If you think the conclusions I’ve drawn – about you or about Draper (!) – are wrong, say so and give your counter argument. All you’ve managed to present so far is moralising. Finally, no, none of the newspapers in question are the Daily Mail…at least not on the first four pages of Google.

David is one of those newspapers the Daily Mail?

I think you have used homophobic langugage. I think it’s indicative of a streak of aggresiveness; I note you want to “emasculate” Derek Draper. Can you not accept that other people have other opinions than yourself? Your piece (above) about me is deeply personal – it’s a trait of the hard-left, demonise the opponent.

I know it was only a throwaway line on a comment thread, Michael, but blimey…

Anyway, don’t let me get in the way of your more substantive debate.

“Mandy and Dolly”, that’s the slur, and it doesn’t take a leap of the imagine to work out what that pertains to.

I do feel I should stop by briefly to defend Dave here, not that he can’t stick up for himself.

Speaking personally, I did not know that the way you indicate is how Derek Draper got his unfortunate nickname, and I do not know who started it. If asked, I would have assumed it came the association with the term ‘puppet’, in reference to his, now shall we say, unswerving loyalty to mainstream Labour. Only Dolly alliterates better.

I can say with integrity that, while I’ve never used the nickname myself either in writing or verbally, I have not until now regarded it as in any way homophobic. Perhaps I am just not close enough to the smear mill, whoever in Westminster is doing the smearing.

I do think you do David a disservice, and one which would anger me if I were accused of same, by suggesting he is deliberately using homophobic language. His language may at time be robust and angry-sounding, but it is also laden with decent values.

The insinuation was that Derek Draper was in a homosexual relationship with Peter Mandleson, and you’ve repeated that insinuation.

And yeah, I hate gays because I used the word Dolly. Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?

But what’s more offensive David, my “snobbery”, or you repeating the homophobic label “Dolly” in relation to Derek Draper?

I’d rather be nicking post-modernist language than the right-wing Guidoesque homophobic slur “Dolly”.

Incidentally, if I haven’t engaged with your “central point” in your eyes, it’s because I dispute the entire premise of your article, and I’ve made that clear enough. I have my ‘big idea’ and I don’t consider it invalidated, but nice to know you’ve done years of research into Marxist and post-Marxist theory, and are well versed on the post-modernist tosh you threw around in that article like you’re a first-year uni student.