Labour's Groomer Feud With Elon Musk.
Keir Starmer's circle hate Elon Musk so much an organisation set up by his Chief of Staff spread lies about Twitter and -bizarrely- gender critical accounts like Gays Against Groomers.
The Labour Party has decided, it seems, to bet the house on the outcome of the US General election. The problem is that if the bet goes wrong it will be Britain that pays the price not just the government.
It was bad enough Starmer sent over 100 volunteers to work for the Democrats.
Now his Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, is in the firing line for visiting the Harris team on a fraternal visit.
You can understand Labour’s desperation.
Even if they’d done nothing to help Harris a triumphant Trump was unlikely to forget certain choice words by the intellectual giants who people its front bench.
The Labour Party could though have tried to talk its way out of that. The grinning buffoon that is David Lammy could perhaps have been sent to Washington to eat yet more pie. The type he seems incapable of digesting: the Humble variety.
Labour might also have pointed out that, as sister parties, Labour and the Democrats have often helped each other out. Just as Republicans and Conservatives do regularly. All the major parties’ employees love working on the other side of the Atlantic. The better to learn from their experience on the electoral front-line.
Labour won’t be able to explain all this away as business as usual though because Starmer’s circle have accompanied this assistance with personal attacks not just on Trump but Elon Musk.
Headlines in the States yesterday reported on a shadowy organisation that’s close to Starmer called the Center for Countering Digital Hate. CCDH is alleged to have been trying to undermine Twitter by telling brands if they advertise on the platform they’re supporting hate.
The group’s mission was allegedly to…. ‘Kill Musk’s Twitter’.
It may seem crazy for Labour to take on both Elon Musk and Trump at the same time. And it is. Musk was already unhappy with Labour.
Now he is going positively nuclear.
Crazier still is that many of the claims this organisation makes against the world’s richest man are demonstrably untrue. In a report on its website it cites, for example, this tweet as an example of hate speech.
It’s from a group I admire hugely called Gays Against Groomers and the extent of its alleged hate speech are expressions like this which say,
“We stand side by side with anyone that wants to end the sexualisation and medicalisation of children”.
This is, believe it or not, cited as an example of “anti-LGBTQ+ hate”. The only response to anyone who thinks defending children from sexualisation is hate speech is….. “ok groomer.”
Except that phrase is also cited by CCDH as LGBTQ+ hate.
At the heart of this tale of Labour incompetence and over-reach is Starmer’s Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney,
It was he who set up the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The fact he did that while he was running the campaign to make Keir Starmer Labour leader and has remained close to it ever since is one reason this spat will be going nowhere fast.
His Center’s simplistic, ill-informed campaign against legitimate opinions bears all the hallmarks of what has become McSweeney’s style. And that of Starmer too.
It’s a style notable for its intolerance, its hyperbole and even, at times, its outright deception.
Our story begins on the 30th of August 2019 when Morgan McSweeney had a brainwave.