It’s always handy for parents to have someone they can use to put their children off any particular profession. ‘Don’t be a comedian, son – you’ll end up like that Eddie Izzard!’ ‘Don’t be a journalist, my girl – you’ll end up like that Julie Burchill!’ Quite a few politicians have vied for this inverted ‘top spot’ – that Jeffrey Archer, that Matt Hancock and that Jeremy Thorpe come quickly to mind. But on balance, I believe that Lloyd Russell-Moyle may come to top parents’ precautionary playlist.
For those who believe in women’s rights, Christmas has come early, no matter who wins the election
What a ghastly creature he is. Some people – a minority, for sure, but a sizeable one – go into politics driven by altruism, but I’m convinced that the majority do it so they can show off, ‘showboat’ even. Russell-Moyle’s political career over the past eight years – when he was elected as Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown – resembles a charge-sheet rather than a résumé.
In 2018 Russell-Moyle was suspended from the House of Commons after waving the mace when it transpired that his extreme anti-Brexit views were due for an early bath. The following year he and a group of similarly fanatical pro-EU MPs protested on Westminster bridge under the banner ‘Love Socialism Hate Brexit’. They even lit red flares within spitting distance of Parliament, thus attracting the attention of the police.
On the eve of his re-election to parliament at the 2019 general election, he gave a crazed speech, swearing to ‘fight [the Tories] in the streets’. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Brighton Kemptown, but you’ve never seen a neighbourhood so chocka with poodle-grooming parlours and vegan cafes. The idea of this bijou ‘hood doing an impersonation of downtown Paris in 1968 made me snigger somewhat; not so much Stonewall as Farrow & Ball ‘Skimming Stone’ wall.
In 2019 LRM was criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews for hosting a meeting at the Commons to which to which a representative of the Houthis had been invited. The official slogan of the Houthis is ‘God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam’. You might think it odd that a proudly gay MP would throw a tea-party for an ultra-reactionary group who were rebuked by Amnesty International this year for sentencing men to death by stoning and crucifixion, including death sentences against 13 students on charges of ‘spreading homosexuality’. But perhaps LRM (which sounds like an unsatisfactory way of managing the capital’s traffic) and the virulently misogynist Islamists talked about how irritating uppity women are – because even more than democratic voters attempting to claim back their national sovereignty, it’s women’s rights which appear to make him the most unhinged.
To say that Russell-Moyle is a trans-fan is like saying Richard ‘Baby Reindeer’ Gadd enjoys attention. In 2019 LRM tweeted that parents who refer to their children as boys or girls according to biological sex are committing ‘abuse’ by ‘forcing a sex on a child’. In 2020, he was forced to issue an apology after writing a piece in which he accused J.K. Rowling of using her experience of sexual assault and domestic abuse to justify discrimination against transgender people – something she has never done. In 2023, he reacted to a speech in parliament by Miriam Cates in defence of women’s rights in a way that may be described as unbalanced. He was accused of crossing the floor to sit next to Cates in order to intimidate her, after he had already heckled several speakers to no avail. After calling Cates ‘transphobic’ and saying she ‘should be ashamed’ he was forced to apologise for his behaviour. ‘I recognise that I failed to control [my] passion’ was how he put it. As Rosie Duffield put it: ‘In other words, he had done nothing wrong. It wasn’t his fault; it was ours for daring to disagree with him. “Look what you made me do,” as my ex-partner would say when I had caused him to explode — perhaps by doing or wearing something he didn’t entirely like or voicing an opinion he didn’t want to hear.’
With this track record, it was a wonder it took until last week for LRM to be kicked to the kerb, but here he is suspended from the Labour party due to a complaint about something he is alleged to have done eight years ago. Of course he described the complaint as ‘vexatious and politically motivated’ adding with a supreme show of ego that it was ‘designed to disrupt this election’ – who died and made you Keir Starmer, Lloyd? As an egoist myself, I doff my chapeau to someone who can make the forthcoming election all about him – especially when most people only know him as that weirdo who looks funny at women who dare to disagree with him. ‘I’m gutted. I’ve spent the last decade of my life building one of the best campaigning CLPs in the country. I’ve been so inspired by everyone pulling together in the last week and excited for the campaign to come. We have an amazing local party, and I am sorry most of all for you party members do will be let down by this. I aim to cooperate with the investigations process to clear my name, but will now take this opportunity to contribute to public life in different ways under what I hope is a Labour government.’ Maybe he could run for dogcatcher?
Whatever the outcome, for those who believe in women’s rights, Christmas has come early, no matter who wins the election. The way we see it, Labour will be worse but the Tories let it get this bad, so who is there to choose from? (If there’s a candidate in my constituency, I would vote for the Party of Women, founded by the glorious Kellie-Jay Keen.) It’s poignant to remember how we used to expect misogyny to come from the Tories, whereas Labour is now the parliamentary home of those who want to erode women’s rights. In a decade’s time, what we widely recognise as feminists – people who put women’s rights at the centre of their concerns – may no longer exist in the Labour party, so widespread is the adoption of trans ideology. Labour is now the only major political party in the UK never to have had a woman leader and the way things are going, it’s entirely likely that the first one will have a penis. It’s not just the far-left nutters either. Take David Lammy, who spoke of ‘dinosaurs…hoarding rights’. Then there’s the ghastly presence of what I dubbed the ‘Transmaids’ in the party. It’s no good them getting angry about the repulsive level of violence against women and the pathetic police treatment of rape if in the next breath they’re saying it’s fine and dandy for a rapist to be housed in a female prison if he suddenly wants to be called Karen, not Kieron. What you end up with is not feminism, but Frankenfeminism which, whatever the intention, ends up gratifying men and degrading women.
It’s irritating when a word one created is used on social media by exactly the kind of people who inspired it. Owen Jones, for example, is keen on throwing my ‘cry-bully’ at anyone who disagrees with his cry-bully brand of politics. It doesn’t surprise me that wokers lack the originality and wit to create their own words – but it does annoy me. So in future, I will advise anyone who wants a definition of a cry-bully to google an image of LRM. I doubt that he will go much further in politics – finished at 37, such a shame! But he will always be the perfect personification of my brilliant word and for that, I’ll happily stand him a Woo Woo cocktail – or even a Unicorn’s Tears – next time I see him around Brighton.
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