The face of hypocrisy

The most toxic aspect of Brown’s debacle yesterday, when he accused pensioner Gillian Duffy of being a ‘bigoted woman’, was that the appalling attitude he displayed could not be dismissed as a one-off, heat of the moment, poor fellow under enormous pressure sort of thing. That whole constellation of contempt for ordinary people, consisting of a) the view that their attitudes on immigration and a host of other matters are pig-ignorant and prejudiced and b) the politicians’ pretence that they are on the side of these ordinary people, shaking their hands and beaming at them and telling them they are the kind of people who make this country great, was suddenly revealed in all its grubby cynicism. It was that mixture of utter contempt, hypocrisy and profound mendacity which characterises the 'progressive' mind and the politicians who lay claim to that mantle which Brown so shockingly illuminated.

Even after he had grovelled, and grovelled again, he was still coming up with the whopper that Labour was now getting immigration under control. And that mixture of contempt and mendacity, of course, is precisely what voters have long understood, and goes a long way to explaining their terminal disaffection from the political process. more...