Out, Damned Trot

A funny thing happened as I drove up the A10 through Stoke Newington today. I suddenly realised that I don't actually possess a car. Up until that precise moment I simply couldn't understand why pedestrians were pointing and laughing at me and drivers behind were hooting.

Having taken the sensible approach and transferred from the right-hand side of the road onto the right-hand pavement by Brooke Road (for those not familiar with the territory, this part of Stoke Newington High Street is one-way heading north), I immediately crashed into a street stall outside Stoke Newington Post Office and sent leaflets and posters flying in all directions. The stall, I quickly discovered, was manned by The Socialist Party of England and Wales - formerly the Revolutionary Socialist League, formerly Militant Tendency, not to be confused with The Socialist Party of Great Britain, The Scottish Socialist Party, The Socialist Workers Party or a good bottle of Scotch, but closely related to The Socialist Party (Ireland) and The Socialist Party (Australia) and the only true standard bearer of The Fourth International (as opposed to the bourgeois traitors of the Reunified Fourth International).

Imagine my shock when, as I desperately set off down the road to avoid being stoned to death by a mob of Trots shouting "Kill the f***ing ginger class traitor", I recognised their ringleader as the bloke who we spotted taking pictures of our house just after we moved in. Yes - it was that bastard from my union and former Labour MP for Coventry South East - Dave Nellist. Admittedly he was now sporting a wig and a beard, but obviously this was the same man in disguise. Having never met Nellist before, I simply hadn't added one and one and realised who the photographer was. But now suddenly it all made sense. He had clearly come down from Coventry to my patch to take the piss, following the local elections in which, despite our "dirty tricks" campaign to unseat him, the bastard had increased his majority. I suppose the ginger toupé and moustache that so obviously didn't match the rest of the hair was part of the big in-joke.

For those unfamiliar with the Beatty Road inauguration saga, this revolting Trot stood outside some other house in my street for some time until I set him straight by publishing my actual address, at which point he re-appeared and took photos of my wife Linda in her dressing gown standing at the bay windows.

At the time we thought nothing of it, assuming the photographer was from FHM or Grazia and looking forward to receiving the cheque in the post and spending the money on some decent claret and caviar. It was only when the pictures appeared a couple of hours later on the spoof Luke Akehurst blog that we realised the evil intent behind this shocking invasion of privacy. I subsequently unmasked Andrew Richard Gos as the man responsible for the text that accompanied the spoof post. A nasty piece of work who owns a large shop named after himself in Sandringham Road and who infamously attacked a poor, helpless, disabled fellow Chatham Ward Councillor with a walking stick when she voted on Hackney's planning committee to demolish the entire borough and sell off all the land to property developers.

So that all explains why I had had trouble pinning down the politics of the spoof site: given its extreme right-wing views it clearly couldn't possibly be anyone genuinely a member of the Labour Party, yet it was also anti-LibDem (though not as much as me), anti-Tory, anti-Green and anti-SWP, written by someone exhibiting a taste for and knowledge of the good life that only comes with considerably more wealth than I earn as a PR Director. Clearly the work of someone with experience in the media, business and attending lavish dinners. Someone with a degree of knowledge of internal Labour matters that suggests he had been in the Labour Party at some stage, probably as an entrist. And someone who sounds desperate to re-enter the Labour Party and seek high office in it once more.

Now it all makes sense. I've been cloned by Derek Hatton. I almost feel proud.