It’s as good an indicator as you’ll find of this government’s asinine attitude to rural Britain that you’re reading a piece in which a Spectator writer semi-seriously considers the far-right credentials of various dog breeds. How right-wing is your dog? in itself sounds like one of Alan Partridge’s increasingly desperate pitches for a new TV show.
Pity the poor black Lab, for it’s these harmless thickos of the dog world that have aroused Labour’s ire. You’ll no doubt be aware that earlier this week, Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Nature, told a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference that the far-right at the next election would weaponise a nostalgic vision of Britain ‘that we don’t want to have [and] never really existed’.
This dystopia, she told her audience, would involve ‘warm ale, a black Labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist, and with symbolism of fox hunting all around them’. Riddell-Carpenter has since attempted to row back, by posting photos of her childhood yellow Labrador, which only serves to expose her as the equivalent of a self-hating Jew. She has also put pictures of her current dog online; a miniature Schnauzer – to which the only possible response is silence.
There is, as they say, a lot to unpick here. Warm ale and pubs were often evoked by that famously non-right-wing writer, George Orwell, in his evocations of the English character. So where does Riddell-Carpenter’s pronouncement leave Orwell’s famous old maids bicycling to Holy Communion in his essay ‘The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius’? Presumably, Sieg Heiling through the mist as highly-civilised human beings fly overhead, trying to kill them. Which would make them Quislings. But I’m getting distracted — not to mention confused.
What the ‘rural affairs’ (my quotation marks) minister has done here — as in common with so many on the Left — is to confuse ‘living in the countryside’ with being ‘posh’. In further evidence of her muddled thinking, Labradors these days are about as reliable a class indicator as a double-barrelled surname. Riddell-Carpenter, who is not a member of the landed gentry and definitely wouldn’t identify as ‘posh’, combined surnames with her husband on marrying.
Once a staple of The Sloane Ranger Handbook and anything by Jilly Cooper (Rupert Campbell-Black had a black Lab called Badger), socially, Labradors have moved downwards. Like the name Olivia, they are now firmly middle-class. Toffs might have one as a pet, but for shooting they prefer clever working cockers. Are we to accept that these friendly, busy little Spaniels make Heinrich Himmler look like a bleeding heart liberal? Under the Labour metric of what constitutes posh/right-wing, I fear we must. Ditto the ratty little terriers and lurchers of uncertain provenance favoured by the aristocracy. Just look at their jackbooted thuggery, running down fluffy bunnies and shaking rats —who’ve committed no crime, other than eating the fascist farmer’s grain — by the neck.
Certain dog breeds are undeniably far-right. The Nazis weaponised Doberman Pinschers, Boxers and German Shepherds (the clue’s in the name). Efforts to rebrand the latter as ‘Alsatians’ have failed: Hitler had one called Blondi, who died with him in the bunker. But don’t be too down on Dobermans, Jenny — they’ll be useful when you want to herd us all into collective AI data centres.
Rottweilers are also extremely right-wing. The late Tory MP, Alan Clark had two, named Leni (as in Riefenstahl) and Eva (Braun). Bulldogs are empirically right-wing, as are Staffordshire bull terriers. Andrew Rosindell, the former Tory turned Reform MP for Romford, Essex, used to parade his around at election time in their Union flag waistcoats. The dogs’ names alone (‘Spike’ and ‘Buster’), never mind their attire, constituted right-wing micro-aggressions. Curiously, the whippet — once attached to any self-respecting Northerner by a piece of string — has moved up socially. Hated oppressors of the working classes like Robin Birley and Rose, Marchioness of Cholmondeley, keep them.
Any fluffy, yappy dog with ‘poo’ in the name is very suburban and naff and so safe, politically, for Labour
Meanwhile, the PM, Andy Burnham who, as he reminds us over and over and over again, hails from the North-west of England, owns a fluffy white aberration. Axel is a ‘Bichon-Poo’ (that’s a Bichon Frise-Poodle cross — or, a mongrel). Apparently Axel is staying in Manchester. Good job — Larry, the No. 10 cat would annihilate him (all cats are far-right sympathisers; you can see it in their gimlet eyes and the arbitrary and savage way they pick off garden birds).
Any fluffy, yappy dog with ‘poo’ in the name is very suburban and naff and so safe, politically, for Labour, as they will share their view of the countryside as something sinister and dangerous which must be carpeted over immediately with Persimmon Homes developments and solar farms.
I’ve felt politically homeless for some time, but according to Jenny Riddell-Carpenter’s logic, with her hatred of ‘fox-hunting’ (n.b. post-ban, hunting involves following a smelly sock dragged by a quad bike), I should be a fully paid-up member of Restore. Full disclosure: I have owned several Basset Hounds. The patriarch of my pack, Churchill (whose namesake is now considered ‘racist’ by the Left) was given to me by a huntsman, because, like the great man, he was too independent.
We currently have Churchill’s widow, named Clemmie (obviously) and daughter, Marigold. Now I think about it, bassets may indeed be far-right, with their hateful habit of removing snacks from small children’s hands and in their inexorable desire for lebensraum, commandeering beds when they’re not even supposed to go upstairs.
Ideally, I’d be writing this in one of Labour’s make-believe pubs, tripping over a canine figment of my imagination when I go to the bar for a pint of Greene King, but they’ve all closed around here, thanks to Rachel Reeves’s Budget. So I’m on the sofa with the dogs and as I get to the pay-off line, I find that they have encroached so far onto my territory, they have me rammed up against the arm at the far-right of the Chesterfield.
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