Boris Hasn't Got the Trots
Over at Harry's Place and elsewhere on the left-wing blogosphere they are hyperventilating about the appointment of Munira Mirza, who has been hired by Boris to be his race relations adviser, to the consternation of many on both the left and the right. Some on the left claimed she was a member or a former member of the RCP sect. As did some on the right.
So Guido asked Munira -
So Guido asked Munira -
"Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party?"
She quickly pointed out to Guido "I think the RCP was disbanded while I was still at school. I wasn't a member." Doh!
Guido has just got off the phone with Joe Derrett, who works in the Mayor's press office - for now - he has for some years handled press requests for interviews with the Mayor. Guido asked him if he was "surprised to still have a job?" "Why?" he said defensively. "Aren't you the former London Regional Labour Party Press Officer?" "Errr, I've got to go to a meeting." he claimed. Somehow Guido suspects Joe won't be in tune with the new order at City Hall for long...
34 comments:
Should definitely have labeled her under "Totty Watch".
Boris is a communist purpose puppet anyway, what difference does it make?
Deffo totty watch, she is an absolute babe.
Ooh! Guido! Bill Jones is out to get you - http://skipper59.blogspot.com/ - we should all resist the temptation to visit Jone's shit blog and leave litter (that really pisses him off). He really is a grade one world class pompous cunt.
I'll cure her
I know Munira, as it happens. She's not ex-RCP, she's Manifesto Club / Institute of Ideas. IoI was set up by a lot of ex-Living Marxism people who are ex-RCP, but is not really left or right-wing. Just very libertarian. And attracts more than a few tories and Lib Dems, especially at their events.
The last one I went to they had someone who said he was a political blogger talking about freedom of speech, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't a communist.
defection alert on pb.com. ex-blairite minister
Guido still at large then?
[hic!]
Excellent! :)
I would have appointed her on the spot to do whatever job she'd care to nominate. Shallow, moi?
"I think the RCP was disbanded while I was still at school. I wasn't a member."
A Clinton-Blair kind of answer. If she is working for the-devious-entryist-crypto-Trot-entity-once-known-as -the-RCP, she's hardly going to admit it, is she?
"Mirza’s appointment will also be viewed as an attempt to neutralise any accusations that Johnson is racist"
NOT granted on merit then job a PR stunt so buffoon Boris does't look racist!
when does the fucking madness end?
Boris has found his Jasper!
Completely off topic but I just saw Naomi Campbell coming out of Downing St as Sky were reporting outside. John Craig got an 'impromptu interview. Said she had met Gordon and Sarah to talk about a charity.
Is this the same Naomi Campbell who was once charged with second degree assault in the US for hitting her assistant with a mobile phone?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4862634.stm
Naomi and Gordon clearly have many issues in common they would have had to discuss.
Were these people who claim Munira Mirza belongs to the Revolutionary Communist Party told it was so by Elvis Presley when they met him on the moon? I have followed a bunch of links in the various articles claiming that Boris's latest bit of totty is really a trotty, and I can't find a shred of evidence for it. She is a libertarian, like most young Tories, and like the Blond One himself.
I think Boris's detractors just can't get their bird brains round the fact that he isn't a frothing racist, nutter, buffoon, crackpot, or anything else they have convinced themselves that he is. So when he appoints a very pretty, smart young muslim girl to a senior role, they make up a story that she is a commie. Just watch as the stories get madder and madder.
Well I'd rather wake in the morning with belly full of her bum than Lee Jaspers!
Boris may not have the Trots, but instead he's filling City Hall up with old Tory cronies from the Dame Shirley Porter era at Westminster Council, as detailed in the latest Eye. Still, I suppose this could be a step forward in obtaining value for money - some of Ken's grant dosh merely ended up in the hands of crack-smoking crooks, this time round the Mayor's largesse could actually buy something useful - votes.
Will Boss Bozza be joining Boss Tweed in the Tammany Hall of Fame?
Having left wing thoughts is a perfectly natural part of puberty - its the clowns who don't grow out of them that have caused the damage.
Well done Guido. I got saddled with the same a few years back - for the same offence and it's a bummer but well, guilty as charged really. If your house is big then you should be able to get in the garden a bit. Huzzah - well done buddy, close shave that. I try and blag that I'm an ecomentalist, carbon footprint etc etc which I guess I am really.
Why are mayoral race advisors never white? Aren't we a race, too?
She's not telling the whole truth, IIRC the RCP disbanded in 98 (officially, some say 97 in reality). As Munira is older than me and I had left school by then it is possible that she could still have joined them. Having said that I was on the fringes and don't remember her.
Regardless the RCP disbanded in name only, LM dragged on for a few sorry years before mutating into Spiked while many front organisations remain active, some to this day, and even more were created.
Sockpuppet at 3.02pm states that Mirza is from the 'Institute of Ideas'.
This from the Institute of Ideas' own website:
"Since 2000, the IoI has created a forum for intelligent and lively public debate of complex social issues. The Institute of Ideas grew out of three years of highly successful events organised by LM (formerly Living Marxism) magazine."
"Regardless the RCP disbanded in name only, LM dragged on for a few sorry years before mutating into Spiked"
maybe, but with the possible exceptions of Mick Hume and Brendan O'Neill (and possibly even including them) you'll spend a long time in the Spiked office looking for a communist.
as I wrote, in fact: IoI was set up by a lot of ex-Living Marxism people who are ex-RCP, but is not really left or right-wing.
Perhaps I should have added 'any more' to make it clearer. The main 'ideology' as much as they have one, is libertarianism, be it left or right-wing based.
Don't worry! As long as you're a relative of Boris, a friend at Oxford, a Telegraph colleague or gave 20K to his election campaign, then you'll be fine!
Sorry to allow reality to intrude.
Guido and some of the commentators are speculating about Munira Mirza's suitablity or otherwise to be Boris's race relations adviser.
But, according to the City Hall press release, she is the new Director of Policy for Arts, Culture and the Creative Industries. In other words, nothing to do with the race relations post, which has yet to be made.
As for the mad Trot accusation, sounds like sour grapes. Everything I've read by her sounds like common sense.
The RCP certainly does still exist. They dropped the name, but the organisation stayed in place.
The RCP isn't "Communist" in a traditional Trot sense. They are broadly libertarian, in termsof their substantive views.
Underlying everything they do is a the belief that, before we can start talking about socialism and class politics, we must first revitalise our political culture. They think that politics has lost confidence, been paralysed by "the politics of fear" that we need to oppose the "risk obsessed culture" and reclaim "human agency" and so on.
What is wrong with the RCP is as follows.
1. They're a cult. Ask anybody who has had anything to do with them. In particular, ask people in organisations which the RCP have tried to take over...
2. They're professional controversialists. That is great if you're organising a debate, or trying to fill the pages of the Speccie, but you CAN'T do it if you're trying to run a mass appeal political party. It makes you look like a weirdo.
3. Their arguments are disappointingly predictable and boring. They all write the same way. It is dull dull dull.
Why should I care about this? After all, I vote Labour. I should be happy to see the Tories making a mistake.
Basically, I like socially liberal Tories. I much prefer them to the old moral majoritarian types. And I prefer genuine socially liberal Tories to some weird ex-Marxist cult. Socially liberal Tories will potentially end up associated with a group which has LOTS of skeletons in its closets.
As for Munira. I have met her a few times. I think she's great. I think she is probably just the person to sweep away the nasty unrepresentative sectarian groups that Ken spent 8 years building up. This needs to be done. I applaud it.
I also think it is possible that she will now have - or shortly will - make a clean break with the RCP/Manifesto Club/Institute of Ideas lot. She certainly should. She's graduated into mainstream politics. She should leave the RCP behind.
The world is full of great people who started in extreme groups and ended up ploughing their own furrow: the Hitchens brothers and Andrew Marr for example. I really hope Munira will do the same, now she's hit the big time.
If she doesn't, then I think you guys have a problem.
"Mirza’s appointment will also be viewed as an attempt to neutralise any accusations that Johnson is racist"
Of course it will be, 'cos the race-obsessed lefties can't see a brown or black person appointed to anything without assuming their colour is 'sending a message' rather than just something they happen to have about their person.
anonymous @3:53
You're in a like case. The lovely Munira is an expert on museums and things; just because of her colour it doesn't mean 'cultural adviser' is code for 'giving the mayor an in on the habits and communal politics of wogs'. What a nice change from the Livingstone administration.
David T,
1. They're a cult. Ask anybody who has had anything to do with them.
I never knew any of them in the RCP days but I've had dealings with, and have a couple of friends in, Spiked and the IoI and - beyond the fact that the older members share a political outlook - 'cult' is unfair. I used to - and still do when I have time - go to some of their events and it's basically a talking shop / social meet with booze. Usually the majority of the evening is chatting about recent political events, a good debate over a few jars and a catch up with people you haven't seen for a couple of months. If that's a 'cult' then so's my bloody local.
I can't talk about what used to happen, but that's what happens now. Were you thinking of something specific?
"The RCP isn't "Communist" in a traditional Trot sense. They are broadly libertarian, in termsof their substantive views."
In other words, cunts!
I used to - and still do when I have time - go to some of their events and it's basically a talking shop / social meet with booze. Usually the majority of the evening is chatting about recent political events, a good debate over a few jars and a catch up with people you haven't seen for a couple of months. If that's a 'cult' then so's my bloody local.
It's odd then they all follow the same ideological line. The names change, the opinions don't. Even the prose is uncannily similar. If they're just a bunch of drinking mates, you'd expect some divergence of opinion and disagreement. It isn't there: when Frank Furedi changes his mind on something, they all follow.
I have come across the Furedi crowd - and there are some good people amongst them. "They" do have a slighly cultish feel - all that remains of the Marxist Leninism is their entryism and sense of being a tight-knit vanguard - transformed into something chic, gung-ho about progress and unashamedly intellectual. I have no doubt that Spiked, IoI and the Manifesto Club are all in a sense fronts for an organisation. Difficult to place on a standard political spectrum, but if I had to I'd say they were right-wing libertarians. Much too right wing for me, but perfect for Boris I guess.
The LM cult and its various front organisations is not ex-Marxist it is still very much Marxist.
Their so-called libertarianism is all about destroying those remaining conservative values that they see as obstacles to the triumph of their dialectical materialist world view.
None of them are to be trusted.
Have any publishers been brave enough to put out a half-decent book about how these various species of Marx-influenced groups transformed their appearance in the wake of the Cold War's curiously-sudden end?
R
Guido is boring. It doesn't matter to him that "BJ" doesn't have the first idea how to do this job, merely that it is "fashionable."
Very boring person Guido turned out to be.
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