That Preston Journalist, whose real name, I am assured by the great people who comment here, is Ashley Kaminski, put up a genuinely heart-breaking video last night. People had been queuing outside a soup kitchen in Glasgow. Among the adults were ten children, including a babe in arms. Kaminski thought that this was terrible, as he should. He’s an avowed opponent of Nicola Sturgeon and all her works, dubbing her ‘McKrankie’ after her supposed resemblance to one half of a double act back in the 1980s. From the tone of his piece, he clearly wanted to blame her, but couldn’t quite. It was wrong, he said, whoever was responsible.
Okay, I don’t know what powers the devolved Scots parliament has, especially regarding welfare policies. I am sure that many Scots voted SNP, not because they wanted independence, but simply because they wanted a proper welfare state, something that wasn’t being offered by Jim Murphy’s Scottish Labour party. But this scandalous situation has been around far longer than the SNP’s administration, and it afflicts communities right across Britain. In Scotland there was a parliamentary inquiry into food banks a few years ago. One of those speaking before the committee was a volunteer, who described the intensely dispiriting deprivation and poverty he saw as he did his job. And I can remember putting up a 19th-early 20th century poem about children queuing outside a food kitchen. It’s disgusting that Britain has returned to such levels of poverty.
But Krankie isn’t responsible. The Tories are. They’ve insisted on wages so low working families can’t make ends meet, and cut welfare payments again and again, all with mantra of encouraging ‘welfare scroungers’ to look for work, making work pay and all the other nonsense. They’ve also introduced benefit sanction after benefit sanction, all with the same intention. It also helps to fiddle the unemployment statistics, as if they’re off the DHSS’ books, they aren’t counted as unemployed.
It’s possible that Sturgeon’s policies aren’t helping the situation north of the border. But the ultimate blame lies with the Tories, and it started when Ruth Davidson, the head of the Conservatives up there, was in power. And Sturgeon definitely isn’t responsible for it down south in England and Wales.
Yesterday, Boris Johnson took it upon himself to ask the Queen to prorogue parliament so that he could force through his unwanted no deal Brexit against the opposition of MPs. Boris Johnson himself hasn’t been elected. He was foisted on the British public as their leader by the Tory party, who represent a vanishingly small section of the British people. With this act, Johnson has assumed dictatorial powers. And the British people aren’t standing for it. There have already been demonstrations against him on College Green, and Mike has put up a selection of pictures of them by Rachael Swindon, Marcus Chown, Mr Bliz, Steve Bray, Carole Peters, the EU Flag Mafia, as well as a video by former Labour cabinet minister, Andrew Adonis, calling BoJob’s action what it is: Massively unconstitutional. He also encourages Brits to take heart, as he feels we’re still going to win this. He says that this is actually a sign of weakness from Britain’s Trump Junior. Boris hasn’t called an election, because he knows he’d lose it, and he’s aware that the Remain Alliance made last week is too strong for him. Adonis feels that there is still enough time left in September and October for parliament to make its voice felt. And Boris hasn’t made any kind of deal with the Fuhrage, who would eat him alive. So people, who want to see Britain a constitutional country at the heart of Europe should feel encouraged: ‘we’re still going to win’.
There is also this petition against the Johnson’s Machtergreifung. Please sign it if you, like me, deeply object to this trashing of British democracy by an autocratic, mendacious clown.
Mike says in his article about it that it won’t make a scrap of business. Boris is a Tory MP, which means that he automatically ignores demonstrations. Mike’s right about this. But this does show the sheer strength of feeling by the British electorate. With MPs across the party political divide ranged against him, and condemnations from Nicola Sturgeon, the Scots First Minister and the Welsh Assembly, and the resignation of Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Tories north of the border, this is adding to the pressure against Johnson. It may not affect him, but it might scare some of his backers.
On the 18th of this month, Mike at Vox Political wrote a piece noting a YouGov poll that found that the majority of Tory members are hellbent on getting Brexit, even if it means the break-up of the United Kingdom, significant damage to its economy and even the destruction of the Tory party itself.
The poll found that, when asked the question whether they would be willing to avert Brexit if it meant Scotland or Northern Ireland leaving Britain, 63% and 59% of Tories would be quite happy to see those nations leave Britain. 61% said they would also be prepared to accept significant damage to Britain’s economy if we left the EU. 54% also said that they would be happy to see the Tory party destroyed for Brexit. Only 36% put their party’s survival before Brexit.
Commenting on this, Mike predicted in his article that Scottish SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon would mention it in her speech marking 20 years of devolution.
And now, according to the front page of today’s I, 28th June 2019, the leaders of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davidson, has warned that Boris’ determination to achieve Brexit whatever the cost – ‘do or die’ – risks breaking up the UK. She was therefore backing Jeremy Hunt instead. Davidson said
‘I want to see him [Johnson] make assurances that it’s not Brexit do or die, it’s the Union do or die. That’s exactly what we’ve seen from the other candidate in the race and that’s why he’s going to get my vote.’
The newspaper also reports that
Polling has suggested that if the former foreign secretary becomes prime minister it could boost support for Scottish independence. (p.6).
Mike reported that the only thing that would stop the Tories from demanding Brexit at the first opportunity is the likelihood that this would lead to Corbyn taking up the reigns of government. But, he concluded
such a government is more likely if they choose a leader committed to Brexit at any cost.
And at the moment, Boris Johnson is the the leading candidate in the Tory leadership contest, despite his determination to force through Brexit whatever the cost. The I has also reported that he’s said that those Tories opposed to a no-deal Brexit will not get posts in his government.
And I’m not at all surprised that the Tories are willing to risk the break-up of the EU. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve heard rumours that the Tories were on the verge of collapse during Blair’s tenure of office. So much so that they were considering changing their name to the ‘English Nationalists’. And I do remember reading an opinion piece in the Heil, which considered that the departure of Scotland from the Union would not significantly harm Conservatism. This claimed that it was only recently that the Tories in Scotland had called themselves Conservatives. Before then they were called the Unionist party. But this still goes back to the period after the early 18th century union with Scotland. What would be the point of having a unionist party, if there was no union, and no real likelihood of ever reviving it?
It just confirms that Brexit is very much an English demand, and the Tory Brexiteers are bitter English nationalists, neither more nor less.
And it flies in the face of the way the Tories under Thatcher appropriated Britishness, its symbols and history. I can remember one headline in the Sunday Telegraph, unsurprisingly about how wonder Thatcher was, had the headline ‘Don’t Call Them Boojwah, Call Them British!’ I think it was a quote from Maggie herself. But the Conservatism she promoted was deeply bourgeois and nationalistic to its core. They seemed to waste no opportunity to drape themselves in Union Flags, like Tim Brooke-Taylor in his Union flag waistcoat on the Goodies, but without the comic trio’s irony. In one programme about Thatcher and the Tory party, her husband, Dennis, declared that his favourite song was Rule Britannia. Which he then tried to sing, only to realise he didn’t know the words. And then there was their infamous 1987 election film, which seemed to show that they had singlehandedly won the Battle of Britain. This showed old wartime footage of Spitfires chasing about the skies, while an excited voice declared ‘Man was born free. It’s our fundamental right.’ Really? I thought the complete quote, from the first sentence or so of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract was ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’ Which effectively describes the condition of everyone, who isn’t massively rich, under the Tories. The sadly departed Alan Coren commented drily about it on the News Quiz, calling it the Royal Conservative Airforce, and saying what a pity it all was for the Tories that after the War the servicemen all came back and voted Labour. Quite. But it does show how the Tories appropriated British patriotism.
And it also shows the reverse: how the Tories demonised anyone who didn’t share their chauvinism and racism – who wasn’t, as Thatcher put it, ‘one of us’ – was really an evil subversive intent on destroying Britain. Left-wing members of the Labour party, who supported the ‘troops out’ movement, like Tony Benn, land who made the reasonable point that to stop the violence we had to talk to Sinn Fein, were vilified as supporters of the IRA. And the same people, who wanted to thaw relations with the USSR instead of ramping up tensions like Reagan and Thatcher, because of the very real danger of nuclear Armageddon were also vilified as Communists by the Tories, the Tory press, and the press secret state.
Oh yes, and if Labour got in power under someone like Benn, Foote, Livingstone or even Neil Kinnock, when he actually believed in traditional Labour values, would destroy the economy.
But it isn’t Labour threatening to destroy the UK. Corbyn and his supporters aren’t telling the world that they’re content to break up the EU or consciously wreak the British economy, provided they get a disastrous policy through. It’s the Tories.
They’re the real subversives and destroyers of this nation. Which is why they have to make up bogus stories about the Labour party being full of anti-Semites, Trotskyites and Stalinists.
If you want to see a genuinely prosperous, united Britain, that’s fair to working people of every nation in this great country, vote Labour.
Because the Tories are happy to see it destroyed and impoverished.
A day or so ago I put up a post arguing that Corbyn’s promise to renationalise the NHS had Tweezer and the Tories rattled, as there had been a story in the I that May had held the promise of repealing some of Andrew Lansley’s vile Health and Social Care Act. This is a long, convoluted act which basically absolves the Health Minister of the requirement to provide universal healthcare free at the point of delivery to everyone in Britain. It’s one of the major landmarks on the long campaign of the Thatcherite right – both Tory and New Labour – to privatise the NHS. May was also talking about increasing taxes to mend the funding deficit in the NHS. This was, however, spoilt by May acting true to form as a Tory. She immediately declared that everyone would have to pay this tax, which could be as high as £2,000. Mike’s posted a piece on his blog about how this was worked out, and pointed out that not everyone should have to pay the same amount. We have progressive taxation in this country, which means that the rich pay higher rates of tax than the poor, who can’t afford it. The Tories, however, hate progressive taxation, because they’re solidly on the side of the rich and despise the poor. And so Thatcher, Major, Cameron and now May have done their best to shift the tax burden onto the poor, in order to lower the tax rates on their rich friends. And Thatcher came unstuck in 1990/1 when she tried to promote the poll tax.
Like May’s proposed tax increase for the NHS, this was supposed to be a uniform rate charged on rich and poor alike. It was expected to replace the rates, which were charged on the value of your property. So a rich Tory donor living in a mansion was going to be charged the same amount of money as someone on unemployment benefit living in a simple terraced house. Never mind: Thatcher and her cabinet of grotesques claimed this was ‘democratic, because we all pay the same’. The British public didn’t agree, and there were massed protests and riots against it. I also know of a number of magistrates, who resigned because of it. As Justices of the Peace, they would be required to enforce this piece of legislation, which they personally felt was terribly unjust. And rather than find people guilty in support of a law, with which they profoundly disagreed, they obeyed the calls of their consciences and resigned. And I have every respect to these people for doing so. Thatcher was then outed in a coup, Major installed as her replacement, and unfortunately the Tories carried on in power until Blair’s victory in 1997.
It struck me at the time, as I said in my previous article, that May was probably trying to scare people with the £2,000 figure, which many poorer people wouldn’t be able to afford, so she could claim that the NHS is unaffordable as it stands. Cue more privatisation. Despite the fact that we could easily afford it if we took a leaf out of the European’s book and spent more on the NHS, and increased the tax rates for the rich instead.
But the fact that May is holding out the prospect of undoing her predecessor’s legislation, and raising taxes for the NHS, shows that Corbyn’s got her rattled.
And not just May. It also seems to have worried ‘Rape Clause’ Ruth Davidson north of the Border. The I ran a story on Tuesday reporting that Davidson had warned may to concentrate on increasing funding for the NHS, and ditch plans for more tax cuts. If she didn’t, she risked relegating the Tories to history.
This shows just how far the panic is spreading in the Tory party. Quite apart from Davidson and Gove forming a think tank – surely an oxymoron in their cases – to reinvigorate the Tory party with new ideas. Because, they warn, if they don’t have them, the Tories may be out of power for a whole generation.
Well, I’d just love to see this vile party and its horrendous politicians thrust out of power, and not just for a generation. That’s too short a time.
As for the gurning, smirking leader of the Tories in Scotland, today’s I carried pieces from a couple of newspapers predicting that Davidson is too young, ambitious and talented to be content to remain head of the Tories in Scotland. According to them, she will most probably try to head down south to forge a political career in Britain and Wales. What a terrible prospect! Davidson is responsible for trying to implement the government’s wretched austerity campaign in Scotland, including its demand that women, who’ve had more than two children due to rape, should have to prove this is the case when claiming child benefit. Hence her soubriquet of ‘Rape Clause’. It’s a nasty piece of vindictive legislation which punishes already vulnerable women, who have been traumatised by their sexual assault. But this is the Tories, who have absolute contempt for the poor, the weak and the underprivileged. Davidson is supposed to be a ‘liberal’ Tory, but there’s no evidence of that except her sexuality. And despite May’s attempts to position herself as a feminist, this is a thoroughly misogynist piece of legislation. The last thing the rest of Britain needs is for her to come down south to spread even more misery down here.
Actually, reading between the line, it’s possible that Davidson may not have a choice. For all that she’s supposed to have masterminded the revival of the Tories in Scotland, she didn’t actually increase their vote. Instead, the SNP’s vote decreased and Labour’s revived, which split the opposition and allowed the Tories to emerge as the largest single party, even though most
Scots voted against them. Which is another argument in favour of proportional representation. Given the parlous situation of the Tories in Scotland, it’s possible that the Scots may vote them out. This would result in the party looking around for a new leader, and Davidson given her marching orders. In which case, if she wanted to continue her career, she’d have to go south.
I don’t want her coming to England and Wales, but I look forward to the Scots voting out the Tories and their thoroughly grotesque and objectionable leader.
Katy Balls, one of the columnists on the I newspaper, wrote a long column on Wednesday claiming that liberal Tories were a dying breed. This branch of the Tory party includes, apparently, Amber Rudd, Justine Greening and Damian Green in England, and ‘Rape Clause’ Ruth Davidson north of the border. With the resignation of Amber Rudd, their ranks are seriously depleted. She then went on describe how the Tories were planning to compensate for their losses in London by attacking weak Labour seats in the north, stressing a social conservative programme.
Social conservatism is the right-wing ideology that stresses traditional western social attitudes against gay rights, immigration and multiculturalism. It’s also very traditional in its attitude to gender roles. Put simply, it’s the attitude of the Daily Mail, which is vehemently racist, and has published no end of pieces arguing that women and society would be better off if they returned to their traditional roles as wives and mothers.
Reading Balls’ article, I wonder who these liberal Tories were, and if they ever really existed. I’ve seen no evidence that Rudd, Davidson, Greening and Green have ever been liberal at all in their treatment of the poor, the disabled and the unemployed. In fact there’s plenty of evidence against it in the Tories’ attacks on these groups through workfare, benefit sanctions, their cuts to vital welfare services and their support of the low wage economy. And while Dave Cameron made a lot of noise about cleaning the racists out of his party, the Tories are still very much against immigration and racist. Rudd’s supposed to be a liberal, but that didn’t stop her presiding over the deportation of the Windrush migrants, though she wasn’t responsible for the policy or the legislation behind it. That was done by Tweezer when she was Dodgy Dave Cameron’s home secretary. As for Ruth Davidson, the only quality she has which might be described as liberal is the fact that she’s a lesbian with a wife, who is now expecting a child. Tolerance of gays is a policy usually associated with the left, and the embrace of gay rights was another, liberal policy adopted by Cameron. But as Private Eye pointed out at the time, the Conservatives always have had slightly more gay MPs than Labour. So it wasn’t much of a break from the Tories’ existing attitudes, at least regarding their own ranks.
The only thing that marks these people out as liberal is they may be less prejudiced against Blacks and ethnic minorities, and far more tolerant of gays than the rest of the party. But they’ve still shown themselves to be viciously persecutory towards working people and the poor. And their supposed anti-racism didn’t stop them from deporting British citizens with a right to stay in this country, simply because they were Black or Asians from the Commonwealth. Or, indeed, that the party as a whole is less racist, although it might be more disguised and expressed less openly. If Balls hadn’t claimed that Rudd, Greening and Green were liberal, it wouldn’t have struck me that they were so. I’ve seen no evidence myself, and I doubt many others have. And despite her sexuality, Ruth Davidson is extremely illiberal, especially when it comes to rape victims and child benefit.
What Balls seems to mean is that if this crew go, then the Tories will become more overtly racist, anti-feminist, Islamophobic and homophobic. This will lead to increased prejudice against gays, Muslims and ethnic minorities, as well as renewed attacks on women and feminism. But it could also show them to be even more out of touch with society and less electable, whether or not they’re campaign in the north.
It isn’t just the Windrush Migrants, who have been savagely persecuted by the Tories. They’re just the latest victims in their ongoing campaign to humiliate, degrade and impoverish the poor, the unemployed, the disabled, BAME people, in fact anybody who isn’t rich and a member of the corporate elite.
Whiting was a young mother, who tragically took her life a few weeks ago. She had been thrown off benefits because she missed a jobcentre interview. She had good reason. She was in hospital at the time, being treated for a cyst on the brain. Common sense should tell you that this is a severe illness, and that treating it comes very much before attending jobcentre interviews, or indeed, anything else. The jobcentre didn’t see it that way, and stopped her benefits. Just as they stopped them for so many other seriously ill people in exactly the same situation.
Fearing that she would be unable to cope without state support, she took her own life. She dropped her kids off at school, went to the local forest and hanged herself. She had appealed the decision, and her benefits were reinstated. This came too late for her, after she was dead.
Mike put this up on his blog. It’s been a scandal in Scotland, and someone pointedly shouted to ‘Rape Clause’ Ruth Davidson about her, when she appeared to defend the Tories’ record before the Scots parliament. But Whiting is just one of nearly a thousand or more victims of Tory benefit sanctions, who have either starved to death penniless, or taken their own lives out of sheer desperation. There are so many that I’ve lost count. Stilloaks, one of the great commenters to this blog, has published a list on his site, as have disabled organisations and a number of other left-wing bloggers, including Johnny Void.
Many of these people left suicide notes explaining that they were killing themselves because of benefit sanctions. But all you hear from the Tories, when this issue is raised, is the constant refrain that there is no evidence to link their deaths with government policies.
It’s vile, murderous lie, to cover up what Mike and other bloggers are calling the genocide of the disabled.
Stop the deaths. Vote out May and her murderous crew.
I really can’t let this go without comment. In one of the history books I’ve got here at home, there’s an observation that you can tell how civilised a culture is by how high the status of women is. I think it’s in part of the book discussing the ancient Egyptians, where the status of women was very high for the ancient world. If that’s the case, then Esther McVile and the Tories are dragging us back into real barbarism.
McVile was before the Scots parliament this week to give her testimony regarding child benefit, and the infamous ‘rape clause’. You can only receive child benefit for two children, but it is available for rape victims, provided they can show that their third child was conceived through rape. This in itself is immensely controversial, and Ruth Davidson, the head of the Tories in Scotland, briefly earned herself the soubriquet ‘Rape Clause Ruth’ after she got up on her hind legs to justify the rape clause. That was repulsive enough. Now the Tories have gone even lower and got Esther McVie to try to defend the indefensible.
And what did the Wicked Witch of the Wirral say? That the rape clause offered victims the chance to talk about their assault, and offered them ‘double support’.
It does no such thing. Everything about the modern Job Centre interview is design to humiliate, bully and degrade the prospective claimant. It’s all part of Thatcher’s sacred Victorian values. She followed the ‘less eligibility’ ideology of the workhouse, in which claiming benefits was to be made so harsh and degrading that only the very desperate would willingly go on them.
As for the psychological harm rape does, I know very little about it. But I do know that it leaves victims traumatised and mentally scarred. They may irrationally blame themselves, and definitely do not want to relive the experience over and over again. I can remember watching a documentary on Channel 4 about new advances in neuroscience and mental health, which included a piece about doctors in Canada, who were treating a French Canadian lady. This poor woman was still massively depressed and anxious a year or more after her assault. And it goes without saying that there are any number of rape victims like her. They don’t like talking about their experience, and they feel so deeply ashamed that in general they really don’t want other people knowing about it.
And the DWP is not known for its sensitivity. Like when its wretched servants ask depressives why they haven’t committed suicide yet. No depressed person should be asked this question. And no rape victim should be required to describe the event for an unsympathetic bureaucrat, whose only concern is to find some excuse to sanction their benefits.
One of the many great commenters on Mike’s blog, Aunty1960, posted this about their experience of the way the DWP handles rape claims.
I have witness statements on my After Atos feedback survey from rape and child sex survivors who say they have to recount their ordeal up to ten times every time they are called for an assessment as they have to again go through it with GP social worker, psychiartrist, DWP physiotherapist counsellor etc etc in order to get each bit of paper and supportive documentary evidence.
The assessors are not understanding or supportive and can ask really inappropriate and insensitive questions.
One witness statement says that all the work that has been done over the years has been totally undone because of having to go through the assessments and retell it and relive it everytime. No closure and respect for PTSD triggers, just keep opening the wound over and over again.
Some very inappropriate comments by assessor on women and their sexuality and sexual experiences. Even outright disapproval of a woman being a lesbian and inappropriate comments.
A lot of work undone and lost. and that includes physical ailments where interventions have been completely undone and undermined.
I cannot stand most people most of the time and professionals about sexual abuse and social discrimination and prejudice, Same ideas still there. This just reinforce and compounds it 100 times more.
But McVile’s statement is designed to play to that part of the Tory-voting public, who are fortunate never to have stepped into a jobcentre, at least, not recently. The people, who are prepared to take the Tories comments about their welfare reforms at face value, and swallow all the lies about how they’re not cutting benefits, their simply refocusing them to help people better. The lies that workfare isn’t about giving cheap, subsidised forced labour to big business, including the supermarkets, but about helping people into work by giving them new skills and other such specious rubbish. Quite apart from the morons that believes the lies put out by the Scum, the Heil and the Depress that all benefit claimants are really scroungers, no matter how severe their disability. ‘Cause these papers says so, and they saw that character in a wheelchair running about in Little Britain. Oh yes, and single mothers only have babies to claim the child and other benefits.You can read off the standard Tory attitudes of the people, who will believes McVile’s monstrous, platitudinous lies, almost like ticking boxes in a list.
Not the Scots, however. The day after McVile uttered this bilge, they organised a demonstration against her. Bravo! and maximum respect! McVie is truly vile, along with the rest of the squad running the DWP – Damian Green and his predecessor, Ian Duncan Smith. All of them should be cleaned out and charged with crimes against humanity for their role in manipulating the benefits system to cause the victims of their sanctions to starve to death or commit suicide.
Unfortunately, they’re likely to be rewarded instead. Rape Clause Ruth was in today’s papers because Time magazine has named her one of the 20 most influential women, or at least, influential women in Scotland. Which is enough to have millions of Scots voting SNP because of Nicola Sturgeon. Although I’d rather see named as more influential than Davidson the actress, who played Mary Hen, Rab. C. Nesbit’s long-suffering wife.
Apart from being offensive in itself, McVile’s stupid comments are dangerous because they try to justify a system that is causing people harm. And her words themselves are likely to upset victims of sexual assault and their families. One of the things I’ve learned from being made redundant along with others is that it isn’t just an official action that hurts. It’s also the dull platitudes management offer to try and make it more palatable. I used to be a civil servant years ago, and one day a whole group of us were called in individually to be told we were going to be made redundant. One young lad left in tears. Talking to him afterwards, he told me that it wasn’t the redundancy itself, but the nonsense the manager came out with about the possibility of getting jobs elsewhere in offices in the area. The lad knew that there was no hope of that. The redundancy stung, and what made it all the worse was the smooth assurances made by someone from outside the office to make it all seem better. McVie’s comments are like that, but much worse because of the horrific nature of the crime to which these women have been subjected.
McVie deserves her nickname. She really is vile, and so are the rest of her corrupt and mendacious crew. Get them out, and Labour in!
Okay, it wasn’t an outright victory for Jeremy Corbyn. But it wasn’t a defeat either.
Like many people, I was surprised and delighted by last week’s election result. I’d gone to bed early Thursday night, as I couldn’t bear to watch the election coverage. I was afraid that, despite the polls showing that Labour had cut the Tory lead down to only one per cent, there would still be a Tory landslide, or at least a workable majority.
I was, therefore, highly delighted to wake up to find that May had lost her overall majority, and was therefore looking around for anyone or anything that would shore up her government by going into coalition with her.
Unfortunately, she has found one in the Democratic Unionist Party, founded by Ian Paisley in 1986 to oppose the 1986 Anglo-Irish agreement. The DUP is socially Conservative and deeply sectarian. They back teaching Creationism in schools, denying climate change, keeping abortion banned in Ulster and violently denounce gay rights. This goes back to when Ian Paisley in the 1970s founded S.U.S. to oppose the legalisation of homosexual acts between consenting adults. The organisation’s name stood for ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’. This always struck me as an hysterical reaction. It’s as if he was afraid that Northern Irish people’s heterosexuality was so fragile, that the moment homosexuality was legalised every man and woman in the province would immediately turn gay. Or else he had some kind of nightmare that gays from across the world were massing at the Irish border or just across the Irish Sea, ready to charge in like an invading army.
Just as worrying is the party’s hatred of the Irish Republic and Roman Catholicism, and its links to a series of Loyalist paramilitary terrorist groups, most notably the UDA. It’s leaders have posed with Kalashnikovs in their mitts, and wearing the uniform of Loyalist terror groups. These links remain strong, despite the DUP’s official rhetoric condemning terrorism in Ulster.
In short, they’re the type of organisation, which several Protestant Ulster people I know came to Britain to get away from. Just as I know Irish Roman Catholics, who don’t want to go back to Ulster because of the same violent prejudice in their communities.
May hasn’t exactly gone into coalition with these clowns. She’s trying to hammer out a ‘supply and confidence’ agreement, in which the DUP will support the government on a bill-by-bill basis. And even that’s looking rocky, and she made the mistake of annoying her new partners in government by announcing the alliance before it was to be formally arrange on Tuesday.
May’s formation of government with these bigots is also something of a problem for many Conservative MPs. About 19, according to Mike, are openly gay, and so put in a very awkward position through this alliance with a rabidly homophobic party. Ruth Davidson, the gay head of the Conservative party, and who is going to marry an Irish Roman Catholic, has already Tweeted her displeasure. Not that this may make any difference. Despite Cameron’s attempts to make the Tories look nice and friendly to minorities – pro-gay, anti-racist, more women MPs – this alliance shows the real nature of much of the Tory party. They’re reverting to type. As for the 19 gay Tory MPs, given the entrenched hypocrisy of the Tories, where the say one thing and do another, it’s likely that they’ll swallow their principles and troop through the ‘Yes’ doors to support the government anyway.
Even with the DUP on board, the Tories only have a bare majority of two. That means that they’ll have to do as Labour did when they only had a majority of five in the mid-70s: cram every single one of their members into the chamber to support them. To the point where they sent the whips round to check no-one was in the toilets.
Far from being ‘strong and stable’, May’s position looks very, very precarious. The Bow group, a Tory think tank, are considering holding leadership elections and there are murmurings from the backbench 1922 Committee. Unfortunately for the Tories – but good for us – all the other contenders for the leadership are actually more unpopular than May. The leading figure is Boris Johnson, but while 23 per cent of people said that he was more likely to make them vote Tory, 33 per cent stated that he’d put them off.
People have started discussing the possibility that there might be another election in October. Mike has put this forward, and suggested that it could be as early as August. And May herself may not last the week.
As for Corbyn, he’s increasingly looking like a prime minister in waiting. This has been the biggest movement towards Labour for the past forty-five years. And it has roundly refuted the claims of his critics that he was ‘unelectable’. Instead, it has confirmed the worst nightmares of the neoliberal establishment – that he is only too electable. The Blairites now have absolutely no grounds for their intrigues against him. Indeed, if Corbyn can do so well despite their attempts to unseat him, it’s probably fair to say that if the Blairites had done the decent thing and supported their leader and the broad mass of the party’s members and supporters, he’d probably be in Number 10.
His success shows that a very large section of the British people are sick of austerity, sick of Thatcherism, sick of the privatisation of the NHS and private ownership of utilities, sick of exorbitant rents, the threat of homelessness, stagnant wagges and a harsh and callous attitude to the poor, the sick, disabled and the unemployed, which has seen them thrown off benefit, to die in misery and despair.
Tony Greenstein, one of the great people, who comments on Mike’s blog, has written on his own that the one thing that Corbyn should not do is water down his policies to make them more acceptable to those inclined to vote Tory. And he’s right. Not only would this leave some of the causes of Britain’s misery in place, it would weaken his own position electorally. People are heartily sick of a Labour party which does its best to emulate the Tories. This was the reason why New Labour lost five million of its supporters from 1997 to its fall, and why Ed Miliband lost the 2015 election.
Corbyn now needs to keep the pressure up – to continue his attack on the Tories. According to Survation, he’s now several points above them in the polls. Let’s hope and do what we can to maintain and increase this lead, until the government falls and we can have a real, Socialist, Labour leader in Downing Street.
For further informed comment, see the following blogs and posts:
And male feminist vlogger and general scourge of the far right, Kevin Logan, has produced this video showing precisely how deeply unpleasant the DUP are:
This is excellent news for anyone on a low income, or who suffers from a long term sickness or is or cares for a disabled person. And it’s going to send the Tories, the Blairites and the parasites in the private insurance industry, who recommended the current high persecutory disability policies, absolutely incandescent with fury.
Mike over on his blog has reported that Labour have made the following promises in their manifesto:
* to scrap the work capability assessments and Personal Independence Payment assessments.
* to stop the endless reassessments of people with severe long term conditions.
* Scrapping sanctions.
* Scrapping the bedroom tax.
* Increasing ESA for people in the work-related activity group, and reversing the cuts in UC LCW.
* Uprating carers allowance.
* reinstating housing benefit for young people under 21.
* Reversing the cuts to the bereavement support payments.
* Reviewing the cuts to work allowances in Universal Credit.
* Reviewing the decision to limit tax credits and Universal Credit to the first two children in a family. Which is, as Mike points out, the Rape Clause. This odious piece of legislation was defended in Scotland by an equally odious piece of work, Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Tories up there.
Mike states
The Labour Party manifesto, released today (May 16) has confirmed what we all saw in the leaked version last week – a bonfire of the cruel legislation that has led to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of vulnerable people.
But remember – this is only what Labour would do, if elected back into office on June 8.
With the mass media lining up to attack Labour over any slightest quibble, that will be hard to achieve.
So please make sure all 12 million sick and disabled people, and all of the unemployed and under-employed get to see this.
He also applauds Labour’s promises to end the way the Jobcentre staff and the benefit system itself demonises those with disabilities and the unemployed, so that it becomes more supportive and enabling.
He gives due credit to Debbie Abrahams, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, saying that this confirms what he has known about her, that she is a woman of strong professional integrity, who will act on her promises.
Mike concludes
If YOU have a long-term illness or disability, this is all the reason you need to vote Labour on June 8. If you don’t, but know somebody who does, please share this information with them.
I agree with Mike on just about every line of this. And I won’t be remotely surprised when the Tories and their lapdogs in the press and media go absolutely insane at this.
It is a direct reversal of the welfare policies introduced by Blair and the Tories, at the behest of American private healthcare firms and insurers. The wretched work capability tests were recommended by John Lo Cascio, the head honcho of the American insurance fraudster, Unum. This was based on bogus science, that has now been comprehensively refuted. I’ve reblogged material from Johnny Void and Kitty S. Jones and many, many others over the years, which provide a very detailed critique which absolutely demolishes its pretension to scientific fact. But still the Tories tout it.
And Labour’s pledge to stop the demonization of the sick and poor is a direct attack on one of the fundamental principles of Thatcherism: that those dependant on welfare payments, the sick, disabled and unemployed, must be humiliated as much as possible, in order to deter them from becoming a burden to the taxpayer. Meaning the rich, who must be given tax breaks and corporate subsidies at every opportunity.
It’s called the principle of Less Eligibility, and it was the reason why the workhouses were such places of degradation and misery. But Thatcher celebrated it as one of her ‘Victorian values’, which she really wanted to call ‘Victorian virtues’, but her spin doctors wouldn’t let her.
Like the Tories, the Blairites are Thatcherites, who adopted her vicious, spiteful and punitive attitude to poverty.
This is also a comprehensive rebuttal to the refrain you also hear from Tory voters when the work disability assessments are criticised: no, they’re not going to vote Labour, ’cause Labour introduced them.
Well, they can’t use that excuse now, because Labour’s committed to scrapping them.
This will be bitterly resented by the Tory press, not just because it is a strong attack on decades of Tory policies, but because newspapers like the Torygraph make their money from advertising, and are afraid to do anything that will offend their advertisers. The Torygraph is particularly sensitive to this, as they’ve been spiking stories that would offend their advertisers. It was the reason one of the columnists, Peter Oborne, walked out and very publicly denounced them in the rest of the media, including Channel 4, a few years ago. As the Torygraph seems determined to lock itself into a death spiral of continuing cuts and sackings in order to maintain its share price, while its readership plummets, I’m not remotely worried if these policies help put another boot into the Tory paper.
And, of course, it’s going to inflame the already fevered tempers over at the Daily Mail massively. The Heil has been one of the papers that has been at the very forefront of demonising people on disability benefit as scroungers. Mike has shown that the true statistics for benefit fraud is 0.7 per cent – a vanishingly small amount. But thanks to the Tories and the lies of the press, the British public believe that it’s 27 per cent.
And the rich, who have been pushing for these policies so they can enjoy ever greater profits and tax breaks are afraid.
How else can you explain today’s headline in the I, which screams that Labour intends a ‘tax grab on the rich’. The term ‘tax grab’ seems to show a little panic on the part of the editor, no doubt on behalf of the Russian oligarch who owns the paper.
So don’t be deceived by the lies and hysterical denunciations of these policies. Unlike the rubbish spouted by May, these are sincerely meant, and if implemented will lead to a better, fairer, and healthier Britain.
Because the destruction of the sanctions regime and the work capability tests will stop people dying. Look at Stilloak’s website and the site Atos Miracles to see how many have died in poverty, misery and starvation due to these vile and evil policies.
Mike has posted another great piece today, reblogging Eoin Clarke’s question on Twitter: ‘Did we ever get round to thanking Scotland for the treatment they gave Theresa May?’ This comes with a clip from Sky News showing ‘strong and stable’ May getting a very cold reaction from the guid folk of Aberdeen as she goes from door to door with an aid while ‘Rape Clause’ Ruth hangs around in the background.
It’s Scot TV on YouTube, who called Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Tories north of the border ‘Rape Clause Ruth’, after she stood on her hind feet in the Scots parliament to defend the odious decision of this government, that rape victims, who have had children because of the assault, can only claim child benefit if it’s their third child by telling the authorities this. As the majority of rapes are not reported because of the humiliation felt by the victims, this is just another further humiliation heaped on extremely vulnerable women to deprive them of benefits.
Scot TV put a clip of Davidson making her speech defending this policy but with an appropriate comment in the description box. They’re exactly right. It’s a vile speech, defending a vile policy by a vile party. Davidson’s openly gay, so her appointment as the Tories’ leader in Scotland presumably was part of Cameron’s campaign to persuade the electorate that, hey, the Tories are all nice cosy liberals now, at ease with people of different ethnicities and sexuality. Except that it’s all just cosmetic. Despite the appearance of openly gay Tory politicians like Alan Duncan, they’re still the nasty party underneath, determined to abuse, humiliate, victimise and degrade the weak and vulnerable whenever possible.
The response of the good people on that street begins with a polite ‘No thank you’, from the first house May tries, followed by very firmly closed doors and a stony silence. Clarke comments that this shows that May is definitely not ‘fake news’, and those, who say so, are just haters.
And for your further viewing pleasure, there’s the Benny Hill version, in which she’s slightly speeded up and the music of ‘Yakkety Sax’ is added.
So let’s thank Scotland for shutting the door on these awful bullies.
As for May herself, ‘Yakkety Sax’ is an appropriate piece of music for her. Despite her campaign to be taken seriously as a leader, she’s a clown. A particularly unfunny one. And the only people who are laughing are the Tory rich, as her policies criminalise, impoverish the already poor and disabled.
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