches’ were unearthed are nothing more than an internal disciplinary matter. ‘How can the we possibly be anti-Semitic, we’ve got a Jewish leader! This is simply the right-wing press attempting to smear us’ is essentially their defence. 

And the fact that he’s gay is also weaponised. ‘The notion that support for transgender rights could possibly undermine gay rights is offensive. Our leader is gay. Do you really think he’d go for that?’ Then there there is the inherent contradiction of them entering into a loose alliance with British Muslims for electoral advantage.

As Rakib Eshan observed in an article for spiked last year ‘The problem is that the two camps were never remotely aligned on other key issues. These include rights and protections for sexual minorities (such as same-sex marriage), the degree to which queer rights and queer theory should be taught in school, and the sanctity of life – both in terms of abortion and assisted dying. It is no secret that British Muslims are more conservative on these issues compared even with the general population, let alone the progressive left.’

And therein lies the fundamental flaw in the Greens thinking. They imagine themselves to be ‘progressive. It’s everyone else thats divisive. Spreading lies and hate, promoting extremist narratives, and thus stoking resentment and inflaming tensions. Repulsion is worrying oblivious to the fact that charges he levels at Reform might be more accurately used to describe the Greens. 

If he thinks that trans-women are women, or that you can be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semetic, then he’s really putting the mental back into environmental.

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If there remained a shred of doubt in my mind that Farrago is by a wide margin the shrewdest political operator since Milk Snatcher, his decision earlier today not just to resign as the MP for Clacton-On-Sea, but to also stand as a candidate in the by-election it triggers demolishes it. Its a fucking genius move. 

Embroiled by recent scandals as he has been involving donations made to him personally, allegations that he’s profited from products he promoted without disclosing this at the time, and the more long-standing one of him being him, he’s wrong-footed his accusers and changed the narrative. He’s put his  money where his mouth is.

He’s throwing down the gauntlet. He’s standing for election so why doesn’t Andy Capp do the same?  In October 2020, after Lettuce stepped down, he tweeted ‘Election now!’, correctly anticipating that Tory MP’s would simply anoint a new leader and avoid the brouhaha that followed Boris’s Johnson resignation. 

If he hasn’t got a leg to stand on, what about the press? They can hardly impugn Farrago’s integrity and avoid mentioning Capp’s lack of it. Farrago has dared them to their job. 

It’s a bold move by him, certainly. But we all know what fortune favours… 

Even if I wasn’t in the chipper mood I am right nowon account of watching England beat Mexico in the World Cup this morning, this news story would’ve cheered me right up.

‘Australian prime minister says he would ‘shag’ Kylie Minogue’ was how’ The Daily Telegraph’’ chose to put it. Which, if you only read the headline before moving on, might leave you thinking that he was addressing their Parliament, giving a speech at a conference somewhere or prize giving at his old school when he just blurted this out.

What actually happened was this. Anthony Albanese, the Australian PM was appearing on a podcast. He was asked who he would “shag, marry or date” out of the pop star, or actresses Nicole Kidman and Rhonda Burchmore. I’ve idea who she is either.

After being asked the question, Mr Albanese was initially reluctant. “I just got married,” he said, “I’m only six months in.” But the host insisted saying: “But if it goes tits up, let’s just pretend,” the prime minister replied: “Kylie, clearly.” “You’d marry Kylie and shag her and date her?” Mr Albanese replied “all of the above”, adding: “She’s terrific.”

Which is the correct answer. It’s a no brainer. If you happen to be heterosexual male with normal eyesight, that is. It just is. Not, it seems, if you’re an opposition MP keen to manufacture a controversy out of someone not taking themselves to seriously. Sarah Henderson, shadow minister for communications and digital safety, said his comments “demean the office of prime minister”.

She then added “Australia’s Anthony Albanese’s whisky-fuelled comments are disrespectful to women, embarrassing to Australians and demean the office of prime minister.” Creating the impression that he’d been totally shit-faced when he said it, as opposed to the more sober reality of him having sipped occasionally from a glass of whiskey and water. And even if he had been totally shit-faced, do we really think it would’ve been ‘embarrassing to Australians?’

She is latest in a long line of politicians who seize on what was clearly a light-hearted comment and turn it into an opportunity to parade their highly censorious morality and get a jibe in at the same time. “Rather than politely decline to engage, Mr Albanese got into the gutter with his grubby remarks, which show extremely poor judgement at a time when trust in Labor is collapsing.”

The only Australian she’s embarrassing is herself. As she herself says,’ Australians deserve better than this.”