Thursday 7 July 2016

Why do Tories adore the professional bullshitter so much?


It's funny how history repeats itself. Back in 2001 (after William Hague became the first Conservative leader in history to resign without serving as Prime Minister) the Tories fell for the distortions of a bullshitter with a CV full of exaggerations and made up rubbish. His name was Iain Duncan Smith and he was so unpopular with the general public that the Tories soon stabbed him in the back before he even got to lead them into a single General Election*.

Now loads of Tories are falling for another bullshitter with a CV full of exaggerations and made up rubbish. Her name is Andrea Leadsom. Her claims about having had a high flying career in finance seem to be just as reliable as Iain Duncan Smith's claimed university qualifications (which didn't exist) and his high flying army career (which was massively over-exaggerated).

Iain Duncan Smith and Andrea Leadsom are not the only complete bullshitters the Tory faithful have fallen in love with by a long stretch. David Cameron was such an egregious bullshitter it still baffles me that a huge percentage of the British public actually considered him to be "statesmanlike"

Cameron lied so fluently and so often that it seemed that he'd rather tell a lie even when it would have been easier to tell the truth, yet he was apparently so good at it that he convinced the Tories to make him their leader, then the general public to make him their Prime Minister.

Then there's Michael Green Grant Shapps or whatever he's calling himself these days. How on earth did an Internet scam artist like that ever climb all the way up to being Chairman of the Tory party without the Tories adoring the slick polished lies of a professional bullshitter?

What is it in the Tory psyche that doesn't just prevent the natural human revulsion at professional bullshitters like Leadsom, IDS, Cameron and Green Shapps, but actually fills them with admiration instead?

It's hard to come to conclusions on such a question without generalising about Tory voters, because there don't seem to have been any scientific studies into why right-wing people seem to accept and admire professional bullshitters so easily and so regularly.

There do seem to be two main options. Either they're so gullible that they actually buy into all of the obvious bullshit and distortions, or, like the rest of us, they can actually see it for what it is, but they believe that the ability to lie, distort, manipulate and con in order to achieve an objective is a core skill for a member of the political class, and something to be admired rather than despised.

Whatever the case, one thing is sure: The high-flying careers within the Tory party for absolute bullshitters like Iain Duncan Smith, David Cameron and Michael Green Grant Shapps, and the rising star of another transparently dishonest bullshitter like Andrea Leadsom demostrate that Tories really do love a bullshitter.

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* = The Tory self-preservation instinct resulted in them overthrowing Iain Duncan Smith as the leader of their party because of his ineptitude and transparent dishonesty. The fact that they subsequently allowed him to conduct a six year long reign of terror over the lives of millions of the most vulnerable people in the country during his tenure as butcher in chief at the DWP is highly illustrative of the callous Tory mentality. They recognised that IDS was far too inept to lead their own party, but they have such little regard for the most vulnerable people in society that they put a man they clearly knew to be inept in charge of the DWP for six torturous years.

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