D-Day

It is Christmas time and in the true spirit of the season, the gift that keeps on giving has been more than bounteous in her ministrations. What a dreary world it would be without the eternally blundering, perpetually challenged, numerically blighted blimp of Hackney. Diane Abbott, MP. Even seeing those post-nominals gives me a smile. Yes folks, Ms Abbott is an actual, voted-for, honourable Member of Parliament; how starved must her constituents be for choice, or how very, very forgiving of stupidity.

Oh yes, stupidity. And that is me being generous because if the woman is not a lumbering, lithping simpleton, what other explanation can there be? If not for low intellect how is it that she can be so wrong on so many issues on every occasion she is trotted out? Why, even today she demonstrated the astonishing level of cognitive dissonance that must needs be attached to supporters of socialism by her performance on the Marr show. Clearly supporting the idea of offering to the British people a second referendum just two weeks ago, she managed to turn ‘the electorate’ into ‘Parliament’ with no apparent discomfort at all.

The woman can’t open her mouth without making a gaffe, from private schools to police funding, from racist remarks about white people to regularly going on broadcast media to defend policy of which she is wholly ignorant. The Labour Party displays a wilful blindness to the effect this woman has on their image when they refuse to gag her. Maybe they are going for the sympathy vote; after all the woman is a mental health charity case if ever I saw one, but fair game for ridicule because of the prominence of her position.

Never far from the news, even when she’s not making it, the latest Diane-inspired madness is the choice people made to be offended by a bloke in fancy dress at a darts tournament. Recognisably Abbott (in spite of the beard) and holding up a sign saying ‘190’ this visual gag was, genuinely, funny. As I type, Maajid Nawaz is holding forth on the radio about how disgustingly racist this was. *sigh* If you have to explain it, etc, but let’s give it a go: Without the blackface, he would just have been a bloke in a dress holding up a puzzling sign.

Perhaps he should have just told people he was being Diane Abbott. Or worn a badge. But that wouldn’t have been comedy, that would just have been lame. I’m sorry Maaj, but it was funny. And all the funnier for having aroused such righteous ire. The guy wasn’t insulting black people, he was having a jab at Abbot the Hut and her utter inability to deal with numbers. Maybe it should have been a fat black fella in a Lego-hair wig? Can you imagine the mental gymnastics the offence-seekers would have had to go through? He’d have been denounced as an Uncle Tom in an instant.

Maajid thinks the level of vitriol directed at ‘people of colour’ (and what a ridiculous phrase that is; naturally I have no colour whatsoever and am thus invisible to the political class) has never been so high. And here we go again, whipping up division, brewing a storm in a teacup, making a tragedy out of a comedy. You know, you can choose to not be offended; but there is so much more of a living to be made out of harbouring grievance.