Thread by @DanFinn95

I see Margaret Hodge is hamming it up for the cameras like the world's worst soap actress, and journalists are pretending to believe a word she says. It's like the summer of 2018 all over again, albeit without the sunny weather.

jacobinmag.com/2018/09/labour…

Frankly, anyone who believed that Hodge was sincere in any of her claims that summer should atone for their gullibility by wearing clown make-up in public for a full year. Every part of her protracted temper tantrum was planned out on a grid with her factional allies.

You can be quite certain that no British journalists actually took her ravings seriously, although they found it expedient to pretend otherwise. It was a display of cynicism and bad faith with few parallels in modern times—a stomach-churning performance.

Even Hodge's critics often forget the timing of her outburst—shortly after Boris Johnson resigned from May's cabinet in protest at her Brexit plan. The Tories seemed to be tearing themselves apart, so a distraction was urgently needed, and Hodge obliged.

theguardian.com/politics/2018/…

Hodge pretended to believe she thought Jeremy Corbyn was an antisemite because Labour's NEC wanted to make some sensible alterations to the IHRA definition. *The man who wrote that definition* says it's not fit for purpose as a disciplinary code.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

The British media devoted an entire summer to this controversy, months away from the Brexit deadline, while categorically refusing to discuss the merits of the IHRA definition or even to inform their audience that it had critics other than Jeremy Corbyn.

opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocra…

The people who have presented Hodge as a saintly anti-racist champion are well aware that even Alan Johnson, a proud Blairite, accused her of aping the BNP's rhetoric against immigration. Nobody believes a word of this guff.

theguardian.com/politics/2007/…