PETER HITCHENS: Only Left-wingers could think killing and maiming is a giggle

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What is wrong with Left-wing people? Why are so many of them so filled with violent hatred of anyone who disagrees with them?

Why has so little attention been paid to the cruel, bloodstained words of John O’Farrell, the official Labour candidate in the Eastleigh by-election?

Mr O’Farrell, an alleged comedian, has not as far as I know repudiated or regretted a passage in a book he wrote at the age of 36, saying he wished Margaret Thatcher had died in the Brighton Bomb.

Bloodstained words: John O'Farrell (left), the official Labour candidate in the Eastleigh by-election has not repudiated or regretted a passage in a book he wrote saying he wished Margaret Thatcher (right) had died in the Brighton Bomb

He said: ‘In October 1984 when the Brighton bomb went off, I felt a surge of excitement at the nearness of her demise and yet disappointment that such a chance had been missed.’ 

In case anyone had missed his point, he added later. ‘I just hated her so very, very much.’ 

I am not, as it happens, a great admirer of Lady Thatcher myself. And I’m not above a bit of invective and mockery against the politicians I actively despise. 

But it is the hate-filled violence of this passage that strikes me. What kind of person can write this, and then not cross it out in embarrassment?

This is not the only example of this sort of thing last week. The BBC has for many years tolerated a radio programme called ‘The News Quiz’ on which sniggering fun-revolutionaries (at your expense) are paid to amuse a sniggering Left-wing studio audience with babyish jests, under the guidance of a self-satisfied chairwoman who thinks she is cleverer than she is.

On a recent edition, a purported comedian referred to the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, as ‘a foetus in a jar’. 

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This was the cue for an exchange in which Mr Gove was (very falsely) described as being friendless (I count him as a friend, though I disagree with him strongly, and so do many others in politics and journalism), and then as having ‘a  face that makes even the  most pacifist of people reach for the shovel in  anticipation of reshaping it’.

A sole Tory panellist, serving as a figleaf for the programme’s blatant bias, was swiftly brushed aside when he tried to defend Mr Gove. The BBC’s attempt to defend this malicious tripe is so wretched that I will do them a favour and not reproduce it. 

In my experience, nasty, bullying people often attempt to disguise their true feelings as ‘jokes’. So there it is, the modern Left displayed – a parliamentary candidate who publicly wished for the hideous, violent death of a woman, and is not ashamed, and a BBC programme that publicly discusses smashing a man’s face with a shovel.

Both of these are supposedly jokes. But they are not. They are a symptom of a raging sickness of the soul that has the modern Left in its grip. They are so sure that they are right that they no longer think their opponents are human.

That way lie the torture cellar, the re-education camp and the firing squad, as the Left proves every time it gets enough power to show what it is really like. It’s not funny.

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No role model: Libya's deposed Col Gaddafi

Now our Army is dictated to by tyrants

It seems that all it takes to get a building at Sandhurst named after you is £3 million. King Hamad of Bahrain, a tyranny which employs torture, has achieved this distinction. A building that used to commemorate the Battle of Mons will now instead advertise the fact that Britain is for sale. Lucky for us that Colonel Gaddafi didn’t donate to Sandhurst when he was still in our good books.

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I’m not sure I buy the excuses made for Hilary Mantel, a once-fine novelist (her book about Saudi Arabia is superb), who has achieved fame and fortune by switching to supersized historical romances.

Ms Mantel is said to have been attacking the wicked popular media when she offered her scornful descriptions of the Duchess of Cambridge. 

Really? She wasn’t quoting anyone but herself as she sprayed the sneers around. And her entire article in the ‘London Review of Pretentiousness’ is drenched in disdain for the Monarchy.

Self-importantly, she recounts one of the occasions when the Queen was lucky enough to meet her.

‘I felt that such was the force of my devouring curiosity that the party had dematerialised and the walls melted and there were only two of us in the vast room, and such was the hard power of my stare that Her Majesty turned and looked round at me as if she had been jabbed in the shoulder; and for a split second her face expressed not anger but hurt bewilderment.’ Crikey.

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Replying to Tarzan's rather low swing

I must respond here to an attempt to smear me, during BBC Question Time, by Lord Heseltine. Tarzan’s a bit creaky in wind and limb now, but he’s still an expert demagogue.

My guess is that he was trying to do a favour for his great friend Mr Slippery, like him a dripping wet Europhile. He falsely claimed that I had said young men who enlisted to fight, kill and die were ‘stupid’, a word I never used and wouldn’t use.

What I said – and believe – is that young men do these things because they are unwise. Who, looking at the heartbreaking cemeteries full of young volunteers for old men’s wars, at Gallipoli or along the Somme, could really argue?

Smear me: During BBC Question Time, Lord Heseltine (second left) falsely claimed that I had said young men who enlisted to fight, kill and die were 'stupid', a word I never used and wouldn't use

In case you want to argue, here’s what a good friend, who happens to be a serving infantry officer with recent combat experience, said to me. ‘Young men are unwise, almost by definition. I don’t see how anyone who has actually served with young infantry soldiers could believe the majority are wise. Brave, loyal, aggressive – but very rarely wise.’

Has Lord Heseltine served with young soldiers in combat? I’m not sure. Despite his taste for camouflage jackets and brigade ties, he had a rather brief military career. Though born in 1933, he missed Korea, Malaya, Kenya and Suez, and wasn’t called up for National Service till 1959. He was almost immediately allowed out again.

It seems he was urgently needed to fight (and lose) a hopeless seat for the Tories in the General Election that year. Wise beyond his years, perhaps.

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Try solving some real problems, ArchbishopWho rules our streets? As I walked on a sunny afternoon through the pleasant heart of Canterbury, I watched as passers-by humiliatingly made way for a pair of lager-swilling youths with weapon dogs, who cackled as they went. No police were to be seen. And I saw a pleasant park wrecked by drifts of litter. Perhaps the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, might turn his mind to these things, instead of homosexuality, women bishops or overseas aid.

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