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is a real international working-class triumph that is being
unsung. Julie initially suggests he is corrupt from
what she’s heard. I strongly disagree.
“I don’t know enough about Venezuela; I dare say
you’re right. But remember when whatsisname, Ortega?
The Sandinista leader was accused of molesting
his daughter, well ten years ago we’d have all cleaved
together and said she was lying, but, thank God for
feminism, how do we know that. I was brought up in a
Communist household, when I moved to London I met
Paul Foot and was briefly in the SWP, and the one thing
my dad the working-class Stalinist and Paul Foot the
middle-class Trotskyist had in common is they couldn’t
fucking look at themselves, see the bad in their side.
That’s what attracted me to people on the right for a
while, like Alan Clark. What a fucking cool man!”
She proceeds to launch into an entertaining and fairly
accurate impression of Clark fantasising about Russian
women in his infamously lecherous manner. Julie has
latched onto the theme of the Left denying its own
crimes now and, as ever, there’s no getting her off it.
“My dad taught me that you hide your own sin and
you don’t take yourselves apart; I’ve realised recently
that we’ve got to criticise ourselves before we can
start on anyone else. In that way lies strength. I love
Mr Castro and the Cuban revolution, and it’s achieved
so much; they can cure blindness there whereas they
can’t in America, but you go there and see 12-year-old
BUY Julie Burchill books online from and
prostitutes; it obviously wasn’t meant to be like this.
And the things he did to gay people, though I dare say
he had a good reason … But to turn away helps no-one.
I really think the Left has to take itself apart before
anyone else, because we can, because we’re stronger
and more intelligent than the Right.”
There we are then, to reverse Groucho’s old maxim,
whether many on the Left want her or not – pro
Bush and Blair on the war as she is – that’s the club
she places herself in at heart. I can’t help but have
a tentative go here; what about her wonderful 2002
Guardian columns where she ripped “Princess Toni”
to pieces on a weekly basis due to his betrayal of the
Labour movement?
“That’s simple, Blair is a great war-leader, like
Churchill; useless in times of peace. Who would vote
for the poor sod after that?”
So you’re not taking away your criticisms of his domestic
policies, privatisation, sucking up to the bosses?
“I’ve never voted for Mr Blair and I don’t imagine I
will. [This interview was conducted shortly before the
2005 General Election] The last time I voted was for
the Socialist Alliance locally, and UKIP nationally, or
was it the other way round? I don’t even remember.
I’ve got nothing to hide.”
She repeats the highly entertaining story of how, on
her father’s death bed she vowed to defend the name
of his old hero Joe Stalin, only to be told by Bill “You
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