Owen Patterson and Iain Martin doubtless thought that they would have an easy crowd on Any Questions from Worcester, which at the last General Election returned to the possession, not only of its historic party, but of its historic family. On top of that, much of the audience would doubtless have come in from the shire. And doubtless, it had done.
But cathedral city and shire county alike were having none of that, at best declining to applaud Patterson or Martin, but cheering to the echo John Harris and, especially, Diane Abbott, not least when she denounced neoliberal economics in general and benefit cuts so that bankers could carry on paying themselves gargantuan bonuses in particular. Yes, our dear friend below the line, Tom The Teenage Trot (Retired), that does mean you.
Well, of course they did. Any examination of the Mail and Telegraph newspapers confirms that the Coalition’s savage cuts in services and in spending power, the road to yet further economic ruin, are no more popular with Conservative supporters, Middle England, or what have you, than they are with anyone else. The Coalition of Resistance to them can and must include Conservative supporters, Middle England, the Mail and Telegraph newspapers, and what have you.
The Labour Leadership Election greatly heightened the profile of Diane Abbott. There has never been any Labour Party policy to abolish commercial schools, and Harold Wilson used them as a parent while he was Prime Minister. It is altogether another question whether or not they are any good, since they are merely adept at putting pupils through the examination system that they are the first to castigate as deficient and defective.
They are often also the most anti-family institutions imaginable, founded on the assumption that the relationship between parents and children is thoroughly distant and purely financial, organised towards the living out of adolescence in single-sex residential environments, and unsurprisingly producing politicians of the sort that voted through Thatcher’s Children Act and other such legislative attacks on family life. But there has never been any Labour Party policy to abolish them.
Abbott’s ordinary, rather than her campaign, website makes clear her sympathy for the 11-plus, for single-sex schools, for Oxbridge as academically elitist, for universities’ flexible approach to entry grades if they see potential in the applicant, for the prevention of social rather than academic elitism by improving the schools attended by the poor, for raising poor pupils’ aspirations so that they actually apply to the top universities, and for reinstating full grants so that they can afford to go.
She has also been consistent in her opposition to European federalism, in her role as a voice of her ethnic community on immigration by people who cannot speak English or who come from countries with no historic ties to Britain, in her support for action against such things as not giving up seats to elderly people on public transport, and in her opposition to the New Labour assault on civil liberties.
All in all, no wonder that she hated both Thatcherism and Blairism so much. And no wonder that they loved her so much in Worcester.
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But don't you think that John McDonnell would still have been a better candidate?
ReplyDeleteOh, undeniably. But his candidacy, brought down by silly Political Correctness and by the stage-outrage of the right-wing newspapers over a remark very tame indeed compared to the casually vicious and viciously casual tribal spitting of their own side.
ReplyDeleteJohn was nominated by more people than Abbott, including Frank Field. Including the Countryside Alliance’s Kate Hoey. Including Ian Lavery and Ronnie Campbell, the two Labour MPs, being half of all the MPs, from the second most rural county in England; Campbell is a pro-life Catholic. And including Ian Davidson, a Co-operative stalwart who on the floor of the House has correctly identified New Labourites as “Maoists and Trotskyists”, and who, as befits a protégé of Janey Buchan, is a hammer both of Scottish separatism and of European federalism.
As I said, any examination of the Mail and Telegraph newspapers confirms that the Coalition’s savage cuts in services and in spending power, the road to yet further economic ruin, are no more popular with Conservative supporters, Middle England, or what have you, than they are with anyone else. The Coalition of Resistance to them can and must include Conservative supporters, Middle England, the Mail and Telegraph newspapers, and what have you.
Only John, with his uniquely broad base among Labour MPs, had begun to demonstrate that he could do that. But that does not mean that only he ever can.