Norman Tebbit's rotten worldview

On the day that the death of Martin McGuinness was announced, the unelected Tory peer Norman Tebbit was given an awful lot of airplay and column inches to spit his bile.

Tebbit wished McGuinness an "eternity in hell", blabbered a load of conspiracy theory nonsense about how McGuinness was a "coward" because he sought peace instead of continuing the deadly civil war, and claimed that the world is "a sweeter place" for the fact that McGuinness has died of a rare genetic disease.

Of course Tebbit's comments should be seen in the context of the Brighton IRA bombing in which his wife was crippled, but they still come across as the ramblings of a bitter old man, especially when compared to the comments of Jo Berry, the daughter of the Tory MP Anthony Berry who actually died in the Brighton bombing.

She said that McGuinness' legacy was one of "reconciliation and peace-building", that he "showed us how to move forward and showed us a way where former enemies can work together for the peace of the whole ... what we have now is so much better than what I grew up in. What we have now is peace".

Another factor to consider when it comes to Tebbit's furious hate-driven bile against one of his recently deceased political adversaries is the wave of staggeringly hypocritical right-wing political correctness that washed over the UK after Margaret Thatcher died. How dare people criticise a recently deceased politician the right-wingers wailed back then, but here we have one of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet ministers spewing abuse at a recently deceased politician and right-wingers are lapping it up like manna from heaven.

Just in case you're not quite convinced that Tebbit's comments are not the distasteful ramblings of a bitter and extremely right-wing man, here's an extraordinary Norman Tebbit quote about his old friend Jimmy Savile to illustrate how much of a good judge of character he isn't:

 "I've got no doubt Jimmy Savile was a very odd fellow, and I'm pretty sure he was in breach of the law on a number of matters. But I do not know that it's possible, 40 years on, to do justice in the sense of knowing just how many of those allegations are complete and true." [source]

So in the mind of Norman Tebbit the guy who sat down with his sworn enemies to bring peace to Northern Ireland (something that seemed impossible in the 1970s and 80s) is some kind of monster who is beyond redemption, but Jimmy Savile is the kind of man you make excuses for by casting doubt on the testimony of his victims.

It's clear that Tebbit's rotten worldview is almost completely determined by his allegiance to the Tory party of the 1980s. 

It doesn't matter how disgusting the crimes that were committed, if the guy was sympathetic to the Thatcher regime Tebbit will make excuses for him, but if they were an enemy of Thatcher's, then he hates them with an furious passion, even if they renounced violence and became one of the main players in bringing the deadly civil war in Northern Ireland to an end!

What a bitter, paedophile-excusing old Tory.

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