PARTY MUST DELIVER STRONGER ELECTION CANDIDATES
16 Sunday Mail
With, as they say in the business, predictably hilarious results.
Even the legendary show’s acclaimed comedy writers Richard Curtis and Ben Elton might, though, have fought shy of a storyline in which they took Hugh Gaffney to Westminster.
Baldrick, a lovable simpleton, failed his assignment by voting the wrong way against the wishes of his political masters.
Gaffney’s, well, gaffes, in his Burns Night Immortal Memory have been much, much less pleasant.
Taking to his feet at a Burns supper, the MP for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill gave a toast to students in Edinburgh which veered from witless to downright offensive over the course of seven excruciating verses.
That people who use the racial and homophobic slurs uttered by Gaffney still roam the earth is depressing enough.
That he’s emerged with little more than a slap on the wrist by his hero Jeremy Corbyn is probably worse.
But there is a darker aspect to the whole farrago in which Gaffney is, like the rest of us, a victim.
It lies in the rest of his Burns toast, the bits in which he didn’t use appalling slur words.
For example: “like all good Scots we love the banter. Rabbie had a pal Tam O’Shanter.”
And: “Passing the cemetery he gets a fright. He nearly done a sh**e.”
Or what about: “This poetry was not done in haste. It was not a cut and paste. It was done rather snappy. Just so I could say – everybody happy.”
No one is expecting Gaffney to emulate Burns himself, William Wordsworth or even William McGonagall.
But without being too offensive to the MP, you’d be disappointed if his poorly scanning non-sequitirs were submitted by an eight-year-old.
Perhaps more unintentionally revealing though were the lines which read: “It was not long ago a postman I would be. Til Theresa May called me. A snap election she did cry. Oh ya beauty, I am going down – bye.”
Ya beauty indeed. Not just down to London but, as we reveal today, to, of all places, China. To represent North Lanarkshire, Scotland and the UK at the expense of the taxpayer.
Let’s hope any words of wisdom he had to impart to his hosts in rhyme or otherwise ended up lost in translation.
Perhaps those responsible for vetting Labour candidates thought that, as a postie, they were on to a sure thing.
You can almost understand the logic – no less a figure than Labour’s last Home Secretary Alan Johnson was famously a postman by trade too.
Sadly, Gaffney is no Alan Johnson. And the whole sorry episode hasn’t just let Labour down but probably postmen and women too.
Gaffney’s lines betray that his elevation to Westminster really happened in too much of a hurry.
As one Labour source unkindly briefed last week, this was an accident waiting to happen.
Sadly, it was only after he was unexpectedly elected that he now
stands exposed completely unsuitable for the job.
Friends say he has been left devastated – heartbroken that his new career could go so wrong so quickly.
One party source said: “Hugh’s been around the party for ages and has been a tireless campaigner.
“The thing is that nobody expected him to win.” That just isn’t good enough though. Long before Labour outperformed expectations at last year’s general election, the party membership had reached record levels.
Where were the Momentum activists among the 550,000 who fuelled this rise when it came to putting heads above the parapet to stand as prospective MPs?
They were clever enough to create an ideological revolution within the Labour structure. God knows they wouldn’t be found wanting when it came to using the correct language at all times.
So why couldn’t more of them have the courage of their convictions to step up to the plate?
The answer is that they are all too happy to hide behind men like Hugh Gaffney. Honest enough campaigners who lack the required polish and nous and who could probably really do with a fair bit of diversity training and education.
So that when they prepare for general elections, the biggest party in western Europe are not giving a job which requires the agility of a cheetah, the cunning of a fox and killer instinct of a great white shark to an unreconstructed dinosaur.
The author of Gaffney’s Immortal Memory was never a man qualified to be a representative of the people in the party of Keir Hardie, Robin Cook, Aneurin Bevan as well as ex-postie Johnson himself.