Remember the Conservative Party’s ‘respect’ pledge? Nicholas Soames doesn’t – unless he thinks “appalling little sh*tweasel” is a term of endearment.

His outburst means we can add homophobia to racism among the Conservative government’s appalling characteristics.

It should cost him – but don’t hold your breath waiting for any reprisals because the Tories don’t seem to think even their own rules apply to them.

Mr Soames made his comment while joining what’s known as a ‘dogpile’ – a large number of social media users attacking one who has made what they consider to be a wrong/offensive remark, in order to gain popularity points – against lefty journo Owen Jones.

Here’s Mr Jones’s offensive statement, along with the follow-up declaring that he was being dogpiled:

As a British media journalist myself, I’ve had experience of the behaviour he was criticising – and it runs against what should be natural journalistic behaviour.

Our role is to question, not to blindly accept whatever we are spoonfed by others.

But you see this blind acceptance all the time in what, as a stopgap measure, I’ll call the London mainstream media. Consider the acceptance of the Tory narrative on the Skripal poisoning. Consider the BBC’s swift adoption of Theresa May’s lie that Labour burned the Windrush landing papers (it was her decision). Consider the determination that the evidence on which the Tory government bombed Syria was sound.

Yes, all these issues have been brought into question – but initially by the New Left media, not the London mainstream which seems to exist in its own bubble.

How about the accusations of anti-Semitism against me? The Sunday Times published an appalling libel and was copied by a series of right-wing papers. Not one of them bothered to check whether the information was accurate.

It was into the mass of disparaging tweets that Mr Soames flung his homophobic insult. I like the fact that it follows a tweet by Harry Cole, complaining about “endless tedious contradictory columns”. Perhaps this person hasn’t realised that part of journalism involves investigating whether evidence is factually accurate or not, and a story can turn around completely between first assertions and final conclusions.

You go where the evidence leads you; you don’t adopt a position and stick to it, no matter what. That isn’t journalism; it’s partisanship.

The Urban Dictionary defines one of those as a person who will put his penis up someone else’s bottom, unexpectedly and without prior warning. As we all know that Owen Jones is gay, this is a serious homophobic insult.

It is entirely possible that Mr Soames was thinking of an alternative definition – that of a person of similar or higher rank who will stab you in the back, deny he did it, and blame you for the stabbing.

If so, then he should have chosen his words more carefully, because the former definition does exist, can be applied offensively to Mr Jones and, as such, is very far beyond the pale.

Mr Soames has ‘form’ with regard to offensive comments. He has been named as the ‘most sexist’ MP, with several female MPs stating that he has made vulgar comments to them. One recent example was on January 31, 2017, when Mr Soames made ‘woofing’ noises at Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.

The victim of this attack has been remarkably calm about it:

There is, of course, another aspect to all this: The favouritism towards Conservatives that takes place in the London mainstream media bubble – almost certainly because of exactly the sort of “suffocating groupthink” and prevalence of people “who made it because of connections and/or personal background rather than merit” on whom Mr Jones was originally remarking.

It hasn’t gone unnoticed by those of us who live outside that London bubble:

While Mr Jones is unburdened by this, the Conservative Party and those parts of the media he criticised should find this a serious headache.

Their overreaction to an honest comment has proved everything that was said about them. Will Tory chairman Brandon Lewis “step up and do the right thing”, as he recently asked of Labour?

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