Playing the victim card
Posted by admin978 on November 20, 2014 · Leave a Comment
Heritage and Destiny readers might be surprised to read that we regret the resignation of Emily Thornberry, who for three years until tonight had been Shadow Attorney General in Ed Miliband’s Labour frontbench team.
Ms Thornberry is the archetypal middle-class leftwinger: daughter of a UN and NATO official, she became a radical barrister and is married to a QC. No doubt her prejudices fit well with many of her constituents in Islington South & Finsbury.
The problem was that she couldn’t resist displaying those prejudices on Twitter following a visit to the Rochester & Strood by-election campaign, where she spotted a white van parked outside a house displaying three St George flags. For an Islington leftie this was confirmation that Rochester is home to “white van man”: football fan, patriot, anti-immigration and therefore likely to favour UKIP over Labour.
The Sun was quick to jump on the bandwagon, and the owner of the house is now quoted describing Ms Thornberry as “a snob”. She swiftly resigned from the Labour frontbench, and her friend Ed Miliband was said to be very annoyed that she had insulted one of Labour’s key groups of target voters: the white working class.
The reality is that Ms Thornberry’s only crime was to be too honest. Her type of metropolitan leftie really does despise white workers, but members of this truly oppressed and marginalised group should beware of playing the victim card.
British politics requires more honesty, not less. Party spokesmen are already far too afraid of causing offence to some group or other.
The truth is that we all have “prejudices”, some more rooted in reality than others. The shackles should be removed from political debate, and we should be unafraid of being denounced as snobs, racists, sexists, heterosexists, xenophobes, or any other victim culture label.
Even Paul Mason – the left-wing economics editor of Channel 4 News – argued this week:
“Maybe we should all front up and say things more clearly. Maybe NHS hospitals should advertise: “We can only run this place with ‘foreigners’ – you got a problem with that?” And maybe businesses could adopt the slogan: “We’re as black, brown, gay, straight, disabled and ‘foreign’ as Britain is, and proud of it – feel free to take your money and prejudices somewhere else.”
“Instead of political correctness you would then have political honesty. It would be uglier but more real.”
From a very different standpoint to Mr Mason, we agree. Let Islington trendies display their prejudices without fear of resignation: but let other “prejudices” also be aired – and let the voters decide!
