Rod Liddle

Welcome, then, to a country in which the police send drones to humiliate people taking a walk and dried pasta has replaced the pound as the national currency. ‘Gimme that pappardelle, mofo.’ ‘Not until you prise it from my cold dead hands, punk.’ A week is a long time in politics, but also a long time in pestilence. And the next time someone uses the phrase ‘the new normal’, I may well break my social distancing regimen and chin him. The lockdown has come as a great boon to the police, who seem to be enjoying it immensely, and indeed to Britain’s vibrant community of curtain-twitching, onanistic, meddlesome ratbags.

The most surprising thing about the letter from Guardian and Observer journalists moaning about Suzanne Moore’s supposed ‘transphobia’ is that it contained 338 signatures. This must be the first time a newspaper has had more writers than readers. What an extraordinarily bloated institution — how does it survive? Through those often advertised workshops where Owen Jones explains to people how to write a column? Most bizarre. Surprise number two was that these hacks were prepared to get themselves worked up about a perfectly reasonable piece, for once, by Moore — but found no problem what-soever with Steve Bell’s disgusting and frankly racist depiction of Priti Patel in a cartoon.

We have now got past the absurd stage of glaring in a reproachful manner at Chinese people on the tube. Coronavirus is disrupting sporting events, so this rather mild-mannered little bug has acquired crisis cachet and we must all take it very seriously. Lots of us will die of it, apparently — in this country some 500,000, according to one estimate. Almost certainly older people with under-lying medical conditions, i.e. the very people who voted for Brexit and ensured Labour’s red wall was dismantled in December. If this worst-case scenario does actually happen, expect the Remainers to demand a rerun of that referendum. Health professionals will be able to enumerate for you the stages of Covid-19 as it goes to work on the human body.

We will rue the day we all decided bullying was a bad thing. The consequence is that the inept, the imbecilic and the perpetually frit will hang on to their jobs and we will become a much less efficient country. By bullying I do not mean physically beating someone up and stealing their lunch money, which is what it used to mean when it had a proper meaning. I mean telling someone they’re useless and deserve to be sacked, which is what bullying means today. As R.D. Laing might have put it, that kind of bullying is a rational response to irrationality. The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, who is 5ft 6in tall, has been accused of using bullying behaviour with regard to her civil servants. Nowhere near enough bullying behaviour in my book.

Words we are not allowed to use any more now include ‘cultural Marxism’. Suella Braverman, now the Attorney General, used them last year and was immediately upbraided by the organisation Hope Not Hate. Very right-wing people sometimes use it too, you see, so it must never be uttered by anyone else. Banning the use of the phrase ‘cultural Marxism’ is about as culturally Marxist as it is possible to get, but I don’t suppose the cultural Marxists at Hope Not Hate appreciated the irony. Cultural Marxism is a largely 1960s excrescence in which everything must be seen through the prism of unequal power relations, other than which nothing else matters at all. Especially power relations regarding race and gender, the basis of identity politics.

A couple of people in the Hornsey and Wood Green Labour party have come up with a fascinating suggestion — a section of the party for working-class people. I don’t know their names, but let’s call them Bob and Hilda for the time being. Bob and Hilda, the last two working--class people alive in the Labour party. The two of them say that while middle-class party members are in general very nice, Bob and Hilda sometimes feel patronised and talked to as if they were children. Bob and Hilda have recommended ‘awareness--raising group workshops’ to address this problem. Hmm.

Sudesh Amman was singularly unsuccessful in his wish to kill kafirs, as he put it, and thereby find himself surrounded by the hoor al ayn — beautiful handmaidens who’ll do anything you want, frankly — in the afterlife. He had perhaps not followed the instructions in the book he had about how to stab people. Two were injured by the madman on Streatham High Road; both, mercifully, should live. However, Amman was shot dead by plain-clothes policemen before he could even scream out the old ‘Allahu Akbar’ thing. The cops were already there because Amman was known to them — known very well to them. I suppose, under British law, they were required to wait until he’d tried to stab somebody before they shot him.

Whoever becomes the next director-general of the BBC should take a close look at last week’s Question Time. It came from Liverpool, which is perhaps the most left-wing city in the country, Brighton excepted. On it, the actor Laurence Fox was making sensible comments about the Harry and Meghan business (which is beginning to bore me into a stupor), when he was upbraided by a third-division academic from a glorified teacher training college. This was Rachel Boyle, a ‘researcher on race and ethnicity’. She trotted out the familiar, learned-by-rote cliché that Fox was possessed of ‘white privilege’ and was therefore, by implication, disqualified to comment on the matter.

There is a fascinating social media group which I think we should all join. It is called ‘DeMOCKracy — 2019 12/12 UK Election Was Undemocratic’. I hadn’t realised, but apparently the election was ‘rigged by Tory billionaires’ to ensure Jeremy Corbyn was defeated. This was done with the aid of fraudulent postal votes, Tory lies, a media which was unanimous in rooting for the Tories — including the BBC and the Guardian! — and will lead, ineluctably, to fascism and the gassing of millions. Where is the evidence for this chicanery?

Watch out for Emily Thornberry. She has sneaked through to the next round of the Labour leadership contest because of nominations to make the whole thing “more diverse”. Some of those who nominated her stressed that this was not an endorsement of the woman. There are people in the Parliamentary Labour Party who haven't learned from what happened last time. When MPs decided to make the contest “more diverse” in 2015 they ended up with Corbyn as leader. One of those who nominated Corbyn on that occasion, Old Margaret Beckett, later agreed that her decision to do so had been that of a 'moron'. But they do not learn. Thornberry is competent, unlike Ms Wrong Daily. She is a woman, unlike Sir Keir Starmer.

Just to sour the festive mood a little, I thought I'd ask what are your least favourite Christmas songs and carols. I've got lots of least favourites. 'Look to the future now, it's only just begun', from Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody is probably the most stupid line ever written in a song. But I like the rest of the song for its sheer good nature and chutzpah. But……….. that spaceman drivel from Chris De Burgh. Mistletoe and Wine is a given, obvs as is Gilbert O'Sullivan's Christmas offering and Taylor Swift's Christmas Tree Farm (go back to it, you woke tart). Carols? If I never hear Oh Come All ye Faithful again I'll be very happy, ditto Ding Dong Merrily On High. I'll bloody well give you a ding dong, mate. Over to you.