“Castigating Lifestyles”, Polly? The Left Have No Equal Via Simon Cooke, Polly Toynbee has done a superb job today in highlighting the disgraceful behaviour of the left towards working class people.
I mean, how else does she think saying this would have been turned out?
Some themes deep in the heart of Toryism just never go away. Up they pop, over and over. Control the lower orders, stop them breeding, check their spending, castigate their lifestyles. Poking, sneering, moralising and despising is hardwired within Tory DNA
Err, I don’t believe Emily Thornberry is a Tory MP, is she?
As Simon points out, in every category Polly mentions, it has historically been the left who have been the most keen to “control the lower orders”, and in the lifestyle choices we talk about here it has been the left in recent times and the present day who have been leading the charge for ever more intrusion into our lives.
[I]t’s the left – including the last Labour government – who led the charge against people’s lifestyles. Banning smoking in the pub, whacking a duty escalator on beer (while exempting wine and champagne), imposing planning restrictions on fast food takeaways and trying to ban gambling. It’s the left that want taxes on fizzy drinks, bans on added sugar and salt, restrictions on portion sizes, the ending of multibuy offers and a host of other nannying interventions in people’s lifestyle choices.
Simon uses the word “host”, but I’d say it’s been more of a deluge. Let’s add a few more examples, eh?
It is Labour’s Luciana Berger who has declared that plain packaging will be introduced if her party wins the next election, even though the public has soundly rejected it. She’s not a loose cannon either, her party leader is right behind her.
It is Labour, not the Tories, who want to ‘sneer’ and ‘moralise’ on what families choose to buy their kids for breakfast by banning Frosties.
During last year’s Brussels negotiations over the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD), it was Labour MEPs and their European friends on the left who – without exception – refused to listen to anyone who tried to persuade them of the benefits of e-cigs. The TPD itself was driven through by an elitist pharma-linked Labour politician who pulled every trick in the book to avoid letting the public have their say. By contrast, some Conservatives fought gamely to defend free choice.
And it is Labour who are fighting tooth and nail for the introduction of minimum alcohol pricing – which will punish the poor – despite the Tories having binned the idea a long time ago.
When it comes to castigating lifestyles; poking, sneering, and moralising, the left have absolutely no equal. Like Polly herself, in fact.
Is Britain uniquely uncouth in our filthy drinking habits, or do our peculiarly restrictive laws cause the desperate drink-to-get-drunk-quick mentality? Why, oh why, can’t we be more Italian? Take away the urgency and mystery, and maybe we could all tipple a little nip in the coffee without making a fetish of alcohol
Well, if we all had a villa in Tuscany from which to preach – like rich lefty elitist Polly – perhaps we too could all be a bit more Italian while despising the ‘lower orders’ and writing about how to control them, eh?
The hypocrisy is stunning, isn’t it?
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