PETER HITCHENS: Don’t hope for a lot from chilly Starmergrad commissars
And ghastly, thro’ the drizzling rain, on the bald street breaks the blank day’, or so wrote Alfred, Lord Tennyson on another occasion. It certainly seemed fitting as I biked through the suburbs on Friday morning, contemplating 20 years of dwelling in Starmergrad, if I make it that far.
We are told that we should give ‘losers’ consent’ when people we don’t like win democratic elections, and I agree that it is the only civilised thing to do.
But I can’t actually remember an election when I did not have to give at least a bit of loser’s consent. A bit of winner’s gloating, as enjoyed by the other side, would be fun. But in this case, who are the winners and who is gloating?
Bridget Phillipson’s supporters greet the moment of her victory with clenched-fist salutes, as if she was off to fight in the Spanish Civil War
I noticed something interesting at the victory of Bridget Phillipson MP at Houghton and Sunderland South. Her supporters greeted the moment with clenched-fist salutes, as if Ms Phillipson was off to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
Ms Phillipson has been the chilly public face of the spiteful tax raid on independent schools, one of the nastiest policies Labour has yet publicly admitted to. And the scene made me wonder: ‘Who are all these new Labour MPs, so cleverly propelled into Parliament by the self-indulgence of a few thousand Reform voters?’ For that is what happened.
The actual Labour vote was pitifully small. There was never any true enthusiasm for them. But the Nigelistas’ emotional spasm destroyed the line of defence which would otherwise have kept us from swapping Bad Tories for Worse Labour.
Well, who are the new MPs? Are they open-minded, undogmatic, generous men and women who see both sides of the argument? Or are they the kind of people you meet in local government, in comprehensive schools and the new universities, zealous Net Zero Greens, ferociously politically correct, filled with scorn for conservative ideas and people, always up for a heresy hunt?
I have a hunch they fall into the second category, and we’ll see that pretty soon in the way they use their huge majority.
Still, the people who helped to put them in will be able to comfort themselves with The Farage Party’s contingent of five MPs
I noticed on Friday that Sir Keir Starmer’s arrival at Downing Street was greeted by a ‘crowd’ of people waving Union Jacks. Who were they? Normal members of the public have been barred from Downing Street for decades. Who gave them the flags? Labour supporters are iffy about the UK flag, which many of them regard as racist. Over the years to come, film of this event will be repeatedly shown, as will still pictures of it, as if it was a real spontaneous demonstration of welcome. It was not, any more than the similar ‘welcome’ given to Sir Anthony Blair in 1997.
We need a real anti-PC drama
The ITV drama Douglas Is Cancelled has for some reason been praised as a courageous depiction of the intolerance of the modern media world. I disagree.
In the programme, starring Hugh Bonneville and Karen Gillan, a middle-aged male TV presenter’s life and career are supposedly ruined because of an incorrect joke he has told at a wedding. But in fact this is not what happens at all. Someone seems to have been frightened of condemning this sort of mob justice. Instead viewers endure a series of peculiar, misleading and quite dull sub-plots.
In Douglas Is Cancelled, starring Hugh Bonneville and Karen Gillan, a middle-aged male TV presenter’s life and career are supposedly ruined because of an incorrect joke he has told at a wedding
There’s an apparent #MeToo episode, in which we are toyed with at tedious length. There’s an attack on popular newspapers. There’s an absurd gag-writer who could not possibly be so inept. And there are cheap, shallow caricatures of so-called ‘snowflakes’ to make it look as if the drama is a bit Right-wing.
Well, it isn’t, as is evident from the guest appearance of Left-wing saint Kirsty Wark. I don’t think she’d have been so keen on a truly anti-PC programme. Ms Wark plays herself as an interviewer at the ghastly liberal Hay Festival (full disclosure: I was once abruptly and rudely disinvited from Hay, no reason given, but I can guess it was for writing a book critical of illegal drugs and their users).
A real drama about modern intolerance is still badly needed, though I’m not sure who’d show it.