On Sunday evening, replete with roast pheasant, accompanied by potato and butterbean cakes à la Clarissa Dickson Wright, and a fruity pinot to wash it all down, we settled by the wood burning stove to watch Darkest Hour, the 2017 film about Winston Churchill’s first few weeks as Prime Minister in 1940.
A sentence like the one wot I just wrote used to be benign, boring even, but now it’s full of triggers for today’s wokerati. One by one:
• Eating pheasant is alarming to extreme vegans (the vegans I know are reasonable and tolerant and I don’t include them in this post);
• Eating pheasant that has been shot is traumatic for animal rightists, as well as for the poor pheasant;
• Potatoes should be avoided, according to the diet-Stasi, especially mine that were fried in beef dripping. Woops there I go upsetting vegans again;
• Clarissa DW supports hunting, which attracts finger-wagging (or rather two-finger salutes)from the urban illiberal elite, as do I by association with her recipes;
• I drink too much wine according to health purists … nah;
• The wood burning stove emits CO2 and particulates into the atmosphere, which means I’m more likely to get Greta ruddy Thunberg shimmying down my chimney to slap my wrists when I’d much rather welcome Santa carrying a pair of gold earrings in exchange for a wee dram;
• Santa, by the way, has been cancelled by the wokerati because he: a) is associated with Christmas festivities and the birth of Jesus who, because he was a Jew, doesn’t qualify to be treated kindly and fairly; b) is an unsuitable role model because he eats and drinks too much (gee, why am I a Godmother 3 times over?); c) fails to give every child of every age in every household identical gifts; d) gives different gifts to boys and girls; e) is culturally appropriated by most of the west – he was originally from Greece; and f) doesn’t allow his elves to join a trade union.
• And finally, don’t ya know that Winston was a racist, misogynist, colonialist Tory and therefore the Devil incarnate. The fact that he saved the world from Hitler is conveniently forgotten by his bug-eyed detractors.
I’ll park that rant in the meantime and go back to the film. The highlight for me was Winnie fleeing his chauffeur-driven car and taking the Tube to Westminster. His mission, which he chose to accept if not instigate, was to talk to the common man (woman and child) to find out how they wanted him to deal with Hitler – negotiate or fight. His instinct was to fight but Parliament, in awe of Neville Chamberlain and Viscount Halifax, was pushing for negotiations through an Italian intermediary.
Fortunately, for the war and the film, the tube-travellers said fight, so fight Winnie did.
My immediate reaction on watching this scene was How Ridiculous. What PM, especially of Winnie’s ‘social standing’ would a) take the Tube, b) talk to the Hoi Polloi, c) listen to the Hoi Polloi, and d) respect what the Hoi Polloi said. So I googled something appropriate and learned that Winnie was indeed rumoured to disappear from time to time and turn up in different parts of London to see what people thought. So while he might not have taken the Tube on this specific fight-or-flight occasion, the scene was based on reasonable probability.
Had a modern-day PM consulted the Hoi Polloi instead of political party donors, ambitious politicians, big business, jobsworths, special advisers, Twitter, the Daily Mail or the Guardian, then there would be no HS2, better flood prevention, universal women-only loos and changing rooms, better bus services, no Northern Ireland protocol, well-paid farmers, more grammar schools, more Bobbies on the beat, and promotion on merit not box-ticking.
One modern-day PM did appear to be listening to the Hoi Polloi – Bo Jo re getting Brexit done. Unfortunately he stopped listening to the people and started listening to Carrie instead, which meant he ended up screwing the people as well as Carrie. (Isn’t the English language fascinating?)
Personally I don’t want to vote for him again, except not voting for Bo Jo means not voting for my local MP, who’s a good egg. He’s hard-working, insightful, responsive, and tenacious. But most important, and which contributes to his other attributes, he listens to his constituents.
I don’t agree with him all the time – his anti-Covid-measures pronouncements are a case in point. I’m anti-some but I do believe that we should all get vaccinated and anyone who chooses not to has their freedoms curtailed somehow. My pivotal reasoning is that the vaccine reduces the probability of the virus being transmitted, so by getting vaccinated you are protecting the wider public, not just yourself, which is your public duty. If you exercise your ‘right’ not to be vaccinated, then it’s only fair you lose other rights in order to balance the reduced rights you have inflicted on someone by infecting them. Ta dah!
So my MP and his Tory mates need to ditch Boris and replace him with a more fitting Tory party leader, such as … such as … such as … aw crap!
This really is the Tory Party’s Darkest Hour.
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