You can’t assist feeling we’re on an inexorably miserable race to the underside. A freeway to hell. Or presumably heaven for the extra perverse. A mission to make folks’s lives as depressing as potential. To consider the worst of everybody. All beneath the guise of nationwide redemption. A rustic match for the twenty first century.
We stay in complicated occasions. There was a time when it was simple to identify clear blue water between the principle political events. More and more, although, you’d be exhausting pushed to distinguish between Labour, the Conservatives and Reform. Particularly in the case of issues of welfare and social justice. Some Labour backbenchers have to be questioning what the hell is occurring, given the issues they’re now anticipated to justify. Their consciences are frazzled. Is that this actually what they entered parliament for?
Time was when a Labour authorities could possibly be relied on to offer the advantage of the doubt to the poorest and most needy members of society. It’s the ticket on which they have been elected. Solely not a lot today. Now that issues have briefly quietened down on the Trump-Ukraine-Russia entrance, Keir Starmer has been drip feeding the media together with his deliberate cuts to incapacity and out-of-work advantages.
And it’s not excellent news when you depend on state help to get by. As a result of the presumption of innocence is altering. The idea is now that you just’re a slacker making an attempt to cheat the system. Somebody wangling to get the state to pay for his or her Netflix subscription due to some hyper-woke imaginary criticism that stops them from being arsed to go away the home to go to work. Higher that 700,000 disabled individuals are pushed into poverty than one scrounger will get away with a lifetime of free-rolling. It’s God’s work. What Jesus would have wished.
And don’t give us all that lengthy Covid bullshit. Everyone knows that you just’re simply terminally lazy. Powerful selections for robust occasions. So it’s time for folks to get on their arms and knees and crawl if essential to do the roles that nobody within the cupboard would dream of doing for a second. All to neutralise the siren voices of these on the far proper. Redemption is a really last-year excellent for Starmer.
The one excuse Labour is providing is subtle dialectics. Solely Labour might be trusted to slash the welfare invoice as a result of they’re the celebration for whom it raises a number of ethical qualms. Although not practically sufficient. No surprise, then, many on advantages are trying again on the final Tory authorities with affection. They could have talked a troublesome sport however they by no means received spherical to radically altering something. Too lazy themselves.
A lot the identical could possibly be stated of the justice system. On Tuesday morning, the Commons was greater than half full for justice departmental questions. And you’ll have been exhausting pushed to discover a single MP who wasn’t eager to bang somebody up for some crime or different. Thought crimes would do today. Actually, they’re in all probability the worst. Deserving of a full-life tariff on the minimal.
The justice secretary and lord chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, captured the zeitgeist. “We have to ensure that we by no means run out of jail locations,” she stated. “You may have my phrase that there’ll all the time be a jail place for everybody.”
There we had it. She wouldn’t relaxation till your entire inhabitants of the UK had been despatched down. By no means thoughts the pretext. Solely as soon as everybody was in jail may we ensure the nation was correctly protected. The one flaw in her argument was that she couldn’t say who could be left to take care of the prisons. Or what she would discover herself inside for.
However MPs on all sides of the home have been ready to miss this flaw in Mahmood’s logic. She had spoken a Greater Reality. That we have been a Fallen Folks in want of incarceration. Throw away the important thing. There was no sentence that would not be commuted to capital punishment. Lee Anderson seemed up. He was very a lot hoping that his former Reform colleague, Rupert Lowe, could be trying on the inside a jail cell. With no likelihood of remission. Hell hath no fury …
All of which was considerably problematic for shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick. There’s nothing extra that Sincere Bob want to do than create bother for Labour however he has nearly no wriggle room. As a result of each time he comes up with an thought he finds that Mahmood is already on the identical web page.
They’re within the demise spiral of the compassionless. A race to see if the opposite additionally has no soul. This would possibly clarify why Sincere Bob seems to have developed a nervous twitch. Although that may be a side-effect of the Ozempic. Quickly there can be nothing left of him however destructive house.
First off Sincere Bob wished to know why so many prisoners who have been launched early had gone lacking. “Aha!” stated Mahmood. She too was appalled. It was all all the way down to the tagging contract with Serco that the Tories had agreed. She was on a mission to spherical everybody up. Together with Serco. And the Tory ministers who had signed the deal.
Jenrick seemed distraught and sat down disconsolate. That is his one likelihood to parade his management credentials to the Tories and his Labour reverse quantity was persistently forward of him. Hell, he was meant to be the trendy face of the Nasty celebration. Being marginally brighter than Kemi wasn’t actually reducing it.
Issues didn’t enhance once we received to the principle motion. The brand new pointers of the sentencing council. Sincere Bob thought he had received forward of the sport by rubbishing them as two-tier justice. Unfair to white males. Solely to search out that Mahmood had received there first. She and Jenrick selected to disregard the truth that each Labour and the Tories had been comfortable to agree the brand new steering solely months in the past.
That was then. This was now. The general public wished a scapegoat and Labour was comfortable to offer them one. The concept that black folks might need been given longer sentences than white folks beneath the present pointers by no means crossed Mahmood or Jenrick’s thoughts. Efficiency politics was the order of the day.
It was all contagious. Junior justice minister Nic Dakin was once a sweetheart. A liberal via and thru. Now he’s pressured to undertake the persona of a rabid assault canine. He appears depressing. “Lock everybody up,” he yelled, his crazed eyes rotating manically. To wild applause. Mahmood then declared there have been two jail wings within the UK that have been drug free. Take me to them. Please. I don’t need any of the Kool Assist on which the Commons is overdosing.
