Corbynista’s guide to rejecting the Tory and all his works
Is it OK to be friends with a Tory? That’s the question The Guardian asked this week, after Laura Pidcock – a young Labour MP and staunch supporter of Jeremy Corbyn – said she would never dream of “hanging out” with a Conservative. Tories, she explained, do not care about “suffering”, and must be treated as “the enemy”. Her revulsion, she added, was “visceral”.
This appears to have prompted some controversy. So, to explain her remarks, Ms Pidcock has kindly agreed to present her own personal guide to Tories – exclusive to this column*.
How to spot a Tory
Recognising a Tory is usually very simple. They have green skin, red eyes, scales, claws, pointy tails and big sharp fangs, which they use to eat the poor. They are all very ugly.
Some Tories, however, are cunning, and disguise themselves as human beings. If you suspect someone of being a secret Tory, pull their hair or scratch their skin to see if it comes off.
Famous Tories from history include Harold Shipman, Jack the Ripper, Adolf Hitler, Vlad the Impaler, Cruella de Vil, the Grinch who stole Christmas, the Big Bad Wolf, Satan and General Woundwort from Watership Down.
Famous socialists, meanwhile, include Jesus Christ, Mother Teresa, Diana, Princess of Wales, the Good Samaritan, Harry Potter, Peter Pan, Bambi, Father Christmas and the tooth fairy. There really is no comparison.
What to do if you meet a Tory If a Tory smiles at you, or tries to engage you in conversation, do not be fooled. They are simply trying to convert you to evil. Fall for their superficial charm, and within five minutes you’ll be joining them in an ancient Tory tribal ritual that ends in burning a mountain of
£50 notes below a cage full of weeping, shoeless children.
It is important to show them immediately that you will not be taken in. The other day in Parliament a Tory held open a door for me. I shouted “Die, Tory scum!”, kicked him in the shins, threw his coffee down his trousers and emptied his briefcase all over the floor. It was the only way to make clear that I will never stoop to the politics of hatred.
You can’t be friends with a Tory if you truly believe in the fight against prejudice. All Tories are prejudiced, every single one. You can just tell.
To explain a subject to someone who didn’t request your help, and already knows at least as much about it as you do – “mansplaining” is an unappealing habit. I believe, however, that I’ve identified a more likeable variant. I’m going to call it “boysplaining”. This is when a small boy earnestly, and unsolicitedly, attempts to educate a grown-up. My threeyear-old son has taken to doing it a lot. Several times a day, apropos of nothing, he’ll launch into a brief lecture about a subject on which he believes I would benefit from enlightenment. It’s very helpful of him. “Dada, can I tell you something?” he’ll say, out of the blue, wearing an expression of intense seriousness. “A clam is a shell. It goes open and shut, snap snap. Inside there is a tiny, tiny creature. It lives there.”
I thank him for the information, and promise we’ll look out for one next time we go swimming.
“Dada, can I tell you something?” he’ll say, 20 minutes later, with the same air of professorial authority. “Mars is a big planet in the sky. There are aliens hiding in holes. If someone visits the planet, they all pop out.”
I thank him for the information, and promise we’ll visit one day.
“Dada, can I tell you something?” he’ll say, 20 minutes after that. “Baby flowers come from pips.”
I always enjoy his lectures. Well, almost always.
“Dada, can I tell you something?” he said the other morning, in public. “Ladies have front bottoms.”
I didn’t ask for any further information about that one.
We British are hopeless at foreign languages. And we’re getting worse. This year the number of pupils studying French at GCSE fell 10 per cent. The number studying German GCSE, meanwhile, fell 13 per cent. When I was at school, I learnt French, all the way through to my final year – but have since forgotten every word of it. Let’s be honest. Our record is pretty embarrassing.
Even so, there’s no need for the Europeans to rub it in.
I don’t speak any Spanish. So, just before we went on holiday to Spain last week, I hastily looked up a few essential words and phrases, and wrote them down.
Stupidly, however, I forgot to write down how to pronounce them. “Gracias”, for example. Was it grassy-ass? Grathy-ass? Grathy-ath? Grathy-ah? Grassy-ah? I had no idea. Still, not to worry. If I got it wrong, whoever I was talking to would surely correct me. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out like that. Because each Spaniard I spoke to corrected me in a different way. “Grassy-ass!” I said to a waiter. “Grathy-ah!” he replied. Chastened, I resolved to get it right next time.
“Grathy-ah!” I said to a barman. “Grassy-ah!” he replied.
Oh dear. Still, at least I knew now. “Grassy-ah!” I said to a waitress. “Grathy-ath!” she replied.
And so it went on. Whichever way I pronounced it, I always seemed to be in the wrong. I felt very sheepish.
Only now I’m home have I discovered that in fact there’s more than one correct pronunciation of “gracias”. It depends which part of Spain the speaker grew up in.
Honestly. This is deeply unhelpful for decent, ordinary, ignorant British tourists. Unless the EU agrees to make Spanish easier to pronounce, David Davis must be prepared to walk away from the table.
* As imagined by Michael Deacon