Grabbing a Peaceful Protester By the Neck Is Quite Bad, Actually

Welcome to Worst Hot Take of the Week – a weekly column in which NEO, AKA @MULLET_FAN NEO, pits two of the wildest takes the world's great thinkers have rustled up against each other.

TAKE #1

What's the story? Foreign Office Minister Mark Field aggressively and forcibly removed a peaceful Greenpeace activist from a room because they interrupted Philip Hammond’s speech.
Reasonable take: Truly obscene behaviour by a man against a non-violent female protester, in no other circumstances would this be tolerated, let alone by a Member of Parliament.
Brain rot: Bravo, that good man! Lucky he didn't kill her – she could have been carrying a weapon! Remember Jo Cox? More fodder for Corbyn to shamelessly use against the Conservative Party, no doubt.

This week, the MP for Cities of London & Westminster Mark Field violently grabbed a female Greenpeace protester during an event in the City, shoved her against a pillar and forcibly dragged her out of the banquet room.

Tory MP Johnny Mercer urged us to imagine being in "their shoes" as the non-violent protestor – who posed no immediate threat – was assaulted by the "panicked" Field, who has not "trained to restrain and arrest", but assured us we should be "thankful this wasn’t worse".

Last month, Field himself said he believes women "all over the world" should "feel safe and protected" so they can "speak freely and be part of the change we all want". The change "we all want" is seemingly going back to the Jacobean era.

Knight of the Realm, Sir Peter Bottomley (a fellow Conservative MP) praised Mark Field and suggested the Greenpeace protester "might have been carrying a collapsible truncheon" and claimed that "most other diners would have done the same". Another Tory MP, Crispin Blunt, echoed his colleagues, saying Field should be "commended" for having "efficiently eliminated a potential threat to people and the event", before saying what he showed is "called taking responsibility and leadership". Why the fuck is every Tory obsessed with framing situations like they’re about to go on SAS selection up the Brecon Beacons?

Well-known Tory canvasser Jim Davidson also called out the rabid "sexism cards" being dealt out, and gave us his definitive take-away of the situation: "The bottom line? Use female assassins, no one will stop them incase they get into trouble."

Mark Field has now been suspended as a minister, no doubt to the annoyance of many of his party members.

TAKE #2

What’s the story? Political commentators says there are no prominent women in Labour’s inner circle.
Reasonable take: Jeremy Corbyn isn't a woman, but over half of the Labour Shadow Cabinet is made up of women. I'm sure when it comes time to choose another leader of the Labour Party many of them will be considered.
Brain rot: The Tories are having a leadership contest with mostly men? Another example of Corbyn’s misogyny!

This week during the Tory leadership contest, in which some of the most rancid people in Britain have competed to become cunt supremo, some of our middle class political commentators have used the opportunity to lambast the true enemy of the people: Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour Party.

Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore wrote that the Tory leadership "winner will stand against Jeremy Corbyn. We all know Corbyn is very concerned about having more women in the Labour leadership. But not concerned enough to actually have many," adding, "Emily Thornberry couldn't be called on to do PMQs as she made the terrible faux pas of telling the truth about the European elections."

Zing. Of course, Moore's entire article fails to acknowledge that Thornberry (as traditional for the Shadow Foreign Secretary) was at the D-Day commemorations, so another literal woman, Rebecca Long Bailey, took PMQs in her place.

Moore doesn't manage to fully ignore the fact that Labour has a gender-balanced front bench (which is 52 percent female), but states that there's a deficiency within "its inner circle".

The problem is not that there aren't enough women in Labour's "inner circle", but that they are the wrong women for Moore: white working class women like Laura Pidcock and Angela Rayner, and left-leaning women of colour like Dawn Butler and Dianne Abbott, rather than centrists like Stella Creasy or Jess Phillips, who she holds up loftily in her article.

Butler isn't mentioned once in the piece, nor is Abbott, which is odd given her prominent position in the party and the fact that Suzanne Moore stood against her as an Independent in the 2010 General Election, receiving only 0.6 percent of the vote. This genuinely pathetic erasing by centrist pundits of people of colour in some lame attempt to shiv Corbyn's Labour is enough to make you want to quit the internet forever, move to a commune and live off the fat of the land.

I wonder when this lot are going to get it through their heads that the Labour Party wasn't established so middle-Englanders could feel better about their vote. I simply beg them all to stop acting like a shill for the Conservative party because they can't buzz their nuts off voting for Tony's "cool Britannia" party anymore.

If you miss the late-90s so much, just get a fucking tattoo chocker necklace, or a fucking hair wrap and a Tamagotchi.

Winner: While "Corbyn's Labour is misogynistic because he hasn't gracefully stepped down as leader for Jess Phillips" is a great take, half the Tory party applauding the needless assault of a woman has to be my take of the week.

@MULLET_FAN NEO