Yoof politics weirdos

I’m not always a fan of Laurie Penny’s work but I’m a sucker for exposés of young Tories acting like young Tories. Go read her article ‘Undercover with the young Conservatives’.

Some in the comments box insist that an article on the happenings at a Labour Students or Young Fabians event would be similarly entertaining. Having been to a few such events I have to say that I find this doubtful.

Of course there are some unpleasant types but they are more likely to be Hamer Shawcross-like characters rather than crude chauvinists with obnoxiously extreme politics. I fear a right-wing exposé of such an event would simply leave the readers yawning rather than horrified.

Know your enemy

Some vomit-inducing profiles of Tory advisers provided by Josh Neicho (formerly of The Hall School Hampstead, Eton, and Oxford).

WARNING! There is serious danger of choking on your own puke as you read the sentence: “affable, charming, always very clever and often extremely well-connected, they are proof that the Conservative Party under Cameron is fashionable again“.

And he came up with this nonsense on the day some polls put Labour only a few points behind the Tories.

Some other highlights:

“Rupert Harrison
Chief of staff to George Osborne

Circle: Moves with a glamorous- sounding set — actors Simon Woods and Rosamund Pike, poet and Krupp armaments heir Claus von Bohlen und Halbach — but characterised by his kindness and strong values.”

I’m glad to know the Chancellor has a Chief of Staff characterised by kindness and strong values as he plans to decimate the UK economy and shaft the poor like its 1931.

“Known for: Huge policy brains and fine judgment, a man who can pour oil on troubled waters.”

Oil on waters? I think we have in Mr Harrison a candidate for CEO of BP!

“Henry de Zoete
Adviser to Michael Gove
Age: 29
Earns: c. £55,000
Family and education: A scion of the de Zoete banking family. At Ludgrove and Eton in the year above Prince William, then Bristol university.
Social circle: A social chap who goes drinking with the other media advisers; keeps separate friends outside politics including football buddies and Lefty Eton pals whom he house-shared with in Hackney. Currently single.”

Hurrumph. I know a thing or two about Lefty Etonians. Any Lefty Etonian worth their salt would not share a house with a Tory overseer of capitalist oppression.

I would go on but it’s too depressing.

I don’t know what hits me more – the fact that these sorts of people are getting parachuted into positions of power and influence or that this Facebook-journalism got printed in a real newspaper.

What did Jarvis Cocker sing about a certain type of person still ruling the world…?

The country is being run by Laurel and Hardy!

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg declares whilst standing in for his buddy Cameron in PMQs that the War in Iraq was illegal. This pre-empts the Chilcot Inquiry and also embarrasses all his Conservative colleagues who voted for the conflict. No 10 suggests the Deputy PM was speaking in a “personal capacity”. Pathetic!

Then Big Dave himself does a boo boo. Whilst trying to stress the pretty obvious fact that the UK≠US, he declares that Britain was the junior partner to the US when fighting the Nazis in 1940. Yes, 1940! When plucky ol’Blighty resisted the blitzkrieg as many other nations fell. And the Yanks didn’t turn up for another year!

Oxford Tutor Vernon Bogdanor has described his former student David Cameron as one of his “ablest”. Pah!

As Paul Waugh points out, if the Labour Government had made gaffes like these the press would have been absolutely merciless.

Tory burka barminess

Philip Hollobone, the Tory MP for Kettering who clearly wants to be the Daily Express’ favourite parliamentarian, wants to ban the burka (or, to be more accurate but less linguistically pleasing, niqabs).

This seems an odd response given his Government’s apparent concern for maintaining civil liberties and reducing state interference.

By contrast Caroline Spelman, the Tory Environment Secretary, posits that this sort of ultra-conservative Islamic dress can be “empowering”. She spoke of how burkas conferred dignity to women in Afghanistan and expressed respect for that culture of women covering up.

Both attitudes are wrong.

Hollobone justifies his proposed ban by claiming it would promote integration. How? Instead it would strengthen the Islamist narrative of Western society being ‘Islamophobic’. I’d like to see his evidence that curtailing the clothes choice of a minority of British Muslims would be more successful at promoting integration and cohesion than, for example, ending faith schools.

He also argues that these face veils are “un-British”. Well, yes, I agree that they do not conform to mainstream cultural norms in the UK but so do lots of things that Hollobone is surely not going to ban.

Looking at Hollobone, I would guess his list of suitably British activities includes dressing up as a station guard and playing with a model train set. But having an interest in daisy age hip hop may constitute an un-British activity that needs to be outlawed.

The bloke simply wants to demonise Muslims and it stinks.

Spelman’s position is another category of stoopid – a wholly different kettle of crazy fish. She seems to be advocating the worst form of multiculturalism; the lazy assumption that all cultures are equally valid and worthy of respect.

Rather than use her position as one of the few women in Government to point out how disgracefully repressive conservative Islamic cultures are in terms of women’s rights, she is excusing the proliferation of the most horrific anti-women attitudes.

We should not beat about the bush. Burkas, niqabs, and suchlike symbolise the belief that women needed to be hidden from men, that women are the property of men, that women’s sexuality needs to be controlled by men.

This is abhorrent and it is regrettable that any woman in the 21st century, anywhere in the world, chooses to wear one. Niqab-clad British Muslims effectively giving the sartorial equivalent of a two finger salute to the progress our society has made in the struggle against patriarchy.

I await a more sensible Tory to articulate a balanced approach which neither advocates crude bans or foolishly endorses the most reactionary Islamic cultures.

All power to the quacks

In Commons Health Questions this afternoon Tory MP David Tredinnick was disgusted by the suggestion of one of his Liberal Democrat colleagues that homeopathy should not receive NHS funding.

Tredinnick, who has a loony reputation in a most appropriate sense, decried the criticism of his beloved homeopathy as “illiberal”. Despite what the cynics claim there was plenty of annecdotal evidence that homeopathy works, he declared. In other words, damn those scientists and their pesky science!

The complementary-enthusiastic Conservative then pointed out that no-one was forcing anyone else to use homeopathic medicine so why not just leave it alone. But Tredinnick is of course in favour of forcing us taxpayers to pay for this nonsense as part of the NHS budget. As with hospital chaplains, I spy some sensible public expenditure cuts!

In a two fingered defiance to sanity and reason Conservative MPs recently put both Tredinnick and Nadine Dorries on the Health Select Committee. Yes, that’s the same Nadine Dorries who, as part of her anti-abortion crusade, allied herself to Andrea Williams of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship, an evangelical who believes that the world is only 4000 years old.

Would it not be more sensible to establish a harmless All Party Parliamentary Flat Earth Society and then let Tredinnick and Dorries help run that?

David Mellor = Prize Arse

There’s a brilliant story in today’s Mirror. Former Tory Cabinet Minister and odd looking man David Mellor was complaining to staff at a pub near his home that they made too much noise.

He was doing this in a typically charmless manner and resorted to lots of swearing (naughty). However, at one point Mellor tried to insult the pub’s chef by telling him to “go do your £10 an hour job somewhere else”!

What a ridiculous insult. My current employer pays me less than £10 an hour. A £10 an hour job would put a worker just below the UK median salary. The minimum wage is only £5.80 – and that’s just for over 22 year olds. Ed Miliband’s demand for a living wage only suggests £7 an hour. All in all, most people would be quite satisfied to be paid £10 an hour!

What an out-of-touch Tory arse Mellor is.

‘No dogs, blacks, Irish or gays’ – Grayling messes up yet again.

Chris Grayling truly is a numpty.

I don’t think his comments are actually especially controversial or surprising considering that there are plenty of people in both the big parties who delight in giving all sorts of privileges and exemptions to the religious.

But the incident is yet another example of Mr Grayling attracting negative headlines for the Tories.

He had dodgy expenses claims, he compared Moss Side to ‘The Wire’, he mistakenly described the appointment of General Sir Richard Dannatt as an adviser to the Conservatives as a “gimmick” and he was lambasted by the UK Statistics Authority for his misleading interpretation of crime figures.

The man is a walking political disaster-zone. Why does David Cameron keep him in his Shadow Cabinet team? Poor judgement, methinks.

Widening the Tory Party’s Old Etonian talent pool.

I was reading about the Conservative candidate for the safe seat of Penrith and the Border the other day.

I appreciate that it’s an old story now, but it still makes me chuckle that the first post-expenses scandal Tory selection – which was meant to prove that the party was allowing people from outside mainstream politics to win nominations and widen the parliamentary talent pool – resulted in Rory Stewart becoming the Conservative PPC.

How the Old Etonian, Oxford-educated, former tutor to Princes William and Harry and Foreign Office civil servant qualifies as outside the mainstream is hard to tell, though I’m sure he is a talented chap.

Tories revert to union bashing

David Cameron used all his questions in PMQs today on the BA-Unite dispute. He wanted Brown to join him in calling on all British Airways workers to cross the picket lines and undermine the strike.

Tory blogger Iain Dale was unsurprisingly impressed by Cameron’s performance. He, along with the right-wing press, clearly enjoys attacking Labour’s links with trade unions.

Dale has a moronic post complaining about “Derek Simpson’s global ambitions“. Dale thought that the US Teamsters union wouldn’t want to support the striking BA workers, but a Teamsters’ statement expressed solidarity with “our brothers and sisters at Unite”.

He also thinks its “bonkers” for trade union leaders to want to integrate workers’ organisations across the world. Well, it’s the logic of globalisation and it makes perfect sense to me.  

The Tories truly are reverting to crass union bashing. Once upon a time, when Dave was trying to reinvent the Tories as a nice rather than nasty party, he made friendly gestures towards trade unions. That strategy has clearly been abandoned.

Whilst people like Iain Dale will get predictably excited by Cameron’s support for strike-breakers and the ‘reds under the bed’ gibberish written about the unions in papers like the Sun, I wonder how this will play out with ‘ordinary voters’.

I accept that Labour’s links with the unions were once seen as damaging. But I haven’t seen any recent polling that measures public attitudes towards trade unions. If anyone has got any please send it my way.

Lord Ashcroft is a dangerous leftist.

Apart from all the dodgy tax dealings and general unwillingness to tell the truth to the British public, perhaps another line we should be using against Lord Ashcroft and the Tories is that he has demonstrated his support for far-left governments on multiple occasions.

In Michael Gove’s article from April 2000 the current Shadow Education Secretary criticised the Conservative Party’s relations with Ashcroft but also noticed the artful tax dodger’s involvement with a leftist party in Belize:

One might have thought that any Conservative who emerged from the wreckage of the 1997 crash would pledge, above all, never to make those mistakes again. Surely they would steer clear of association with figures, such as Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, whose talent for fiction rendered all connected with him, literally, incredible.  Surely they would jib at relying on such a man once they were told he was the paymaster of a left-wing party in the country whose interests he represented at the United Nations?

The Guardian has also reported that the Tory peer has been sniffing out business opportunities in everybody’s favourite Communist regime: Cuba.

This is Red Toryism gone mad!