Drama Queen

I’m from a deprived generation. I wasn’t lucky enough to be born into a mining community; I wasn’t lucky enough to be brought up to believe I deserved a job for life. I never inherited the right to harbour hatred for anybody who managed me, or for anybody who achieved success outside the confines of collective action. And I never did master the art of looking down on anybody who believed he could get by on his own merit without the permission of a shop steward.

Outside of the hive you have to do it all for yourself; there is nobody else to blame. But at least you don’t have to undergo the indignity of being spat on because your grandfather was a scab. In some caring communities the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the sons and bitter memories are long and twisted. I didn’t have the union to fight my corner, but I also didn’t have the unions to tell me and mine, forever and after, what to think and how to vote and who to hate.

When a company I worked for went into decline, or when I was made redundant or made up my own mind to leave, or on the one occasion I was constructively dismissed, I neither expected nor received assistance. It was my life, my decisions, my responsibility to accept the consequences, good or bad. It’s called freedom and it’s a good thing, but to some people it appears to be pure selfishness.

To Labour, Mick Phillpot was a product of Thatcherism. “Greed!” shrieked Glenda Jackson, among others blaming the actions of every bad British citizen on the legacy of somebody who left power over two decades ago. This is the same opposition who snarl and spit at whatever the coalition proposes to rein in thirteen years of Labour profligacy, which ended just the other day. Of course, not a single Labour MP ever claimed dubious expenses or took lucrative seats on boards; no union leader ever earned a salary way in excess of those he represented, or demanded free living for life and as we all know, Lord John Prescott fought tooth and nail not to be ennobled.

Always with the shouting and the spittle, the Left, always the apoplectic outrage. High drama. No wonder they attracted an Oscar winner to their ranks. It’s a wonder she isn’t rolled out to rend her garments in public more often. Perhaps they could erect a small stage for her at the funeral next week, where she can give her Ophelia... to an audience of none. Those staging their own little protests will selfishly try and disrupt the occasion. But their hysterical ranting will be drowned out by the quiet dignity of those they despise so much.

Glenda in The Commons Yesterday

Maybe this is the fundamental difference between Left and everybody else. The Left live in frenzied denial of human nature and treat every manifestation of it with visceral loathing as a thing to be suppressed, subjugated and legislated into change. Whereas everybody else accepts the animal that we are and then we shrug and try to rise above it.