The British public is feasting on hatred. One minute it’s estate agents, then bankers or foreigners. Who will be next?
This was written at the height of the MPs’ expenses scandal.
I can’t. Believe me I’ve tried. And I know it would make my life easier. Occasionally in the last three weeks I have managed to work myself up into a state of righteous indignation for an entire hour at a time. I feel briefly as though I may be able to join in. But then it goes. Nothing I can do about it, I am afraid. The national anger, the frenzy, the fury about MPs and their allowances just passes me by. Actually, it is worse than that. I am afraid it makes me shudder.
When Princess Diana died I walked through St James’s Park and saw people, tears in their eyes, laying funeral wreaths for someone they had only seen on television. I remember then feeling outside the national mood, finding the intensity of the mourning slightly strange.
Yet I did, at least, find something uplifting in the emotion, even if I didn’t feel it myself. Sadness at the death of a young woman with two young children is, after all, compassionate, a worthy sentiment. I felt rather proud of my compatriots, if a little bewildered at their fervour.
The national mood of anger at MPs strikes me rather differently. It doesn’t bewilder me as the Diana wreaths did. I can see that some MPs have behaved badly. I even think some should (and might) end up in prison. So I ‘get it’. I see why people feel as they do. I understand it. I am, to use that dreadful political cliché, ‘in touch’ with the national mood. I just can’t share it. I find it ugly, unpleasant, lacking all sense of proportion.
Robert Mugabe starves his population to death. Nothing. The Janjawid commit genocide in Darfur. Nothing. Gordon Brown bankrupts the country. Nothing. Then someone buys an unnecessary trouser press. Pandemonium.
When people are being murdered in their millions, dying in their boring, banal way, the BBC puts Question Time on at 1.30 in the morning and sticks a comedian on the panel to give proceedings a bit of a lift. Now that Cheryl Gillan has accidentally claimed for £4.47 of dog food, they move the show to prime time, bumping the Two Ronnies or whatever, so that everyone can boo Ming Campbell.
I would find it all fantastically silly if I didn’t find it so worrying. It is, you see, a flashing alert signal for me when ‘I was following the rules laid down by Parliament’ ceases to be regarded as any sort of defence. I get worried when I see people declared guilty until proven innocent in Harriet Harman’s famous ‘court of public opinion’ because there has been an article written about them in a newspaper. It makes me shiver when a whole category of people – politicians – are regarded as guilty, because ‘they’re all the same’, and when it becomes routine to dehumanise them by comparing them to farm animals.
And it isn’t just the MPs, you see. It would matter less if it was, I suppose. It is that all of us think everyone else is on the take, or is useless, or tasteless.
We’ve only just finished (for the time being) a great national furore against bankers. Bankers, they’re all greedy. With their big, fat bonuses. Ripping us off, lining their pockets, making off with our savings. That Sir Fred Goodwin, he’s one. Take away his pension. Strip him of his knighthood. Kick him out the golf club, him and his banker friends.
And before the bankers, there were social workers. Totally useless. They let Baby P die because they were busy ticking boxes. It’s left-wing political correctness gone mad (and you don’t want to go mad, or you’ll have to see a psychiatrist, and there’s a group of people you want to steer clear of). Sack them. Take away their pay-offs. It’s time that whole profession had a clear-out.
When the opinion pollster (not that you can trust opinion pollsters) Populus asked voters their view of MPs’ pay, they were virtually unanimous in wanting an independent group put in charge. ‘How about a major accountancy firm?’ Populus asked their focus groups. Oh, no, came the reply. We can’t have accountants, they’re the worst. ‘Lawyers, perhaps?’ Lawyers? Are you kidding? They’re worse than accountants.
Although perhaps not as bad as estate agents, I suppose. Does anyone know what they do for all that money they get paid? No, neither do I. You can’t trust a single one of them. Any more than you can trust a journalist. And don’t get me started about journalists. Here they are, going on about MPs’ expenses when they’re all on the fiddle themselves. I know they are, because I read it in the newspaper.
Journalists, they’re as bad as second-hand car salesmen. Or those people who sell insurance, come to think of it. Or those so-called advisers who hook you on their pensions and leave you without a penny. And there you are destitute, while Premier League football players, who are stupid and always up until 2.30 in the morning in a nightclub with one of the millions of young women who are now out binge drinking, swan around ‘earning’ a million pounds a week for kicking a ball around and shouting at referees (who aren’t deaf, even though they are all blind).
Mind you, at least they work for a living. Not like toffs who think they own the world (and probably do). Their sense of entitlement is dreadful, particularly the ones who went to Eton. It’s a toss-up whether their arrogance is to be preferred to the smugness of middle-class people who live in dull suburbs and sound like Richard Briers and cut the grass too often.
Vicars? Wet and ineffectual. Property developers? Rapacious, reactionary. Teachers? Left-wing, long holidays. The police? Never come when you need them. Firemen? All off doing their second jobs when they should be working for us. Public-service workers? Pen-pushers in plush offices. Farmers? Always got their hand in the public purse, when they are not spreading diseases. Benefit claimants? On the fiddle, obviously. The bin man? Leaves rubbish all over your drive unless you pay him off.
The Scots, the French, TV documentary makers, hospital consultants, MEPs, traffic wardens, diplomats, council workers, people who wear sweatshirts with a hood. Let’s face it, I can’t trust anyone, except me and you. And I’m really not sure about you.
The other day I stumbled across an American opinion poll. It showed that a quarter of Americans, when asked, said that they blamed the Jews for the financial crisis either moderately or a great deal. Even more – nearly 40 per cent – attached some blame to us. Great.
When I witness this national mood of anger and blame, when I see people heckle politicians, and call them crooks, and lump them all together, and pass by all the good they do, I hope you will forgive me if I can’t join in. I don’t like it when people start mobbing up. It frightens me.