Tuesday 16 August 2016

Theresa May's crocodile tears


In her inaugural speech Theresa May shed brazen crocodile tears over the plight of the poor, the working class, ethnic minorities and those with mental health problems.
She complained about the fact that poor people die on average 9 years before the well off referring to it as a "burning injustice".

If Theresa May really cared about the well being of the poor, why on earth did she continue to support George Osborne's ruinous ideological austerity agenda after it became clear that it had led to the longest sustained real terms wage declines in history for ordinary workers and exponential growth in food bank dependency due to his wage repression policies and brutal social security cuts while the tiny super-rich minority literally doubled their wealth as a result of his tax cuts for corporations and the super-rich.

It's bad enough voting in favour of economic policies that resulted in an unprecidented upwards redistribution of wealth, but to then shed crocodile tears over the "burning injustice" of poor people having worse life chances than rich people really does take the piss.

May then complained that "if you’re a white working class boy you're less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university" but within weeks of being anointed as Prime Minister Theresa May set about scrapping the maintenance grants that help students from low-income families go to university.

Scrapping financial support for poor students is bad enough in its own right, but doing so within weeks of actually pretending to give a damn about the university prospects of working class kids is an extraordinary display of hypocrisy.

May also complained that "if you’re at a state school you’re less likely to reach the top professions than if you’re educated privately", but what she didn't mention is that since the Tories introduced £9,000 per year tuition fees the percentage of state educated kids going into higher education has slumped from 71% to 62%.

To vote in favour of introducing the highest fees for public universities anywhere in the world in order to price kids from poor and ordinary backgrounds out of higher education is bad enough, but to then shed crocodile tears over the fact state educated kids are less likely to get top jobs is disgustingly hypocritical.

May then complained about the inequalities between women and men, completely regardless of the fact that the austerity measures she repeatedly voted in favour of for the last six years disproportionately affected women.

Next she complained that people with mental health problems struggle to get the treatment they need without any reference to the fact that the NHS cuts and botched top-down reorganisation that she voted for have resulted in a huge crisis in mental health care and the closure of NHS mental health facilities all over the country.

Then she finished off complaining that young people are finding it harder than ever to afford their own homes without any reference to George Osborne's crackpot house price inflation schemes, his refusal to reform the financial sector to prevent them just re-inflating another dangerously unsustainable house price bubble or the utterly woeful house building figures over the preceding six years of Tory rule.

It is astonishing that since being anointed as unelected Prime Minister Theresa May has become the most popular politician in Britain. It's incredible that people were not sickened by the absolute hypocrisy of her crying crocodile tears over social injustice when the central ideology of the party she represents is conservation of the interests of the wealthy minority at the expense of the rest of society has contributed so much to these social injustices she pretended to give a damn about.

It's a sad indictment of the state of British political awareness that such a brazenly hypocritical woman could be lauded as the most popular politician in Britain, but I guess that's just a reflection of the superficial style-over-substance words-over-actions modern world, where politicians are more likely to be judged on the tailoring of their outfit or on the manner in which they eat a bacon sandwich than on their policies or their integrity.


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