With Emily Thornberry en route to Cuba to attend the funeral of Fidel Castro, back in Blighty landbound socialists — with selective memories — continue to take to the airwaves to heap praise on the late dictator.
Happily during one such appearance, from Richard Gott — a former literary editor of the Guardian — on Sky News, Douglas Murray was on hand to offer a few home truths. After Gott heralded Castro ‘one of the most remarkable figures of the last century’ and ‘a really great, great man’, Murray gave an alternative take on the Cuban dictator:
‘History will remember him as one of the more minor 20th century dictators but a dictator nonetheless, a brute, a thug — somebody who overthrew one non-democratic regime and then forgot to hold a general election ever again.’
When Gott hit back that he was talking ‘complete rubbish’, Murray suggested that this was hardly surprising given Gott’s history with the KGB…
‘Well, I would expect to hear that from Richard Gott, who of course was an agent of influence at the KGB during the cold war and thus very clearly on the wrong side of history himself.
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