Let’s not forget, Churchill was a problematic figure

Let’s talk about Winston Churchill. The debate has raged in Westminster’s wood-panelled halls, where cigar smoke was expelled in choked outrage after shadow chancellor John McDonnell called the wartime prime minister a “villain” for sending troops to break up the miners’ strike in Tonypandy in 1910. Picture the ranks of pinstriped shoulders jammed in doorways of West End gentlemen’s clubs as gammon-faced former public schoolboys jostle to be first to condemn such a view.

Led by Boris Johnson (the very concept of faded imperial power magically given flesh) and Churchill’s grandson Nicholas Soames (the living embodiment of upper-class privilege), the canonisation of Winnie began anew.

I won’t take part. That’s because I’m from Dundee, where our distaste for the man, who was our MP for 14 years, is based on a century of tradition.

“This city will kill me,” Churchill wrote to his wife after an unsatisfactory breakfast at the Queen’s Hotel. Some citizens would have volunteered, but most merely thought he was a pompous elitist whose brief visits to Dundee were marked by protest and acrimony.

Eventually, Churchill was sent packing by a city who preferred Edwin Scrymgeour, the only prohibitionist MP in Scottish history, which is hilarious.

When I was a child, I was heard to praise Churchill on one occasion. My mother, kind-hearted by nature, had a quiet chat with me, dropping truth bombs. Dundee remembers.

Yes, he was a strong leader in defending world freedom from the greatest threat it has ever faced. Yes, he has admirers, even among Dundonians.

However, Churchill was also a problematic figure who believed white Christians were better than people of other races and creeds, who was “strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes” and was responsible for appalling events in Ireland, India and other places.

If we’re talking about Churchill, let’s do it in context – and set the jingoism aside. Was he a villain? I think so. Was he a hero? Not to me.

Most merely thought he was a pompous elitist