THE NASTY PARTY?

British Politics and the Race to The Gutter

One of the funnier Monty Python sketches, Four Yorkshire Men, consisted of a group of four affluent middle aged men sitting in sunny climes smoking fat cigars each trying to outdo the other in tales of childhood poverty and squalor.[1]

First Man: “Four of us used to live in one room, no furniture, with holes in the roof.”

Second Man: “Roof, roof, we used to dream of having a roof! Whole family lived in sceptic tank at bottom of garden!”

You get the drift. I thought of this sketch the other day whilst watching two MP’s one Labour the other Conservative trying to outdo one another on who was the tougher on welfare and immigration.[2] This disgusting spectacle, a race to the gutter in a grubby bid for the votes of the misinformed,[3] the bigoted and the malign, was characterised by an increasingly unpleasant tone and the touting of ever more vindictive, discriminatory, repressive and downright nasty proposals. The tone is easily satirised, but I find it hard to laugh.

Tory: “Bulgarian’s and Romanians, we would make them all surrender their watches and any valuables against any future claims they might make on the National Health Service.”

Labour: “You would let them access the NHS! We would compel them to go back to their own country to be sick. And we’ll make anyone unemployed for more than six weeks sign ‘I am a lazy bastard’ contract  and force them to polish boots for their welfare payments.”

Tory: “Six weeks, six weeks, we’ll send them on compulsory military training in the Sahara desert if they have been out of work for more than six days!”
Rachel Reeves: "We'll be tougher than the Tories."

A free word of advice to the Labour Party, it’s not a good idea to try and out- nasty the Tories; they are professionals at that sort of thing.

As to immigration pandering to ignorance and prejudice is a very dangerous strategy indeed. European history is littered with the consequences. Labour politicians, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper, please take note, should hang their head in shame at engaging in this kind of grotesque bidding war.

When I think of all the young Bulgarians that I know, decent, generous, hard working and well educated, I blanche in shame to hear them slandered in the media by British politicians, journalists, and ‘know-nothing’ pundits.


[2] It is probably unfair to single them out when so many are engaged in this disgusting exercise, so I will not mention that Rachel Reeves was the Labour Politician and Philip Hammond the Tory.
[3] And no prizes for guessing who is providing the misinformation.




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