Twit of the Year contest - I'm betting on a win for Alastair Campbell

I'd add "Conservative" MP Nicky Morgan to the list. In fact, it seems a shame...

"To think people like you ruled a country..."

In case you're finding it hard to place the quote in the title of this post, it's from...

The extraordinary generosity of our mayor, Sadiq Kahn

The brazen juxtaposition of "I've" and "your" makes it sound...

The National Trust's climbdown on gay badges is a temporary setback for the forces of Progressivism - which never rest, never sleep

'Dame' Helen Ghosh has been stymied in her attempt to punish National Trust volunteers who refuse to wear pro-Gay rainbow lanyards by forbidding them contact with the public. This is very good news. The former civil servant's tenure as director-general of the organisation is due to end soon in any case: she's due to take over as Master of Balliol College next March, where she will no doubt busy herself rooting out anything tainted by custom, tradition or common sense. After all, this is the woman who attempted to ban the word "Easter" from the the annual Cadbury's/National Trust Easter egg race. She can now tinker and busybody away to her heart's content overseeing a vital section of Britain's educational assembly-line, whose main purpose these days appears to be churning out yet more self-righteous fools to further swell the ranks of left-liberal elite social engineers determined to rewire our brains and our instincts...

Diane Abbott - proof that Care in the Community is a bad policy

"Police people"? There's a popular idea on the Left that anyone claiming that Diane Abbott..

Brendan O'Neill: Jeremy Corbyn isn't hard left, and it's the educated middle classes who almost won it for Labour

I've avoided reading too much analysis of the election results since last Friday. Right-of-centre commentators have been all over the place - it was the manifesto, Mrs. May's unappealing personality, too much Brexit, too little Brexit etc. Despite arithmetic, the Left seem convinced that they won the election. Blairites have either cravenly lined up behind the Dear Leader - or have been snapping and snarling at everyone like angry pitbulls who haven't had their dinner. It's all been a bit hysterical and noisy. So I thought I'd leave it for a bit before re-engaging. I have now done so. As so often in recent years, the most interesting thoughts seem have come from Brendan O'Neill, the Spectator contributor and editor of Spiked Online. First, in The Rise of Labour, the Death of Labourism, he argues (convincingly, I think) that Labour owed its surge more to middle-class voters in better-off areas than to its traditional working class base:

Why do young people vote Labour? They've been taught to. And it's going to get worse.

If you're a secondary school pupil, eight out of ten of your teachers vote for left-wing parties. Presumably...

Diane Abbott confirms her status as the Worst.Frontbench.Politician.Ever!

Apart from reminding one of a particularly dim schoolgirl trying to cover up the fact that she hasn't done her homework, Dermot Murnaghan's...

Labour candidate Roger Godsiff is refreshingly aware of his limitations...

Oh go on, Rog - don't be so hard on yourself! And I wish critics would stop being so mean about Jeremy Corbyn. After all, he's been so right about so many things...

Up is Down, Wrong is Right, Ugliness is Beautiful, Hate is Love, Black is White...and Free Speech is Fascist

Members of the Corbyn-supporting Momentum movement/cult here, and the Antifa (Anti-Fascist) movement/cult in America...

Diane Abbott has come bottom of the Maths class. Again. BBC headmistress Jo Coburn is furious.

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I have been saying for years that the Shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott...</div>
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...is undoubtedly the most stupid woman in Britain. I rest my case.<br />
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Just when I thought today couldn't get any better, I happened upon this unrelated tweet:</div>
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Remember - it's our duty to keep laughing at these people.&nbsp;</div>

Labour MP Dawn Butler on PM yesterday, being asked how Labour will make Britain "fairer". Oh dear.

I'll freely admit that, until yesterday...

The Dumbest Tweet of the 2017 election campaign is over before it started - step forward, Labour MP Chuka Umunna

Poor old Chuka's in a right tizz. I think he may need someone to put a blanket over his shoulders, make him a nice cup of tea, and sit with him for a bit. In case you've forgotten the chap, Chuka Umunna was Labour's future once - for all of 30 seconds - before doing a volte-face and declaring that he wouldn't be a candidate in the Labour leadership contest. Presumably he and his other Blairite chums have been busy plotting ways to defenestrate poor old Steptoe and replace him with one of their own in time for the 2020 general election - only for Theresa May to pull the rug out from under them by bringing it forward by three years. And the Blairites just aren't ready. Sickening, I imagine. The Labour Party's resident nightclubbin' metropolitan lounge lizard vented his spleen on Twitter this morning...

A turkey hears that Christmas has been rescheduled...

Considering that the Tories have so far deliberately...

Cultural Marxist mindbenders walk among us, sounding their PC piety klaxons...

I take a week off from the blog and return to find that the country's vast, sinister army of left-liberal social engineers has been hard at work rewiring the national psyche. It seems that, having failed to halt Brexit - and with the Tory lead in the opinion polls hovering between 16% and18% and President Literally Hitler in the White House - they've decided to redouble their thought-policing efforts in those areas (inclusivity, diversity, gender equality etc.) where they're not needed, because those battles have already been won. Still, when your main pleasure in life is signalling how morally superior you are to the vast majority of your countrymen (or countrypersons),  any cause is fair game - even if it's no longer a cause in any meaningful sense of the term.  First, the piety klaxon blared out from the campus of Hull University:

Britain's left-wing comedians quake as they realise "the men are coming up the drive"

Delightful news: the arrogant, lazy bigotry of left-wing metropolitan BBC comics like Marcus Brigstocke and Stewart Lee has led to some members of their audiences outside London booing and walking out of their otherwise rib-tickling stand-up "comedy" gigs, disgusted by the performers' anti-Brexit material. For some reason, the comedians' bewildered bleatings recalled the moment when, during a televised public speech, the vile Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu realised that the vast crowd listening to him in the square below were booing, not cheering, him. But that seemed a bit silly, given that the wretched tyrant in question spent decades murdering and torturing his people, rather than - as in the case of Brigstocke and Lee - using allegedly comic material on a platform provided by left-wing broadcasters to shame, browbeat, bully and embarrass anyone who doesn't share their achingly PC view of the world. So I searched for another analogy...

When "our" side next loses a major vote - let's behave really, really badly!

I'm finding politics rather dispiriting this year. At first I thought it was a natural reaction following the wholly  unexpected triumphs of 2016 - an inevitable period of dullness after the excitement generated by the Brexit vote and the defeat of Hillary Clinton: unconfined joy can only be sustained for so long. But I've recently begun to realise that it's also partly bemusement at having all one's suspicions confirmed. I've spent years raving about the sinister liberal-left establishment which runs this country (and Europe and America), and how, because "it" or "they" have such a firm grip on all of our major institutions, "they" will still be in control - whichever party is in power. Every day and in every way, this wild delusion is turning out to be true. I feel a bit like Mel Gibson's deranged cab-driver in the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory whose paranoid fantasies concerning vast global plots to undermine democracy turn out to be spot on - i.e. he's evidently nuts, but he happens to be right. The same could be said of me. It's disconcerting.

Yes, I know we who constantly complain about the "left-liberal elite" sound bonkers - but we're justified

"YOU'RE NEXT!"

I'm well aware of the danger of designating a disparate group of people as The Enemy, applying a handy, disparaging label to them, and then using it in a lazy, knee-jerk fashion every time something displeasing happens. The ability to instantly identify a standard scapegoat obviates the need for thought or analysis, and allows moaners like me to search out the next issue to blame the left-liberal elite for. Depending on which side of the political fence we're on, we choose different scapegoats, be it The Blacks, The Muslims, The Jews, The Rich, The Bankers, The EU, Little Englanders, Xenophobes, Racists, Social Workers, The Gutter Press, Tory Scum, The BBC, The Establishment, Climate Change Deniers, The Snowflake Generation, Social Justice Warriors, Guardian Readers, Academia, The Unions, The Green Lobby, The Military-Industrial Complex, Hollywood etc. In order to quell this instant pigeonholing tendency...

London's mayor is staging an open-air screening of a French-Iranian film to signal his disapproval of Donald Trump!

Sounds innocent enough, at first glance:

I "follow" the Twitter feed of the virtue-signalling little creep who - thanks to...

I'm pretty sure I heard today's edition of Radio 4's Any Questions 40 years ago

I was reading the Telegraph late this morning, and steadily becoming more depressed. Apparently, British veterans are to be charged with murdering an IRA leader in Northern Ireland 44 years ago. A Royal Marine charged with murdering a Taliban captive will be spending Christmas in jail because his bail hearing has been postponed until the new year. Pilots, aircrew and baggage handlers are staging a strike over Christmas. The worst prison riot for 25 years has taken place in Birmingham, possibly fuelled by drugs and a lack of access to television. Italy is proposing to drop fidelity vows from the marriage contract, because they represent "an outdated and obsolete view of marriage". Queen Mary University of London has removed a foundation stone laid by King Leopold II of Belgium because the Pan African Society said it represented "imperialism"...