The thing with bullies is that they will always cry victim if the tables are turned and their victims begin standing up for themselves, and so it has come to pass with the right-wing internal wreckers in the Labour Party.
For three infuriating years of deliberately trying to wreck the Labour Party within by continually plotting against the party leadership, and regularly abusing hundreds of thousands of ordinary Labour members ("arm-twisting trots", "dogs", "rabble", "cultists", "communists", "entryists", "Stalinists", "Nazi storm troopers" ...) the ordinary members have begun to fight back with a series of no confidence votes in the most divisive anti-Corbyn Labour MPs.
But after "no confidence" votes in several of the worst offenders like Chris Leslie (one of the architects of Labour's disastrous austerity-lite strategy at the 2015 General Election), Joan Ryan (who was caught on camera fabricating fake anti-Semitism smears) and Gavin Shuker (a guy who keeps threatening to quit the Labour Party in order to inflict as much damage as possible from the inside) the Labour right-wingers are suddenly crying victim.
The extraordinary thing is that it never needed to be this way. If the likes of Joan Ryan, Chuka Umunna, Jess Phillips, Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Ian Austin, and Stephen Kinnock had got with the new programme they would never have ended up facing no confidence votes and the looming prospect of mandatory reselection of all Labour MPs.
Jeremy Corbyn made it clear over and again that he was prepared to work with the Labour right-wingers, but every time he extended the hand of friendship and invited them into his shadow cabinet they ended up petulantly refusing to serve, knifing him in the back, andor slagging off the ordinary Labour Party members who twice decided that they wanted a genuine democratic socialist as their leader, not another run-of-the-mill pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, pro-war, anti-welfare neoliberal.
Corbyn also expressed his personal opposition to the idea of mandatory reselection of Labour MPs in the past, but after three damaging years of internal wrecking from these neoliberal plants in the Labour Party, it's not Corbyn calling for democratic reselection, it's the Labour Party membership.
Yet somehow these right-wing internal wreckers have the absolute brass neck to suddenly begin arguing that membership dissatisfaction with their three years of divisive and damaging conduct is a distraction from the main task of criticising the Tories!
So for three years they expended far more effort on attacking their own party and slandering the membership than they did on criticising the Tories, but as soon as the prospect of democratic reselection is looming on the horizon they're suddenly painting the idea of being held to account for their actions by ordinary people as a terrible distraction from the main job of criticising the Tories.
And aside from the utter hypocrisy of suddenly deciding that criticising the Tories is the main objective after three years letting the Tories run wild as they concentrate on internal wrecking, some of the worst offenders are lobbing insults again too.
After the vote of "no conficence" against Joan Ryan, she issued an extraordinary Tweet describing her own party members as "trots, Stalinists and communists" instead of seeking to make amends with the people she's so badly let down!
It's as if she's so lacking in self-awareness that she can't even see that bitterly slandering the people who have lost confidence in her as a perfect demonstration that she's completely unsuited to be their representative in parliament.
Then there's Chuka Umunna who has returned to the Labour right-winger trope of calling left-leaning Labour members "dogs" in an effort to get Jeremy Corbyn to quash the move towards democratic reselection of all Labour MPs.
These people are terrified of democracy and the concept of actually being held to account for their actions by ordinary people.
It's no wonder they're acting so incoherently given how wrong everything has gone for them in the last three years.
They've gone from heirs apparent who would get to walk into the top jobs in the Labour Party without the faintest worry about ever being held to account by anyone, through petulantly refusing to participate in Corbyn's cabinet; and then their spectacularly failed chicken coup; and then their failed effort to ban Jeremy Corbyn from participating in the 2nd Labour leadership election; and then their outrageous purge of left-wing Labour members for "crimes" like retweeting Caroline Lucas or liking the Foo Fighters; and then seeing their predictions of a Labour General Election wipe-out under Corbyn ruined by the biggest surge in the Labour vote since 1945; and now they're facing the very real prospect of being democratically replaced by their local Labour Party as a result of this bullying and constant internal wrecking.
So the over-entitled Labour right-wingers are angrily lashing out again, but making the same mistakes as before: Insulting the Labour Party members they're soon going to have to justify their behaviour to, and resorting to the laziest and most hypocritical cry-bully arguments in the expectation that ordinary Labour Party members are suddenly going to start lapping up their ridiculously fact-averse narratives now, after three years of getting ever more pissed off by them.
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The Labour MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland Tom Blenkinsop has been having a quite extraordinary cry-bully tantrum on Twitter.
Months of anti-Corbyn drivel
Ever since the inept Anyone But Corbyn coup was launched Tom Blenkinsop's Twitter feed has been absolute abomination, with dozens and dozens of tweets attacking the Labour Party leadership and party members, and barely anything criticising the Tories, but over the weekend before ballot papers for the Labour leadership election were sent out he went into complete-meltdown mode.
Here's an example of Blenkinsop's anti-Corbyn drivel before his complete meltdown: "Corbyn is more wooden than a wooden spoon sitting in the wooden draw of a wooden kitchen...in the woods". The guy obviously thinks he's got some kind of searing rapier wit, but before his meltdown it was just cringeworthy babbling like that, retweeting hatchet-job articles from the likes of hard-right blogger and Murdoch stooge Guido Fawkes and repeatedly calling for Stalinist style purges of the Labour Party.
Something snapped
Over the weekend before the ballot papers were sent out something clearly snapped in Blenkinsop. He went from cringeworthy anti-Corbyn chuntering and calling for a Stalinist style purge of the Labour Party to rid it of all Corbyn supporters to repeatedly yelling "entryist" and "idiot" at anyone who dared question his ridiculous behaviour.
Calling for a purge of left-wing Labour Party members is bad enough, but repeatedly yelling "entryist" at anyone who dared question his attitude (including someone who clearly identified as a lifelong Labour voter) is sickening.
Stalinism
Blenkinsop followed up his bizarre calls for a Stalinist style Labour Party purge with an even more explicit call for a purge of anyone who booed Sadiq Khan's divisive attack on Jeremy Corbyn (just a few weeks after Khan had vowed to stay neutral in the Labour leadership election).
The most ridiculous thing of all is that after repeatedly calling for an ideological purge of the Labour Party, he then had the absolute gall to retweet someone who was chuntering on about Jeremy Corbyn supporters being a bunch of Stalinists.
One of the interesting things that arises from Blenkinsop's repeated calls for an anti-democratic purge of the Labour Party is that he clearly won't have a leg to stand on if Corbyn defeats the coup-plotters then decides to do the sensible thing and allow democratic re-selection of appallingly divisive and self-serving Labour MPs.
Blenkinsop wouldn't have a leg to stand on if the Labour Party allowed his local constituency Labour members to hold a democratic ballot to deselect him as their MP when he's openly and repeatedly called for an anti-democratic purge of the Labour Party.
It would obviously take a very brazen individual to object to democratic re-selection of MPs after calling for an anti-democratic purge of Labour Party left-wingers, but judging by the constant stream of divisiveness and abuse that passes for his Twitter feed, it's beyond doubt that Blenkinsop is capable of such brazenness.
Owen Jones is not an idiot
The fact that Blenkinsop calls Owen Jones an "idiot" is indicative of the guy's mentality. He's using a public platform to hurl abuse and insults at members of his own party, he writes dozens of anti-Corbyn tweets for every one he writes criticising the Tory government, and he's repeatedly called for a Stalinist style purge of the Labour Party, then his response to someone criticising his attitude is to call them an "idiot".
Personal abuse is pretty the lowest possible level of debate, and Blenkinsop's Twitter tantrum is a perfect illustration of the fact that he's a political gutter-dweller.
If you want some proof that Owen Jones isn't an idiot you could read his 9 questions for Corbyn supporters article and my response to it to see how the Labour leadership debate could have been conducted if it wasn't for people like Tom Blenkinsop who would clearly rather ruin the Labour Party completely than allow Jeremy Corbyn any chance of success.
Cry-bully tactics
Blenkinsop is clearly utilising the cry-bully tactic. The objective of which is to repeatedly insult and abuse people to the point that they respond in kind with abuse and insults of their own, then cry about the terrible abuse you're suffering. We've seen it already from the ex-Guardian hack Alex Andreou in his Acid Attack article on Jeremy Corbyn and anyone who supports him, and now we've got a classic example of an actual Labour MP using the same dirty underhand tactics.
This guy is supposed to be an intellectual!
One of the strangest things about Blenkinsop is that he's apparently got a degree in PPE and a Masters in Continental Philosophy from Warwick university, but on Twitter he comes across as having the debating skills of a petulant child having a tantrum.
Perhaps the philosophy department at Warwick University taught him that the ideal way to structure an argument is to repeatedly hurl insults at your opponents and then accuse them of things that you yourself are arguing for?
Blenkinsop is clearly acting as a very poor advert for the post graduate philosophy department Warwick University. If an abuse-hurling intellectual lightwieght like Tom Blenkinsop is the calibre of person they churn out, then what value do their qualifications actually hold?
Blenkinsop's echo chamber
I first became aware of Blenkinsop's Twitter tantrum when someone posted a screenshot of one of his comments on the Another Angry Voice Facebook page, but when I went to check out whether such a ludicrously divisive comment could be real I discovered that he's blocked me, which is odd because I've never had any interaction with him on Twitter whatever.
It subsequently turns out that Blenkinsop has blocked pretty much every left-wing Twitter account out there, including Harry Leslie Smith, anyone who disagrees with him, a load of other people who haven't ever even interacted with him and even his own constituents!
There are only two reasons to use the Twitter block button. One is to stop people hurling abuse at you and the other is to create a closed ideology echo chamber where all views that contradict your own are silenced. Given that an awful lot of people who are blocked by Tom Blenkinsop have never even interacted with him, it's absolutely obvious what he's been doing.
I'm definitely going to consider the fact that I've been blocked by Tom Blenkinsop despite never having interacted with him as a badge of honour.
Worse than Britain First
The extreme-right hate group Britain First operate a similar kind of closed ideology echo chamber to Tom Blenkinsop, but with one crucial difference. They wait for people to actually leave dissenting comments before they hit the block button, they don't just go around randomly blocking anyone who might challenge their precious closed ideology.
It's incredibly sad that there's a Labour MP out there with an even more censorious attitude than the fascist britain First hatemongers.
Bringing the Labour Party into disrepute
Labour Party politicians like Sadiq Khan and Kezia Dugdale have every right to back whichever candidate they prefer (even though their stated reasons are laughable), but what the likes of Tom Blenkinsop and Ian Austin are doing with their divisive Twitter hate campaigns is completely unacceptable.
Any other party would have launched disciplinary proceedings against such divisive and vitriolic abuse aimed at fellow party politicians and members. Could you imagine Theresa May standing for a Tory MP who has taken it upon themselves to wage a one-man Twitter war against her, her cabinet and a significant percentage of the party membership? Of course she wouldn't.
Once the leadership election is over, I'd be amazed if muck-hurling Labour MPs like Tom Blenkinsop aren't at least put up for re-selection by their constituents, which seems to be a fair guess at why he's having such a tantrum. He can see that his toys are going to be confiscated because of his bad behaviour, and he's having a screaming tantrum about it.
Sadly for Tom, he doesn't even seem to realise that resorting to screaming tantrums rarely ever result in sensible adults changing their minds.
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.
