...and her REAL political colour revealed on her Twitter account
EMILY Maitlis has never been shy to disguise her Left-leaning views, as even the most cursory glance at her tweets and retweets directed at her 360,000 followers reveals.
Unable to contain her excitement at Dominic Cummings’s trip north, she tweeted about it before her monologue on Tuesday night. But her bias goes back a long way, as ROSS CLARK explains…
WEDNESDAY MAY 27
Missing from the Newsnight presenter’s chair, Miss Maitlis is busy on Twitter, retweeting Newsnight’s feed, which was quoting Donald’s Trump’s rogue ex-press secretary Anthony Scaramucci: ‘It’s a very tough decision for the executives at Twitter… You didn’t think you were going to be in a situation where you had a pathological liar as the President of the US and now you have to sit there and measure and weigh through what he’s doing.’
Miss Maitlis then retweets three negative tweets about Trump, including one by comedian Sarah Cooper: ‘Still processing the fact that the President has no clue what he’s talking about on national television.’
MAY 26
Far from having second thoughts about the way she had introduced the subject of Cummings that night, Miss Maitlis proudly retweets praise from user ‘Nearly Legal’, a lawyer recommended by (who else?) The Guardian: ‘Okay, that is an opening. @maitlis telling it as it is.’
MAY 24
Retweets a clip showing people shouting and making obscene gestures at Cummings as he walks towards his home, with a comment by New York Times correspondent Jane Bradley: ‘These aren’t journalists shouting at Cummings but furious members of the public.’
Miss Maitlis tweets: ‘The damaging thing about this whole issue for government is that Cummings instantly loses any right to tell others they are out of touch/elite/ missing the public mood. That’s properly over now. He has become the thing he loathed.’ Retweets the Labour Party’s official account: ‘There cannot be one rule for Dominic Cummings and another for the British people.’
Retweets the Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff: ‘Just want to say there will be good Tory MPs and ministers hating every minute of this, who need to decide if this is what they want their party to become. Politics is being demeaned and as with expenses scandal, there will be lasting damage.’
MAY 14
Retweets LBC radio presenter and archRemainer James O’Brien: ‘The far-Right routinely disseminate and pretend to believe things they know not to be true to stoke hatred and division. To see the tactic being adopted by Conservative MPs and even an actual minister is a moment of real danger for our democracy.’
Retweets an anti-Tory doctor who congratulates her following an item in that
evening’s Newsnight: ‘as a frontline healthcare worker I’m so grateful you are calling out the lies, u-turns and incompetence of this government. Proper journalism.’
MAY 11
Retweets times columnist Jenni Russell: ‘Boris was never up to the job of crisis leader. His role was figurehead. But his Cabinet can’t fill the gap because they were chosen for Brexit loyalty, not competence. We’re being led by bunch of inadequates.’
MAY 6
Professor Neil Ferguson has resigned from the Government’s sage committee after his married lover visited him. In contrast to the excitement she will show when Cummings is accused of breaking lockdown, Miss Maitlis retweets a scientist: ‘the lockdown is here actually to protect your community and protect the NHs… so in a sense, not to let this [resignation] distract people from complying with the lockdown.’
APRIL 5
Miss Maitlis retweets a doctor who has been angered by a column in the Daily telegraph: ‘@telegraph has really decided to ratchet up the blame game. Yep, it’s the NHs who’s to blame for the Covid19 lockdown. Oh – and Us-style healthcare would be better. NHs staff – who’s with me in boycotting telegraph advertisers? Because this kind of accusation stinks.’
DECEMBER 9, 2019
three days before the general election, she tweets: ‘Don’t underestimate the similarities between G.B.Done [Get Brexit Done] and M.a.G.a [Make america Great again, trump’s campaign slogan] – they each work if they are consistently repeated and chanted – but never explained.’
DECEMBER 7
Retweets Lib Dem candidate sue Wixley, praising tory voters who lend their vote to the Lib Dems.
DECEMBER 4
Retweets Lib Dem activist who claims thenleader Jo swinson has been unfairly criticised for her time in the tory-led coalition Government. ‘the irony is Jo swinson, who no one knew five years ago, is being held to account on her record in government, while Boris Johnson completely shrugs it off.’
NOVEMBER 6
Retweets Jonathan Lis, of anti-Brexit group Brit Influence, after Miss Maitlis grilled tory ex-minister James Brokenshire on Brexit.
‘Maitlis puts a suggestion to James Brokenshire that simply won’t go away: after so many years of attempted detoxification, the tories are back to being the Nasty Party again.’
Miss Maitlis goes on to retweet supportive comments that Brokenshire was ‘completely out of his depth’ during her interview and was speaking in ‘banal soundbites’.
OCTOBER 20
Retweets a post by the then Lib Dem MP sarah Wollaston who had defected from the tories. ‘No one should be duped by the fake “One Nation” tory spin. this would be a very different and far more Right-wing #NastyParty if it gets back in. the cull of the moderates has been ruthless.’