Former Labour MP ships his embarrassment from Westminster to Brighton – and provides fodder for hilarity
Opinion
Dudley North ‘quitter’ MP Ian Austin is a die-hard, some would say obsessive, Corbyn-hater. So much so that he couldn’t resist using a debate to hold the Tories to account over their contempt for law as an opportunity for yet another dreary rant against the Labour leader – earning the ‘disgrace’ the obvious and unalloyed contempt of the Labour backbenchers around him.
So it was no great surprise when he was spotted lurking around Labour’s conference venue in Brighton on his weekend off – 180 or so miles from his West Midlands home patch.
Austin, it turned out, was planning a stunt – touting his sad and unfathomably dull new venture he has titled ‘Mainstream’. Not a political party, you understand – but a ‘cross-party campaign’ and newly-incorporated limited company MTCAE Ltd (according to the campaign’s privacy policy), which seems to consist of Austin and a single director named Benjamin Tait.
Typically dire, Austin eventually posed for a picture in front of a mobile billboard he or his minions were dragging up and down Brighton seafront with his monotonous message:
But one person’s self-embarrassment is another’s opportunity – and Labour-supporting Twitter activist ‘The Agitator‘ quickly realised Austin had set himself up for the most excruciating ‘ownage’.
Holding a sign or appearing in front of a billboard is a ‘Thick of it’-level political mistake for an MP – because the technically-adept can quickly make that sign or billboard say anything s/he wants. So Mr Austin’s Corbyn-obsession was quickly transformed into – well, a celebration of ‘The Absolute Boy’ and his party, to hilarious effect:
If Corbyn-hating MPs believe in hell, their image of it might very well look something like the moment of genius above.
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Bottom feeder beached in Brighton,
Can some clever person check to insure that he didn’t claim ‘EXPENSES’ for the trip? Speaking for the populace of my home town, we have enough sh*t on the pavements as it is.
J
Why is Ian Austin in Brighton?. Few if any have any interest in listening to his repetitive and frequently nasty monologues
He is not a member or supporter of the party and our debates fringe and social events are nothing to do with him.
He made a very good living out of us for a very long time and in the end jumped off the gravy train before he was pushed. However although he departed the party in a blaze of publicity he lacked the integrity to resign his seat and trigger a by election.
The result is the labour voting electorate in Dudley North are lumbered with this “independent” until the next election by which time I have no doubt he will have landed himself another sinecure elsewhere. This des not bother me in the slightest. I don’t care which new gravy train he jumps on – I just want to see the back of him.
meh would be a more succinct title for this ‘initiative’
I just did a search to ascertain if any of the press were reporting this stunt (and didn’t find anything) and came across the following ‘article’ from April of last year with the following headline and sub-headline:
CORBYN’S SHAME Tearful Labour MPs shame Jeremy Corbyn as they reveal extent of sick online abuse they get as party’s anti-Semitic problem exposed
Jewish MPs revealed torrent of abuse they have received during heated debate in Parliament
And needless to say, they repeat the mantra that JC isn’t doing anything about it and castigate him for not taking action etc, etc. I mean we all know what their agenda is, but if they were receiving all the anti-semitic abuse they claim they were, then given that racism is a criminal offence, then the obvious thing for them to do is to report it to the police. Interestinly enough, in the Tory Party’s Code of Conduct (which DOESN’T apply to members, only Tory politicians) it says the following:
‘Criminal behaviour should be dealt with by the police. Any confidential hotline should be manned by a solicitor who can tell the caller whether their complaint falls into this category. If so, the party should have no further dealings in the matter.’
Anyway, here’s a link to the …. er…. Sun article, in which it just happens to say at one point that ‘Four people have been convicted since 2013 for anti-Semitic abuse and harassment towards Ms Berger’, but needless to say, neither Berger OR the Sun points out that none of them were LP members. And I think we can safely assume that those who posted actual anti-semitic or abusive comments AND used the hashtag JC4PM (as she claims) WEREN’T really LP members OR JC supporters. Entirely the opposite!
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6076270/jeremy-corbyn-anti-semitism-house-of-commons-debate/
There’s a number of stories rolled into one in the following Electronic Intifada article, but get this one:
Sam Knights, a campaigner with the climate action group Extinction Rebellion, also revealed Thursday that British police have banned him from attending the Labour Party conference, despite being an elected delegate:
The police have decided to ban me from the Labour Party Conference, despite the fact I am an elected delegate.
I suspect this is because of my work with Extinction Rebellion. If so, it has worrying implications for democracy and the policing of peaceful protest.
(Ends)
How on earth can the police ban someone from attending a Labour Party conference! And given what he says, the police obviously didn’t give him an explanation for why they were banning him, and I can only assume that he would have asked them why AND that they refused to tell him.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/uk-blocks-visit-bds-co-founder-omar-barghouti
And then there’s this one in the Sun (which I just came across again, and was no doubt widely reported), and is so far-fetched it’s obviously complete B/S:
‘HOPE YOUR BABY DIES’ Tory MP’s pregnant wife breaks down in tears at vile threats from Corbynista trolls
The mum-to-be became the victim of an online hate campaign after her husband clashed with the Labour leader in the House of Commons
THE PREGNANT wife of a Tory MP was reduced to tears by vile threats from Corbynista trolls with one telling her “hope your baby dies”.
(Ends)
And yet again the message(s) oh-so conveniently carried the JC4PM hashtag! Funny isn’t it how there’s all these JC supporters doing everything they can to sabotage Jeremy’s chances of winning a GE and forming a goverment! Anyway, the article is from December 2017, and at one point it says: ‘The MP also received death threats, which the Mail on Sunday reports are now the subject of a Met Police investigation.’ Now although they don’t name the MP (to ‘protect his family from further abuse’), you can be absolutely certain that had the police caught the person who made the (alledged) death threat – and ESPECIALLY if they were a LP member – it would have been front-page headline news right across the MSM, but that HASN’T happened, and I have little doubt that it’s ALL fabrication, including the bit about it being subject to a Met Police investigation. And THAT’S why we’ve heard no more about it! And as if anyone would think to try and find the MP’s wife’s Facebook page and then, having done so and learnt that she was pregnant, then post a comment to her saying that I “hope your baby dies”. It’s just TOO absurd and ludicrous for words! Oh right, and he/they also drag Momentum into it:
He also blamed left-wing pressure group Momentum – which has threatened moderate MPs who fail to back Corbyn – for escalating the abuse.
He told the Mail on Sunday: “The Momentum hate mob saw it as a green light. Mr Corbyn must stop pretending he has no responsibility for this menace.
(Ends)
Yes, it’s all carefully crafted by black propagandists!
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5156813/tory-mps-pregnant-wife-breaks-down-in-tears-at-vile-threats-from-corbynista-trolls/
As for not mentioning the MPs name, so as to “protect his family from further abuse”, they obviously decided on this for melodramatic purposes AND did so knowing that all anyone had to do to find out his name was do a search for articles that covered the initial ageist heckling, as I just did, and learnt who he was in the space of about thirty seconds (in a Daily Mirror article).
If it wasn’t so serious, it would be totally laughable, but then again, you can be absolutely certain that THEY *were* laughing their heads off about their despicable concoction!
And THIS is well worth reading (if you haven’t done so before
https://medium.com/@pitt_bob/has-the-labour-left-subjected-luciana-berger-to-hatespeak-and-death-threats-146598226313
Did I just spot the initials BDS at the bottom? We might be being misdirected here. ☮️
Watch out for that new slogan ‘unfit’ u have heard it used twice in the past week. Jo Swansong said Mps see him as unfit. And on podcast ‘Talking Politics’ last week a commentator said the reason we are having prologuement is because Corbyn is seen as unfit to be PM.
What does it mean? And if one’s only argument against Someone is that “others see them as unfit”, well, ain’t that pretty much beyond the bottom of the barrel in terms of actual reasons?
Oh and yes… Austin is a cunt
Bay whitaker……….. The only reason we have a suspension of parliament is because we have no written constitution and archaic Royal prerogative used for the benifit of the establishment and authoritarian unelected regimes to impose draconian laws at will.And the big question is what are the Labour party going to do about it if we are elected, I suspect don’t rock the boat will be adopted.!
That type of propoganda doesn’t do anything for democracy,and its a shame on all of us that austin berger and all of the others were not evicted from the Labour party.We have allowed them to peddle poison and they carry on regardless helped by a compliant media and supported from within the Labour party ….Who would believe it?
Who’s ‘we’ Joseph? And describing the corporate media – along with the BBC – as compliant (in the smear campaign) is an understatement if ever there was one. THEY have been totally complicit in the black op to sabotage JC’s leadership and demonise Him and the left.
And could you explain why it’s a shame “on all of us” that Austin and Berger et al weren’t evicted from the Labour Party. And if you don’t mind me saying so, just because we can’t prevent them from peddling their poisonous propaganda, it doesn’t follow that we ‘allowed’ them to do so. Millions of us couldn’t prevent Blair and the Establishment from invading Iraq, for example, but that hardly means that we allowed it.
Allan We the membership are the Labour party and we shoulder some of the responsibility for those that represent us Thats collective responsibility whether we voted for the bergers the Watson’s and all our party.The same way we blame The Torys for the government we have…simple really!
Afterthought: And whilst most of us on the left may know that Austin and Berger and Co and the MSM and the Tories and the LibDem leadership and the JLM etc are all complicit in dissembling falsehoods about Jeremy and the left, and that all their condemnation and outrage is phony and contrived, millions of people out there DON’T, and they don’t have the faintest clue that they are being deceived and duped and manipulated Big Time.
Footnote: And it’s more than a little interesting that Jeremy didn’t know anything about the proposition to abolish the position of deputy leader until it all blew up. In other words, Jon Lansman didn’t consult Jeremy about it and kept it from him, and if that IS the case, then I have no doubt that Lansman and his fellow conspirators planned it that way, because on the one hand they knew that it was highly unlikely that he would have been agreeable, and on the other hand he/they wanted it all over the media knowing that Jeremy would then ask Lansman to withdraw it, by which time one lot of damage had been done, and then a second lot of damage done amongst a section of the membership by Jeremy asking Lansman to withdraw it, and leave Tom Watson in place. And re the latter, first you have tens of thousands of members on the left buzzing on the possibility of getting shod of Watson, and then they crash back down to earth when Jeremy asks for the motion to be withdrawn, and then many members feel anger towards him for doing so. And the whole episode also over-shadows the conference itself JUST as its starting.
Clever stuff, and Lansman and Co probably had it all planned and worked out since months ago!
NB It would be more than a little interesting to ascertain if a number of Blairites on the NEC supported the motion!!!
Hodge: “I’m not giving up until Corbyn ceases to be leader”
Hmm, a right little hate-fest by a bunch of fascist sociopaths! But the bit that particularly amused me was the following:
Hodge had no warm words for the leadership, claiming the leadership are “dishonest” in their claims of having a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism.
And THIS from the woman who submitted 200 claims of anti-semitism to the NEC, which turned out to involve 111 people, only 20 of whom were LP members. The NEC should of course have asked her to explain how she came to identify 91 of the them as LP members when they WEREN’T LP members, and especially in view of the fact that the MSM (and no doubt the Jewish newspapers) ran the ‘200’ story, none of whom (as far as I’m aware) followed up when it was determined that only 20 of them were LP members.
And needless to say, it was HER that was being dishonest and lying through her teeth – as with her fellow saboteurs – about the leadership being dishonest. Malignant and demonic is the only way to describe what they are, and even MORE so the Jews amongst them – along with the Jewish newspapers and the JLM and the LFI etc – who don’t give a damn about the worry and concern they are causing to tens of thousands of their fellow Jews in their quest to destroy Jeremy’s leadership and, as such, the possibility of him winning a GE and forming a government. Despicable beyond words!
Ha! Give it your best shot! Watcha got left, you tiresome, malignant old hag?