I’m afraid Emily Thornberry’s tweeted photo of a white van in front of house bedecked in the flag(s) of St George did represent a sense of sneering superiority expressed in aspects of ‘New’ Labour. More than anything, it was just plain stupid. But even more stupid was David Cameron’s comment that “the Labour Party sneers at people who work hard, who are patriotic and who love their country and I think it is absolutely appalling.”
Well, Dave: you are the appalling one in all this. An ill-judged tweet is one thing, especially since without any doubt whatsoever the Labour Party is of the working man and woman, but Cameron’s attack was more cynical political spin and quite frankly a lie. It is Cameron’s government which has stuck the knife into “people who work hard” by slashing their tax credits, by freezing (so effectively cutting) their child benefits and by doing nothing as the minimum wage becomes not just the bare minimum but the template on which wage levels are now decided.
I certainly don’t have an issue with the flag of St George. Why should I? Despite my Norwegian and Dutch ancestry, which if Farage and co were elected might see me deported from the country in which I was born and raised, I am as patriotic as the next person. I rather like the flag because it’s mine. It doesn’t belong to some fascist crackpot group, it belongs to all of us who consider ourselves to be English. Thornberry’s tweet was all implication, nothing direct about it and in many ways that made it worse because we all came to the same conclusion about it. Because there could be no other.
It certainly doesn’t mean that all of Labour sneers like Thornberry does. Of course it doesn’t. No more than all Liberals are gay men who fiddle £50k from the taxpayer to pay rent to a landlord who just happens to be their boyfriend. (You’d go to prison if you claimed Housing Benefits for a landlord who was also your partner, but in politics you just have a few months on the back benches and then quietly slipped back into the cabinet. Nice work if you can get it.) How could a political party, founded in the roots of the working classes, though recently re-branded under Blair, sneer at its very electorate?
The Sun must have loved it. Right to point out the snobbery but now self-flagelating at the prospect of its overwhelmingly working class readers being persuaded to vote for a party that has dumped on working class people throughout its existence.
Thornberry is a very clever idiot, who excelled at school and then practiced in law. The only ‘normal’ people she probably ever met were the criminals she was prosecuting or defending. Like so many politicians, she has little idea who ordinary people live. Cameron either has less than no idea how ordinary people live or he is the ultimate cynical politician who really does now how bad his policies are clobbering the working poor and doesn’t give a toss. But for him to decry Labour for sneering at working people, well that’s sick.
That’s the level of British politics these days where the powerful and elite pretend somehow they are the anti-establishment, fighting the vested interests. Where privately educated, former merchant banker (cockney rhyming slang appropriate here) Nigel Farage convinces those who should and do know better to support the most popular right wing party in this country since Oswald Mosley wore a black shirt.
White van man is an insult because he is not one person. Or she. I’ll say he for now because it’s easier. He does all sorts of things and to take the piss is really not on and it’s certainly not right to denigrate those who actually like our country’s flag
Thornberry very silly, throwback from New Labour, not reflective of Labour under Miliband. Time to move on. ~
