Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Tax, tea tips, baked beans and Nik-naks
Barton ward councillor Oliver Fawcett had his Facebook friends tittering when he revealed the details of a call he received. A female constituent called him to say she no longer wanted to pay her council tax and wanted to be taken off the register. The Conservative pointed out that the payments aren’t voluntary and was halfway through explaining what the money is for when the line went dead.
Ageing man-about-town Dougie Smith, who ran the chippy in The Borough for many years and is now in his eighth decade residing in Dover Street, has been imparting the wisdom of his years – on the subject of tea: “The first cup is always better than the second.” And: “A cup of tea made by someone for you always tastes better than one you make yourself.” Gandhi, Buddha, Dale Winton – eat your heart out!
I was having a post-work beer and catching up on some current affairs reading at The Thomas Becket in Best Lane when one of the barmaids exclaimed: “He’s just the coolest, smartest, kindest guy.” Even though I was the only male customer in there, I can confirm that none of those superlatives refer to me.
I’ve noticed that some pubs around Canterbury, including The Becket, have started stocking what I call proper crisps. No, not that gourmet variety which purport to be “hand-cooked” (whatever that is) and have stupid names like Mrs Battersnatch’s finest ox loin flavour and the texture of cardboard. No, they’re bringing back the likes of Quavers, spicy NikNaks and Monster Munch. Result.
Speaking of food, a lad was spotted eating cold baked beans out of the can outside Poundland in St George’s. He was using a metal spoon so either he brought that with him knowing he was going to make such a purchase or he bought it specially to indulge in this most appetising repast. Last week, we carried an intelligent piece by Canterbury Labour Party activist Dave Wilson on proposals for an east Kent super council to be created by a merger of four local authorities.
I’ve no intention of offering a commentary on Dave’s points, but I will use something he said – or rather didn’t say – as a starting point.
Dave bemoans the fact that the Conservatives have imposed “austerity” upon Britain and fears that a super council will inevitably mean Conservative rule in east Kent.
But he speaks as if Conservative power is an unwanted abomination, imposed by knaves and blackguards whose purpose is other people’s misery, or else a nasty freak of nature which has befallen the UK and east Kent in particular.
He omits to mention that Conservatives are in power because people voted for them.
Here are the statistics: of the four councils potentially merging there are currently 98 Conservative councillors, 41 Ukippers, 25 Labour and three Lib Dems.
Kent County Council has 47 Conservative councillors, 14 Ukip and 12 Labour.
Since 2010 all of Kent’s MPS have been Conservatives and in the 2015 general election the nation showed its opposition to “austerity” by upgrading the Conservatives from the largest party in the House of Commons to the majority party.
South-east England returns four Ukip MEPS to the European Parliament and three Conservatives, while Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens have one each.
This demonstrates that there a great many people – not least in Kent and its eastern portion – who do not want leftist parties anywhere near the levers of government.
To what can we attribute this? Well, firstly, there’s the changing nature of the population.
The Scottish economics writer Iain Martin, editor of the political website Reaction, explains: “The UK population has in the last three decades become dramatically more entrepreneurial, consumerist and acquisitive, realistic about economic change, tough on crime, sceptical about welfarism, and far less collectivist.”
Next is the effect upon voters of the left’s belief that it holds the monopoly on goodness and moral correctness.
Believing oneself to be virtuous is a supremely narcissistic state of mind, a relentless act of self-love. But it is accompanied by a significant psychological by-product: the greater a person’s sense of virtue, the more readily will he hold in contempt those who fail to match it.
One of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s characters provides this insight: “I love humanity, but to my great surprise the more I love humanity in general, the less I love people as particular individuals.”
Leftists glide effortlessly between telling us how nice they are and how they just want to help people, into ridiculing and abusing anyone who does not share their prejudices.
Concerned about immigration? You’re racist. Call women “love”? You’re sexist. Proud of Queen and country? You’re a dimwitted cap-doffing nationalist. Want to leave the EU? You’re a xenophobe. Disapprove of Islamic attitudes to women and homosexuals? You’re Islamophobic. Uncertain about gay adoption? You’re a homophobe. Vote Conservative or Ukip? You’re vermin. Believe in God? You’re a moron.
Such verbal thuggery is calculated to humiliate and silence its targets so why should voters support politicians who find them so revolting?
Populist parties across Europe are succeeding because they offer the complete opposite. They say: “We don’t find you revolting. We don’t think you’re racist. We don’t think you’re stupid. And we will represent you.”
Indeed, the issue of who or what leftist parties represent is another key factor in the equation of their waning popularity.
Britain’s Labour Party, for example, is today dominated by the educated middle and upper classes and too many of them think they have evolved into a state of moral and intellectual superiority. How, therefore, can it not be their duty to educate or civilise the inferiors into the correct way of existing?
The trouble is people don’t like being dictated to. In an article for the Jewish World Review last year, the American political philosopher Thomas Sowell explained: “At the heart of the left’s vision of the world — and of themselves — is that they know better what is good for other people.
“This means that the left sees itself as having both a right and a duty to take away other people’s options.”
Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle, a long-time member of the Labour Party, offers this diagnosis: “Labour’s traditional voters, away from London, do not agree with almost anything its front bench has to say on any issue. And the front bench doesn’t remotely agree with what its voters want.”
Nothing better encapsulates Labour’s cultural drift from ordinary people than the fact that the privately-educated, cross-dressing, millionaire TV personality Eddie Izzard is poised to become one of its most prominent politicians.
Labour’s conversion from the party of working class ambition to the party of middle class angst is complete.
But there is a glimmer of light. It comes in the form of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who last week took the courageous and honourable decision to instruct his MPS to support the government’s Brexit Bill which will begin the process of pulling out of the EU.
In so doing Corbyn was attempting to attune Labour to the will of the electorate. His party – and the political class in general – needs more of this.
It can stop telling people what to think, stop obsessing about race and sex, stop abusing anyone who doesn’t share its views, dispense with the nauseating self-indulgent posturing, and start paying attention to the worries and fears, the hopes and aspirations of the common people.
Is that so hard?