THERE’S only one story the world’s talking about at the minute and the question that it throws up for all of us interested in fair play is, Witch-hunt, or justice taking its course?

The whole world has had its say by now and none has been more vocal than the Donaghadee Dynamo, Jamie Bryson. 

Eddie the Legal Eagle has laid his cards on the table and he thinks it’s a massive miscarriage of justice, that the entire global system of government’s been hacked by a cabal of lefty conspirators and it’s the end of democracy as we know it.  But enough about the Scottish Cup Final, what about the Trump trial?

He's not happy about that either, needless to say. Drawing upon his years of experience as a doorman wrangler, taxi dispatcher, soccer mascot and DLA tribunal adviser, Jamie slowly and carefully took out his legal files from a B&M Bargains bag and solemnly consulted them before tweeting: “The Trump trial is a pantomime: the establishment are terrified of him, so they have trumped (pardon the pun) up all sorts of nonsensical charges, abused the law & all with the purpose of trying to silence him. Keep going Donald!”

He followed that up with: “Another super judgment from Humphreys J, which will have ramifications beyond this case.”

No, wait. That was about the Jimmy Savile case.

Jamie claimed the judge in the case was backed by “Sinn Féin and the IRA, male rapists who demand to be housed oin female prisons, biological males who claim they can get pregnant and Hamas.”

No, wait. He said that about Alliance.

He called the New York District Attorney’s office “a vindictive and politically compromised organisation, is a disgrace & their treatment of the RUC Disabled association in particular was utterly reprehensible”.

No, wait. That was the Charity Commission.

When Billy Big Balls loses his nerve

WHAT exactly was it that outgoing Hackney MP Diane Abbott got put through the wringer for?

She’s been subject to the Torquemada-like attentions of Keir Starmer since she wrote a letter to The Observer in April last year which led the Labour Party to break out the white hot pokers, the rack and the pincers. So what she did must have been, like, really, really bad, right?

Did she agree with Georgia Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene that the California wildfires of 2020 were caused by space lasers funded by evil Jewish billionaires?

Did she suggest that the US conspiracy nutcases of QAnon were right when they said the US is run by Jewish paedophiles who drink the blood of babies?

Did she reveal that she was in Charlottesville in 2017 carrying a tiki-torch with Donald Trump’s pals and chanting “The Jews will not replace us”?

Not really. What she wrote was: “It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.”

There may have been a time in Britain when suggesting that prejudice takes many forms was a reasonable and indeed important thing to say. That time has long gone, however, and any public debate about colour, religion and ethnicity has to be cleared by a Star Chamber consisting of billionaire right-wing media barons and politicians under the spell of… billionaire right-wing media barons.

And when the Labour Party, controlled as it is these days by the Daily Mail and not daily realities, decided that she might be in danger of upsetting the Board of Deputies of British Jews, then her Hannukah goose was cooked.

Oddly, when Diane agreed to complete an awareness course after agreeing that her letter had downplayed the challenges faced by the Irish, Travellers and Jews, she was required to do just one: on antisemitism. She wasn’t required to do a course informing her about the plight of the Irish; or of Travellers. Just of Jewish people. And if the veteran Labour MP was indeed guilty of failing to acknowledge racism experienced by the Irish, Travellers and Jews, didn’t the Labour Party’s requirement for Diane to attend an antisemitism course alone suggest that antisemitism is more of a concern to Keir and his chums than the Irish and the Travelling communities?    

It was only a matter of time before Keir Starmer’s reign as the Billy Big Balls of British politics came to an abrupt halt, and when on Friday afternoon he dropped his effort to block Abbott from running in the forthcoming election, he was back to looking permanently like somebody to whom it’s just occurred he may have left the immersion heater on.

Not that he had turned his tremendous wrath on everyone during his time as an early medieval torturer. Indeed, faced with wrongdoing, gaffes and incompetence by those within his inner circle, Keir became a kitten playing with a ball of wool.

Croydon MP Steve Reed is one such pal who has benefited from his leader’s myopic defence of Jews in Britain. In July 2020, Mr Reed inserted himself into a row involving top Tory Robert Jenrick and his role in green-lighting a massive property development.
Turned out Mr Jenrick had received a donation from billionaire businessman Richard Desmond, who made his name as proprietor of the Daily Star and a host of tacky top-shelf men’s magazines. Steve thought it would be a smashing wheeze to connect the dots. He tweeted: “Is billionaire former porn-baron Desmond the puppet master for the entire Tory cabinet?”

Mr Desmond is a Jew and the description of Jews as puppet-masters has been an antisemitic trope for as long as antisemitic tropes have existed. In fact, it could be said to be an antisemitic trope of an antisemitic trope.

The calls for a Reed resignation began immediately and in no time at all the Labour MP had issued a grovelling apology. Keir Starmer showed how seriously he took the matter by making the MP Shadow Environment Secretary. “Steve didn’t mean any offence,” a party spokesperson said. Ridding the party of its antisemitism image didn’t extend to doing anything about Steve apart from promoting him, and that was that.

CONFUSION REIGNS: Keir Starmer has been all over the place in relation to Diane Abbott's future
2Gallery

CONFUSION REIGNS: Keir Starmer has been all over the place in relation to Diane Abbott's future

Two months later, another Starmer chum, Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman, reacted to the surprising news that two businessmen would not be receiving their expected peerages by tweeting: “Apparently there has been a bit of a run on silver shekels.”

The two businessmen in question were Jewish and the use of the Biblical term “silver shekels” was not just an antisemitic dog whistle, it was a blast from a Middle East oil tanker foghorn.

Again, Starmer’s Labour Party leapt immediately into action. “Barry has deleted the tweets and apologised. He deeply regrets the offence caused,” a spokesperson (the same one?) said.

And once again, that was that. Not a minute’s suspension for either white man, never mind the marathon ordeal inflicted on the black woman. Maybe Diane could write a letter to The Observer about it.