Monday 2 July 2012

That Chuka Umunna Confession

He has said that it was only Class B (not that I agree with different classes of illegal drug, but the fact is that we have them), that he regrets it, and that the drugs scene was one of the reasons why he got out of the music industry.

That is an awful lot more than Cameron has ever said. Our dear Prime Minister takes the view that Class A drug use, at anything up to 10 years older than Umunna was when he smoked the odd spliff, is normal behaviour, and he has never uttered one word of remorse.

At least as much of a story here is how very public school dominated something like disc jockeying has become. 60 per cent of chart acts were now commercially schooled. An enormous cultural change, arising out of several more. Far more important than anything to do with skin colour.

Umunna has close ties to Lord Glasman and Blue Labour. He himself talks about "One Nation Labour". David Lammy is much the same: there is a distinct strain of church-based social conservatism in black culture; the gangsta rap or what have you is imported from America rather than from Africa or the West Indies, is at least as popular among whites of the same age here as there, and even there is not the full story.

Ethnic minorities of Commonwealth origin are also extremely pro-monarchist, with everything that that entails. Just look at the number of Caribbean countries that at least retain the Queen, and in many cases actually remain British territory. They don't have to. They choose to. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has been known to bemoan that she herself was the only Asian republican whom she had ever met. Bernie Grant, probably the most left-wing MP of recent decades, was staunchly monarchist while keeping up very close links both to the Caribbean and to Africa.

Blue Labour (still going strong, contrary to what is often claimed) is an ideal union of the white and the black working classes on the basis of their common interests. Hardly the only such union: white working-class people are second only to Afro-Caribbeans when it comes to marrying across ethnic lines, and 50 per cent of children with one Afro-Caribbean parent also have one white parent, usually a member of the white working class.

Those common interests include opposition to immigration by people who have no historic ties to these Islands (including blood ties - all West Indians are really mixed-race, and they are often very proud of the names and ancestors indicating that fact), or who cannot speak English, or who are hostile to Christianity.

It is thanks to the blacks that London has a higher than average level of regular church attendance. Lammy was at one time a member of the Archbishops' Council, administering the Church of England. Umunna is also an active Anglican with family roots apparently in the jewel in the Conservative Evangelical crown, the Anglican Church of Nigeria.

All in all, those who think that the next Labour Leader is going to be a radical feminist and general old student Leftist of impeccable upper-middle-class whiteness are on course for the same shock that Hillary Clinton and her supporters got. I can almost forgive Umunna for being younger than I am. At least he is bald, so that's all right, I suppose.

2 comments:

  1. Oh watch you wriggle David! Your hero commits a sin you have previously castigated, and watch you squirm to justify it! Wriggle, David, wriggle! You could be a contortionist

    Quick question: if, say, David Miliband had answered exactly the same question in exactly the same way, would you have written this same post? Well the

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  2. I am not justifying anything, and nor is he. That is the difference with Cameron. Never mind Osborne.

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