Middle Class Holes 7 - Owen Jones

Arse of darkness

Hercule Poirot sat alone in the large, wing-backed chair in the drawing room of Middleton Manor, his fingertips steepled, contemplating the web of clues he had gathered. At last, the solution was beginning to present itself, the pieces fitting together to satisfy the precision of his remarkable mind.

Suddenly, the door burst open - and in rushed his faithful assistant, Guardian columnist Owen Jones.

‘Poirot, babes, I have a theory that will blow - your - mind!’ he exclaimed, eyes wild with excitement. ‘These murders were not the work of a single individual!’

Poirot blinked in surprise. ‘But - what is this you are saying, mon ami?’

‘I’ve worked it all out!’ cried his aereated aide. ‘I have all the evidence! The horrible slayings of Lord Middleton, Lady Cynthia and Colonel Melbury were part of a well-funded, targeted campaign -‘

‘Yes, yes?’ urged the startled Belgian super-sleuth.

‘-by the Murdoch press, the American religious right, hedge fund managers, the Conservative Party, Tufton Street, Graham Linehan. Israel, Mrs Thatcher, Mumsnet, and the LGB Alliance!’

Poirot sighed. It was going to be a long evening.

For your own sake, it’s best to try to ignore and disengage with the truly dark cases in public life - Willoughby, Tatchell, various of the Twitter characters. Letting these people into your head is a victory for them. It is, as they are, dispiriting and tedious and depressing. And every time they open their mouths, it’s a win for my ‘side’, so why interfere with that delicious process? Plus, as disability rights activist Long John Silver told closeted twink Jim Hawkins during one of their inclusivity training sessions, ‘You can’t touch pitch and not be mucked, m’lad’.

But there was no way I could compile a list of the Top 50 Most Awful Middle Class People In Britain without including Owen Jones - the ridiculous and repulsive self-appointed moral arbiter of our times, gym bunny Sandinista, fluffer for Jeremy Corbyn, tireless explainer of complicated things to scatterbrained ladies, and all-round rotten lot.

Now, I’ve been accused of being too kind in this series. But that won’t be a problem this week. There’s usually something illuminating, a twinkle, a saving grace in these people that you can grab hold of . However, it is hard to find any excuses or glimmers of redemption in Jones. It’s all just bad, all the way down, and all points around.

Toxic is a word scattered about perhaps too readily nowadays. Genuinely poisonous people are thankfully few. But here goes.

Is Jones middle class? He is a possible borderline case as a middle classhole, but his mum (computer scientist and lecturer) and dad (union bigwig) met as members of Militant Tendency - how romantic! ‘Give me a shady nook, by a babbling brook …’ That all puts him in the field, I reckon.

Let’s get Jones’s personal presentational qualities out of the way, quick. What are those immediately obvious factors?

Smugness and anger, that can be fine. Smugness and pettiness, ok, it can be funny. But the Jones compound - smugness mixed with self-pity - is a lethal cocktail. Though the combination can occasionally be inexplicably popular; see Robbie Williams, the last pop star.

And Jones is popular. Popular, but never any bloody fun, unlike Williams, who at least offered some of that as a sweetener. Like Ian Hislop, in a different way, Jones stopped being funny, even to laugh at, years ago. He infuses everything with a tang of tedium. Even making mock of him feels like a chore.

He has the general aspect of a Victorian street urchin yet to develop secondary sexual characteristics - like the ones in the 80s Sherlock Holmes opening credits - despite being in his forties. He can generally be found jubilating in something terrible, an imp on an ash heap. He has a strangely puppet-like gait and deportment, as if head, arms and legs are being pulled by different pairs of hands. This was seen in its purest form when he flounced out of a TV studio in 2016. This followed some quibbling with the host and with fellow guest, phone-in wrangler Julia Hartley-Brewer. The quibble in question concerned - grimly symptomatically of Jones - the identity characteristics of the still-warm violently killed. If Hartley-Brewer’s account is correct, Jones forgot the cardinal rule of live TV; never go in front of a camera when you are absolutely Jan Hammered.

Heavens to Murgatroyd - exit stage left!

Let’s have some of his greatest hits. This is a very rich vein; there are literally hundreds of examples one could choose. First up - pot and kettling to an unbelievable level -

And here are just a few of Jones’s many thoughts on and around the vexed topic of women -