Have Politicians Ever Been More Vile?

Via Snowdon, there is a marvellous piece at the Telegraph today by Peter Oborne which is a must-read. It's all good, but this passage is especially pertinent.

Politicians of Right and Left have been transfixed by these anti-smoking campaigns. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has shown hardly any appetite to challenge the conventional wisdom of his own department, while Luciana Berger, the shadow health minister, is a breathless proselytiser for the anti-smoking lobby. No mainstream politician has dared to challenge the consensus, and only Rothmans-puffing Nigel Farage of Ukip really gets the point. 

I believe something is changing in Britain. George Osborne’s Budget, with its tax cut for beer and bingo and permission for people to take charge of their own savings, has caught a wider mood of national rebellion against bossy government. I noticed that when Question Time debated smoking in cars a few weeks ago the biggest round of applause was against the anti-smokers. 

This new politics of personal maturity is a problem for Ed Miliband. As Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin show in their important new study of Ukip, Labour has abandoned that sector of the population which used to be known as the working class. Mr Miliband’s Labour instead is in danger of becoming the party of the public-sector workers, the health and safety experts, the Brussels bureaucrats, the quangos and the wider political directorate.

We jewel robbers have known this for quite some time, but as if paid a few cream buns to confirm Oborne's morning article, up pops Diane Abbott on the Daily Politics at lunchtime to ram the point home. Scroll to 1:20 in on the video below for an astonishingly disdainful performance.

Has there ever been a more stark exhibition of 'bossy government' than that?

"One of the reasons why the {pause, smug grin} the Tories have been so reluctant to introduce plain packaging is {even smugger grin} wha' I call Lynton Crosby politics. {in contemptuous caricatured cockney accent} A penny off a pint, a penny off beer, and you can have your fags as well."

Have you ever seen or heard anything so contemptuous of the public a politician is supposed to be serving? We "can have" our fags as well? We are only allowed what politicians say we are now?

And what of the contempt for reducing tax on a pint of beer? This is a British politician sneering at the temerity of the government to drop tax by a tiny amount; disgusted that any politician could contemplate making the noose less tight around the public's neck!

And, having delivered this self-absorbed display of disgusting snobbery, she sat back - satisfied after having chided her class for daring to make working class life that little bit more tolerable - and her haughty, self-satisfied face spoke volumes.

Now, on the plus side, her arrogant, insulting performance will undoubtedly have swayed hundreds if not thousands to distrust the plain packs lobby. But, on the other, it's very sad that the British are not the kind of people to demand the repulsive bitch's head on a spike.

Oborne's Telegraph piece is titled:

There’s a quiet rebellion under way against bossy government

The rebellion won't be quiet for long if Abbott's Marie Antoinette-esque attitude becomes more widespread.

Sir Cyril Chantler's review of plain packaging is due to report by Monday. If it sides with monstrous arseholes like Abbott instead of the public - who provide her wages, remember, and who have overwhelmingly rejected the idea - it will be a watershed moment in showing how politicians despise and deride every single one of us.