Right wing political blog Guido Fawkes had no sympathy for Labour MP Nadia Whittome in 2021 when she announced she had taken an “incredibly difficult” and “very sad” decision to take a “step back” from work because she was suffering from mental health challenges.
It did not matter to the site that Whittome had been a frontline care worker during the Covid pandemic, Under the headline ‘Nadia’s Shell Shock Shows Politicians Need Life Experience… Nadia’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’, Guido Fawkes contrasted Whittome’s photo with that of a WWI soldier. Readers were told that “Guido has no insight into what ails the youngest MP in Parliament, Nadia Whittome, such that she needs to take a break from parliament due to PTSD. Parliament may be daunting though nothing akin to the trenches of the First World War”.
The piece was not bylined but is widely thought to have been penned by the site’s then senior reporter, Christian Calgie. But now he is ensconced as senior political correspondent at the Daily Express, Calgie’s views on mental health appear to have softened.
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On September 17, Calgie, so right wing even some of his Express colleagues find him an oddball, appeared to have called for Zarah Sultana, the former Labour MP now behind Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party venture, to be deported.
Writing on X that he could not “wait until my taxes no longer fund Zarah [sic] salary,” Calgie received a response from a user called ‘Wasted’ saying, “Cannot wait until my taxes fund deporting Zarahs”. Calgie replied: “Even better.”
Now, after receiving what one Reach colleague told Rats in a Sack was “the mother of all bollockings”, Calgie has reverse-ferreted on calling for a British MP born in Birmingham to be deported. “I wish to apologise to Zarah Sultana MP for my inappropriate response to a message on X. It was wrong of me to do so and I am sorry,” he wrote, adding that he was now “Taking a break from X to prioritise my mental health.”
A comparison with the trenches of the first world war might seem appropriate – but that would be cheap.
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