It seems, woke-bashers can come in all political colours.
‘Marks & Spencer show true courage by shunning woke herd in one huge way,’ the Express gushed this week, celebrating the retailer’s decision to air an advert on GB News’ radio station.
While such praise is typical for the Express, the author of the piece is far more intriguing.
Written by Baroness Kate Hoey, the article highlights how the M&S ad on the right-wing channel struck a chord with her and other despisers of ‘woke’ culture.
Hoey, a former Labour MP for Vauxhall for 30 years, applauds the supermarket for showing “courage” in “shunning the woke herd,” and frames M&S as an “unlikely hero” in the political landscape.
Hoey recounts how she emailed Stuart Machin, CEO of Marks & Spencer, to congratulate the retailer for its decision to advertise on GB News, after being alerted to the campaign by a social media post from a GB News viewer who claimed to have shopped at M&S as a result. Hoey says that M&S’s decision received a surge of supportive social media reactions, implying a broader cultural movement behind it.
She then defends GB News itself, arguing that those who value the channel’s role in a diverse media landscape should “push back” against its critics.
“If GB News is to not just survive but thrive, it’s time for those of us who value its role in a diverse media to be vocal in our support of the channel.
“It’s time to push back against those seeking to censor broadcasters and instead welcome those who choose to advertise with them,” she writes.
A former Labour MP for 30 years, Baroness Hoey is hardly someone we’d expect to champion the right-wing network on the pages of the Daily Express. But, as the BBC once noted, her career seems full of contradictions. Although ‘seems’ doesn’t come into it. Over a long political career, she went all over the place which to put kindly, could be evidence of independent mindedness, or just total confusion.
Once a member of the International Marxist Group, the Northern Ireland-born politician, who left Labour in 2019, is a staunch supporter of Brexit and the union.
“I was always very cynical about the European Union,” she told the BBC in 2023.
It seems, woke-bashers can come in all political colours.
From her Marxist roots to her current right-leaning stances, Hoey proves that you never quite know where political contradictions will lead, even straight to the pages of the Daily Express defending GB News.
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