Four By Two?

From its first proposal and for several years thereafter, all criticism of the invasion of Iraq was routinely branded as anti-Semitic. From time to time, it still is.

And now, the same appears to be the branding of all criticism of the latest New Labour apparatchik to have become President of the NUS (out of the oligarchy into which flowed the nominally Labour, but entirely Soviet-controlled, strand within New Labour), right at the moment when an essentially Blairite government is finally implementing the totally Blairite policy on higher education. What next? Is it anti-Semitic to criticise the Blairite health policy to which its principal architect, David Miliband, ridiculously pretends to be opposed in today's Observer?

It may be sad to say this, but there is little or no chance that even those of today's students who grew up in London would be familiar with the Cockney rhyming slang "four by two", or with much Cockney rhyming slang beyond "apples and pears", if that. Still less would they be familiar with its abbreviation to "two" in the chant "Aaron Porter, we know you, you're a f***ing Tory two". Porter, however, is the latest example of a "funny, you don't look Gentile" person, although at least he is not called either Cohen or Aaronovitch while furiously protesting, both that he is not Jewish, and that any disagreement with him is nevertheless anti-Semitic.