Theresa May's weak leadership is a danger to Britain

Over the weekend the new Tory Home Secretary Sajid Javid decided to tear up the longstanding British convention that our government opposes the death penalty in all circumstances. He apparently made this decision entirely on his own, without any cabinet discussion, legal advice, or permission from the Prime Minister.

Theresa May is such a weak and incompetent leader that she's absolutely failed to correct or discipline Javid for making up government policy on the hoof, and ended up eventually agreeing with him in order to minimise the scandal, which is a very dangerous green light to all of her other ministers to just completely make things up as they go along without fear of repercussions.

It's possible to imagine that May's lackadaisical attitude to Javid inventing policy on the hoof could stem from the extraordinarily weak political position she's in (very few remaining allies, razor thin majority in parliament, under constant threat of a "no confidence" vote triggered by Jacob Rees-Mogg and the ERG Brextremists) but this incompetence isn't actually new.

Back during the 2017 General Election campaign her (now resigned in disgrace) Defence Secretary Michael Fallon made the shocking announcement that Britain would consider using nuclear weapons as attack weapons, which amounted to a sudden declaration that the UK is abandoning the long-established "no first strike" policy, and endangering the "Mutually Assured Destruction" deterrence compromise that has existed between the nuclear powers since the 1950s (by giving other nuclear powers a clear incentive to get their strike in first before Theresa May does).

Amazingly Fallon made this seismic change to Britain's nuclear weapons policy without cabinet discussion, legal advice, or permission from the Prime Minister. But Theresa May decided not to discipline him or put the record straight on Britain's actual nuclear weapons policy for fear of making one of her ministers look like a fool during an election campaign.

Even more amazing was the way the media (and especially the BBC) completely ignored this extraordinary on the hoof abandonment of Britain's longstanding nuclear weapons strategy in favour of a certifiably insane "yes first strike" policy, and instead focused all of their nuclear weapons political questions on relentlessly attacking Jeremy Corbyn for sticking with the traditional "no first strike" policy!

If Theresa May allows her ministers to just make up new policies on issues as important as nuclear weapons and the death penalty with no discussion, legal advice or permission, her incompetence and weak leadership is clearly and obviously a danger to Britain, British standards, and the British way of life.

And the fact that she actually ends up agreeing with them in order to save face, even though they went behind her back to announce these new policies has set a dangerous precedent. It doesn't matter how dangerous, regressive, un-British, or downright insane the new policy, she'll probably end up green lighting it just to avoid the fuss of disciplining them and putting the record straight.

Even if you somehow agree with the Fallon's crackpot "yes first strike" strategy or Javid's efforts to undermine Britain's longstanding opposition to the death penalty, there's absolutely no way that you can agree that the correct way to introduce these wild new policies was to do it behind Theresa May's back, safe in the knowledge that she's such a weak and directionless leader that she'd simply agree to them after the fact to avoid a fuss.

And if the non-reaction of the bulk of the mainstream media to Theresa May letting her ministers go unpunished for repeatedly going behind her back to announce wild new policies this is anything to go by, then she's not going to be held to account for this dangerously weak and incompetent attitude either.

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In modern Britain incompetence is tolerated as the norm and strong leadership is met with howls of condemnation

If we set aside our views on Brexit for a moment and try to look at Jeremy Corbyn's decision to sack Owen Smith for publicly criticising Labour's six tests position from a reasonably objective stance, it's obvious that Smith had to go.

Love them or loathe them Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher were strong leaders, as were Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee in the mid 20th Century.

It's inconceivable that any of these strong leaders would ever have allowed a member of their cabinet to publicly defy the party policy to set out their own personal policy in a newspaper article. Any cabinet member who did that, would have been sacked, and rightly so.

The problem of course is that after eight years of shockingly weak leadership under the Tories, people have got used to the government behaving like a total rabble, where gross incompetence is the norm, and with ministers regularly making up policy on the hoof and getting away with it. So when they see a party leader actually imposing discipline it comes as a shock to them.

Things were bad enough under David Cameron, whose tolerance to the incompetence of his ministers was so extreme that George Osborne and Theresa May survived easily despite six years of endlessly missed targets and hopelessly botched legislation, and the even more incompetent Iain Duncan Smith remained unsacked until he chose to betray Cameron by walking out of the government at the most damaging moment possible.

But under Theresa May things have become utterly farcical. We had the former Defence Secretary Michael Fallon announce the off the hoof policy that Britain was abandoning the "Mutually Assured Destruction" stance to announce the policy of Britain being open to using nuclear weapons as attack weapons. Not only did Theresa May not sack Fallon on the spot for announcing such a reckless abandonment of Britain's longstanding nuclear weapons policy, she actually let this insane new policy stand.

Then Fallon's replacement as Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson embarrassed Britain by saying that "Russia should just go away, and shut up". Theresa May is such a weak leader that once again she didn't correct this nonsense with a firm reiteration of the government's actual position, or ask for Williamson's resignation.

Then worst of all there's the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who even set out his own bespoke "Manifesto for EU Withdrawal" in a 4,000 word essay for the Daily Telegraph. This wasn't just the usual foot in mouth blabbering we've all come to expect from Johnson, it was a deliberate and calculated effort to undermine his own government's Brexit negotiating position.

Does anyone imagine that strong leaders like Thatcher, Blair, Churchill, or Attlee would have just sat back and done absolutely nothing when their own Foreign Secretary publicly undermined the official party position?

Regardless of whether you agree with Boris Johnson's decision to publicly undermine the Tory government by calling for a much harder form of Brexit, or with Owen Smith's decision to break collective responsibility to call for a second EU referendum, it's obvious both needed to be sacked, otherwise we'd end up with rudderless political parties full of ministers who feel entitled to just make up policies as they go along.

The reality of the situation is that Teresa May is such a weak and incompetent leader that she allowed a senior cabinet minister to go completely unpunished for brazenly undermining the official party stance.

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn behaved in the way any competent political leader would when one of his shadow cabinet ministers publicly criticises the official stance of their party in a newspaper column, rather than raising his concerns within the shadow cabinet, or through the democratic apparatus of the Labour Party.

The remarkable thing is that Theresa May's display of weakness and incompetence towards Boris Johnson's absurd display of disloyalty barely elicited barely a whisper of criticism from mainstream media hacks.

Then just a few months later we've had to endure howls of outrage from the very same hacks who remained silent about Theresa May's weakness and incompetence after Jeremy Corbyn rightly sacked Owen Smith for timing his attack on the Labour Party position just before the local elections in a calculated effort to do as much damage as possible to Labour's election chances.

It's as if eight years of Tory incompetence has done so much damage to the fabric of the United Kingdom that weakness and poor leadership are now accepted as the standard, and any signs of competence and strong leadership are met with furious condemnation and howls of outrage!

Regardless of our views on the important issues of the day (Brexit, austerity dogma, wage repression, rising poverty, the productivity crisis, NHS and social care funding ...) surely nobody thinks it's right that modern Britain is a place where unmistakably weak leadership goes almost completely uncriticised, while displays of routine political competence are attacked and derided as being somehow shocking and unacceptable?

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Yet another worst possible take from the Daily Mail

Let's imagine for a moment that it's your job to work as a mercenary hack for an extreme-right propaganda rag. Your bosses want you to come up with an article defending the indefensible. 

They're terrified that the Westminster sex pest scandal is going to cost Theresa May the slim parliamentary majority that it cost her £1 billion in bribes to the DUP to obtain, so they want you to write an article defending the sex pests and denouncing their critics. So how would you go about it?

Well this is the scenario faced by the Daily Mail hack Peter Hitchens, and his solution to the problem was to equate the victims of sexual assaults and harassment to "militant Islamists".

The crux of his argument being that if women complain when powerful men grope them or harass them with sexist comments, then males in general are the actual victims, and women in politics should end up wearing a niqab or a burka as a safety measure.

Hitchens begins his torturous path to this absurd conclusion with a simple sleight of hand. he denounces anyone who complains about their abuse/harassment at the hands of a specific man with "the belief that all men should be assumed to be slavering sex predators", which he claims is a view they share with "militant Islamists".

It's interesting to see that Hitchens assumes his audience of Daily Mail readers to be so thick that they couldn't possibly differentiate between an allegation that "a specific man groped me" and an assertion that "all men are slavering sex predators".

Hitchens then tries to elicit sympathy for the sex pests by chastising the victims: "Any male action, any form of words you choose to disapprove of can and will be presumed to be guilty because, well, men are like that. The culprit will be ruined for ever" he whines.

Of course there is always the problem of a small minority of women who make false, malicious or exaggerated accusations against men. Women who not only attempt to trash innocent men's reputations, but also cast doubt on the testimonies of actual victims through their dishonesty. 

But this is not what's happening in the Westminster sex pest scandal, because several of the MPs have already openly admitted what they did (including the Tory MP Mark Garnier was actually allowed to keep his ministerial job after laughing off his massively inappropriate treatment of a female employee as if it was all just jolly japes).

Attempting to elicit sympathy for the alleged perpetrators of sexual harassment as if they're the victims is bad enough, but when many of them have actually already admitted their guilt, then it's just downright sick.

Hitchens' next move is the classic whataboutery tactic.

What about "the biggest constitutional crisis in a Century" he whines? And What about the country "wobbling on the precipice of bankruptcy"?

Under these circumstances, Hitchens opines, women who denounce the sexual misdemeanours of senior politicians are ridiculous, and will be "laughed at by future generations".

The obvious problem with Hitchens citing these specific whataboutery issues is that he makes no attempt to explain how the country ended up in such a parlous position. 

He makes no attempt whatever to explain that the "biggest constitutional crisis in a Century" is the absolute shambles the Tory party are making of Brexit, and the economic weakness of the country is a result of seven years of ruinous Tory austerity dogma.

It's way beyond insincere to raise these issues and just ignore the role the Daily Mail have played in all of this. His fellow Daily Mail hacks relentlessly promoted Brexit despite the fact that the Brexiteers had no plan whatever for how they were actually going to manage the transition, and they poured absolute derision on anyone who dared suggest that investment economics makes more long-term economic sense than the Tories' bonkers "let's cut our way to growth" austerity fetishism.

Hitchens then goes on to dig himself even deeper into his hole by pointing out that "Michael Fallon was one of the worst Defence Secretaries in history" in order to lament that Fallon wasn't made to quit because of his incompetence, but because he's not "safe in mixed company".

Again, Hitchens avoids the Daily Mail's role in all of this. In June 2017 Theresa May handed the British people a wonderful chance to remove Michael Fallon as defence secretary, but the Daily Mail churned out a relentlessly pro-Tory propaganda line for the entire General Election campaign which helped him back into office.

The Daily Mail worked tirelessly to convince their readers to keep Michael Fallon as Defence Secretary despite his obvious dishonesty, incompetence and blabber-mouthed lunacy, and now one of their main columnists is whining about the way that he's gone.

Given the Daily Mail's role in keeping this incompetent buffoon in his job, Hitchen's should actually be grateful that the women who succeeded in removing him by denouncing him as a sex pest. Instead of attacking them, Hitchens should actually be thanking them for clearing up another of the Daily Mail's messes.

After making an absolute fool of himself by citing three Daily Mail messes as more serious problems than sexual assault, Hitchens returns to one of his favourite themes; feminist-bashing.

When he says "the suspicion lingers that much of the current fuss is aimed mainly at making all men look wicked and grubby" he's displaying his paranoia.

When a sex pest is denounced as a sex pest (for stuff like groping junior staff and young journalists, sending sexual text messages to a teenager he only has the contact details for because she applied for a job in his office, misogyny, or sexual harassment) I don't find that I empathise with the perpetrator just because I too have a penis. 

I'm actually glad that they've been exposed as the creeps that they are, because I don't behave like that with women, so why should they be allowed to get away with it just because they've got power. wealth and authority?

Hitchens finishes off his article by proposing "the niqab, the burka, and the segregation of the sexes" as a solution, before having one more dig at the victims by implying that they're suffering from insanity for having spoken out.

In the middle of the article Hitchens prophesied that the victims of sexual misconduct would be laughed at by future generations, but my prediction is different: Future generations will be full of derision should they ever come across this display of paranoid, hyperbolic, and intellectually dishonest victim-blaming from a mercenary hack working for a fanatically right-wing publication that actually helped to create the whataboutery problems he cites as being more important than dealing with the allegations of sexual misconduct he's decrying.

Look at his anachronistic views on issues like love, marriage, and equality of the sexes they'll snigger. Look at the way he displays his shockingly compromised integrity and look at the way he uses intellectually dishonest tricks to fool the audience he arrogantly believes to be his inferiors.

What backwards times people lived in, future generations will wonder, that the people of Britain actually accepted such a repulsive blend of arrogance, divisiveness, misogyny, misdirection, victim-blaming and paranoia published by the propaganda arm of the thankfully long-defunct Tory party!

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The farcical handling of the Westminster sex pest scandal

The Westminster sex pest scandal is being handled atrociously, both by the political parties and by the media. 

One of the worst aspects is the huge disparity in the way different MPs are being treated by their parties, and by the media.

In the cases of Clive Lewis and Kelvin Hopkins of the Labour Party, and Damian Green of the Tories, all three of the politicians firmly deny the allegations made against them by single accusers. Yet Kelvin Hopkins has been suspended and had the party whip removed, while Clive Lewis and Damian Green have not. 

It's impossible to explain this kind of double standard. Either MPs should get suspended during investigations, or not. You can't have a completely ad hoc system where some get suspended and some don't.

In contrast to the firm denials from three MPs mentioned above, the Tory MPs Stephen Crabb and Mark Garnier have openly admitted their revolting sexual misdemeanours (Garnier laughing his unacceptable behaviour off as if it was just some kind of joke), but they haven't been suspended by their party.

How can MPs who admit their guilt get off Scot free, while (some of the) MPs who protest their innocence get punished?

Then there's the Tory MP Charlie Elphicke who has been suspended from the Tory party and reported to the police for "serious allegations". He is protesting his innocence but has  been suspended from the Tory party. 

However the details of the allegations against him have been kept secret, so after a day of the mainstream media fixating on the unsubstantiated and strongly denied allegations against the two Labour MPs who protest their innocence, the media barely covered the Elphicke allegations because there are no "juicy details" for them to fixate upon on.

Then there's Michael Fallon who preemptively resigned as Defence Secretary with an admission about his inappropriate behaviour with women, but he avoided getting suspended from the Tory party despite openly admitting his guilt. Theresa May decided that instead of admonishing him or suspending him, she'd actually send him a glowing love letter to tell him what a wonderful guy he is!

Then there are the two dozen plus Tory MPs who stand accused of sexual misdemeanours by their own party in the Tory Sex Pest Dossier, and the evidence that Theresa May was warned three years ago that the Tory whips collected details of sexual abuse by their MPs in order to blackmail them into compliance.

The existence of the Tory Sex Pest Dossier (which jumbles up allegations of extreme sexual misconduct with basic blackmail material like consensual affairs between Tory MPs, unusual sexual proclivities, and an apparently false claim against the MP Rory Stewart), and the statement from Theresa May's former communications director Kate Perrior explaining how the culture of blackmail was still ongoing under Theresa May's leadership are both absolutely damning, and should be one of the main elements of the scandal.

But somehow, despite the Tory whips office being at the centre of the scandal, Theresa May saw fit to actually promote her two most senior whips. She caused a storm of internal dissent in the Tory party by promoting her Chief Whip and close personal ally Gavin Williamson to replace Michael Fallon as Defence Secretary, and then she promoted his deputy Julian Smith to Chief Whip to replace him.

So not only are the Tories still studiously ignoring allegations that their whips office have used allegations of sex abuse as blackmail material for party political advantage, they've also promoted the two most senior whips at the centre of these allegations!

The Labour MP Rupa Huq is absolutely right that the House of Commons has "no real structure for complaints" and that the rules on sexual harassment are "lax if not non existent".

It's hardly surprising that sexually inappropriate behaviour has been happening in such a large workplace, especially in one with no clear rules and procedures for sexual misconduct, but the way complaints are being dealt with in completely ad hoc manner by the parties is totally unacceptable. It's created a situation where three Tory MPs who have openly admitted sexual misdemeanours have avoided suspension from their party, while one Tory and one Labour MP have been suspended despite firmly denying the accusations against them.

The next thing to note is that the press have focused much more negative attention on MPs when the allegations are made public, than when the party keeps the actual details of the allegations under wraps (as the Tories have done with the Charlie Elphicke case), which obviously gives the political parties a clear incentive to bury the details of the allegations as much as possible in order to avoid negative publicity.

Then there's what I consider to be the core element of the scandal, which is the way a very senior Tory adviser has admitted that the Tory whips office used accusations of sexual misconduct in order to blackmail MPs into compliance, rather than launching investigations and working to ensure the safety of people like journalists and junior staff as a first priority.


Yet the two men at the very centre of this scandal have actually been handed promotions!

The major problem is the way the parties are currently dealing with the cases in a bizarre "make it up as we go along" manner that punishes people who deny any wrongdoing, lets people off Scot free when they openly admit being creepy sex pests, and then actual hands promotions to two Tory whips who stand accused of having used allegations of sexual misconduct as blackmail material, rather than doing anything whatever to actually deal with the inappropriate behaviour.

The way the whole thing is being handled is an absolute farce. 

If our political parties can't even deal with a scandal like this without implementing glaringly obvious double standards, and actually promoting people at the epicentre of the most damning accusations, then how on earth can they be capable of actually running the country in a decent manner?

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Theresa May's lamentable handling of the sex pest scandal

Elements of the mainstream media (including the BBC) are working hard to try to whitewash it, but the fact is that Theresa May's handling of the Tory sex pest scandal is outrageously self-serving and inept, even by her own piteous standards.

Theresa May knows that even despite having bribed the DUP extremists into propping up her government, she's in a position of extreme weakness in parliament. The thinness of her government's majority means that she simply can't afford to properly punish her MPs for serious sexual misdemeanours.

Thus we're in the bizarre position of seeing Labour quickly suspend Jared O'Mara for having made a load of vile Internet comments years before he actually became an MP, while Theresa May is far to weak to even ditch Mark Garnier as a government minister after he openly admitted treating a junior female employee in a massively inappropriate manner during his time in parliament, let alone suspend him from the Tory party.

If a guy in pretty much any other job used sexist terms at a junior female colleague, and sent her out to buy sex toys on company time, he'd be in big trouble. But in Theresa May's Tory party this kind of behaviour is apparently so acceptable that there's no punishment for it whatever.

Then there's the married Tory MP Stephen Crabb who hasn't been suspended despite having been caught sending inappropriate sexual texts to young women for a second time! If a young woman applies for a job in your office, you don't then have the right to send her a load of sexual filth after you rejected her job application. The sight of Tories actually defending this behaviour is quite extraordinary, and the fact that Theresa May hasn't suspended Stephen Crabb suggests that she's absolutely fine with it too.

Then there's the case of Michael Fallon, who, according to Robert Peston, resigned as Defence Secretary because he knows that he's sexually harassed numerous other women, and the stress of waiting for them to come forward and expose his behaviour did for him.

Theresa May's response to this preemptive resignation was absolutely extraordinary.

Instead of demanding that Fallon provide a list of women he remembers harassing and groping in order that the party can consider whether he should be permanently expelled or not, she actually sent the guy a bloody love letter detailing how all the things she adores about him.

In her love letter to Fallon she even praises him for having set a good example by resigning, but makes no effort whatever to address the fact that sexual harassment is unacceptable.

The shockingly lax attitude Theresa May has been displaying towards the sex pests in her own party is bad enough, but the Labour MP Lisa Nandy really nailed her to the floor in parliament when she drew attention to Theresa May's abject lack of response in 2014 to her questions about how the Tory whips office use the sexual misdemeanours of Tory MPs in order to blackmail them into unquestioning loyalty to the party.

@Lisanandy reduces @theresa_may to stuttering evasion by asking why she did nothing when warned about party whips using abuse as blackmail pic.twitter.com/N5ZPfAw6vs

— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) November 2, 2017

Amazingly the BBC news team decided that this question was not serious enough to include in their news reports on the sex pest scandal, as if the Prime Minister getting caught out like that isn't noteworthy enough to tell people about.

The way the leaked Tory sex dossier jumbled together extreme cases of sexual harassment with stuff like consensual affairs between Tory MPs and the kinky sexual tastes of others made it absolutely clear that it was more of a blackmail list than an effort to confront sexual harassment/assaults within the Tory party.

Lisa Nandy raised the subject of blackmail by the Tory whips office three years ago and Theresa May did nothing about it. The leaked Tory blackmail list is evidence that this blackmail culture of collecting accusations of sexual harassment/assault (along with stuff like extramarital affairs and unusual sexual proclivities) has still been going on under her watch.

It's absolutely obvious that when the party becomes aware that an MP has an issue (groping women, forming inappropriate relationships with junior staff, perpetual drunkenness, use of drugs and/or prostitutes ...) they should ensure that the MP gets help with their addiction problems, and launch disciplinary procedures/notify the police if the offences are serious enough to warrant it (which stuff like groping, sexual harassment, and assault definitely are).

Not only has Theresa May allowed the Tory whips office to continue collecting dirt on Tory MPs in order to blackmail them into compliance, she's allowed this blackmail culture to continue on her watch despite being explicitly warned about it multiple times three years ago, before she even became Tory leader.

It's obvious that all political parties are going to have problems with inappropriate sexual behaviour. Even smaller parties like the Lib-Dems and the Greens have tens of thousands of members, so just a 0.1% rate would result in dozens of incidents to deal with.

The thing that differentiates the parties is how their leaders react when sexual misdemeanour cases come to light.

If they react quickly to suspend the suspects while investigations are conducted, they're taking the issue seriously.

If they deliberately turn a blind eye to the blackmail culture of the whips office for years, and then allow people who openly admit that they're sex pests to not only remain as Tory MPs, but as members of government too ... well it's obvious that they're prioritising other factors (like desperately maintaining a razor thin parliamentary majority) over dealing with the sex pest scandal.

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The Tory defence minister Michael Fallon is a liar

The Tory defence minister Michael Fallon put on an absolutely woeful performance on the Marr Show on Sunday May 14th. He evaded questions, he made unfunded spending pledges, he revealed the latest Tory flagship policy to be just a load of empty spin, he resorted to the worst kind of dishonest gutter politics, and he outright lied to the British public about Tory cuts to the armed forces.

Fallon's lie

Fallon told his outrageous lie in order avoid admitting that the Tories broke their 2015 manifesto pledge that they would stop slashing away at the armed forces.

The manifesto commitment Andrew Marr tried to get Fallon to admit was "we will maintain the size of the regular armed services and not reduce the army to below 82,000" [source - page 77].

Since 2015 the Tories have reduced the army to 79,000.

The sneaky and evasive Fallon saw the trap coming and outright lied that the commitment was to increase the size of the army to 82,000 by 2020, rather than to not cut it to below 82,000. Just look at how brazenly he lies.

Michael Fallon telling an outright lie about the Tory 2015 manifesto pledge that they would stop slashing the size of the regular army. pic.twitter.com/f1fEqpKLEF

— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) May 14, 2017

Here's what the Tory manifesto actually said.

Anyone would think that such a huge and obvious lie from a government minister would have completely dominated the news agenda, especially given the scrutiny Labour politicians are subjected to for stuff like getting their numbers muddled up. But no! Hardly anyone in the mainstream press even picked up on the fact that the Tory defence minister told the British public outright lies about defence policy.

Look how he kept digging despite having the truth literally quote at him. pic.twitter.com/hw6JWWE46t

— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) May 14, 2017

Witness the way Fallon squirmed and lied, and maintained the fiction that the manifesto pledge was something else, even after Andrew Marr actually quoted it to him.

Just imagine the level of arrogant contempt necessary in order to carry on lying to the British public when you've had the truth actually directly quoted at you, and them. Everyone could see that he was lying, but he just carried on. It's excruciating to think that this guy is actually responsible for the British armed forces.

It's absolutely beyond me how anyone could have confidence in him to continue as defence secretary after such a brazen display of dishonesty. But then there are a lot of S*n, Daily Mail and Express readers out there aren't there?

More lamentable rubbish

Infographic on Fallon's dodgy expenses by Rachael Swindon.

Fallon's lie about the 2015  Tory manifesto commitment to stop slashing the armed forces to bits was far from the only deeply concerning thing he said.

When asked to explain where the government would find an extra £1 billion in their military funding pledge, he claimed that they'd do it "by growing the economy". When asked about the £7 billion black hole in the defence equipment budget Fallon replied by claiming that the government could raise the cash by selling off "some airfields".
So the mainstream media accuse Labour of "magic money tree" thinking over their fully-costed manifesto pledges, but Fallon can just reply with ridiculous platitudes about where the Tories are going to fund their manifesto commitments and resolve their own financial blundering, and nobody gives a damn.

Fallon repeatedly evaded answering questions about whether the UK's nuclear submarines are reliant on the outdated Windows XP operating system that is susceptible to hacks like the WannaCry ransomware attack that just hit the NHS.

Fallon admitted that the Tories flashy new policy on council houses is just empty spin, with no new money to commit whatever.

When Fallon tried to smear Jeremy Corbyn for talking to the IRA (at the same time as Margaret "we don't negotiate with terrorists" Thatcher was having her secret negotiations with the IRA) the Labour shadow defence minister Emily Thornberry hit him with the best sucker punch of the 2017 General Election campaign by highlighting his history of sucking up to the Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad.

Conclusion

The Tory defence minister outright lied to the British public about defence policy and he made an arse out of himself over and over again, yet millions will still vote Tory, and for this guy to keep slashing the armed forces, lying to the British public, botching army recruitment, farcically mismanaging the defence equipment budget, and now apparently selling off a load of our airfields on the cheap to whoever wants to stump up the cash (Saudi Arabia? Qatar? China?).

I guess having a blatantly incompetent and massively over-promoted buffoon in charge of our armed forces just a continuation of a longstanding British tradition though isn't it?

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Is Theresa May "a bigger threat to the Falklands than Argentina"

Remember back in January 2016 when Jeremy Corbyn suggested that Britain and Argentina should enter negotiations to co-operate over the Falkland Islands so that both countries can share in the prosperity, rather than restricting economic opportunities through animosity, trade sanctions, antagonism and militaristic posturing?

Remember how the Tories and the right-wing press spouted lie after lie after lie about what Corbyn was suggesting and even tried to claim that Corbyn's policy was to give away the Falkland Islands?

Remember how the Tory defence minister Michael Fallon even claimed that Jeremy Corbyn is "a bigger threat to the Falklands than Argentina"?

Remember how this hyperbolic nonsense was spouted ad nauseum by the mainstream press and  how David Cameron even got in on the act by including it in one of his most incredibly evasive* and downright dishonest "answers" ever at PMQs (see image) in which he lied five times in the space of thirty seconds? 

Fast-forward just eight months and Theresa May has sent Alan Duncan over to Argentina in order to come up with a deal to ... erm ... work out a deal for Argentina and the UK to co-operate over the Falkland Islands.

Where are the shrieking headlines about the Tories surrendering to the Argies? Where are the bile dripping editorials? Why isn't Michael Fallon attacking his Tory colleague as "a bigger threat to the Falklands than Argentina" for doing exactly what Jeremy Corbyn suggested just eight months previously?

The Falkland Islanders are apparently delighted that the Tories have pinched Jeremy Corbyn's idea, and are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of an end to the decades of crippling trade sanctions on hydrocarbons, fishing, shipping and tourism.

Not only did the Tories (and their attack-dogs in the mainstream press) savage Jeremy Corbyn for suggesting an entirely sensible policy of economic co-operation between the UK and Argentina rather than militaristic antagonism, the Tories have actually gone and nicked it off him within the space of a year!

The lack of bile-dripping articles in the mainstream press about how Theresa May is "a bigger threat to the Falklands than the Argentinians" for doing precisely what Jeremy Corbyn was slaughtered for proposing just eight months ago is indicative of the extraordinary levels of pro-Tory bias of the UK mainstream press.

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* = The Jeremy Corbyn question that Cameron was evading was about the sweetheart deal the Tories had concocted to allow Google to pay an effective tax rate of just 3%.