Softly-spoken Labour MP Barry Gardiner, who terrorised mainstream media interviewers during the General Election campaign with his pinpoint attacks on their bias and poor journalism and talked at length to the SKWAWKBOX about his status as a reluctant social media phenomenon, has spoken again to this blog on the subject of this week’s Queen’s Speech debates and the ‘mini-revolt’ that many have dubbed a ‘tantrum’ for its apparent petulance and futility.
Gardiner, who will be in Swindon this weekend playing his part in Labour’s ongoing ‘General Election mode’ assault on Tory-held marginals, showed that he doesn’t reserve his ‘stiletto’ treatment only for mainstream interviewers – although he applies his masterly grasp of pointed understatement more when he turns it on errant parliamentary colleagues than he affords miscreant Progress directors:
Gardiner was succinct on the topic of former front-bencher Chuka Umunna’s attempted EU amendment to the Queen’s Speech and those MPs who supported it:
I think this was an occasion when we were able to show how divided the Conservatives were over their pact with DUP and had actually forced the government into a u-turn over paying for abortions.
It was a shame that the focus was taken off that in an unhelpful way.
An ‘unhelpful way’ sums up a self-indulgent attempted amendment that let the Tories largely off a hook of their own making, by giving the right-wing media the chance to pretend the week had been about Labour’s supposed divisions:
It’s desperate nonsense, of course, but Umunna and those who supported his vanity project should face a torrid time from their members at their next CLP meeting for giving the Establishment media even a glimmer of an opportunity to push even such idiocy.
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The establishment’s propaganda machine, that is
Barry Gardiner, one of the most effective Labour MPs we have.
Richard Angell one of the biggest twerps we have.
Reblogged this on elizapdushku's World.
It should be noted that Barry’s and Richard’s comments are from October 2016.
It’s time we had a vote for a new deputy leader and I propose Barry Gardiner for that position.