How is the Tory party spin machine going to react to this video clip?

If you haven't seen the clip of Michelle Dorrell's tearful accusations of betrayal against the Tory party she voted for in the last election the clip is embedded below. If you have seen it already, maybe it's worth watching again because it's not very long and it raises an issue that cuts to the heart of the ideology that drives the Conservative philosophy.




Firstly I'd like to say that when it comes to someone who admits having voted Tory suffering the consequences of Tory ideological austerity, it's easy to take a "ha! should have known better" stance, but that's not actually a productive thing to say at all. At least she understands her mistake now. She doesn't deserve to be criticised just because the Tory propaganda machine convinced her to vote against her own economic interests - because convincing millions of people into voting against their own economic interests is precisely what the Tory propaganda machine exists in order to do. 

There's little point in saying that she shouldn't have voted Tory because there's nothing she can do now to change how she voted in the past. However what might be useful is to have a think about how the Tory propaganda machine plans to react to this video. It might help us get a few issues under the spotlight if we consider the kind of narratives the Tories and their supporters will try to spin in order to minimise the impact of one of their so-called "hardworking people" crying with frustration at the lies they told her in order to con her into voting for them.

Contempt

The initial Tory response to this video was a bizarre display of utter contempt for Michelle, and the general public. When specifically asked if David Cameron would be meeting Michelle to discuss her concerns, the official Tory response was to say "The prime minister meets with people from all different walks of life all the time". Imagine the utter contempt they must have for the public to think that we're so stupid that we'd accept a statement like that as an answer to a specific question about whether David Cameron would be meeting a specific person.

More lies

It's absolutely clear that the Tory party lied about not cutting Tax Credits before the general election. This comes as no surprise to some of us. Especially to people who remember their outright lies about having no plans to raise VAT before the 2010 General Election, and how they raised it just months after the Lib-Dems enabled them into power. It's also no surprise to people who remember that 2010 Tory "Contract with the Electorate" that they broke so badly that they decided to delete all traces of it from their party website in the hope that the general public would forget all about David Cameron saying "if we don't deliver our side of the bargain, kick us out in five years time".

I think we've all come across habitual liars in real life before haven't we? You know, people who lie so freely and easily it seems that sometimes they're so accustomed to lying that they still lie even when it's probably much easier to tell the truth. It amazes me that so many people seem incapable of seeing that David Cameron is this kind of inveterate liar. There are so many examples of him outright lying to the public and using grotesquely dishonest language it's absurd, yet some people are apparently such poor judges of character that they can't see that behind the posh accent, expensive suit and well-practiced PR spin, David Cameron is blatantly a fundamentally dishonest person.*

We all know a fundamentally dishonest person like this, and we all know that their reaction to getting caught in a blatant lie is never to come clean, it's always to tell even more lies.

The lie that Cameron and the Tories are telling now is that these Tax Credit cuts are being made up by increases in the Minimum Wage**, but everyone knows that the paltry increase in the Minimum Wage are coming 9 months after the cut in Tax Credits, meaning a severe financial hit for millions of "hardworking families". Here's an example of David Cameron telling exactly this lie: 

"what our proposals do are reform welfare and at the same time bring in a national living wage" [source].

Personal attacks

The strategy at Tory party HQ in response to being caught in this lie seems to be a combo of "ignore it until it goes away" and "just tell more lies if you're really pressed on the issue", but other Tories have realised that the only way they can try to diminish the impact of this video is to attack the woman in order to distract everyone's attention away from David Cameron's outright pre-election lies about having no plans to slash Tax Credits for working people.

One of the main strategies you should expect to see from the Tory attack dogs in the mainstream press and those obnoxious below-the-line Tory apologists who are aver willing to get their hands dirty slinging shit in defence of their beloved Tory party is the idea that Michelle isn't a "hardworking person" trying to establish a business in difficult economic times, but actually an outrageous freeloader who thoroughly deserves to live in such poverty that she can no longer afford to provide for her kids.

Another avenue of attack for these horrible Tory apologists will be to attack the nature of her business by sneering about how a nail bar is a frivolous business, without any acknowledgement that hundreds of thousands of other people running small businesses will be affected too. Maybe it's possible to sneer at a nail bar, but how about small independent cafés, takeaways, stationary suppliers, building companies, electricians, bakeries, computer repair shops, newsagents etc. Are all of these businesses fripperies that need to be crushed out of existence too?

Freeloaders

The idea that Michelle's nail bar is an example of freeloading just because it's not currently turning healthy profits is obnoxious in the extreme. There are several reasons that this kind of vindictive attitude is based on severe ignorance.

One of the most obvious reasons that this argument is nonsense is the purely pragmatic one. If Michelle's business is crushed out of existence by the dramatic cuts in income the Tories are going to inflict on her, will she be more or less of a "freeloader" if she ends up unemployed and claiming unemployment benefits? Maybe we could have a think about how such an outcome would be beneficial to anybody (answer later in the article). 

Another very strong counter-argument to this kind of "freeloader" attack is the idea that the benefit of a business is not just measured in terms of its short-term profitability. It's important to consider other factors too. Even if a small independent business does not produce big profits, it can still have a strong net benefit to the wider economy. Two of the principal reasons are demand and employment. If the business uses any materials then the economy benefits when they are purchased, and if the business employs people the economy benefits by virtue of the fact that these people are economically active instead of unemployed.

Then there's the concept of infant industry protection to consider. There's very strong economic evidence that helping entrepreneurs and small businesses get started is a very beneficial thing for economies to do. I'm not saying that Michelle's nail bar is going to be the next Google, but it's absolutely clear that today's struggling small business could be tomorrow's highly profitable business providing an awful lot of employment, economic demand and tax revenues.

The strongest argument of all against these ludicrous assertions that Michelle should stop expecting handouts is the vast scale of taxpayer "handouts" to all kinds of other businesses. Research has shown that corporations receive some £93 billion per year in taxpayer handouts, yet do our right-wing blowhards complain about that? Of course they don't. They're too busy attacking Michelle for receiving a few thousand pounds in Tax Credits to provide for her family while she works hard trying to establish a successful small business.

Let's look at a few examples; the privatised rail companies take £billions per year in taxpayer subsidies; dozens of outsourcing corporations are almost entirely dependent on the taxpayer for their business models (Serco, Capita, A4E, Atos, Seetec, G4S ...), nearly all employers benefit from tax credits topping up the poverty wages they get away with paying to their employees, the power companies get vast taxpayer handouts, and let's not forget how the banks had to be rescued with the biggest government subsidies in UK history to save them from bankruptcy back in 2007-08.

Are the pro-Tory blowhards squealing for the railways and power companies to be shut down for the good of the economy? indeed the abolition of any company whose employees receive Tax Credits or any bank that needed taxpayer bailouts during the financial sector insolvency crisis? Of course they're not, because they don't really care about the issue at all. The only thing they're interested in is trying to discredit Michelle because they see her as a threat to their beloved Tory party.

Who really benefits from this policy?

It's absolutely clear that millions of the "hardworking people" David Cameron conned into voting Tory are going to be hit hard as a result of the Tory Tax Credit cuts. It's also clear that the wider economy and the taxpayer will suffer if this campaign of impoverishment results in lots of small businesses going bust and their owners (and employees) end up claiming unemployment benefits.

The only obvious beneficiaries are big corporations who would probably be glad to see their small local competitors wiped out. The huge corporate chains of coffee shops, newsagents, bakeries, computer suppliers, construction firms etc must be rubbing their hands with glee to see support for the owners of small local businesses being withdrawn like this. 

Where small local tax-paying businesses fail, gigantic multinational tax-dodging Tory-donating corporations can step in.

The only potential beneficiaries from this Tory policy of eradicating small local businesses by withdrawing support for their owners are major corporations and the kind of smug millionaire Tory party donors that David Cameron has been stuffing into the unelected House of Lords as fast as he can.

Anyone who thinks that impoverishing ordinary people and crushing their businesses out of existence is for the good of the taxpayer or the general economy must be so economically naive that they'd even fall for the Tory Austerity con!

Conclusion

The Tories are obviously hoping that by front-loading their harshest attacks against ordinary people to the early months of this parliament that people will have forgotten about it by the time the next General Election comes around. In my view the video clip of this Tory voter reduced to tears by the lies she was told to extract her vote is such emotive material that it's not going to just fade away like the fuss over the blatant VAT lies the Tories told back in 2010.

This clip shows the Tories up as the liars they really are, and exposes the fact that they don't actually give a damn about the "hardworking people" they're always harping on about in their propaganda. In fact many Tories and their sympathisers give so little of a damn about ordinary people like Michelle Dorrell that they'd openly attack her in pathetic attempts to discredit her and distract attention away from the blatant lies David Cameron told to con her into voting Tory.

It should be absolutely clear that the Tories serve the interests of the big corporations and millionaire donors that fund the party (just follow the money), but the Tory propaganda machine has managed to con millions of ordinary people into believing a load of economic fairy tales about how the Tories have done a marvelous job of fixing the economy (they absolutely haven't) and how their "cutting our way to growth" strategy is the only conceivable plan of action (it really isn't).

If this video helps to demonstrate to potential Tory voters that the party doesn't actually give a damn about them because they're far too busy serving the interests of their wealthy financial backers, then it's a good thing. It's just a shame for Michelle that on top of being impoverished by the party she voted for, she's going to have the Tory attack dogs on her case now because her tears of frustration represent a real threat to the age old Tory party agenda of serving the extremely rich at the expense of everyone else.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

* = I imagine that some Tory apologists might try to claim that Tony Blair was a liar too, which might seem like a fair point, but isn't for two main reasons. Firstly pointing out that one person was horribly dishonest doesn't mean that's a licence for everyone else to behave like that. The second point is that they can't seriously have not noticed that the Labour Party is now led by a man who believes that Tony Blair should be investigated for war crimes as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq where his public reputation as a liar was forged. 

** = Another thing to note about the Tories paltry increases in the Minimum Wage is that it's actually irrelevant to self-employed business owners like Michelle because they won't benefit from it at all. The only way it could conceivably impact them is of course is if it means their businesses are going to be even under even more pressure because they have to find more money to pay their employees when the Minimum Wage increases come in. 

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George Osborne's Fiscal Charter

The Tories Fiscal Charter is an appallingly brazen piece of economic posturing for purely political purposes and an affront to good economic reasoning. It defies belief that more people are not questioning the validity of such an arbitrary and economically incoherent bit of lawmaking carried out as some kind of attention seeking political stunt rather than for any coherent reason.

It's clear that the Tory party simply couldn't behave in this manner without a huge deal of complacency about how badly misinformed the general public are about the economy in general, and more importantly, the Tories' own appalling economic record of imposing socially and economically destructive ideology, despite the fact that most economists see austerity as dangerous economic nonsense.

George Osborne is a man who has overseen the slowest post-crisis recovery in history, the longest sustained decline in average wages in history, a shocking decline in comparative productivity with the other G7 economies, and the continued existence of the vast UK trade deficit. Yet there he was blustering away as if he's some kind of amazing guardian of the economy, rather than a hopelessly under-qualified chancer who has somehow been given a mandate by just 24% of the public to continue his hopelessly inept and often venal economic stewardship for another five years.

Instead of being derided for introducing one ludicrous piece of pure political posturing dressed up as some kind of grown up/prudent economic policy after another, Osborne and the Tories have been getting away with it virtually unscathed due to the complicity of the mainstream media and the failure over the previous five years of the Labour Party to properly speak out against the bizarre Tory/mainstream media consensus that ideologically driven austerity is not an incoherent and damaging policy, and to not subject them to constant scrutiny and criticism for continuing to stick with it despite so much evidence that it's bad for the UK economy.

If you think that the idea of legislating perpetual arbitrary budget surpluses is a good idea, you need to have an actual think about what that means. It means that the government will always have to collect more in taxes than it actually spends, even if it can be shown that spending the same as it raises in taxes (or borrowing some extra to invest) would be highly beneficial to the UK economy.

The Fiscal Charter is ridiculous arbitrary rubbish of the kind that riddles modern economies. Why should a government be bound in perpetuity into spending 3% less than it raises in taxes each year? Why 3% and not 2% or 4%? What is so mystical about this spending ratio of 97% of what is raised in taxation that it needs to be enshrined in government legislation like some kind of arbitrary unquestionable economic scripture?

It's ridiculous that so many people openly support the idea that in "ordinary economic times"* the state should be bound into always taking more from its citizens than it actually spends on services and investment, even if it can be shown that extra spending on particular services or strategic investment in specific sectors would dramatically improve the UK economy! How can anyone believe that such a rule constitutes rational, common-sense good stewardship of the economy?

It was an embarrassment to the UK that such a ridiculous piece of legislation was voted through parliament, but I was impressed by the Labour backbencher Jonathan Reynolds when he properly properly skewered Osborne's ludicrous posturing during the debate (see image). At least someone in Westminster has the wit to say what an obviously crap idea it is.

I do think it's a crying shame that there must be a certain number of economically literate Tory politicians who could see the truth in accusations that the Fiscal Charter is a load of ridiculously arbitrary political posturing, but who still voted in favour of it because they behave like drones, with no freedom to rebel against such patent idiocy.

It's also a shame that a number of Labour MPs abstained on the vote because they're apparently incapable of understanding how ridiculous the idea of legislating permanent arbitrary surpluses is, especially coming from a man who promised back in 2010 that his ideological austerity agenda would have us in surplus already by now and then failed so spectacularly to achieve it.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

* = What on earth are "ordinary economic times" anyway? No situation where the government has bound itself into not spending what they raise in taxes even when it could clearly be shown that such spending would be good for the economy cound ever be considered a "normal economic time". It would have to be considered an extraordinary economic period where economic illiteracy could be passed off to the public as "common sense" or "good economic housekeeping".

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12 things you should know about Theresa May's immigration rhetoric

During the Tory party conference in October 2015 the Home Secretary Theresa May gave a speech about immigration, which seemed clearly designed to boost her credentials as the future party leader with the Tory party hard-right and Eurosceptics by using a lot of tough-talking anti-immigrant rhetoric. As is to be expected from a Theresa May speech it was as full of bile and misleading propaganda as it was devoid of facts and evidence.

In this article I'm, going to run through twelve things that you should know about Theresa May's appalling track record of failure and the delusional nonsense that she spouted in this speech.

Theresa May's appalling track record

Before we get to the content of Theresa May's speech, it's first important to note her dismal track record of failure. Back in 2010 the Tories went into the General Election with a pledge to reduce immigration to below 100,000 per year. For all of Theresa May's headline grabbing rhetoric and bizarrely ill-conceived immigration crackdowns, by 2015 there had been a huge rise in net migration to an all-time record high of 330,000. 

The Tories were so embarrassed about their failure to deliver this "contract with the electorate" that they simply deleted all traces of it from the Tory party website in the hope that the electorate would just forget all about it (and all of the other failed promises it contained).

Theresa May's open discrimination against British families

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One of the most disgusting elements of Theresa May's (abject failure of an) immigration crackdown is the way that she has been using a loophole in EU immigration law to openly discriminate against British families. When Theresa May introduced draconian new economic apartheid measures to ban British people from ordinary backgrounds from bringing their non-EU spouses to the UK, she knew full well that immigrants from elsewhere in the EU would be able to continue to bring in their non-EU spouses under European Freedom of Movement legislation. She knew that her rules would openly discriminate against British families but she went ahead anyway.

Theresa May has inflicted untold misery on tens of thousands of British children by putting them in the situation where either one of their parents isn't allowed into the country, or the whole family is forced to live in exile from the UK.

Aside from all of the suffering Theresa May's family wrecking anti-British discrimination has caused, it's also worth noting that immigrants coming into the UK to be part of a British family are pretty much the ideal kind of immigrant. They're highly likely to speak good English, integrate into British society and continue to work and pay tax in Britain on a long-term basis. 

Instead of offering advantages to immigrants who are most likely to integrate into British society and stay in the UK to make a long-term contribution (using some kind of points based system perhaps), Theresa May has been actively driving them away with legislation that only affects British families, not the families of migrants from any other EU state.

Attacks on foreign students 

Another completely illogical part of Theresa May's (abject failure of an) immigration crackdown is the way that she has targeted foreign students, as if wealthy well educated immigrants are some kind of burden on society, instead of a hugely important source of revenue to British universities and a great net benefit to the UK economy, especially if they choose to stay and work here when they've gained their qualifications.

In order to put the insanity of Theresa May's draconian crackdown on foreign students into perspective, it's worth contrasting her policy of actively driving well educated and highly motivated students out of the UK economy with what the Germans have been doing.

You may have heard that university tuition fees have been abolished in Germany, meaning that anyone from within the EU now has the right to free university tuition there.  Additionally they have also made free tuition available to students from non-EU states such as the USA too. In my view this is a fantastic ploy because it will attract intelligent youngsters from less-privileged backgrounds who have been priced out of UK and US universities. What they seem to be doing is setting up a brain-drain into Germany by offering overseas students some university education without the burden of tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt to achieve it.

Recycling old pledges

One of the most ludicrous things about Theresa May's speech was the fact that she decided to revive her failed pledge to cut immigration to below 100,000, as if the UK electorate are such a bunch of drunken half-wits that they've completely forgotten that she already pledged that five years ago, and also failed to notice that under her watch immigration hasn't fallen at all, in fact it's risen to an all-time record high of 330,000.

It worked for George Osborne so why not?

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In 2010 Theresa May pledged to reduce immigration to below 100,000 by 2015 and George Osborne pledged to completely eliminate the budget deficit by 2015.

By 2015 net immigration had increased to 330,000 and Osborne had failed to even halve the budget deficit. However instead of admitting his abject failure to eliminate the budget deficit, Osborne and his Tory mates simply reframed this abject failure as a stunning success by endlessly harping on about how they'd "cut the deficit by a third" (as if missing your target by two thirds is some kind of laudable achievement) and simply resurrecting the pledge to eliminate the budget deficit as part of their 2015 General Election campaign.

Campaigning on a pledge that you abjectly failed to achieve the last time around is a brazen move indeed, but with the unrelenting support of the mainstream media it worked and the Tories managed to scrape back into power with their austerity propaganda narrative, so why shouldn't Theresa May campaign on a pledge that she too failed to deliver last time around? Her thinking must be that if one potential Tory leadership candidate (George Osborne) can get away with it, then surely she must be able to as well.

Economic apartheid

One of the central planks of Theresa May's plan to deter immigration from within the EU is to set up a system of economic apartheid against EU migrants by banning them from claiming in-work social security for four years.

The fact that such a vindictive discriminatory policy has widespread public support just goes to show how venal and terribly misinformed a lot of people must be, because in order to support such a policy it's necessary to completely misunderstand what tax credits actually are.

Tax Credits are not a handout to workers, they're a subsidy to greedy employers who pay their employees significantly less than enough to cover their costs of living. The Tax Credits system has allowed greedy employers to get away with severely underpaying their employees, safe in the knowledge that the taxpayer will make up the shortfall.

Denying certain workers access to this greedy employer subsidy would blatantly lead to a situation where these workers and their families would be forced into poverty simply because of where they happened to live before they took the job that they're currently doing.

Tit-for-tat retribution on the continent

The idea that migrants from within the EU are some kind of infection that needs to be treated with a severe dose of economic discrimination is foul enough in its own right, but the logical consequences of such a policy of xenophobic economic apartheid are also worth consideration.

Does anyone really believe that the other states in Europe wouldn't respond with tit-for-tat measures should the UK decide to bring in economic discrimination against their citizens? 

Why should the hundreds of thousands of Brits who choose to go to live and work elsewhere in the EU be allowed access to social security in those countries if EU citizens are barred from receiving social security here?

Does anyone really think that it would be fair for the UK to ban EU citizens from accessing social security like Tax Credits and sick pay, while British citizens remain entitled to those things in other EU states?

Isn't it obvious that as well as forcing EU migrants into poverty in the UK, tit-for-tat measures would end up forcing UK citizens into poverty elsewhere in the EU?

Incoherent partisan rubbish

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One of the themes of Theresa May's speech was that the left is somehow to blame for the mass immigration of the last three decades. The barefaced cheek of such a stance is pretty incredible to behold. 

It's bad enough to hear someone on the right trying to cast blame for immigration onto the left when anyone with the vaguest degree of political literacy knows that there hasn't been a properly left-wing government in Westminster since the 1970s (anyone who thinks New Labour were economically left-wing must be bizarrely misinformed about politics). However what relly takes the biscuit is that the person blaming the left is the very same very right-wing politician who was responsible for overseeing the biggest inflow of migrants ever recorded just last year!

How on earth is it the left's fault that almost four decades of right-wing governance have resulted in the most right-wing Home Secretary in generations overseeing the biggest inflow of migrants ever?

How is anyone gullible and misinformed enough to believe this ridiculous "blame the left" fantasy? 

Stoking xenophobia with outright lies

So aside from her own appalling track record of failure and her brazen attempts to cast blame on the liberal left for her own abject failure to deliver what she promised, there's also the fact that Theresa May used a lot of desperately misleading xenophobic anti-immigrant rhetoric in her speech.

One of the worst parts was her claim that "we know that for people in low-paid jobs, wages are forced down even further while some people are forced out of work altogether", which contrasts sharply with her own government departments' research last year that found that "There is relatively little evidence that migration has caused statistically significant displacement of UK natives from the labour market". But then who cares about facts and evidence when dishonest xenophobic fearmongering is so much more popular with the punters judging by the delirious reaction of so many right-wing pundits and below the line commentators?

I mean who else could be better placed to achieve the extreme-right wet dream of reducing immigration than their favourite hard-talking liar woman who has just overseen the biggest flow of migrants into the UK in recorded history?

Of course Theresa May's fearmongering rhetoric has gone down well with the extreme-right and hard-of-thinking who just like the sound of the familiar right-wing rhetoric they've rote learned from the right-wing press. However it's worth noting that several economically right-wing organisations like the CBI business lobby (which is normally  highly loyal to the Tory party) slammed the speech as "irresponsible rhetoric". Even the Daily Telegraph ran a critical analysis calling her speech "dangerous and factually wrong".

Who is really to blame for the housing crisis?

Aside from "don't worry about all your broken pledges, just make them again because the lower orders will have forgotten" and "tub thumping rhetoric always trumps facts and analysis of reality", another fundamental rule in the handbook of Tory propaganda is that "immigrants and other minority groups make very convenient scapegoats".

How is it that people are willing to accept a representative of the party that ideologically vandalised our social housing and has recently overseen the lowest levels of new housebuilding since the 1920s at a time of high migration, blaming others for the appalling state of the UK housing market?

It's not the fault of the migrants that there is a shortage of decent affordable housing in the UK. It's the fault of a government that sees the re-inflation of the UK's unsustainable housing bubble as the only way they can sustain their ridiculous "economic recovery" narrative. 

In their minds the construction of adequate affordable housing to meet the needs of the UK population would be dangerously counter-productive because a fall in house price inflation would undermine their whole fake growth economic strategy, and anger an awful lot of Tory voters by reducing the profitability of their speculative buy-to-let exploitation schemes too.

Clamping down on refugees

Another disturbing element of Theresa May's speech was the measures she has proposed to clamp down on refugees and the rhetoric she used to try to imply that people who are capable of fleeing persecution and terrible war zones are not worthy of refugee status because they had the means and ability to escape.

Other countries accept far more refugees per capita
than the UK (source)

The idea that the UK should set an arbitrary limit of admitting only 25,000 refugees per year, no matter what the global circumstances is utterly bizarre, especially given the fact that the UK takes a tiny proportion of the refugees that countries like Sweden, Malta, the Netherlands and Austria do. 

What makes this disparity even more unfair is that it's not the Swedish, Maltese, Dutch and Austrian governments that have been destabilising the middle east, causing chaos in Iraq, stoking the Syrian civil war and laying the groundwork for the rise of ISIS, it's the UK and US. Our foreign policy has resulted in huge refugee crises in the region, yet it's other EU states that have been predominantly picking up the pieces while Theresa May does little more than demonise the victims of distant conflicts and brutal regimes.

We need to talk about demographics

One of the most absurd things about the immigration debate in general is the way that hardly anybody mentions the ageing population demographics. It should be obvious that the UK needs an inflow of economically active migrants in order to fund the retirement of the baby boomer generation, especially given that the birth rate has fallen well below 2 children per family. The demographic situation means that without an inflow of economically active migrants an ever greater number of pensioners are going to be reliant upon a smaller workforce to sustain them.

Another factor to consider is that the Tory party is currently pushing through legislation to further reduce the birthrate amongst resident Brits with their abolition of Child Benefit and Tax Credits for all but the first two children per family unit.

It's quite ironic that many of the blowhard right-wingers who lap up Theresa May's immigration rhetoric without subjecting it to any kind of critical scrutiny are from the older generations who would have to accept a big cut in their standards of living if they were to get their fantasy scenario of closed-borders and forced repatriation, because the dwindling working age population clearly wouldn't be able to carry the burden, meaning their pensions would fall and the NHS would suffer terrible staff shortages and funding cuts.

Conclusion

The kind of right-wingers who rote learn their opinions from the pages of the right-wing press were understandably delighted with Theresa May's tough-talking anti-immigration rhetoric, but that just goes to show how these days words speak louder than actions in UK politics. 

Theresa May has overseen the biggest surge in immigration in history and has deliberately discriminated against British families in her abjectly futile attempts to reduce migration, yet right-wingers seem to be willing to completely overlook these incontestable facts because they so love hearing a politician talking tough on immigration, that they're willing to overlook Theresa May's appalling track record of incompetence. They're even willing to overlook the fact that she's making them precisely same pie-in-the sky promises that she so abjectly failed to deliver last time around.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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How David Cameron is still talking absolute rubbish about Syria

Last night I had the misfortune of watching the BBC News. I'm not naive. I know that the government of the day hold the BBC purse strings so there has always been a strong pro-government bias in their reporting (whichever party happens to be in power). I also know that New Labour made things even worse when they decided to castrate the BBC for daring to tell the truth about how Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell "sexed up" the evidence used to justify the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Even though I'm well used to the BBC failing to hold the government of the day to account, the ridiculous Tory propaganda they tried to pass off as news last night was utterly appalling.

The segment in question was a report about David Cameron's absurd blethering about the Russian airstrikes in Syria against anti-Assad terrorist groups. Cameron had worked himself up into a state of carefully stage managed rage about how Russia were hitting the wrong targets, and how it was an outrage that some of the targets they'd hit had been the "good" US/UK backed terrorist groups in Syria, rather than the "bad" Saudi/Qatar/UAE backed terrorists he's had to pretend to oppose because their sheer barbarity makes it impossible to explicitly support them.

Cameron's humiliation over Syria

It's worth noting how the BBC and the rest of the mainstream media seem to have completely forgotten David Cameron's humiliation when his insane rush to war was defeated by a rebellion of his own MPs just two years ago, making him the first Prime Minister in over 200 years to lose a war vote in parliament. 

His own MPs saw through through the sheer insanity of attacking Assad when Islamist fanatics were flooding into the Syrian conflict back in 2013, yet he's still not willing to accept that ISIS are a greater danger to the UK than Bashar al Assad's government.

Perhaps Cameron will eventually change his mind if ISIS affiliated groups begin launching terrorist attacks in Britain? But maybe not? Maybe he's a man so filled with impotent rage that he didn't get his way back in 2013 that he'll continue arguing that the UK should assist the Islamist takeover of Syria by destroying Assad's government whatever evidence presents itself that Islamist fanatics like ISIS are a much more dangerous enemy to the UK than an admittedly brutal regional dictator like Assad ever could be?

What does Cameron actually want to happen in Syria?

Cameron's rhetoric is so confused it's absolutely pitiful. He tries to pretend to be opposing ISIS, but then he openly supports the much weaker terrorist groups who are trying to oust Bashar al Assad from power, leaving the door wide open for ISIS to take control of Damascus. 

I don't know who Cameron thinks will prevent Syria falling to ISIS should he get his wish that Assad meets the same fate as Saddam Hussain or Muammar Gadaffi? Is he completely unaware that the rise of groups like Al Qaida in Iraq and ISIS came about in the first place as a result of the power vacuum left by the catastrophically ill-conceived invasion and occupation of Iraq (that the Tory party supported at the time)?

David Cameron hobnobbing with the not at all brutal and repressive Saudis.

Maybe David Cameron thinks the ragtag bunch of rebels who have failed to topple Assad despite all of their backing from the US and UK will be able to hold ISIS back should Assad fall? Can he really be unaware that several of these groups have allowed ISIS to usurp their own fighters and their supplies of US weapons? 

Maybe Cameron envisages a massive ground invasion by US and UK troops to engage in direct conflict with ISIS? I wouldn't want to be a British soldier fighting extremists so brutal that even Al Qaidi criticise them for their barbarity.

Whatever future scenario Cameron is imagining (if any), he can't be so stupid to think that ISIS wouldn't take advantage of a power vacuum in Syria can he? Perhaps that's precisely what he wants in order to justify a US/UK invasion and occupation of the region?

The BBC News report predictably didn't ask any questions like these, instead allowing his confused and ridiculous rhetoric against the only established power structure (as repressive as it is) standing between ISIS and control of Syria to go completely unchallenged. 

Aside from the strategic incoherence of continuing to attack Assad while ISIS make headway across the region, David Cameron's rhetoric was bizarrely hypocritical too. It's utterly ridiculous to hear the UK Prime Minister refer to a dictator like Assad as "the butcher Assad" when he's oh-so-happy to suck up to vile human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia when he's over there trying to hawk weapons contracts for British arms companies. 

David Cameron's friends

If David Cameron had any integrity whatever he'd use exactly the same kind of rhetoric to condemn Saudi Arabia as "butchers" for the planned crucifixion and beheading of Ali Muhammed al-Nimr for the "crime" of protesting in favour of democracy. And he'd describe the Chinese government as "serial human rights abusers" instead of sucking up to them by describing the UK as the most open country in the western world to Chinese investment and bribing them with £billions to build our energy infrastructure for us (because the Tories have such a strong ideological opposition to the UK building it's own energy infrastructure that they'd prefer to bribe a repressive bunch like the Chinese government to do it instead of building it for ourselves).

Cameron doesn't speak out against butchers and human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia and China because they wouldn't buy our weapons or build our nuclear power stations for us if he did. He reserves such rhetoric for Assad, presumably because his great (and not at all brutal or repressive) friends in Saudi Arabia see Assad as an obstacle to the spread of their extremist form of Wahhabi Islam throughout the Arab world, and Cameron wants to keep them sweet so they continue to buy more weapons from British arms companies.

The wrong targets?

Another factor that makes Cameron's whinging about the Russian airstrikes seem so absurd and out of touch is that the very night before his manufactured outrage about Russia hitting the wrong targets, the US spent a couple of hours bombarding a hospital in Afghanistan. As many concerns as I have about the Russian's direct involvement in Syria, at least they seem to be attempting to attack combatants in a war zone, not deliberately obliterating a hospital. It doesn't matter if militants are hiding in a hospital, or in a UN compound, it's a war crime to attack such locations. It's phenomenally brazen for Cameron to criticise another country for attacking "the wrong military targets" the day after his closest military ally launched a sustained attack on a hospital killing some 20 staff and patients.

And a partisan political swipe at Labour from the BBC

Perhaps one of the most telling things about the report was the way the BBC News anchor concluded the item by reading out a highly partisan swipe at Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party without allowing anyone from Labour any kind of reply to the Tory party accusation that their middle east foreign policy represents a threat to UK national security. 

If the BBC had allowed anyone from the Labour Party to respond perhaps they'd have pointed out that ISIS, not Assad represent the biggest threat to UK national security, and that Cameron's continued backing of anti-Assad terrorists in Syria is actually helping ISIS by further destabilising the region?

It's absolutely clear that if the state broadcaster in Russia or Syria had aired such a biased, pro-government, anti-opposition report, people would rightly be howling their condemnation, but because it's the BBC, hardly anyone even considers it noteworthy enough for comment that they brazenly favour the government of the day, and allow David Cameron's ill-conceived gibberish about the conflict to go completely unquestioned.

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