The front page of The Times makes for dispiriting reading. Not the photographic fluff about Kate and Bill Windsor’s son George’s 10th birthday – ooh, isn’t he lovely? Doesn’t he look like (insert royal name of choice)? He’ll have as much hair as his dad in 20 years time: you know the kind of thing – which I see as little more than a distraction, but then maybe a distraction from what Rishi Sunak is planning to do is what we need. Concerned that the country is not already divided enough, the oily little toad has decided the way to win the next election is to extend the culture wars. Divide and rule is his chosen tactic. I hope voters can tell him in no uncertain terms what they think of it.
Sunak will employ the usual tired weaponry in an attempt to firm up the Tory core vote. Crime, migration and trans-rights are apparently the big issues of the day, issues which have not previously existed, certainly not during the last 13 years of this … er … Tory government. We will be expected to forget that bit and instead home in on Sunak’s gaslighting as he pretends that his is a brand new government and that he cannot possibly be blamed for the governments that came before, even though he was chancellor of the exchequer for a fair part of it.
If crime has gotten out of control, then there’s a fair argument that runs along these lines: the Tories have had thirteen years to do something about it. If migration is worse than ever, hello? Sunak, mate: read the point I made some moments ago. Brexit has made that far worse, not better. As for trans-rights, well this is desperation stakes. I would guess that some Tory polling has come back with an indication that there is something in the red top reporting on trans issues for them to exploit. I’ve known a few trans people over the years and my own view is that the main issue some people have with them is ignorance. If you don’t understand something – and I have no idea how it must feel to be a trans person – then if your newspaper tells you it’s very concerning, you might be fearful. There’s no need to be – education works – but once a bogus agenda gets its teeth into people’s psyche, irrationality rules. Sunak concludes he needs to do something. So why not a phoney war?
We already have an ongoing war against some people on benefits who, it has been decided, are all scroungers and people without legs should stand on their own two feet. That gets the Daily Mail readers vigorously nodding along. Let’s not just force sick and disabled into work: let’s parade them in stocks. Trust me, the Mail would do it if they thought it would sell a few more copies.
What was it Burt Bacharach and Hal David say about it? Oh yes, this:
What the world needs now is love, sweet loveIt’s the only thing that there’s just too little ofWhat the world needs now is love, sweet loveNo not just for some, but for everyone
Here, my innocence and naivety comes to the fore. Why just we can’t just love each other a little more? Do we really need state-sponsored xenophobia and transphobia? Aren’t refugees the people we could have been in a different lifetime? But for a few chromosomes, how different could our own lives be? And crime? Well, that’s actually a massive subject, much larger than another pointless crackdown, as so many politicians pretend? Simple slogans from Sunak, supposedly but not really to address complex problems.
We can do better than this. Most people, I always say, are good people, who would prefer to be kind to others. There are plenty of wrong ‘uns who let themselves down and poison society – and I mean you, GB News, the Mail, Sun, Express, Piers Morgan, Talk TV/Radio and so on – but I reckon most people would prefer unity than Sunak’s preferred divide and rule. We will soon see about that when Sunak finally calls a general election, something he will surely leave to the last possible moment.
I ask myself whether the country is now more united, more equal and more happy with itself today as it was before David Cameron came to power with the aid of the Lib Dem sell out merchants and it clearly isn’t. Sunak wants more old against young, which was brought to the fore with the Brexit disaster, black versus white, straight versus LGBT and all the rest of it. He thinks division will boost his political fortunes because it’s all he has left. And given that so much of what is wrong has happened because of Sunak’s party, we mustn’t let him get away with it.
