After the false dawn of socialism that was Ken Livingstone’s eight years in charge of London as Mayor, a bone fide Marxist has made her way into the government of our great city. The Evening Standard made great play of the fact that several members of Livingstone’s team had alleged links to far left groups – despite the fact that, gesture politics aside, this manifested itself in a decidely pro-capitalist regime.
I read with interest today in the Standard that Munira Mirza has been appointed as Boris Johnson’s Arts and Culture spokesperson. Ms Mirza is part of a clique that emerged from the Revolutionary Communist Party now based around the website Spiked Online and the Chianti quafing cabal known as the Manifesto Club.
The Revolutionary Communist Party are best known for their publication of Living Marxism magazine that was closed down after being sued for libel by ITN. They were also notorious in my student days for what was termed ‘horizontal recruitment’ – a flatmate of mine experienced this first-hand after a ‘Troops Out’ meeting above a pub in Islington. Their wrath was mainly aimed at others on the Left and they were so divisive that many believed that the RCP was in fact a CIA/MI5 front organisation. Maybe Munira Mirza’s elevation to the ranks of Boris Johnson’s Junta confirms our paranoid suspicions as it’s not clear what qualifies Munira Mirza in the realms of Arts and Culture beyond editing a couple of dodgy corporate-sponsored reports.
Could it be that the famously fruity Boris Johnson couldn’t resist the tales of ‘horizontal recruitment’ in his attempt to recreate the spirit of the knocking shop that was the Spectator under his editorship.