How swivel-eyed loons are paving the way for goggle-eyed sociopaths

“Put that light out”

Ben Brogan has a somewhat telling column in the Daily Telegraph this morning. The headline – ‘Cameron shouldn’t blame our rowdy press for his own failings’ – is probably the best example I’ve seen for some time of guilty protesting by the media. Ben can defend the actions of the hacks and moguls until the Normandy cows decide they want to leave the EU: the truth is that – as I have maintained from the start of this nonsense – a loosely affiliated media/business clique has produced something out of nothing here, purely with the intention of overpowering a democratically elected government.

What’s happened here isn’t ‘rowdiness’. It is a plot, pure and simple: and the plotters are, to say the least of it, an unprepossessing bunch of, um, if not swivel-eyed loons, then certainly very right wing goggle-eyed sociopaths. Wander down the guest list at this Hellfire party: Lord Ashcroft, the Barclay Brothers, Tim Loughton, Paul Goodman, Nigel Farage, James Forsyth et al. If you want to know why Red Ed chose to help the Conservatives last night, think about it for a few seconds: if the plotters get their way, the Labour Party will be swamped at the next election….drowned under a giant wave of bellicose anti-EU Ukippers in league with Borishunt Fallongove and their psycho chums in the City. Having done some back-of-envelope sums earlier this morning, I would say that a UKip/Tory non-compete pact in 2015 (or whenever) would deliver a solid neocon-nutter majority in the Commons of at least 80 seats.

Now let’s summarise the events that led the Guardian’s Nicholas Watt this morning to describe Cameron’s position as in serious jeopardy thanks to ‘a sea change in the parliamentary party as growing numbers of MPs decide that the prime minister is becoming a liability’. I’ll drop all the ‘alleged’ legal bollocks, because I doubt very much if anyone could go into a libel Court on this matter now and be credible. Lord Feldman held an off the record dinner, and in one way or another was disparaging about grassroots Tories. James Kirkup then broke a fundamental journalistic code of conduct by reporting these off-the-record comments – even though the other hacks didn’t, and the BOSELs remark has been around for ages. Either he or another informant then told Farage what had happened, and being by nature nothing more than a gobby opportunist, Farage machinated with the likes of Forsyth and Goodman to get the identity of the Top Tory leaked into the blogosphere. Feldman then denied the remarks, as did Number Ten. The Newscorp and Sarkist press piled in with endless follow-ups….just in time for the Gay Marriage Bill (which, by the way, I don’t support and never have) to become a humiliating shambles for the Prime Minister.

When Cameron returned from the US last week, I said this time he was in serious trouble, because the Tory Right had reached its carpe diem moment. I wrote last night about why – far from being ‘a bit of a yawn’ – my forensic analysis of this extra-Parliamentary takeover was of serious constitutional significance. The significance is very clear indeed: a clique of unlected wealthy media barons have conspired with unprincipled hacks to unseat an elected Prime Minister. If you can explain why that is any different to the nasty combo of Union block votes and flying pickets against Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, then I’d love to hear about it.

Out of the frying pan into the fire? I think a more appropriate phrase would be ‘killing the Bourbons and getting Napoleon’. I’m now going to drop the subject and report some other stuff. But even if, as some think, this ‘demeans’ me, I cannot resist the opportunity to say “I told you so”.

Yesterday in the Paedofile: Parental rubbish and Royal connections