Just a Downright Smear

I'm sure a lot of you know about the comedy twitter fight between the MP for Bristol East, Kerry McCarthy, and various Conservative supporters, especially Iain Dale, over the past week or so. McCarthy is Labour's twitter tsar.

I've broadly stayed out of the commotion until replying to a tweet by Manchester Labour Students (@manclabstudents) which read;

"I'm fed up with the Tories sending unelected and unaccountable troops out of the trenches" - @KerryMP

... quoting from an article on McCarthy's blog.

I replied with;

@manclabstudents If @KerryMP wants more elected Conservatives to talk to then I suggest she gets Gordon to call an election ASAP!

... which, as you can probably tell, was very tongue in cheek. I wasn't really expecting Kerry to convince the PM to go for an early election on the basis she'd have more Tory MPs to have a chat with.

I also wasn't expecting this little gem from McCarthy in return;


Woh! Sounds to me McCarthy was attempting an out and out smear on Conservative Party Chair, Eric Pickles, about him blacking up at some point.

Any benefit of the doubt I had for McCarthy before has very much evaporated now!

JR

UPDATE: An article has been brought to my attention about a Tory MP suggesting blacking up was viewed as racist because of political correctness. I don't agree with him, simply because it is usually done to cause offence, and therefore is racist. However, I'm not sure what Eric Pickles has got to do with it!

With thanks to Alex Ross, a Labour activist in Bradford, who very politely let me know what Kerry McCarthy was referring to. This is in contrast to the personal attacks I've received from others that really do put the Labour Party into disrepute (more in a blog post soon).