One of the trickiest things to understand about self-declared "centrists" is how they're so insulated from reality that they're incapable of even understanding the damage they keep doing to their own cause.
The primary fixation of the "centrists" at present is demanding another EU referendum that they've patronisingly called a "people's vote" as if the 33.5 million who voted in the 2016 referendum were somehow un-people.
Giving your campaign an absurdly patronising name is bad enough, but anyone with a grain of sense should be able to spot the massive glaring risk with this "another referendum now" strategy, which is that if Remainers conspire to lose it (like they did the last one), then they'll have created a cast-iron irreversible double-mandate for Brexit.
With this risk of creating an irreversible double Brexit mandate in mind, you'd think that "centrists" and other Remainers would be focusing all their efforts on trying to create as much public appeal as possible for the idea of stopping Brexit ... But no! A lot of the bone-headed, shockingly out-of-touch, unbelievably divisive, and downright dishonest behaviour of "centrists" looks like it's actually designed to make the general public hate Remainers.
"Taking the piste"
Andrew Adonis' Tweet about a 2nd referendum on his mates winter skiing options may have some kind of niche appeal amongst the most militant of Remainers, who knows? But if the replies are anything to go by, he's spectacularly misjudged the mood of the nation.
Brexit happened in the first place because Tory austerity dogma and wage repression policies caused an unprecedented collapse in living standards.
"Centrists" compounded the problem through their failure to pin the blame for this collapse in living standards on Tory government policy for fear of implicating themselves too (the Lib-Dems actively enabled Tory austerity dogma, and Labour "centrists" somehow decided that imitating Tory austerity dogma rather than opposing it would win them the 2015 General Election!).
This "centrist" failure left the door wide open for ukippers, hard-right Tories, and assorted extreme-right hate groups to falsely pin the blame for the consequences of Tory austerity and wage repression on immigrants and the EU.
Since the Brexit vote things have got even worse. More people in dire poverty, more people in exploitative low-paid jobs, more people feeling the effects of Tory wage repression, more people struggling to get by, more people relying on food bank handouts just to survive ...
Yet here's one of the most high profile Remainers (an unelected lord) actively fulfilling the caricature of an out-of-touch Remainer elitist living the high life while the ignored millions continue to struggle to survive!
How could anyone ever think that these appalling optics could help the Remainer cause?
Manufacturing the news
Brexiteers won the 2016 referendum with an absolute mass of deceptions, distortions, and outright lies. Even the Vote Leave campaign chief openly admitted that they wouldn't have won without the '£350 million for the NHS' lie.
It seems that rather than oppose this kind of outrageous propaganda, "centrists" have decided to imitate the same tactics to manufacture outrage and distort public opinion to their will, with the Guardian leading the charge.
An outrageously deceptive headline misrepresenting Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit policy in order to trigger a tsunami of rage shares on the Friday, an then following it up with an article on the Sunday openly gloating about the bitter internal Labour conflicts triggered by the mass rage sharing of Friday's deceptive headline and even outright lying about Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit stance!
Anyone who has paid attention over the last three years can't have failed to notice the bitter "anti- Corbyn" agenda of "centrist" hacks at the Guardian. But the terrifying thing is that this anti-Corbyn groupthink mentality is so deeply embedded at Guardian towers that they're wilfully spreading deceptions and outright lies in order to manufacture divisions amongst opponents of Tory Brexit.
Any Guardian hack with a shred of journalistic integrity should be outraged that the organisation they work for is conducting such an obvious propaganda war to use deceptions and lies to attack Corbyn and drive a wedge between the Labour left and the Remain campaign, when any sensible strategy to minimise the Brexit damage should be aimed at unifying all opponents of Tory Brexit, rather than deliberately infuriating the Labour-left with anti-Corbyn propaganda and lies.
Preaching to the converted
I vehemently opposed Brexit in 2016, and I've continually opposed the Tories' shambolic and incompetent handling of Brexit ever since, but JK Rowling's astoundingly patronising, hate-fuelled, faux biblical Twitter rant is so obviously appalling and that ordinary people must be wondering how she ended up so consumed by such bitterness and hatred, despite living a life of wealth, luxury, and almost constant acclaim.
Another puzzle is how thousands of "centrist" types apparently enjoyed this utterly cringeworthy display of preaching to the converted so much that they actively liked it and shared it!
If you wanted to actually reinforce the views of Brexiters, showing them this horrific display of patronising and elitist "centrist" bile would surely work infinitely better than composing some new lie to plaster on the side of a bus.
Counter-productive behaviour
If "centrists" were even remotely capable of learning from their own mistakes they would have clocked that their barrages of smears and abuse aimed at discrediting Jeremy Corbyn during the 2015 Labour leadership election only ended up boosting his popularity.
If they had any sense whatever they'd have got to grips with the concept of counter-productive behaviour, and evolved their campaigning strategies accordingly.
Another lesson "centrists" should obviously have learned is that their lamentable campaign tactics during the 2016 referendum somehow managed to hand a bunch of hard-right pro-austerity Brextremist charlatans an astounding victory, despite the fact they demonstrably didn't even have a plan for what to do next if they did somehow end up winning!
That "centrists" so clearly haven't learned either of these lessons should leave anyone who opposes Tory Brexit sick with worry, because presuming these people get the second referendum they want so much, how is Tory Brextremism ever meant to be defeated with a bunch of out-of-touch, unbelievably divisive, bone-headed, elitist, downright dishonest, and unbelievably counter-productive people like this fronting the campaign against it?
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Corbyn: Brexit would go ahead even if Labour won snap election blares the Guardian headline.
Why is Corbyn saying this unhelpful absolutist nonsense? Surely Labour needs a more nuanced stance on resolving Theresa May's Brexit mess? These were my first responses when I saw the headline, but then I noticed the distinct lack of quotation marks so I did what most of the thousands of people who rage shared the article didn't, and actually read the full article.
Within the first few paragraphs it becomes clear that what Corbyn actually said is very different from Brexit would go ahead even if Labour won snap election. (in fact he isn't quoted saying this anywhere in the article at all).
Corbyn's actual position is that if Labour won a snap election he would go back to Brussels to try to secure a better deal. Corbyn's statement that "you'd have to go back and negotiate, and see what the timetable would be" is clearly completely different to I'm going to force Brexit through regardless.
In fact Corbyn's position here is actually common sense. If he's lobbing Theresa May's shambles of a deal into the dustbin of history (where it belongs) the obvious next step is to speak to the EU negotiators to establish the basics of their position under the new circumstances. Are they prepared to renegotiate now that the government has changed? Are they prepared to renegotiate if Theresa May's Customs Union red line is dropped? Are they prepared to extend the Article 50 deadline to allow time for further negotiations?
Yes, the EU have told Theresa May "no renegotiation" but you'd have to be crackers to think they'd absolutely refuse to renegotiate if the British people voted to reject Tory Brexit and the new Prime Minister came with a new Customs Union proposal (that would certainly help to deal with the tricky Irish border issue).
If they said "no" they'd essentially be telling Britain that we're stuck with the unpopular shambles of a deal that both the British public and the British parliament have rejected, which would be an astoundingly anti-democratic stance.
If you're incredibly generous to the Guardian you could try to argue that Corbyn saying that he'd take the logical step of going to Brussels to talk about the practicalities and timescales of renegotiation is not entirely contradicted by the absolutist position blared out in the article headline, it's more of a distortion than an outright lie.
But then after trawling through 18 paragraphs of the article (including several on the absurd "stupid people" / "stupid woman" distraction) we get to the part that absolutely contradicts the bold absolutist assertion in the article headline.
When asked what Labour's position would be in the case of a second referendum Corbyn answers that "it would be a matter for the party to decide what the policy would be".
Admittedly Corbyn goes on to reiterate his position that his first step would be to see whether the EU would open the door to renegotiation, but how the hell is talking about what Labour's position would be in a second referendum compatible with the absolutist stance from the article headline that "Brexit would go ahead"?
If Corbyn is leaving the door open for a second referendum, and saying that the party's stance would be decided by the (largely pro-Remain) membership, why the hell is the Guardian unambiguously claiming that Corbyn's position is the absolutist stance that Brexit will go ahead regardless?
Why is the content of the article so clearly at odds with the headline?
And why are the crucial details that expose the headline as a lie buried in paragraph 18?
Surely a fairer and more accurate headline might read "Corbyn leaves option of second referendum on the table" or "Corbyn: If EU won't renegotiate, Labour members will decide referendum policy".
But nope, the Guardian chose to run a deceptive headline in the hope of creating a storm of outrage shares like the (admittedly far more despicable and deceptive) mega-viral Independent article earlier in 2018 that grotesquely cherry-picked highly selective quotations out of a Corbyn speech about trade policy to misrepresent what was said as an attack in immigrants.
The Guardian know that the vast majority of people who read the headline won't end up clicking through and reading all the details of what Corbyn actually said. And they also know that an accurate headline wouldn't generate a fraction of the 48,000 (at the time of writing) rage shares on social media, so it's perversely in their commercial interests to publish a deceptive headline in order to maximise the amount of exposure.
If they can ensure far more exposure, and a higher level of clicks through the use of a deceptive headline, why wouldn't they?
The Guardian clearly don't give a damn about further trashing their own reputation through the dissemination of dishonest rage-share click bait headlines.
They're clearly more interested in fuelling the anti-Corbyn bonfire with deceptive headlines than helping the public to understand the reality of what Corbyn actually said.
When a news organisation is prepared to publish deceptive headlines like this it becomes ever clearer that they're not actually trying to report the news, but to create it.
They're not providing reasonably impartial coverage of what was said, they're pushing political propaganda.
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If you ever wanted more evidence that Brexit is fuelled by delusional thinking, take a look at the ludicrous wording of the "Leave the EU without a deal in March 2019" petition and consider the fact that over quarter of a million people have actively approved this ludicrous display of Brextremist idiocy by signing it.
Just in case you can't see for yourself how idiotic every single sentence of this absurd petition is, I'll break it down, and just like the petition I'm leaving the most extraordinarily idiotic bits until last.
"We are wasting Billions of pounds of taxpayers money trying to negotiate in a short space of time" - Nope, we're actually wasting £billions in public funds trying to make preparations to mitigate the worst aspects of the "no deal" economic meltdown should we crash out without a deal in place. The government just announced they're wasting £4.2 billion more on this "no deal" nonsense.
"Leaving the EU in March 2019 will allow the UK good time to negotiate more efficiently" - Leaving the EU in March 2019 with "no deal" will destroy the single biggest piece of leverage the UK has in this farcical mess. As it stands now the UK can revoke Article 50 at any time before March 29th and the ECJ ruling also states that the EU are not allowed to punish Britain in any way by tinkering with our terms of membership if we do so.
If Article 50 lapses not only will it trigger an economic meltdown, but it'll permanently destroy the option of remaining under the current terms until someone comes up with something better than Theresa May's absolute farce of a deal.
Revoking Article 50 is clearly the sensible action that would stop the clock ticking and allow the UK "good time" to actually come up with a coherent exit plan (without deliberately exploding a bomb under the UK economy and wilfully destroying the single biggest piece of leverage we've got in the process like a "no deal" flounce would).
"The EU will be more eager to accept a deal on our terms having lost a major partner" - The EU will offer us better terms if we implode our own economy in the hope of inflicting a bit of collateral damage on them? How is anyone stupid enough to imagine that the EU would be the ones left begging the economy that just voluntarily self-immolated for help?
"We will save billions of pounds from our EU divorce payment" - Walking away from our debts and liabilities would be a disaster for Britain. What other country would ever consider signing trade deals with the UK if we'd just demonstrated to the world that we're prepared to leave our closest economic allies in the lurch like that?
If you just watched someone very publicly defraud a neighbour would you be stupid enough to sign up to a deal with them?
"as well as a similar amount from Civil Service and Govt costs" - This is just a flat out lie. The UK government is currently diverting thousands of civil servants from important jobs into emergency "no deal" planning at a cost of £billions. Aside from the costs in Whitehall, just think of the cost of all of the extra customs facilities, bureaucracy, and staff when the free trade in goods is brought to a crashing halt.
This is such a brazen effort to misrepresent one of the biggest costs of a "no deal" scenario as a benefit it's extraordinary that anyone could fall for it.
"This money will be used to support our own country whilst we await the EU to talk to us to make deals more in our favour." - We're going to use the money we're not going to save as we wait for the unicorns that are not going to be delivered!
Even the pro-Brexit Tory government admits that a chaotic "no deal" Brexit would trigger a bigger economic meltdown than the bankers' insolvency crisis in 2008. There will be no Brexit dividend, and the EU will not come riding to our rescue if we deliberately vandalise our own economy in the hope of causing them a bit of collateral damage.
"The EU border in Ireland to be managed simply by having a dual Euro / pound currency as legal tender in both the North and South" - Such a "simple solution"! Let's all sign a petition to make the UK government force the Republic of Ireland to accept Sterling as legal tender!
What kind of delusional imperialist dream world are these people living in? Ireland is an independent state. The days of English toffs in London telling the Irish what to do are long gone.
Aside from the sheer stupidity of thinking the Tories in Westminster could do anything whatever to force the Republic of Ireland to adopt Sterling as an official currency, consider the Northern Irish unionist perspective. They're bitterly opposed to Theresa May's agreement because the "backstop" creates divergence between the Northern Irish economy and the economy of Great Britain. Yet this "simple solution" is to create a much bigger economic divergence by saying Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland should adopt a dual currency scenario, while mainland Britain sticks with Stirling only!
How do these idiots think that their ridiculous proposition to economically reunify Ireland would go down with the unionists in Northern Ireland?
"Exports to the South would be dealt with in Euro and vice versa when importing to the North. Rates fixed at time of the deal." - What they've proposed here is a de facto currency union between the UK and the Eurozone!
If rates are "fixed at the time of the deal", then the value of Stirling would have to permanently track the value of the Euro wouldn't it?
This lot voted for Brexit because of "sovereignty" but they've all just signed a petition calling for the UK to abandon its own monetary sovereignty and join the Euro by default!
Conclusion
The wording of the petition is unmitigated gibberish from beginning to end. There's not a single redeeming sentence in the entirety of it, yet over quarter of a million Brexit dupes have signed it anyway.
The fact that this unrelenting display of idiocy is the single most popular petition on the UK government's petition website is nothing short of a national embarrassment. Just think what the Irish must make of this mass demonstration of sheer unthinking idiocy and consider the fact that Brits routinely make jokes about the Irish being thick!
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Theresa May's tactic for pushing her shambolic and unpopular Brexit deal through parliament is now stark-staringly obvious.
She humiliated Britain on the world stage by delaying the Brexit vote simply because she knew she was going to lose it, and now we're going to get a steady drip drip drip of "no deal" Brexit fear-mongering for a month in the hope that it frightens MPs into backing her lamentable shambles of a deal.
- Drip, we're announcing that we're going to waste another £4.2 billion on "no deal" planning.
- Drip, we're planning to turn Kent into a giant lorry park because of the customs chaos we're going to deliberately inflict at the border.
- Drip, were buying £millions worth of fridges to stockpile medical supplies.
- Drip, we're spending another wodge of public cash on sending out fear-mongering letters telling British businesses to prepare for the worst.
- Drip, we're planning to put soldiers on the streets to quell the inevitable "no deal" looting and riots.
Drip, drip, drip all the way through Christmas, until some as yet unspecified date in the middle of January when she may or may not allow the meaningful Brexit vote to go ahead (depending on whether she thinks she can win it).
Holding the entire nation to ransom like this for a month is despicable, and over Christmas too.
So even if we're lucky enough to be financially insulated enough to not even worry about the risk to the economy or the risk to our own jobs, or the risk of laying employees off because "no deal" Brexit has trashed our small business, Christmas dinner is going to end up getting ruined anyway by Brexit-bickering between people who actually enjoy this kind of insane Tory brinkmanship in order to fear-monger support for a terrible deal, and the rest of us who despise it.
This game of brinkmanship is a blatant 'project fear' strategy, but it's not even a competent one.
Who on earth could imagine that a coherent 'project fear' propaganda strategy would involve throwing away your parliamentary majority in an unprecedented display of political hubris, having not one but two Brexit secretaries resign in protest at your plans, becoming the first government in UK history to be held in contempt of parliament, humiliating Britain by chickening out of a scheduled parliamentary vote because you knew you were going to lose it, rushing around Europe to be told "no", "no", "no" and "no again" by national leaders and EU diplomats who are utterly sick of your time-wasting and contradictory nonsense, and then topping it off by welcoming an alleged rapist back into the Tory fold with open arms so you can survive an internal party vote of no confidence?
She threw her own parliamentary majority away in a totally needless gamble, and now people are actually trusting her with this extraordinarily high-risk gamble with the entire future of our nation?
Even if you do agree with the bloody dangerous game of cliff edge walking brinkmanship Theresa May is playing, surely the last person you'd entrust such a ridiculous gamble to someone as stubborn, egotistical, selfish, cowardly, strategically inept, and downright incompetent as her?
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The Tories and their chums in the mainstream media are brazenly lying that when Jeremy Corbyn said "stupid people" to the howling and braying mob behind Theresa May, he was saying "stupid woman" to her.
I can't believe I'm wasting my time writing about this staggeringly dishonest piece of faux outrage Tory propaganda that's clearly based on a flat-out lie, but here we go.
Here are 12 reasons you shouldn't allow yourself to get distracted by this ridiculous scandal.
1. When Tory Chancellor Philip Hammond clearly and undeniably called Andrea Jenkyns a "stupid woman" in parliament how quickly was it completely forgotten about by Tory MPs? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)
2. Did anyone see Tory MPs howling about sexism just last week when Theresa May welcomed an alleged rapist back into the Tory fold without the conclusion of a proper investigation into the allegations just because she was afraid of losing the internal Tory vote of no confidence in her leadership? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)
3. Did anyone see Tory MPs banging on about sexism last week when Theresa May also readmitted a vile Tory sex pest who bombarded female constituents with disgusting sex texts and stands accused of bullying a junior female member of staff? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)
4. Why do Tory MPs never complain when Theresa May grovels before misogynistic head-chopping tyrants from Saudi Arabia in order to flog them weapons to commit their war crimes in Yemen despite the fact they execute women's rights protesters, even when she welcomes them to Britain on International Women's Day? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)
5. Tory MPs all actively vote in favour of sexist austerity dogma that deliberately loads 86% of the economic pain onto women and even after it's pointed out to them they continue their "war on women" with another brazenly sexist budget designed to punish low-income women and single parents (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)
6. Did anyone see any Tory MP express distaste at the outrageous sexist views of their Tory candidate for mayor of London Shaun Bailey or complaining when Theresa May backed their parliamentary candidate in Darlington last year despite a slew of sexist and homophobic posts on his personal blog? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism or other forms of bigotry)
7. Did anyone see Tories howling with outrage when the Tory MP Christopher Chope deliberately sabotaged the Upskirting Bill by talking for so long there was no time left to vote on it? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)
8. How many Tory MPs complained so loud when Theresa May made a vile extreme-right misogynistic Twitter troll famous by quoting him in parliament to score cheap political points against Jeremy Corbyn? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)
9. Where was the outpouring of Tory outrage when the misogynistic Tory MP Philip Davies tried to deliberately derail Domestic Violence legislation with an absurd 91 minute speech aimed at talking out the debate so the vote couldn't happen? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)
10. Where was the outpouring of Tory outrage when the then-Home Secretary Theresa May introduced brazenly sexist arbitrary income requirements for British citizens applying to bring their non-EU spouses to Britain? (Tories don't give a shit about sexism)
11. Misrepresenting "stupid people" as "stupid woman" and howling faux outrage about it is such a blatant distraction tactic. It's clearly a piece of fake outrage nonsense to deliberately deflect public attention away from the extraordinary game of reckless "no deal" Brexit brinkmanship Theresa May is playing with the nation's future (the subject Corbyn was holding her to account over during the parliamentary session where he made the widely misrepresented "stupid people" comment).
12. The evidence is absolutely clear that Corbyn didn't even say what the Tories and their propaganda agents in the mainstream media accused him of saying (watch the slow-mo video). It's just yet another example of Tory/mainstream media smear tactics aimed at destroying anyone who doesn't go along with the neoliberal economic fanaticism that has wreaked so much damage on the UK over the last four decades.
It's absolutely shocking to see so many people allowing themselves to be so easily distracted by such a ridiculous display of faux outrage over a comment that wasn't even made, while Theresa May recklessly gambles with the entire nation's future right in front of our eyes.
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Let me start by saying that I think the Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr has done some fantastic work exposing the dodgy dealings and deceptiveness of interlinked Brextremists like Arron Banks, interfering foreign billionaires like Robert Mercer, Vote Leave, and the network of dodgy opaquely-funded hard-right pseudo-charity like the Taxpayers' Alliance and the IEA.
The work she's been involved in is a prime example of the kind of large scale investigative journalism that mainstream media organisations can do incredibly well when they focus on holding the powerful to account rather than attempting to shape public opinion through the dissemination of their groupthink-inspired political narratives, blatant smear campaigns, and/or recycling government press releases or the output of shady publicly-funded propaganda units.
The scale of the abuse she's received from Brextremist mobs like the Arron Banks' Leave.EU propaganda operation is a testament to what a good job she's been doing.
If Brexiteers like the BBC's Andre Neil really believed she was the ridiculous cat lady crank woman they routinely portray her as, they'd ignore her completely, rather than deliberately whipping up storms of online abuse to try to intimidate her into silence.
The problem of course is that if you set yourself up as a political integrity campaigner, then you need to make sure you're absolutely clean yourself, and unfortunately Carole has dropped a total clanger, that doesn't just undermine her integrity, but damages the fightback against the shady Brextremist liars by association.
When the Institute For Statecraft scandal broke people were rightly outraged that this UK government-funded pseudo-charity has been caught interfering in the domestic affairs of our European neighbours and smearing the government's political opponents at home.
Sure people should be allowed to criticise Jeremy Corbyn if they like, but if the Tory government has just flooded £2 million+ into their covert propaganda operation, there's absolutely no excuse for them repaying the favour by launching social media attacks on the Tories' political opponents.
Just imagine if it was the other way around and Jeremy Corbyn had handed £2 million in public cash to a shady left-wing propaganda unit to attack and smear his political rivals, the media outrage would be white hot and relentless.
In the wake of the breaking scandal Carole Cadwalladr made what seemed like a very strange intervention with a Twitter thread that clearly and quite brazenly pivoted criticism away from the Institute For Statecraft and back onto Jeremy Corbyn and other senior Labour figures.
Who writes a thread about the scandalous smear tactics of a publicly-funded propaganda outfit that bounces criticism back onto the target of their smears by basically repeating all the hyperbolic accusations?
At the time I pointed out that what she'd done was a classic example of a propaganda pivot, but what I didn't know then was that Carole had deliberately concealed her own personal involvement with the organisation in question while she was deflecting criticism away from them and back onto the target of their smears.
Deliberately pivoting criticism away from a very dodgy government-funded propaganda unit by echoing their attacks on a political rival of the party that pumped £2 million+ into their coffers is bad enough, but omitting the fact that she'd actually worked with them just a month previously, well that's exactly the kind of deceptiveness and lack of integrity that Carole has so successfully exposed in others.
And given that she's an award-winning investigative journalist, there's absolutely no believing that she failed to spot the link between the Integrity Initiative organisation who invited her to speak at their lavish taxpayer-bankrolled seminar for journalists, and the Integrity Initiative Twitter account she worked so hard to pivot criticism away from in her Twitter thread just a month later.
She's been caught red-handed playing the exact same deceptive propaganda games as the people she (rightly) criticises, but her reaction isn't to stop, take stock of how damaging this mess is for her campaign for greater political integrity and accountability, or to apologise.
Nope, it's to play the victim and create false equivalence between the right-wing Brexiteers who abuse her so disgustingly, and critics who point out that she's been caught making a shocking lapse in judgement.
Of course Carole can involve herself with the shady government-funded Institute for Statecraft if she wants to, and nobody with any sense of proportion is going to say that she's a "deep state operative" for giving a speech at one of their many lavishly-funded anti-Russia seminars.
However people can rightly point out that if the Putin government had been caught red-handed pumping £2 million into a shady psuedo-charity propaganda unit that works to create a 'new cold war' siege mentality in European politics and the media, deliberately interferes in the domestic politics and media organisations of European democracies, and spreads anti-opposition propaganda at home, Carole would obviously have been all over it rather than actively running social media distraction for them.
People can justifiably claim that she's spectacularly undermined her own credibility by writing a prolonged Twitter thread pivoting criticism away from them and onto Jeremy Corbyn, without even bothering to mention her own connection to the organisation in question.
The sensible approach would obviously be for her to attempt to repair the damage with an apology for her appalling lapse in judgement, but we'll see what happens.
Judging by her antics so far, it'll be more spinning, more deflection, and more efforts to dismiss people's legitimate concerns about her behaviour with straw-man 'the Russian stooges are calling me a deep state operative ho! ho! ho!' tactics.
In the hope that you're reading this Carole, please just apologise for this terrible lapse in judgement, undertake to try and avoid such poor and deceptive choices, be open and honest about your associations with any organisation you write about in future, and get back to what you're good at (investigating the shady behaviour of people like Arron Banks and dodgy opaquely-funded hard-right pseudo-charities like the Taxpayers' Alliance and the IEA).
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Surely we all already know that the Leave.EU campaign are a truly despicable mob?
They used a flood of xenophobia, anti-immigrant fearmongering, and outright lies to push the Brexit vote just over the line in 2016, and then ever since then they've been used as Arron Banks' personal propaganda campaign to promote his businesses, abuse journalists who investigate his finances, and promote plots to usurp the Tory party and drive it even further towards the extreme-right political fringe by flooding it with Brextremist ultranationalist entryists.
But their latest stunt has to be their most despicable yet.
On Friday 14th December 2018 a small group of Brextremists blocked Westminster Bridge to protest in favour of a ruinous "no deal" meltdown.
They could have chosen to upload a video clip of any moment of their protest to their Leave.EU propaganda account, so it's absolutely telling that they chose to upload a 50 second clip of the protest blocking a paramedic emergency response vehicle from attending an emergency . Even more disturbing is the caption on the Tweet which reads "this is what happens when the establishment ignores the will of the people".
There's absolutely no mistaking what they're threatening. If they don't get the ruinous hard-right "no deal" chaos they're craving there's no depth to the depravity of the actions they're going to take in retribution.
If they're willing to block a rapid response paramedic from attending an emergency and then actually gloat about it on Twitter, they're sending a message that that people will die if they don't get the extreme Brexit they want.
Aside from the fact they blocked a paramedic and then gloated about it on Twitter, there's also the fact that they've hijacked the yellow vest idea of the French gilets jaunes protest.
What makes this theft so despicable is that the gilets jaunes in France is a popular uprising against collapsing living standards that commands the support of the overwhelming majority of French people.
This bunch of Brextremists who have hijacked the yellow vest look are the polar opposite.
They're protesting in favour of a "no deal" socio-economic catastrophe that would cause an appalling collapse in UK living standards, and their extremist interpretation of the 2016 Brexit vote is only supported by a minority of the British public.
And of the minority of Brits who actively want Theresa May to follow through on her threat to trash the UK economy with a "no deal" Tory economic meltdown, I suspect only an even smaller minority of them would be extreme enough to support this strategy of blocking ambulances and gloating about it on Twitter to achieve it.
Of course not all of the 17.4 million of Brits who voted Leave in 2016 are vile extreme-right nasties like the Brextremist ambulance-blockers yesterday, but it's impossible to deny that whatever anyone's reasons for voting for Brexit, they were unconcerned about aligning themselves with fascists, racists, xenophobes and liars when they did it.
And even if people actually crave the chaos and suffering of a "no deal" economic crisis, any Leave voter with any sense of human decency whatever should be just as outraged about this Brextremist ambulance-blocking tactic as the rest of us.
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