The animals of Pen Farthing’s hood: 'Confused' columnists, obvious smears and why living dogs beat a dead cat any day...
The animals of Pen Farthing’s hood: 'Confused' columnists, obvious smears and why living dogs beat a dead cat any day...
The tale of 'poisonous' Pen will serve as a handy distraction for Johnson, Raab and the cabinet of horrors.
I come from a military family1 for whom the closest thing to religion is rehoming rescue animals, especially dogs. But we — especially my dad — have a profound dislike for mawkishness, the concept of ‘heroes’, and people who dress dogs up in ‘funny’ outfits. That’s why I find the Pen Farthing story so utterly grotesque.
Paul ‘Pen’ Farthing, a former marine who set up an animal shelter in Kabul, has been all over the papers like a pissing puppy this week. His campaign to get himself, the animals in his care, and his Afghan staff out of the country has taken up a lot of newsprint, air-time, and attention at the MoD that might have been better spent elsewhere.
It’s been claimed that Operation Ark — the self-aggrandising name given to the effort to get the 200 animals out of Afghanistan — had support inside Number 10 from the Prime Minister’s unelected consigliere and current wife Carrie Johnson as well as being discussed during a Cobra meeting. The increasingly infuriated MoD, which is briefing against Farthing like he collectively insulted their mothers, has denied both claims.
The public row between the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, who accused Farthing of “talking bollocks” and whose department has fired off several shade-filled tweets about the saga, and the Penistas who have accused officials of trying to sabotage the Homeward Bound sequel has provided the papers with a lot of material to work with.
Oddly though they spent a lot less time on the fact that a… car seemed to have been evacuated earlier this week. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t a transformer.
A rash of briefings against Pen — now being called “the Pet Dick” in Westminster — has given the Sunday papers a rich vein of gossip and acrimony to mine. Today’s Sunday Times goes big on a story headlined I will destroy you, Pen Farthing warned defence aide over Afghanistan pet airlift which claims the former marine sent “an expletive-laden rant” to Peter Quentin, one of Wallace’s special advisors.
The paper quotes extensively from the message — sent on Monday— which it can only feasibly have got from Quentin or someone extremely close to him. It’s less good chap and more Goodfellas as Farthing rages:
Get me out of Afghanistan with my staff and my animals. I served for 22 years in the Royal Marine Commandos. I am not taking this bollocks from people like you who are blocking me. You’ve got ‘til tomorrow morning. I’m on Sky News about 7.45 and your name will be the only name people are talking about.
… I will spend the rest of my time fucking destroying you on social media and every other fucking platform I can find…
… So here’s the deal, buddy. You either get me that fucking Isaf number and you get me permission to get onto that fucking airfield or tomorrow morning I’m going to turn on you and the whole fucking country, and everybody else who’s invested in this rescue is going to know it’s you — YOU — blocking this fucking move. Alright?
Of course, The Times censors every occurrence of fucking in the above quote because it a) likes to subject its readers to the world’s easiest game of hangman and b) is fine with publishing pictures of being falling from aeroplanes or bloodied in the aftermath of a terror attack but considers its readers too delicate to read the word ‘fuck’ without being overtaken by a bout of the vapours.
Elsewhere in The Times, Charlotte Ivers contributes a column about the animals of Farthing’s hood under the headline Saving pets before people . . . have we gone snarling mad?
Ivers is Times Radio’s political correspondent and well-connected in Tory circles (she’s a former Number 10 spad and her recent ex-boyfriend is spad-turned-MP Richard Holden) and writes:
Last week I texted a few MPs, asking: Have you had more campaigning emails from constituents about saving human refugees, or animals? All but one said animals. Perhaps I should not have been surprised. For years, parliamentary staff have told me their inboxes are dominated by pleas to save animals, regardless of any human suffering anywhere in the world.
She quotes from a YouGov survey conducted last week which found 40 per cent of respondents think an animal life is worth the same as a human one2. You can expect more stories on that theme in the press this week as YouGov is currently running another survey asking the question.
It’s unsurprising that Ivers, an employee of News UK stable and a former political correspondent for TalkRadio (the audio version of The Sun), writes admiringly of “a proud history of tabloid campaigns to save condemned fluffy creatures” and links the Farthing farrago with another ongoing story:
Most recently the star of the show has been Geronimo, the TB-ridden alpaca whose death was ordered four years ago. He is now on his third environment secretary.
She also references the ‘legendary’ dodgy donkey dash of 1987 when The Sun and Daily Star battled for the right to adopt Blackie and save him from a hyped-up horrible fate in a Spanish village as well as the more recent tale of Annie who was dubbed “Britain’s loneliest elephant” by the tabloids.
Geronimo also makes an appearance in The Sunday Times story about Farthing’s voice message with a “senior official” snarling:
If [the animals] turn out to be riddled with disease, Defra will have to put them down. It will be Geronimo the alpaca on speed.
That faint sound you can hear is Keir Starmer sharpening an axe.
Writing about her time in Number 10 under Theresa May, Ivers says:
[In 2017] MPs and candidates felt stung by the anger shown during the general election about the party’s position on fox hunting. Those who returned to Westminster had a conviction that Something Must Be Done to correct the view that the government was a bunch of fox-murdering toffs.3
… there was a plea from the Downing Street policy unit for policy ideas that were popular, cheap and did not require legislation: the Holy Grail for a government with minimal support, less money and even less of a majority. Thus we were inundated with animal-friendly policies, from banning plastic straws to reintroducing three beavers to the countryside. The latter policy warranted a government press release.
But after admiring the emotive tactics of the tabloids and admitting that the government which she served was engaged in cheap animal stunts, Ivers writes:
… the fact that, in order to secure the safe passage of some dogs and cats, resources, time and energy have been diverted from saving people who have put themselves at risk to work for our country? I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. And I really don’t like what it says about our country.
What it says about our country is that cheap tricks work and that Pen Farthing and his supporters have seen the tactics used by the tabloid newspapers and our tabloid governments and simply turned them to their own advantage.
That 1,000s of people have not made it out of Afghanistan, including at least 100 interpreters, while Farthing has is a grim fact. It’s made grimmer by the detail that he and the animals have now flown out but his Afghan staff, despite being granted UK visas, were blocked from entering the airport and remain stranded in the country. Farthing had said he wouldn’t leave the country without them.
I’ve not got much time for Farthing. I think he’s self-aggrandising, self-serving, and self-interested and that his campaign has used up resources that should have been dedicated to getting more people out of Afghanistan. But I also believe he’s simply behaved in the way that the government and the tabloids have shown time and again works.
Farthing harnessed the same cheap emotionalism about animals as the tabloids always have, even as they pick and choose which human suffering is worthy of their attention. And today, Pen Farthing’s behaviour has made him a very convenient scapegoat for a government that did too little, too late to help thousands of people out of Afghanistan.
Alongside The Sunday Times ‘revelations’, The Mail on Sunday also ‘curiously’ got hold of the voice message and goes with the line: Kabul animal rescuer Pen Farthing is accused of 'costing lives' as recording reveals his foul-mouthed rant threatening to 'f***ing destroy' an MoD official in the middle of Afghanistan airlift.
And The Sunday Telegraph was also in the MoD WhatsApp burn group, running its analysis of the message with the headline…
Pen Farthing said to have left voicemail for Ben Wallace's adviser: 'I am going to destroy you'
… and offering a buffet of bitter quotes from government sources:
A UK Defence source said the former soldier’s plane arrived “in the nick of time” making Mr Farthing “the last British civilian” to leave the Taliban-controlled city.
However, the source was clearly irritated that soldiers were tending to Mr Farthing’s animals.
“There will be paratroopers for whom the last thing they do before leaving themselves is putting Pen Farthing's cats and dogs on a plane,” he said.
A minister said: “Pen Farthing is a truly odious man. He has dragged officials’ names into the public domain and subjected them to abuse. For everyone consumed by this humanitarian crisis - soldiers, officials, everyone - we are fed up to the teeth of him. It’s exasperating that he has been feted when he is the most unpleasant individual, odious.”
It’s not a dead cat, it’s throwing 172 rescued cats and dogs into the headlines and hoping that the mix of support for and anger about Farthing will absorb a lot of the attention that was otherwise on the feckless Foreign Secretary and the incompetent Prime Minister, who starred in a horrifically scripted Thick of It outtake this week.
After claiming “the sea was closed” Dominic Raab ‘writes’ today from behind the closed4 Telegraph paywall that The UK must face up to the new Afghan reality. It’s a slab of bland rhetoric that was clearly drafted by a spad or civil servant before Raab’s name was slapped on top. It concludes:
The situation unfolding in Afghanistan is a bitter pill to swallow. But we must face up to the new reality, bring countries together behind a new plan, and exert the maximum moderating influence on the Taliban, in the days and weeks ahead.
Raab should still be in the centre of the storm but Farthing will prove a convenient distraction. His selfishness undoubtedly prevented more people from being able to escape but Raab’s callousness and incompetence had a far greater effect. And unlike Farthing who is, despite his frequent appeals to his military service, basically just some guy, Raab is still the Foreign Secretary.
Meanwhile, Ben Wallace, Defence Secretary and, according to the Penistas, a confirmed dog hater, writes for The Sun that We must not ignore the effects of horrors our soldiers have witnessed in Afghanistan, while the paper covers his new nemesis Farthing warmly under the headline HOMEWARD HOUND: Pen Farthing’s plane leaves Afghanistan with 173 dogs and cats after heartbreak at leaving staff behind. The Sun knows its readers like cuddy animals more than the refugees it demonises on a daily basis.
As The Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail turn their fire on Farthing, The Observer reports that thousands of emails to the Foreign Office about the evacuation from Afghanistan went unread. That’s the story that should be getting the most attention today but the Tory-supporting press is putting the blame on one annoying bloke rather than a whole government of incompetents and grifters.
Pen Farthing left himself open to being framed as a villain by the papers and hero by his social media fans. While Ben Wallace rages and the right-wing newspapers smear, Dominic Raab will be absolutely delighted that he’s no longer the only one in the dog house.
The closest I’ve ever come to yomping through hostile territory was my Duke of Edinburgh expedition to north Norfolk but my dad’s a Falklands veteran, my mum worked in casualty reporting during the conflict. I was christened in a ship’s bell on the deck of a warship.
The survey results you really need to read are the answers to the question “which animals could you (unarmed) defeat in a fight?” A remarkably high number of Americans think they could get the better of a goose. 6% of American men thought they could defeat a Grizzly in hand-to-hand combat.
This was an accurate view.
In reality, it’s leaky as all hell.