Andy McSmith's Diary: Small-minded comments that linked Brussels outrage to Brexit

There is an online genre practised by people who cannot resist using a horrific event such as the Brussels bombs to show that they are right and everyone who disagrees is wrong about whatever.

The Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson set Twitter alight with this observation posted less than an hour after the first bomb went off: “Brussels, de facto capital of the EU, is also the jihadist capital of Europe. And the Remainers dare to say we’re safer in the EU!”

More than 1,000 people retweeted this comment, many to condemn it, but one of those who retweeted without comment, in apparent agreement, was Ukip MEP Patrick O’Flynn. His Ukip colleague, Mike Hookem, weighed in with a press release reiterating the claim that it reinforced the case for Brexit.

It is oddly small-minded to appear to imply that people being murdered in Brussels and Paris need not concern us as long as terrorists stay on that side of the Channel.

Terrorism’s Trump card

At least Ukip’s politicians were not using the death toll in Brussels to cast about for votes – unlike Donald Trump, or George Galloway. A few hours after the outrage, Galloway announced on Facebook: “I opposed all the wars which fuelled terrorism while my opponents supported them. I stand against the Islamophobia in which terrorism swims while my opponents casually wallow in it. I am the best man to keep Londoners safe.”

And Trump wasted no time in announcing that he would “close up our borders” and that he favoured waterboarding suspected terrorists. He told Fox TV that fear of terrorism is “at least a small part of the reason why I’m the No 1 front-runner”.

Lord Black cashes in

Conrad Black, the former owner of The Daily Telegraph, has not been seen in the House of Lords for a long time, though he is still a member, notwithstanding the 37 months that the old fraudster spent in a US federal prison.

Lord Black and his wife Barbara Amiel once had a £23m London mansion, a £16m spread in Palm Beach, Florida, and a £6.25m pied à terre in Manhattan. All gone. And they have now also sold the sprawling nine-bedroom mansion in Toronto built by Lord Black’s father. “It’s a big house for two people,” Lord Black has been quoted as saying – yet, oddly, the couple will continue living in it, under a leaseback arrangement. Could it be that his lordship was in urgent need of ready cash?

Cryptic Corbyn

Like an obsessive who watches Casablanca hunting for the moment when Humphrey Bogart says “Play it again, Sam!” I have scoured the Hansard record, not believing what I have read – that Jeremy Corbyn made a speech in the Commons attacking the Budget and forgot to mention Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation.

I discover that the Labour leader actually made a passing mention of “the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions”. Well, there cannot be a “new” Secretary of State unless the old Secretary of State has either a) died, b) been sacked, or c) resigned. So within Corbyn’s speech there was a cryptic indication that one of these three things had befallen Iain Duncan Smith. Eat your hearts out, all you who knock Jeremy Corbyn.

The real Iron Lady

MPs are so angry with Mike Ashley, owner of Sports Direct, for his contemptuous reaction to being called before a Commons committee to answer questions about his employment practices that they are threatening to issue him with a legal summons.

This prompted the veteran Dennis Skinner to observe: “There used to be a woman in the House working for the Serjeant at Arms called Mary Frampton. We will need one to deal with him.”

Mary Frampton, who died in August 2014, was the feared and fearless official who served a summons on Sir Charles Villiers, the lordly head of British Steel, and later on Arthur Scargill.

“We have such a person,” the Speaker, John Bercow, told Skinner. He did not say who he or she is.