Those Tory Non-Apologies In Full

No one was ever prosecuted under Section 28, because as phrased it banned something that was in any case impossible. Bullying is bullying, and any teacher who cannot deal with it should not be in the job, simple as that. Any teacher who deliberately failed to address a particular type of bullying in order to make a political point is a revolting, hateful creature.

But David Cameron is very sorry for Section 28. Dead letter though it was, it annoyed Michael Cashman and Peter Tatchell, which latter was the only person who remembered that it still existed by the time that it was repealed. And that is all that matters. Media London is run by men who not only engage in homosexual acts, but see such engagement as definitive of economic, social, cultural and political identity both personally and collectively. So what they say, goes.

The Tories had a choice to make, and they have made it. They have chosen this, and so rejected the visible ethnic minorities. They have chosen this, and so rejected the white working class. They have chosen this, and so rejected the North. They have chosen this, and so rejected the huge numbers of votes, not least in the electorally vital Midlands and North West, that are now up for grabs after three terms of spitefully anti-Catholic government. They have chosen this, and so rejected the rural, Protestant Scotland that was theirs as a matter of course well within living memory. They have chosen this, and so rejected the Ulster Unionists. They have chosen this, and so rejected the Welsh chapels just as Wales becomes thoroughly disconnected from New Labour. And so on, and on, and on.

The SNP might get rural, Protestant Scotland. The DUP will get the UUP. But Plaid Cymru already largely has the Welsh-language chapels, and will never get the English-language ones. Enter the BNP, as surely as among the white working class, in the North, and among the disaffected (but often not very well-instructed) Catholics. Among the ethnic minorities, those who would construct little Caliphates, Hindutvas and Khalistans in “their” areas are very well-established (not least in league with the Tories), while the forces of Black Nationalism, in both its West Indian and its American forms, are increasingly on the rise. As much as anything else, which of these is good for the homosexually inclined? Thank you, David Cameron. Are you going to apologise for all of this, too?

No, of course not. Nor are you going to apologise for the Treaty of Rome, the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. Nor are you going to apologise for the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Nor are you going to apologise for the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Nor are you going to apologise for the destruction of the grammar schools, and the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs.

Nor are you going to apologise for the dismantlement of most of the rail network in the Fifties, and the disastrous privatisation of the rest of it in the Nineties. Nor are you going to apologise for the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, and for sentences that automatically mean literally half of what they say. Nor are you going to apologise for starving the Armed Forces, including in the run-up to inviting the Argentines into the Falkland Islands. Nor are you going to apologise for that invitation. Nor are you going to apologise for failing to recognise the Muzorewa Government in Zimbabwe. Nor are you going to apologise for backing Tony Blair’s totally and transparently false prospectus for the invasion of Iraq.

Nor are you going to apologise for destroying the economic basis of paternal authority in (initially working-class) families and communities. Nor are you going to apologise for abortion up to birth, divorce legally easier than release from a car hire contract, and effectively unrestricted trading on Sundays. Nor are you going to apologise for trying to end Christian collective worship in schools until forced to back down by the House of Lords.

Nor are you going to apologise for destroying rural bus services, for pricing local people out of rural communities, for driving independent shops out of business, for destroying village and town centres while despoiling the countryside, for taking agriculture to the brink of collapse, and for your mercifully unsuccessful attempts to privatise the Post Office and the Forestry Commission while abolishing the Agricultural Wages Board.

Nor are you going to apologise for the sacking, pointed out in Peter Hitchens’s column this week, of those miners who had worked through the strike.

And so on, and on, and on.

None of these things matters in the least to the only people who matter to the Tories.