Labour leadership candidate John McDonnell, when asked what he most regretted about the 1980s, said "not assassinating Margaret Thatcher".
Is this man fit to be a member of the Labour Party, let alone lead it?
I hope his remarks receive the condemnation they deserve from all sensible Labour supporters.
I don't have a problem with his remark. I regret that nobody had the courage to assassinate Gordo way back in 1997.
ReplyDeleteI thought his party had made this sort of remark a hate crime.
ReplyDeleteBut of course, for the left, she isn't female, nor is she elderly and so does not really belong to any of the protected minority groups.
Aaah, but remember, the Left are on the side of the Angels, so nothing they do, including murder, is wrong.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what is the particular part of the brain that leads people to Left wing thinking? It seems like a sickness.
What's truly appalling is that one of the people who nominated him for leader has been given a post under this government. Clear evidence surely of Cameron's unfitness for office?
ReplyDeleteHarman should get the chief opposition whip to suspend the whip from McDonnell, lets remember that Mrs Thatcher had an attempted assanination in 1984 against her.
ReplyDeleteThat Assination attempt resulted in several premature deaths and the incapacitation of people. Norman Tebbits wife suffered horiffic injuries and still suffers from the attempt on their lives through immobility etc.
For an indiviual who is supposed to be a parliamentarian to advocate the death of a former prime minister without trial and on the basis of his narrow political predjudice is dispicable.
Lets remember even for those who do not agree with Thatcherite philosephy she never did what Gordon Brown and New Labour did. Mrs Thatcher always governened in the National Interest.
You do realise, don't you, that he is not standing for Leader of the Conservative Party? Mind you, with these views on Thatcher, he might as well have been at any point in the last 20 years. Come the next contest for that position, she will be a distant memory, and the winner might well be someone who could not vote when she left office. The one after that might very well not have been born in 1990.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you defend about her? Her Single European Act? Her Anglo-Irish Agreement? Her Exchange Rate Mechanism? Her Police and Criminal Evidence Act? Her replacement of O-levels with GSCEs? Her introduction of abortion up to birth, and the moral chaos of the 1980s generally? Her privatisation of British Airways, British Petroleum, and what are now our largely foreign-owned water and power supplies, something unconscionable in any other country?
Do you mean her destruction of the economic basis of paternal authority, initially in working-class families and communities, though it spread like wildfire, exactly as it was intended to do? Her compelling of the State to make gifts of significant capital assets to people who were thus enabled to enter the property market ahead of private tenants who had saved for their deposits, and her accompanying creation of the Housing Benefit racket, which is vastly more expensive than would be the maintenance of a stock of council housing?
Or do you mean her refusal to recognise the Muzorewa Government, because she thought that the Soviet-backed Nkomo would somehow have been better than the Chinese-backed Mugabe, for whom she nevertheless secured a knighthood? Her support for apartheid South Africa, an anti-British revenge republic set up in a former Dominion of the Crown?
The list goes on, and on, and on. No wonder that, as you do not appear to have been told, she ended up having to be removed by her own party. No wonder that the only people with a good word to say about her mercifully live thousands of miles away, in the United States. And no wonder that John McDonnell has been nominated by Frank Field and Kate Hoey.
"sensible Labour supporters"..... I think you will find that most of them gave up years ago. Which is a big part of the reason that politics in this country sunk so low.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope the coalition encourages sensible people back into politics. On all sides of the House.
Not a good week for that particular remark.
ReplyDeletehe got loud applause from ordinary labour supporters Iain. and not one of the other deluded muppets standing next to him uttered a peep of even mild disagreement. of course the milibands being proper scions of the marxist clique probably whole heartedly agree.
ReplyDeleteLabour...wrecking economies and class hatred...it what we do........
I hope so, but given that there was no condemnation of or action against his previous praise of Bobby Sands and the IRA, I wouldn't get your hopes up.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, he previously said: “It’s about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA.”
So his pro-murder stance is consistent.
This excuse for a politician confirms that Labour is motivated by hatred for anyone who dares think differently from them.
ReplyDeleteThe Labour leadership "race" is an affront to serious debate. Two identikit, labour-as-career cyphers, a discredited bagman for a disastrous PM...and now this utter wretch. Jesus!
ReplyDeleteAt first, I thought, "Well, it was probably only a joke."
ReplyDeleteBut then I wondered what might happen if a Tory had said, "I regret not killing Harold Wilson/Tony Blair/Gordon Brown."
There would be outrage. I'd be disgusted. We can't have a potential PM saying his biggest regret was not murdering a rival. That said, if Labour go ahead in their notoriously-unpredictable preference votes and vote him, or Balls, then let them burn in their own folly.
MCDonnell is a piece of shit who does not deserve to breath the same air that normal people do.
ReplyDeleteWinston Churchill once said that he did not know much about economics, but he did know that shooting Montague Norman would have been a good thing.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to you issuing a swift condemnation of the great man.
Is that covered under the various counter-terrorism bills?
ReplyDeleteJust goes to show how tribal Liebour, new and old, actually are. It is precisely because of this fact that Mc Nasty will not be censured. The only good thing is he has about as much chance of leading them as I have...
ReplyDeleteIain, I agree with you about McDonnell. What are your views on the appointment ofLord Browne of Madingley to become a government "Super-Director"?
ReplyDeleteHe made the same JOKE in the warm up period for the Any Question programme from Swansea in May and the Audience reacted with laughter and applause - obviously they have a better sense of humour than the right wing media has today.
ReplyDeleteOh please, save us from the faux outrage of the Tory right.
ReplyDeleteTo describe McDonnell as a 'potential PM', as one of your more demented commenters does, is simply absurd. McDonnell won't get on to the ballot and even if he did he'd come dead last. If Tinky Winky, La-La and Po were standing he'd still get fewer votes than them. He's an inconsequential non-entity of a backbencher on an ego trip.
Ignore him and in a few weeks he'll have gone away.
I think it was meant as a joke, in any case it was in exceptionally poor taste. Speaking as a Labour activist there are some in the Conservative Party I have issues with, inc Margaret Thatcher in some respects, but wouldn't make any such jokes out of common decency
ReplyDeleteIt says a lot about the GMB that he remarks were greeted with strong and enthusiastic applause.
ReplyDeleteI now beleve McDonell would be an excellent header of the Labour Party. These remarks will live with him till the end of his days and the press will never let him forget them. The next election would make Michael Foot's humiliation in 1983 seem like a marvellous victory and that's even after factoring in the fact that the Coaltion will have to make some very unpleaaant decisions in the next five years.
If he had been a Councillor he would be in front of the standards panel. There must be the same thing for MP throw him out of parlament
ReplyDeleteCompare and contrast the outrage when (IIRC) Jeremy Clarkson called Gordon Brown "one eyed".
ReplyDeleteneedless to say, no mention of it that I can find on the Al Jabeeba website.
ReplyDeleteHe must be wondering what he has to do to get the Labour Party to take him as seriously as you do.
ReplyDelete@David Lindsay
ReplyDeleteIdiot
Other lefties here.
Sure make crass jokes, the reason that people get especially het up about it is that your stalinist party are the first to crucify anyone who steps out of line in terms of comments about your protected groups.
The faux outrage and demonisation of Thatcher is laughable. Yes she made loads of mistakes, yes she got loads of things right.
The utter carnage left by that Labour government was a nightmare for anyone to have sorted out.
Oh for what its worth I was a factory shop steward during the late 70's, but then I lived through Thatcher's era and experienced it first hand, unlike most of you pontifacting layabouts.
Remind me again how many female/gay/jewish leaders Labour has had
John:
ReplyDeleteThe BBC do mention it in a deep & dark basement on their website. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10257155.stm
Also look at the way the BBC's Political Correspondent Ross Hawkins tries to excuse him. Sickening (although it may have been a selective quote by the BBC website's editor).
For my take on this, see: http://walkerramblings.blogspot.com/2010/06/thatcher-hatred.html
"I hope his remarks receive the condemnation they deserve from all sensible Labour supporters."
ReplyDeleteWhere to start, eh?
Hope springs eternal, I suppose, but you seem to think there might be 'sensible' Labour supporters? Why? Are not feeling very well or something?
Nobody sensible can possibly associate themselves with Labour, surely? Witness David Lindsay and his serial repeat posts all over the blogosphere. There are several demented others of that ilk as we all know - but, 'sensible'?
Please seek medical help, Iain.
Unwise comments really. Nevertheless he has little to lose (no real chance of getting on the Labour ballot paper) and he pretty well somes up the way many in the Labour heartlands still feel about Thatcher; Pure hatred.
ReplyDeleteAs for the 'what if we said it about Blair or Brown?' Utter nonsense. The Tory heartlands never did anywhere near as badly because of them as Labour voting areas did under Thatcher.
But if you do want to have a street party when one of them snuffs it fair enough ;)
F****** funny.
ReplyDeleteGiven his support for the IRA his desire for the assassination of Margaret Thatcher is entirely consistent. No doubt he was disappointed when she was not murdered in October 1984.
ReplyDeleteThat his "joke" gets applause from Labour Party members, many of whom wet their knickers in excitement in their youth thinking about all the tens of millions starving to death under the Mao or in the death camps of the Khmer Rouge is hardly a surprise.
And I thought that the right were against political correctness?
ReplyDeleteDrop the faux outrage, children.
And David Lindsay @4:33pm, thanks for reminding us all that every politicians' record is going to be a very mixed bag.
I dunno, humourless righties...
ReplyDeleteThe Left are filth, a really horrible lot.
ReplyDeleteAnd is it just me or have the Labour party already taken on an air of redundancy? They now appear so out of date, so anachronistic in modern Britain.
Their defeat was much deserved and we all hope they remain in opposition for the next 20 years (or more).
Funny much?
ReplyDeleteDavid Lindsay, you are an odious little creep and not fit to wipe the Lady's boots.
ReplyDeleteIain said to the great unwashed "I hope his remarks receive the condemnation they deserve from all sensible Labour supporters."
ReplyDeleteReally? All I hear is silence.
Very droll. As he has resigned himself to having missed his chance, why doesn't he have a pop at Blair? Far more deserving. Or is that 'different' in some sort of way?
ReplyDeleteHe is fit to be a member of the Labour Party, but not of a civilised community. Remember that Margaret Thatcher only stood in the leadership election because the Daily Mirror (pretty much an organ of the Labour Government) character assassinated Sir Keith Joseph by inventing a quote to imply that he was in favour of compulsory sterilisation (very clever because the phoney quote was that a certain girl might be sterilised for her own protection) so some people thought he had actually said it and the Daily Mirror was merely taking it out of context to traduce him. Character assassination is nastier than the physical version.
ReplyDeleteDavid Lindsey's serial disregard of truth in his list of "facts" suggests that he is a Labour supporter.
The Commies here believe that you can say or do anything to someone who disagrees with them. But raise an eyebrow at one of their own and they wet their knickers.
ReplyDeleteI refer you to my initial post. You lot established the Orwellian thought crime in legislation in your attempt to block free speech.
It's the staggering hypocrisy that nauseates non-Commies.
A right-wing Tory MP made a joke today about assassinating Harriet Harman.
ReplyDeleteI made that up actually - but I would hazard a guess that the reaction from the BBC and other media would have been just slightly different compared to the way McDonnell's joke was dealt with.
Of course a Labour candidate from Northumberland said something similar a few months ago when he said he hoped Thatcher wouldn't recover from a hospital visit. I don't know if that candidate is now an MP or not.
The statue should be moved out of the Houses of Parliament. Only statues of dead PMs are allowed.
ReplyDeleteMove the statue to Grantham Town Hall.The American tourists can look at it there.
What goes around, comes around.
ReplyDeleteWhy doesn't Gisela Stuart stand for leader and sort these nutters out?
ReplyDeleteWith the best general election result for labour, she could show the others how it's done.
John, I suppose a positive interpretation of the BBC's lack of coverage for McDonnell's "gaffe" is that he is too minor to bother reporting. However, I suspect you are right and this is being dismissed as a minor mistake within BBC reporter circles whereas Tory MP "mistakes" are given the fullest possible exposure.
ReplyDeleteMcDonnell has a long track-record of support for the IRA war machine, notable praising Bobby Sands at every opportunity and in May 2003 declaring that "it's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA."
Against this background, advocating the assasination of former Prime Ministers is tame stuff.
The real campaign (eg, the one between Messrs Millibland and Balls) is going to be a mixture of dull, cynical and depressing. Ed Balls is a joke, yet a joke that may well become leader, judging from the way things are going. Good news for Cleggameron, who are going to make easy meat of Balls at Questions.
@David Lindsay - "What do you defend about her? Her Single European Act? Her Anglo-Irish Agreement? Her Exchange Rate Mechanism? Her Police and Criminal Evidence Act? Her replacement of O-levels with GSCEs? Her introduction of abortion up to birth, and the moral chaos of the 1980s generally? Her privatisation of British Airways, British Petroleum, and what are now our largely foreign-owned water and power supplies, something unconscionable in any other country?"
ReplyDeleteAll of you slagging off David - do you deny any of the above? I doubt that you can, as they are all true.
Maggie had her positives, but those Tories who see her through rose-tinted spectacles as a serial winner of elections (something that, like Blair, she only managed because of a very weak opposition) have a false view of her merits. She was in many ways destructive and undermining of both Britain and Britishness. Her willingness to sell of UK assets at knock-down prices to foreigners so long as some merchant banker chums got extra bonuses is the most signal of these anti-patriotic acts. Most of the privatisations were sold off at ridiculously low prices and the punters who snapped the shares did not keep them - as in Yeltsin's Russia, which followed the model - they were mass-purchased by oligarchs at bargain basement prices.
Yep, it has my condemnation. I don't do sick humour.
ReplyDeleteWhat an absolute asshole.
ReplyDeleteI hope someone has the opportunity and courage to tell him to his face what an awful shite he is who isn't fit to lick Mrs T's bootstraps.
If you lived and worked in the towns and villages of Britains industrial heartlands during Thatcher's tenure.
ReplyDeleteWatching helplessly as your livelihood and way of life was cruelly snatched away from you. The gap between rich and poor increasing at a rate of knots and child poverty rising to more than double than what it was.
Then I think you'd find the remark too good for her.
"If you lived and worked in the towns and villages of Britain's industrial heartlands...Watching helplessly as your livelihood and way of life was cruelly snatched away from you....Then I think you'd find the remark too good for her."
ReplyDeleteI agree, she should at the very least be tortured to death for not being a Socialist.
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ReplyDelete@ Thespian
ReplyDeleteSo how do you feel about the gap between rich and poor now? What's your considered view of the child poverty figures published this year - after thirteen years of a Labour government?
And what were these industries that you speak lovingly of? Anything like the unspeakably awful British Leyland or, worse, the lunatic miners? Only Scargill and his demented followers could have been so stupid as to strike when they did. "Never strike with the sun on your back", eh? And yet that's exactly what they did. Scargill's hubris directly led to the closure of the pits. But he didn't have to pick up the pieces did he - and nor did the likes of McDonnell.
Any parallels with British Airways now? Where's Tony Woodley, exactly? On his hols in Cyprus, that's where. Nice villa, too, none of this two star bed-and-breakfast stuff for him. Nothing's too good for the workers, after all.
Meanwhile his fellow trade unionists are spending their holidays on the picket lines at Heathrow, the poor deluded fools.
Nobody has a right to a 'way of life', least of all parasites such as Woodley.
McDonnell should be held up as an extreme element of New Labour thinking. It is OK to say something in jest, no matter how ludicrous, if it generates applause. It is but the uglier side of political spin. We can see through this one, but not as easily see through
ReplyDelete1. "Labour Investment v. Tory Cuts"
2. "Beyond boom and bust"
3. Investment with no monetary returns funded through the deficit.
4. Daily government initiatives based on politically funded "research" that any objective researcher would throw in the waste bin.(And were, mostly binned once they had filled the news bulletins for a day).
Well said, Unsworth. It never ceases to amaze me how these lefties and bleeding heart liberals blame Lady T for everything from child poverty to crimeyet patently deny the untold damage done by 13 years of Labour.
ReplyDeleteIf I ever meet him I will ask him to repeat his remarks to my face. If he does so he may well get a short practical lesson in violence, we shall see if he enjoys it then.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in Britain's industrial heartland. The Wilson governments destroyed one of our core industries and decimated the other two - Blair/Brown finished them off. I don't live there now because when I finished my post-graduate course under a Labour government the nearest job I could apply for was 100 miles away.
ReplyDeleteThespian should be advised act out his plays where the audience does not mind too much about reality.
Apparently he has now stood down as a candidate. No mention on the BBC of the reasons why he stood down. And I have not yet heard any of his fellow Labour MPs disown him.
ReplyDeleteHis comments clearly show that comic remarks are best left to comedians - otherwise they go wrong.
ReplyDelete