Semi-Partisan Politics

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He who lives by the sword dies by the sword

Well, well, well.

Once again, leftists are reminded that the revolution always eats its own:

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign has demanded an apology from Owen Smith after the challenger apparently described his rival as a “lunatic”.

Corbyn’s team reacted with anger over claims that Smith, a shadow Cabinet minister until just weeks ago, used the term about his former boss at a rally in London last night.

The Labour leader, who has himself faced an onslaught of criticism overnight because of his controversial video on a “ram-packed” Virgin Train service, said Smith’s language had descended into “personal abuse”. This morning Smith issued a partial apology.

[..] “And what you won’t get from me, is some, you know, lunatic at the top of the Labour Party, you’ll have someone who tries to form a coherent narrative about what’s wrong with Britain,” it is claimed Smith said.

A spokesperson for the Jeremy for Labour campaign, today said: “Owen Smith has degraded this contest by descending into personal abuse. He should apologise to people suffering with mental illness, many of whom would have been dismayed and upset to to hear such offensive language used in public by a Labour politician.

“He should also withdraw his remark, and spend time with people suffering from mental health problems to develop some sensitivity in his use of language. This is simply not the language that someone standing to lead our party should use, and it injects an ugly tone into this contest that no Labour member wants to see.”

Smith’s intervention also prompted dismay from the Labour Campaign for Mental Health. In a statement posted on Facebook today the group said: “While we tend not to comment on the leadership contest, we were saddened to see that the term ‘lunatic’, a term with a long history of abuse toward those with mental illness, has been used in this contest as a term of derision against a colleague. We, as a party, should be fighting to end the stigma and support those in our community with mental health issues, and not use these cruel, oppressive names to insult opponents.”

One probably shouldn’t gloat at Owen Smith’s misfortune – but let’s indulge ourselves just this once. Because nothing restores the conservative soul more than watching preening, virtue-signalling Social Justice Warriors self detonate on the very same verbal land mines they themselves have laid across our political and cultural discourse.

Does anybody seriously think that people suffering with mental illness are in anguish today because of Smith’s remarks? Is anyone at this moment penning an angry letter declaring “On behalf of lunatics everywhere I am appalled by Owen Smith’s cavalier appropriation of the term ‘lunatic’ and his lazy attempts to describe the state of madness while making a political point”? Of course not.

But this is the rod which the preening social justice Left have made for their own backs. They have weaponised language to such an extent that even normal, everyday expressions are loaded with dynamite – not because their use actually “harms” the so-called victim group in question (lunatics, in this case) but because it offends other professional offence-seekers on the Left, parasitical people who gain power and social status within their social circle by pointing out and loudly criticising the supposed intolerance of others.

And you have to hand it to the Corbyn campaign – they responded magnificently to Calamity Owen’s latest gaffe, immediately portraying their man as the virtuous Protector of the Mentally Ill, standing up to Smith’s supposed deliberate denigration of their suffering. Like Ronaldo on the receiving end of a light tackle, Corbyn played the victim brilliantly, immediately falling to the ground and flopping around (metaphorically speaking) as if stunned by Owen Smith’s sheer inhumanity, before donning the white robes of virtue and sanctimoniously “defending” mentally ill people from a supposed microaggression which none of them would have noticed in the first place were it not for Corbyn’s skillfully weaponised victimhood.

But don’t feel sorry for Owen Smith – he will have learned nothing from this latest escapade. Despite himself now having come under attack twice for violating PC / Social Justice dogma (the “smashing Theresa May back in her heels” remark, and now this) you can be sure that Smith will soon have reverted to type, clutching his pearls in mock horror and seeking to make political capital out of the garbled speech of some or other unfortunate Conservative MP. He knows no other way. None of them do.

Snarling, weaponised victimhood is literally all that the modern Left have going for them at present.

 

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Top Image: BBC

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