Laura Pidcock’s Gulf gaffe

We don’t hear much of Laura Pidcock these days. The onetime Corbynista rising star was unceremoniously dumped by her North West Durham constituency at the last election, having managed to turn it from a Labour safe seat into a Tory gain in just over two years. Denied a voice in Parliament and with media appearances drying up, the Momentum heroine has been reduced to opining from her Twitter account on the issues of the day.

Now out of the Commons and safely installed in the more comradely surroundings of the CLASS think tank and the People’s Assembly, Pidcock can wage virtual proletarian struggle to her heart’s content. Today her choice of target was a gas leak off the Gulf of Mexico, causing a fire on the ocean surface west of the Yucatan peninsula. For Pidcock, the answer was clear: somehow, the dastardly free markets were to blame, prompting her to tweet: ‘The sea is on fire but some people *still* think capitalism can be managed.’