BY QUENTIN PIGG
I thought it rather fitting that the charity ‘Period Power’ chose that boy with the curious habit of making frenzied fisting gesticulations to be their patron. Fitting because my thoughts on Owen Jones could be condensed into that four letter word which so eloquently describes the private parts of a woman. But I’m afraid that today, calling him that simply won’t do; I must expand upon his vulvic villainy and why he must never be allowed to whitewash the prominent role he played in supporting that demented scarecrow from Islington or excusing the culture of hard-left demagoguery which ensued.
In his recent Guardian column, you may see that he is already laying the groundwork for a retelling of history. One which sees him distanced from the Corbyn project and the pernicious toxicity that has since defined it. He writes, ‘Ineptly questioning the truth of Russia’s involvement in the Salisbury poisoning. That single episode inflicted terrible damage on Corbyn – and for what?’ Curiously omitted, though, is his Newsnight appearance which saw him turn up to the BBC, as giddy as a pig on poppers, to defend the credulous readiness of Corbyn to take the Kremlin at their word.
What hobbies did you enjoy at sixteen years of age? Play the Playstation with friends? Attend the latest blockbuster at the cinema? For Owen, pleasure seems to have been derived from feverishly making edits to Wikipedia articles*, and more specifically, ones which reference Israel. The most concerning of which reads ‘The notion of Jewish ethnicity is a lie invented by 19th century German anti-Semites’. He has since written that this was a misunderstanding on his part of 19th century German antisemitism – a comment as equally strange as the one it sought to excuse, if you ask me. Whilst Owen imagines that he should have been allowed to vote at that age, I recognise that the brain hasn’t finished developing and thus don’t hold this against him.
What I think we may hold against him, though, is that his promise of ‘an all-out war’ against antisemitism from the left seems to have been a promise as disappointingly empty as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s assurance that we would be relieved of her presence should Boris become PM. The tweet in which Owen announced this actually came after many hours of silence following the revelation that Corbyn had defended an antisemitic mural. Breaking that silence, Owen said: ‘This statement from Corbyn on the anti-Semitic mural is a relief’. A relief? Wouldn’t that suggest that during this interlude of uncharacteristic silence, Owen was fretting that Corbyn could, in fact, be an anti-Semite? Quite telling, then, that his instinct was to remain mumchance.
To be clear: I don’t for a moment think that Mr. Jones is antisemitic, or that he is truly villainous – vulvic or otherwise – but I do think that his doggedness to finally see a socialist government realised, meant that he afforded excuses to some rather nefarious people which he would not had they come from any other party.
Take the wreath incident. Corbyn had been shown to lay a wreath at the grave of a terrorist who took part in the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, and Owen’s response was to say that ‘a wreath has never killed anybody’. As far as I’m aware, he hasn’t apologised for that comment to this day.
Owen, swap the shandy for a shot of Glenfiddich, own up to excusing the inexcusable, and more importantly: apologise to the Jewish community who feel that your anti-racist campaigning hasn’t adequately covered them for the past three years.