The Labour Party legend and founder of the NHS Nye Beven once described the art of Conservative politics as wealth persuading poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power. There's no better example of poor people handing political power to wealthy out-of-touch Tories than Cornwall.
Cornwall has the highest rate of poverty in England (in fact it's classed as the second poorest region in the whole of northern Europe behind only the West of Wales), yet somehow every single one of the six MPs in Cornwall belongs to the Tory party.
Not only do people from the poorest region in England vote for the party of wealth and privilege, they also voted massively in favour of Brexit and giving the Tories free rein to drastically reform the United Kingdom in favour of multinational corporations, landed gentry and the super-rich.
The mystery of why Cornwall is populated by so many forelock-tugging Tory voters is one of the biggest puzzles in British politics. How can so many poor people be so politically naive that they imagine that the party of wealth and privilege is ever going to represent their interests?
It's absolutely clear that the Tory party has no intention whatever of rewarding the Cornish people for their misplaced loyalty, in fact the Tories are intent on administering a savage economic punishment to the Cornish serfs so that there's no danger of them ever getting ideas above their lowly station.
Cornwall already looks set to lose the £60 million per year in funding they get through the EU when Brexit goes ahead, and now the Tories have offered Cornwall a paltry £18 million in Growth Deal funds, which is 14% of the £127 million in funding that Cornwall applied for.
Despite the grovelling loyalty of so many Cornish Tory voters, the Tory party are totally content for Cornwall to remain an under-developed backwater and one of the poorest regions the whole of northern Europe.
The Tory relationship with Cornwall is like a cruel and merciless 19th Century lord of the manner who believes that administering savage beatings and harsh pay cuts are the best methods of keeping his servants in line. It doesn't matter how much the servants doff their caps, bow and scrape or tug their forelocks, their cruel lord and his obnoxious family members will always rigidly adhere to the policy that the only way to instil discipline in the servant class is through a draconian regime of impoverishment and severe beatings.
The really sad thing for Cornwall is that if it wasn't obvious that voting Tory is a counter-productive strategy for England's poorest region; and it wasn't obvious that voting out of the EU when your region benefits so significantly from EU Structural Adjustment Funds - then it's clearly not going to be obvious to the Tory voters of Cornwall that they're getting absolutely shafted by a party that has always worked relentlessly to protect the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.
Cornwall is pretty much the perfect example of people being content with their servitude. It doesn't matter how much damage the hard-right Tories do to Cornwall, the Cornish people seem intent on electing ever more of them, and then signing ludicrous blank contracts with the Tories that allow them to just make things up as they go along to suit the interests of their wealthy financial backers.
Some people just love their abusers.
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2 comments:
Great Post!
Brilliant post. I have been researching this topic for years. Too many Tory toffs in Cornwall who take advantage of poor working people who get paid a pittance to struggle and remain here. Tories savagely defend the educational facilities because they know it is the official route out of poverty for poor young people.
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