Well this is embarassing...

At some point I'm going to write properly about the Bermondsey byelection. The one with the homophobic campaign and where the Liberals won around which a lot of nonsense has built up.

Supposedly the slogan "(Liberal or Labour) It's A Straight Choice" was a virulently homophobic attack on Tatchell, despite also being used in the immediately previous byelection as well where the candidates were all, from what I can tell, heterosexual. These days Liberals tend to use the phrase "it's a two horse race" for the same effect.

But there's a peculiar silence in Labour ranks about a ghost of Bermondsey this week.  Angela Eagle has launched her bid to replace Corbyn as leader, which would make her the first out-lesbian leader of their party.

Yet in responding to her Jeremy keeps appearing at platforms with this slogan

Um... if deploying the word "straight" was inciteful homophobia in the less enlightened world of 1983, surely that makes it very knowing and inciteful homophobia in the much better educated and informed world of 2016?

I look forward to the people who have laid into Simon Hughes' election campaign over the years doing a similar demolition job on Jezza.  Especially if Angela does not become leader, in which case on the same basis as the myth of Bermondsey it was clearly the prejudice wot won it.