From 2005 through to 2008, I worked as a practising barrister in England, but spent about half my time in Brittany, commuting on a twice or thrice-monthly basis by sea and air. I did not keep in close touch with UK political affairs. I used my TV in France only for DVDs and videos and had no Sky service. The brief triumph of BNP candidates Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons in the European elections was heard by me via BBC World Service and Radio 4 (which can usually be picked up on or near the coast).
In mid-2009, having given up Bar practice in early 2008, I returned to the UK. I started to take great interest in British political life. One aspect surprised me particularly: the rise to –brief– prominence of persons whose connection to politics was slight. Not so much “commentators” (their usual self-styling) as pseudo-commentators and pseudo-“activists”. One of these was a young woman called Alexandra Swann (on Twitter, @alexandralswann, not to be confused with @alexandraswann, an American blogger). She was (for her “15 minutes of fame”) a UKIP spokesperson:
and the msm started to take an interest in her. For a few months she seemed to be on TV constantly, pontificating (albeit risibly) on social welfare, employment, all sorts of things. UKIP gave her 10 minutes in which to speak at its 2012 Conference:
The Guardian –of all outlets!– gave Alexandra Swann op-ed space, calling her “the new face of UKIP”. She was also called, by others,”the future face of UK politics”!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/mar/06/leaving-tories-ukip-alexandra-swann
In fact, she described herself as “libertarian” and had been an office-holder at one time in “Conservative Future”, the more or less defunct Con youth wing (the Scottish section even had to cancel its conference, when only 6 people applied for tickets!). Like so many youthful “libertarians” (she was 23 years old in 2012), she had a wealthy father to help her out should she be unable to stand on her own two feet in the approved Ayn Rand manner. Indeed, she was, at the time, still a student, working on a politics-oriented PhD at Sussex.
In fact, it was around that time that UKIP started to split internally between the members who were basically pseudo-nationalist Conservatives (fiscal Conservatives who were anti-mass immigration) and the more social-national UKIPpers who might (and did, briefly) appeal to voters in the Labour heartlands of the North.
Two years later, Alexandra Swann had left UKIP:
She was so politically-unaware that she thought that UKIP should ditch its anti-immigration stance and become a party of Ayn Rand “libertarians” (liberty for the wealthy and austerity/repression for the poor, as I see it). She was not alone in holding such attitudes: some who held elected positions were not far from her in this; one could mention Daniel Hannan MEP, Douglas Carswell MP etc as “fiscally conservative, socially-liberal”. Those far more seasoned (not to say educated and intelligent) figures likewise at least pretended to think that a “small-state” national conservatism could be popular. Needless to say, the idea is anathema to me.
Since that time, Alexandra Swann has retreated into private life and (her tweets have recounted) has even had a job or two, as well as becoming, presumably on a small scale (via family money? I do not know, but how else?), a buy-to-let parasite or “residential real estate investor” if you prefer. I should add that the lady blocks me on Twitter, though I have never tweeted to her. She must have disagreed with a tweet of mine which was critical of her smug “entitled” attitudes…
What I am writing about here is not this one now-obscure person, Alexandra Swann, as such (she was, in the end, too silly and inconsistent a figure to be taken seriously even in Britain’s decadent political/msm milieu), but as a symptom of a time when the mainstream media promoted almost anyone, especially those thought to be travelling along the “welfare reform”, “austerity” line. A pretty face and youth helped but were not essential. There were others after 2010 who were trying to become media talking heads and/or political stars. Some even became MPs.
There was Louise Mensch, who caught the wave early. David Cameron-Levita-Schlumberger placed her on the “A” List, as a result of which she was briefly an MP, though she resigned for “personal reasons” later, by which time various stories about her behaviour had surfaced, not least the fact that (as she admitted), “hard drugs” had “messed with” her brain…
Louise Mensch could be seen on TV constantly in 2010-2011, supporting the evil policies of the “Conservative” government of Cameron-Levita (and not only on Sky News, but Newsnight, at the time still a programme of some weight).
Since her resignation as MP, Louise Mensch has tried and failed at various commercial social media and Internet activities and was for a few years a columnist for the Sun “newspaper”, until she “left” in 2017. I always wondered why Murdoch paid her (assuming that it was a paid job). It seemed bizarre that a woman who constantly gets basic facts wrong could be a columnist even for the Sun. She still tweets, though: prolifically and sometimes –though unwittingly– funnily. She blocks me on Twitter…
I should add that Louise Mensch has been gunning for me for years on Twitter and elsehow. She loved it when the Jew Zionists managed to get me disbarred in 2016 (I suppose that she thought that I was still in practice and that I would suffer as a consequence) and (together with or parallel to the same Zionists) tweeted directly to me that she was going to get me chucked out of the New York Bar too. She is married to a wealthy Jew. Her desire to extract the “pound of flesh” from me was patent!
For the record, the New York Bar does not police its members’ opinions on politics (there’s this thing called the U.S. Constitution…) and I never heard anything more about the complaint by Louise Mensch against me (if it was ever made) or that supposedly made by some London Jews (eg one Goldberg QC, who threatened me with the same in the newspapers). In fact, I have never practised in New York anyway, and whether I belong to the NY Bar is a matter of supreme unconcern to me.
There were many others around 2010 (in fact from 2009) and in the succeeding years who were to be seen on Sky News and BBC News newspaper reviews, on Question Time and BBC Daily Politics. Some found niche positions in small publications or online, but most have almost faded from view. One is the egregious Caroline Criado-Perez. Like several others of the type now under discussion, she seems to have come from a rather wealthy background, so it scarcely matters to her from an everyday point of view that she dropped out of university in the first year. Her Wikipedia entry –pretty obviously mainly drafted by her– mentions her “working in digital marketing for several years”…well, it may be true…(ha).
It seems that some silly and malicious people emailed or tweeted to Caroline Criado-Perez in a threatening way (three were even convicted), allowing her to claim a kind of pseudo-martyr status for a while. I personally have no objection at all to women of note (no pun intended) being depicted on paper money, but to agitate for that (which had already been done anyway) hardly counts as a career…
Caroline Criado-Perez had an OBE bestowed upon her by David Cameron-Levita for her “activism” in getting Jane Austen on a banknote (though Elizabeth Fry had been on banknotes for years). She has now agitated for a statue of a Suffragist in Parliament Square. She still seems to regard herself as a kind of full-time or other “activist” though her Wikipedia entry says that in 2013 she was “in process of completing” a Master’s degree in Gender Studies. Roll over, Einstein! I have no idea whether she will now get a CBE for having asked that a statue be erected; maybe not.
I have never tweeted to Caroline Criado-Perez, but she must have seen me criticize her on Twitter or, more likely, not take her seriously on Twitter, because she too blocks me…I have only seen her a couple of times on TV and she seems quite pleasant in her interview manner, but “pleasant” alone just does not cut it in these times. She is a one-trick pony who is just not at all interesting.
What strikes me about the three women above is how adept, at least initially, they were at self-promotion. Also, how, in the end, self-promotion is not enough. 2010 and 2012 were different to 2018. Times are becoming serious. Yes, you could get on TV shows if you were a pretty girl willing to address (however shallowly) important issues; yes, you could maybe become an MP if you had the right help and image; yes, you could get an OBE for something like demanding that a certain type of person be put on a banknote. However, that’s where it finishes. The pretence of gravity is not the same, ultimately, as gravity. If you are shallow, or ignorant, or a one-trick pony, the more serious times will not carry you along but will dump you as irrelevant.
My intention in writing the above was not to criticize those mentioned but to characterize a time, a time that is pretty much gone now. The new time demands serious people with the ability to think and act seriously. This is no longer the time of the dilettante.
Later Note
“[Louise] Mensch is diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which made her realise she was “self medicating” with wine for stress….[103] She has also commented, on BBC Question Time during a debate on calls to decriminalise hard drugs, about taking hard drugs in her 20s; she subsequently told the press: “It is something that I regret incredibly, that, in my youth, I messed with my brain. I said ‘we all do stupid things when we are young’. It’s had long-term mental health effects on me.”
[Wikipedia]
Update, 25 January 2020
Nearly two years have passed since I wrote the above. The times have indeed become serious, but I have been astonished to note that System politics has founds niches for dilettantes almost as absurd as the three mentioned in the article. The Prime Minister is now Boris-idiot, dilettante sans pareil, and his top adviser is Dominic Cummings, another dilettante, who has asked that “weirdos and misfits” apply to “reform” the Civil Service. 35,000 have, we are told, applied. The UK is now going down so fast that it is dizzying.
Labour? Same: Jess Phillips for one, tipped (incredibly) as leader at some point (I doubt it, not if Labour is going to survive).
Update, 17 March 2023
None of the three women mentioned has come back into prominence, except that Louise Mensch has continued to tweet complete rubbish (including anti-Russia propaganda); she has been dumped by her now ex-husband, a wealthy American Jew; she still, it seems, lives in New York. As far as I can see, her tweets about me from years ago have all been deleted, and I myself was expelled from Twitter in 2018 after a long campaign by a pack of Jews.
Ian Robert Millard 
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