20 September 2018

Thick as Pigshit

Class War ballses it up.

By Robert Kilconner

Did he pay them or are they just thick?  The Class War activists who decided it was a good idea to beard (if that is an appropriate expression in relation to children) Rees-Mogg’s children and nanny on his doorstep should surely have realised that they could do him nothing but good.  It isn’t just that politicians of all parties have deplored the incident, which they have.  It isn’t just that the public don’t like seeing children targeted, which they do not.  The error is more fundamental than that.  Anyone who watches British politics will know that Rees-Mogg’s courtesy and laid-back tolerance of criticism is a great strength, one of the main reasons why he attracts support despite his eccentric political views.  Why then give him the chance to trade on it?

I have never played first-class cricket, but I have picked up a few points by watching it on the television.  One of them is that if you wish to get a batsmen out or to stop him scoring, you bowl to his weaknesses and not to his strengths.  How come then that Class War, by pointless aggression on the doorstep, gave Rees-Mogg the perfect example to show the very traits for which many admire him?  Listen to how he responds to Mr Bone telling his children that he is horrible and that lots of people hate him:

“We are a free country.  They weren’t violent.  They aren’t admirers of mine.  I am in public life and not everybody is going to like me.  That is a reality of public life.”

There it goes: polite, balanced, English.  Six runs into the stands.  Those who always liked Rees-Mogg find their admiration reinforced.  Those who do not agree with him find themselves respecting the way he dealt with the incident.  A few cross the line and become his supporters.  As well try to contain Alastair Cook by bowling him a slow long hop down the leg side as try to damage the Moggby staging this sort of incident.

But the truly awful thing is that Class War do not seem to recognise their stupidity and that the hapless Bone continues to justify his efforts.  Imagine a meeting of Class War in some Pythonesque cellar in East London:

Chair:  Activist Bone to report, please, on the Rees-Mogg assignment.

Activist Bone:  It was very successful as it happened.  Not only did I catch Rees-Mogg on the doorstep but his children and nanny were there too.  I told them he was horrible and that lots of people hated him.

Chair:  Well done comrade.  That could be up to seven people you got our message to.  Not a huge number to be sure but seats are often won by smaller majorities than that.  Do you think you convinced them?

Activist Bone:  It is hard to say with the children as they are rather young but I think I fed doubts into their subconscious which may well have an effect later.  The nanny was harder to crack, but I had the measure of her.  I told her she had the Stockholm syndrome.  That must have hurt.

Chair:  The what syndrome?

Activist Bone:  Stockholm.

Chair:  Hold on, we haven’t got to the resolution on Brexit yet.

Activist Bone:  No, the Stockholm Syndrome is about liking your oppressors.  I told her she had it.

Chair:  Do you think she understood what you were talking about?

Activist Bone: Er, well, they are a very well educated household.

Chair:  I hope that’s not admiration I am hearing, Comrade.  Anyway, how has the media reacted?

Activist Bone: It’s great; we have got up the noses of all the media and the political parties.  Even some of our own people have denounced the targeting of children.

Chair:  No backbone, that’s the problem with them.  We need a coup to purge our organisation!  The trouble is that, from the reaction to the incident, we may not have enough right-thinking people to pull it off.

Activist Bone:  Not now, perhaps; but just wait till those children get old enough to consider what I said to them.

The tragedy of all this isn’t that people get so carried away with political issues that they lose their sense of decency.  It is that in yet another field, Britain’s competence seems to have slipped away.  Manufacturing, international football and now the organisation of protests.  It is a sad tale of decline, and the complete mess which Class War managed to make of this protest is just another dismal chapter.