Labour peer Margaret Hodge agreed with one helluva ahistorical statement from Boris Johnson’s former communications director Guto Harri. It was over the four remaining Tories in the party’s leadership election race – and Jeremy Corbyn.
Tory leadership race: not as ‘dangerous’ as Corbyn?!
On Monday 17 September, Harri told LBC that of the four Tory leadership candidates:
‘Not one of the four on offer is as dangerous to modern Britain as Jeremy Corbyn was.’
Baroness Margaret Hodge agrees with Guto Harri’s claim that any of the Tory leadership candidates would be ‘preferable over a government led by Jeremy Corbyn’. pic.twitter.com/RvB8Ht7Yyc
— LBC (@LBC) September 17, 2024
Specifically, he said:
not one of them is as dangerous to modern Britain as Jeremy Corbyn was.
Naturally, Hodge nodded along in agreement.
Of course, the irony was off the charts level ludicrous. Hodge and Harri seemed to be missing the part where the last candidates standing are effectively the back-up actors for the four horsemen of the Torypocalypse. Obviously, they both represent the worst, most cataclysmically callous dregs of a dangerous far-right Conservative party, and signal the end of days for the fascists we hope will soon sink into eternal political irrelevance, yet have an infuriating way of resurfacing on morning-time TV.
But nothing about this quartet of opportunistic hanger-ons is as dangerous as Jeremy Corbyn? Not according to Hodge or Harri, apparently. Amusingly, it’s another case of Corbyn living rent-free and rattling the establishment long past his own Labour leadership stint. Note, neither whispered a word about Starmer – make of that what you will.
Unsurprisingly, after fourteen years of Tory wreck and ruin, many might beg to differ. Conquest, war, famine, death – for the uninitiated, let’s take a stroll down cunt Cabinet member memory lane, since the leadership election end is nigh.
Could it be Cleverly who conquests?
First up, former Home Office head and one-time foreign secretary James Cleverly.
Maryam Jameela previously succinctly summed up the Braintree MP’s rap-sheet on his rise to fame during Liz Truss’s lofty little out-lettuced lark in Number 10, writing that:
Cleverly has a military background and, according to the site They Work For You, has never voted to allow same-sex marriage, generally voted against laws that promote equal rights, and has consistently voted for the mass surveillance of people’s communications.
She also pointed out for the Canary that the Cleverly’s record on Palestine left a lot to be desired. Specifically, that dark money lobby group Conservative Friends of Israel jetted him off to the genocidal apartheid state three months after he became MP. Of course, that’s why as foreign secretary Cleverly also declared the UK’s “unwavering” support for the genocidal regime, and laid into pro-Palestine protesters for Murdoch rag the Times while home sec.
Did we mention that Cleverly is a member of the secretive hard Brexit European Research Group? Nothing devious or dangerous there then. We all know how well that’s going for the country.
Evidently though, jumping on the Sunak last-ditch sensationalist electioneering stunts hasn’t done the militaristic career MP any favours, as he’s currently coming in third in the current leadership race. Specifically, we mean the Sunak’s ill-thought out national service gambit thrown in at the last election campaign hour. Cleverly got behind this, and now, we’re betting he wishes he hadn’t. Though, the Braintree MP’s hare-brained unpaid fire-fighter or police community service idea came hot on its heels – so maybe we have this and more to (not) look forward to come the next general election.
War-monger Tugendhat to top the poll?
Speaking of war-mongering wankers, we have Tom Tugendhat tying in third place in the Tory leadership race with Cleverly at the latest bout.
For former army officer and security minister Tugendhat’s salt, he’s joined the rancid ranks of Tory right-wingers mooting the option to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Ditching human rights protections is all so very “commonsense Conservative” according to Tugendhat.
He also wants more money for the mass-murdering military-industrial complex – 3% GDP – from 2.3% in 2023.
While security minister, he also snubbed calls from the Electoral Commission to close loopholes allowing other countries to donate to UK political parties.
After the far-right fascist race riots, Tugendhat also turned on just who you might expect from another tosspot Tory. Not the neo-Nazi pogromists – but climate and Palestine protesters – because of course (long eye-roll).
Pestilence plaguing the final rounds with Jenrick in the running
If there’s one remaining candidate that embodies the rot still rife at the heart of the Tory Party, it might just be Robert Jenrick.
In 2020, the then housing secretary was right in the thick of a Tory corruption scandal of his own making. This was over him signing off on ex-Daily Express owner Richard Desmond’s housing project in east London. It had all the sordid elements of the best worst Tory corruption scandals of the past half-decade. Text messages, cash for favours, overruling the local council – you name it.
Not to mention the housing sec might have also pulled a few strings with some local Tory councillors to get his own planning application approved.
However, Jenrick’s take on the homelessness crisis is as vile, and putrid Tory as they come. His parliamentary aide MP Adam Holloway made the despicable widely out-of-touch comments that:
many people choose to be on the street
And the unbelievably incongruous view that:
sleeping rough… is a lot more comfortable than going on exercise when I was in the Army
You’d think a housing secretary might distance himself from controversial codswallop like that. Not Jenrick. Owing to his time as an investigative journalist (apparently), he called his aide’s thinking “sophisticated”. Go figure from a multi-property-owning millionaire though.
Death and decay of the Tory Party as Badenoch beats the odds
The biggest oxymoron of the leadership race? Kemi Badenoch – the former equalities minister.
On everything to anti-racism to LGBTQ+ rights, there could not be a more unfit for office equalities minister if the Tories tried. Although, with this bunch, anything’s possible.
Open anti-feminist? Check. As the Canary’s Steve Topple wrote:
In 2019, Badenoch dismissed the #MeToo movement, saying that:
When I look at a lot of the stuff that you see on social media about how – I think it’s a generational thing as well – younger people look at appropriate behaviour and what is a sexual advance, what is sexual harassment and so on, to me, it’s actually becoming a lot more puritanical than anything I ever saw in my 20s or in my teens.
Viciously racist? That too. As Maryam Jameela wrote for the Canary:
Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, has made a name for herself in the right wing-manufactured culture war by railing against critical race theory. She also attacked journalist Nadine White, who is the first dedicated race correspondent at the Independent.
Big fucking bigoted transphobe? You got it. In fact, this last one has been a particular fixation of Badenoch. A couple of lowlights for instance:
- Penning a letter to the (also transphobic) ECHR on redefining sex under the Equality Act to mean ‘biological sex’ in a bid to strip trans people of protections under the law. While equalities minister we might add.
- Drawing up plans for doing just that to the Equalities Act in order to ban trans women from hospital wards, toilets, changing rooms, sports event etc.
Danger, whoever’s the last Tory leadership race bod standing
Naturally, there’s spades more where all that came from, but you get the gist.
Until the next scandal, one of these torrid Tories will be the party’s wannabe PM. Of course, no one should pay the vehemently Corbyn-smearing, genocidal Israel-supporting Tory peer Margaret Hodge any heed anyway. Ditto the comms director for Boris Johnson for that matter.
The four Tories left don’t pose any danger to Hodge, Harri and their Westminster establishment asses – but it’s clear they’re every bit dangerous to the rest of us. The same as they always have been during the last fourteen years of Tory tyranny and deliberate austerity-driven decay.
Feature image via the Canary
