Why is it ok to be vile and offensive if you’re Left-wing? Jeremy Clarkson’s Meghan column was plain nasty. But the backlash he’s facing is infinitely harsher than the outcry over these repellent slurs, writes ROSS CLARK
- Backlash against Jeremy Clarkson’s column is infinitely harsher than in the past
- Within days it was the most complained about article in the history of IPSO
- Here, Daily Mail examines small selection of remarks made by Left-wing figures
Jeremy Clarkson’s column in The Sun last Friday, in which he said he despised Meghan Markle ‘on a cellular level’ and wished she could be paraded through the streets naked, was unquestionably nasty
Clarkson’s Meghan column was plain nasty. But the backlash he’s facing is infinitely harsher than the outcry that greeted this cartoon and these other repellent slurs.
Within two days, it had become the most complained about article in the history of IPSO, the Press regulator. It attracted a letter signed by 60 MPs across all parties and was even condemned by the author’s own daughter.
Jeremy Clarkson’s column in The Sun last Friday, in which he said he despised Meghan Markle ‘on a cellular level’ and wished she could be paraded through the streets naked, was unquestionably nasty.
In an apparent reference reference to the iconic ‘walk of shame’ scene in Game Of Thrones, the former Top Gear host added that he wanted to see ‘people throwing lumps of excrement at her’.
Clarkson himself has been shocked by the backlash and forced into a climbdown.
‘Oh dear,’ he tweeted. ‘I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game Of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people.
‘I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.’
His statement did little to quell the mounting outrage, however. The BBC Springwatch presenter Chris Packham declared that Clarkson was guilty of a ‘hate crime’ and called for him to be jailed.
His column wasn’t just offensive, it could be interpreted as misogynistic and it certainly distracted attention away from Harry and Meghan’s own appalling behaviour towards the Royal Family, feeding their narrative of victimhood
Labour MP Stella Creasy also suggested he should be prosecuted for a hate crime and that the law should be changed, if necessary, to make it possible.
A petition on the website change.org demanded that Clarkson be sacked by Amazon Prime and ITV, where he presents Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? It has already attracted five thousand signatures, although ITV says he will keep his job.
I have no liking for Jeremy Clarkson, whom I have always thought boorish. His column wasn’t just offensive, it could be interpreted as misogynistic and it certainly distracted attention away from Harry and Meghan’s own appalling behaviour towards the Royal Family, feeding their narrative of victimhood.
But the backlash against Clarkson has also highlighted the monumental and ceaseless hypocrisy of the Left.
For while its commentators, politicians and Twitter warriors erupt into outrage at a columnist in a Conservative newspaper, the truth is that the Left has its own despicable record of making horrible remarks, some of which might be said to verge on incitement to violence.
I am not in any way trying to excuse Clarkson — just pointing out that many of the voices now demanding his head will have been conspicuously silent over even viler comments from the Left.
When they cause offence, they rarely seem to pay a price or even apologise. Different standards seem to apply.
As evidence, here the Mail presents just a small selection of egregious remarks made by Left-wing figures in recent years — and examines what happened afterwards…
ACID REMARKS ABOUT FARAGE
During Britain’s last round of European Parliament elections in 2019, Nigel Farage, then leader of the Brexit Party, had a milkshake thrown over him.
A few days later, comedian Jo Brand said on the Radio 4 programme Heresy: ‘Why bother with a milkshake when you could get some battery acid.’ She followed up her remark by saying: ‘That’s just me. I’m not going to do it. It’s purely a fantasy, but I think milkshakes are pathetic, I honestly do, sorry.’
In spite of acid attacks being a very serious problem, and the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox three years earlier, the BBC refused to apologise for broadcasting Brand’s comments, saying they were made on a ‘deliberately provocative’ show.
During Britain’s last round of European Parliament elections in 2019, Nigel Farage, then leader of the Brexit Party, had a milkshake thrown over him
A ‘BAD END’ FOR BORIS
This week, children’s author Sir Philip Pullman described Clarkson’s column as ‘poison’. Yet in 2019, when the debate over the Brexit Withdrawal Bill was reaching its heated climax, Sir Philip weighed in by tweeting: ‘When I hear the name ”Boris Johnson”, for some reason the words ‘rope’ and ‘nearest lamp-post’ come to mind as well.’
When he was criticised for what he said he had intended as a joke, far from apologising, he merely switched his proposed method of execution — throwing in for good measure some language parents wouldn’t want in their children’s bedtime stories.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ he wrote, ‘Of course I wasn’t advocating hanging the b*****d. But rulers who try to do away with democratic parliaments come to bad ends. As I pointed out on Twitter some time ago, the axe and the block are still in working order.’
In an interview with The Guardian shortly afterwards, he was still revelling in his ‘joke’, saying ‘the upshot of it was that I gained 2,000 Twitter followers.’
GOVE ‘LOOKS LIKE A FOETUS’ TAUNT
In a 2013 edition of BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, chaired by Sandi Toksvig, one of the guests referred to Michael Gove, then education secretary, as having ‘a face like a foetus in a jar’. Not to be outdone, another guest on the show replied that Gove had ‘a face that makes even the most pacifist of people reach for the shovel’.
Cue laughter all round.
In a 2013 edition of BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, chaired by Sandi Toksvig, one of the guests referred to Michael Gove, then education secretary, as having ‘a face like a foetus in a jar’
SICK JIBE OVER GRAVELY ILL PM
In an edition of Channel 4’s late-night comedy show The Last Leg in May 2020, just days after Boris Johnson had narrowly escaped death from Covid-19, actress Miriam Margolyes attacked the Government’s handling of the pandemic before adding: ‘I mean, I had difficulty not wanting Boris Johnson to die. Then I thought, that will reflect badly on me and I don’t want to be the sort of person that wants people to die.’
Since she is a confirmed member of the ‘outspoken’ liberal Left, her comments have not prevented her being invited onto Channel 4 shows since.
BOVINE ATTACK ON PRITI PATEL
The Guardian is never slow to call out racism, whether real or imagined. But, in March 2020, that did not stop the paper publishing a drawing by its in-house cartoonist, Steve Bell, depicting then Home Secretary Priti Patel as a bull. Sitting alongside Boris Johnson (also as a bull) in the Commons, she had cloven hooves for hands, a ring through her nose, horns and a demonic expression.
Patel, as the paper’s editors surely knew, is a Hindu and it was deeply offensive to portray her in this way. Yet it declined to remove the cartoon or apologise, merely stating that ‘politicians of all parties are quite often caricatured as animals’.
No apology: Guardian’s 2020 cartoon depicting Priti Patel, a Hindu, as a demonic bull
DING DONG, THATCHER’S DEAD!
When Margaret Thatcher died aged 87 in April 2013, Labour’s front bench offered respectful praise for her. But it was a different story among some of the party’s lower ranks.
John Edwards, a councillor in the West Midlands, tweeted ‘#The passing of Thatcher. Rejoice! Rejoice!’. Former Labour MP George Galloway tweeted: ‘May she burn in the hellfires.’
In Glasgow, 300 people gathered for a ‘celebration’ on the streets, while the former Prime Minister’s Left-wing enemies sent Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead (a song from the film The Wizard Of Oz) to No. 2 in the charts.
Mustering as much respect as it could manage, the BBC decided not to play the entire record on its chart show.
‘SUPERFICIALLY BLACK INSULT’
Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was roundly condemned for his botched mini-Budget in September, but one comment stands out.
Speaking at a Labour conference event, the Ealing Central and Acton MP Rupa Huq described the then Chancellor as only ‘superficially’ black, adding: ‘If you hear him on the Today programme, you wouldn’t know he’s black.’
On this occasion, there was condemnation of her remarks. Huq was suspended from the Party and forced to apologise.
Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng was roundly condemned for his botched mini-Budget in September, but one comment stands out
RAYNER’S ‘TORIES ARE SCUM’ RANT
Labour MPs have quite rightly drawn attention to the wall of abuse that MPs face on social media and on the street. Yet the party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, referred to the Tories as ‘scum’ in a speech at a fringe event at the Labour Party conference in 2021. ‘We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute vile… banana republic, vile, nasty, Etonian… piece of scum,’ she ranted. She eventually apologised.
But this was not her first offence. The previous year, she was reprimanded in the Commons when she said ‘scum’ in reference to a Conservative MP while he was speaking during a debate.
WISHING THE QUEEN A PAINFUL DEATH
While the Queen was lying on her deathbed in September, many people around the world were sending their best wishes. But not Uju Anya, an associate professor of applied linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S.
She tweeted: ‘I heard the chief monarch of a thieving, raping, genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating.’
Given the circumstances, her comment was infinitely more offensive than Clarkson’s about Meghan. Yet far from earning her condemnation, many on the Left praised her. She was even treated to an interview in The Guardian.
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