When people challenge my opinions I shrug, said Vladimir Nabokov. When people challenge my facts, I reach for my dictionary.
Brendan O’Neill, formerly of the Revolutionary Communist Party and Living Marxism, now of Spiked, has had me reaching for mine. He accuses me of lying, a charge which might send a less liberal journalist than me to his lawyers. He says my charge that his comrades and the Brexit Party’s European Parliament candidates Claire Fox, James Heartfield and Alka Sehgal Cuthbert are cavalier about the abuse of children “are lies, straight-up, low-down lies,” “character assassination”, and an act of desperation by the remain side.
The desperation is all his. For mysterious reasons it might be worth journalists getting to the bottom of, Farage has picked candidates who used to belong to the RCP – despite the group’s long history of defending the IRA – a history I notice Comrade O’Neill does not deny.
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