I T WAS THE KIND OF
comments made by Andrew Mitchell MP and Tory chief whip, that kept many working
class voters from voting Tory. The arrogance displayed toward those police
officers guarding Downing Street confirmed to the socialist Left their cultural
prejudices against Tory ‘toffs’.
It was not the several expletives
Mitchell peppered his rant with, but the use of the term pleb to describe the
officer who refused him admittance through the main gate in Downing Street, which
rekindled for me the world of PG Woodhouse, where Bertie Wooster and his fellow
drones engaged themselves with stealing policemen’s helmets; as a means of
bringing excitement into their indolent lives
Andrew Mitchell it appears, late of
Rugby and Cambridge, is known as ‘thrasher’ for his fondness for the cane,
which reawakens another literary simile, that of Flashman (also late of Rugby)
in Tom Brown’s School Days; whose
sadism knew no bounds. Like all such arrogant bullies who feel themselves
protected by an authority bestowed, Andrew Mitchell’s final caveat to the police officers, ‘you have not
heard the last of this’, is a promise that has proven to apply more to his own
behaviour than that of the guardians of the most important and celebrated
street in the land.
What is more I would take the word of
those officers for what was said, any day, rather than a politician…any politician. The sad thing is
that those officers standing guard over Downing Street may be obliged to stand
between Mr Mitchell and a bullet, if terrorists were ever to launch an attack on
while Mitchell was arguing and blaspheming over which entrance he and his
wretched bike should be allowed to enter from.
Mitchell’s attitude is outdated and
indeed offensive. If I used the word Paki or Nigger, I would be hauled before
some hate crime tribunal for sentence – which in the case of a hate crime would
carry a modern sentence, at least equivalent to manslaughter. But the use of
the word plebe; an equally offensive word to those it is meant to represent (or
why did Mitchell use it?), is allowed to be used, like chav, without any
involvement with the courts of law. Indeed Mitchell is not even being sacked
from the front benches. But what if the officer he let loose his vulgarity upon
had been black?
I doubt then that Cameron would feel
obliged to issue no more than an apology on his chief whips behalf - but would
have been forced to tell him to go back to the backbenches.
ANDREW
MITCHELL is a throwback to earlier Tory
cultural prejudices, where today’s people would be expected to respond
immediately and without question to his antediluvian malevolence. This Tory
chief whip believes himself once more back a Rugby where discipline and the lash
to enforce it, still remains necessary and suited to his nature and reputation.
But I am glad that this comic figure
of a disciplinarian has met his match. He cuts an old-fashioned vignette as he
peddles, grey-haired, his bicycle into Downing Street with its basket attached
to its handle bars. This man, physically at least, is no obstacle to any back
bench Tory. The nick name ‘thrasher’ is no doubt, intended to intimidate his
backbenchers. But if so, his prime minister David Cameron, has lost the plot;
as the events this week at the entrance to Downing Street have proven.
From 2010 to the reshuffle this year
Andrew Mitchell was the Secretary of State for International Development. In
this office he managed a multi-billion budget for overseas aid. He, unlike any
other minister, had his budget ring fenced. Which of course meant, unlike other
government departments, the International Development budget is to grow.
Mitchell, in this capacity, sought
to persuade us of the returns we would receive from such giving. But when we in
this country were being forced by our politicians, as well as the economic
realities to make sacrifices; why then in God’s name should our people still
have to subscribe to a multi-billion pound oversees budget? But I digress
ANDREW MITCHELL is
thankfully no longer Secretary of State for International Development, and in a
position to spend any more of the tax payers money. He now resides as his party’s Chief Whip, who has fallen fowl of his
own arrogance and may still be forced to stand down despite his leaders’
‘confidence’ in him.
The sooner this disreputable
individual leaves the stage, the better it will be for the Conservative Party. But I am afraid that the only time
Cameron shows any kind of determination is when he stands by a cabinet minister.
In terms of the common cultural nomenclature,
pleb should perhaps become treated by the liberal establishment as an addition
to the list of none-words like Paki, which we cannot utter on penalty of
committing a hate crime.
To be a Plebeian in ancient Rome
meant nothing more than being one of the people, ruled over by the patrician
class. Today, such an aristocratic class no longer exists to any meaningful
extent; while if the word pleb means anything today, it is used to describe
what remains of the working class and the broader middle classes.
Mitchell was never a patrician. He
was the son of a wealthy parents who could afford him the best education money
could buy – and a fat lot of good it did them. The new chief whip has been
given a position of power over the Conservative benches which befits his reputation
as the ‘Flashman of the Whip’s Office’.
I believe Andrew Mitchell is indeed
role playing the part of the truculent
aristocrat who believes himself above the common heard and fully entitled to
express himself in the terms he used against those officers. He probably pines
for the Rotten Boroughs, where his like bought their place in parliament,
rather going cap in hand (as he would see it) to an electorate.
To be fair to the modern Tory party
Mitchell is an isolated romantic reliving earlier times in our parliamentary
history when a walk down the street in a topper turned heads in respect. Today’s
Tory Party is full of plebs, as is all other parties. The only patrician class today
is homed in Buckingham Palace; and no tenant of that august establishment would
ever have spoken in Mitchell’s terms, to any member of the police force.
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