Tories ensure mates’ plates are full as our poor children suffer
LABOUR deputy leaders who hail from the North tend not to pull their punches.
John Prescott once landed a lefthook on a mullet-headed protestor who’d hit him with an egg, and John McDonnell (who was effectively Jeremy Corbyn’s number two) labelled Churchill more villain than hero when it came to the workers.
And this week, Angela Rayner was overheard calling Tory MP Chris Clarkson, who was accusing Labour of exploiting this pandemic for their own ends, “scum”.
She apologised for her use of language. And she was right to. Because Clarkson lied to the people of Heywood and Middleton at the last election when he told them Tories cared about them, is a member of the Countryside Alliance which advocates ripping foxes apart, and has just voted for his furloughed minimum wage constituents to exist on £5.75 per hour and allow the poorest kids to risk hunger.
Which is why the scum in my bath and kettle definitely deserve an apology gy for being g likened to
Clarkson. Rayner’s description may have been a bit earthy for some but it struck a chord with millions. As did the irony of Scummy Boy accusing Labour of exploiting Covid for their own ends.
As the Mirror revealed on Thursday, more than
£ 1billion of outsourced government contracts have gone to firms run by Tories’ friends and donors during this pandemic, many given without other firms being invited to bid.
Yet it’s Labour, with their calls for furloughed workers to receive 80%, not 66% of their wages, and to follow Scotl Scotland and Wales in feeding the poorest kids over half term term, who are being accused of op opportunism.
W Watching the debate on foot footballer Marcus Rashford’s call t to keep giving free meals to chil children who qualify for them thro throughout school holidays, felt like travelling back to the 198 1980s when little- known Tor Tories who wanted to impress Th Thatcher gleefully attacked sin single mums as scroungers. B Brendan Clarke- Smith declared “I do not believe in nationalising children” and called for everyone to “get back to the idea of taking responsibility”. Ben Bradley dismissed it as an extended “freebies” scheme, and Paul Scully saw no value in it because kids “have been going hungry for years”.
At which point I expected them to tap-dance along the green benches singing Food, Glorious Food from the musical Oliver!
They reminded me of Edwina Currie once declaring that if I wanted to interview her it would have to be over an expensive meal at The Savoy, paid for by me. A few years later she was labelling benefits claimants who used foodbanks parasites.
Staying with irony, how many millionaire Tories voting down subsidised meals for poor kids were recently bragging on social media about how much they’d saved on a family lunch thanks to the £ 500million taxpayers spent on Eat Out to Help Out. Surely not just you, Jeremy Hunt?
Hopefully, enough northern voters who fell for Boris Johnson’s promise to level them up will now realise, as they spit out the boot leather, he meant to kick them down.
In a few weeks, many of those 318 Tory MPs who scuppered Rashford’s proposal will be doing photo-ops in their constituencies on Children in Need night.
Maybe the BBC should give Pudsey a patch on both eyes this year so he doesn’t throw up at the sight of the brazen hypocrites.
More than £1bn-worth of contracts have gone to the Tories’ friends
yourvoice@mirror.co.uk