You can take the girl out of Mayfair... but the East End deserves better
I want to give Michelle Mone the benefit of the doubt, to defend her as a woman from the east end of Glasgow who has made good. I want to but, boy, does she make it difficult. Her daughter Bethany is about to go back to her mum’s old neighbourhood for a reality TV show called Born Famous when the 19-year-old will live with a another teenager in Bridgeton. The producers claim her sojourn in one of Scotland’s poorest postcodes will help “confront feelings of privilege, class and celebrity and uncover the realities of social mobility in 2018”. However, SNP MP Alison Thewliss, whose Glasgow Central constituency includes Bridgeton, was among critics less than impressed and said the programme was “utterly despicable exploitation” of the community. In response? Baroness Mone of Mayfair OBE – entrepreneur, global speaker, designer, parliamentarian, and innovator, according to Wikipedia – called Thewliss “another SNP moron” and blocked her on Twitter. And that’s the rub. There’s just nothing very gracious about this Lady. Despite her apparent success, she leaves behind only sour grapes, harsh words and, incidentally, failed companies. The flaunting of her wealth and globetrotting lifestyle only sharpens the nagging suspicion that her peerage is of more use helping her flog some product on the QVC channel than in changing Britain for the better. She is, of course, a Tory Peer in the House of Lords, appointed by David Cameron. She walks in the corridors of power, moves in influential circles and is a woman, like her or not, who could make a real difference in the war against inequality – if she chose to. Instead, her lifestyle, and the perpetual publicity around it, seems to encourage the idea that fortune and fame are goals in themselves, not tools that could be used to make change happen and make things better in neighbourhoods very much like the one where she grew up. She could, if she wanted, make a tangible difference. She could help build some ladders to allow other young people growing up, like her, without the advantages enjoyed by others, get on. Instead, she sends her daughter to Bridgeton for what Johnny Rotten once called a “cheap holiday in other people’s misery”. The reality of biting inequality in the UK is well documented and we really don’t need another over-privileged, under-qualified kid to go on a poverty safari to “uncover the realities of social mobility”. I hope young Bethany takes something away from Bridgeton. I hope she goes back to her mum and asks her about the politics and policies that cement the enduring penury of many of her contemporaries. There is no defence of this programme. It is poverty porn. It tells young people that great wealth and fame, however vacuous, are, above all else, things to aspire to. Actor David Hayman, another Bridgetonian, once said, “poverty is man-made and it can be unmade”. You really don’t need a TV show to tell you that.