The proof that class still rules by Mark Steel

Mark Steel

Labour can't blame thieving aristos when they deny class still exists

First published in The Independent on 27th May 2009

If Kim Jong-Il has an imaginative public relations office, he'll issue a statement that setting off another nuclear weapon was due to a simple mistake as he was confused about which missile he'd registered as his second one, and it was all within the rules but he's sorry if anyone's upset and it goes to show this ghastly system needs to be jolly well reformed.


This would be more plausible than the now famous interview by the MP who protested that complaints about his expenses were driven by "Jealousy" because his house "Looks like Balmoral" and "Does me nicely," ending with a flourish by snarling "What right has the public to interfere in my private life? NONE."


He was so absurdly beyond his own stereotype, if it had carried on he'd have said "I REQUIRE substantial grounds in order to carry out the annual event of hunting a farm-hand and roasting him on a spit, and no do-gooder of common stock will tell me otherwise."


But the most annoying thing when listening to these types is not their own arrogance, but that the mainstream view of modern Britain, including the idea on which New Labour was founded, is that class division belongs only in the past. So when you go past a housing office on a council estate that's full of disgruntled tenants, they must all be yelling "When are you bastards gonna come and repair my duck island? It's THREE WEEKS since I reported it was leaking, where are my bleeding ducks supposed to rest when they're half way across my pond, they're getting KNACKERED, now SORT IT."


And Job Centres will be packed with claimants crying "I can't survive on £68 invalidity benefit. Out of that I've got to pay for council tax, heating, food, moat cleaning, I've already got the portcullis going rusty I'm DESPERATE."


And if a single parent on housing benefit was questioned about why they hadn't declared a morning's work, they could say to the fraud officer "Do you know what this is about? JEALOUSY. I now own some cat food and a packet of biscuits which does me nicely and no member of the darned public has the right to interfere," and be allowed to carry on as normal.


The chances of someone moving a long way up or down the social scale from the one they were born into, are now less than they were in the 1950s. But somehow the Labour Party has come out worst from all this, partly because some of their lot has been on the fiddle as well, but mostly because they're driven by the idea that class is no longer an issue. They can hardly shout about thieving aristocrats when they've spent fifteen years insisting class no longer exists. So trends taking place now, that would once have made Labour popular, such as hostility towards bankers and contempt for the duck-island owning gentry, instead help make Labour less popular than ever.


But they could still rescue the situation. The bumbling landowning set are usually dismissed by people who insist class has disappeared, as a quaint and quirky hangover from British history, a bit of fun with no real power. So to prove this, they should be made to open up their houses so the public and groups of children can splash in the clean moats and frolic in the grounds, taking pictures of each other merrily throwing stones at Douglas Hogg as he stomps round the lawn muttering "Confounded bloody commoners," reminding us of the times when class still mattered.

Snowmen are costing Britain billions by Mark Steel

Mark Steel

It's fine to skip work to play in the snow. But strike, and you wreck the country



Snow used to be annoying, because it made everything stutter at half-speed, leaving you frustrated on icy rail platforms, or trying to find out what time the school would open. But now it's brilliant, because the moment a snowball's worth has settled every single thing packs up completely. It's not worth even asking whether a school, bus, library or cardiac unit might be opening. Just frolic about and laugh at the idiot spinning his car in circles.


Most things were still shut on the second day, even though the snow had mostly gone, because someone said there might be more coming. If one of these space probes finds evidence of snow on Mars, the buses will all be cancelled just to be on the safe side.


Then the reporters do that heroic bit where they stand under an umbrella gasping, "This LITERALLY apocalyptic downfall has landed on EVERYTHING. It's landed on trees, pavements, even on CATS if they've been outside, NOTHING is spared the relentless flakes. Reports are coming in of people walking across a park to find their socks are quite LITERALLY damp. Huw, I've read the Bible and quite frankly a plague of locusts would be welcome relief after this."


And we're told, "The police have issued a warning that for the time being no one should do anything whatsoever. Even filling in a crossword, they say, could lead to a broken hip or even an avalanche so just sit still for a few more days."


The weather office had been warning the snow would arrive for a week, but still there were hardly any preparations made to keep anything running. Transport for London will probably issue a statement that "This is a valid criticism, so next time we won't be caught out. Instead of cancelling everything on the day we'll cancel everything a week in advance."


As people have pointed out, there are other countries that have snow most of the time. And they keep doing things. For example there's a train called the Trans-Siberian Express. And they must have snow in Siberia. Presumably the board of Virgin trains must think this train has sat in the depot for a hundred years, and every day there's an an announcement that there's no service today because of frozen points at Novosibirsk.


But the most heartening response was from those newspapers that delighted in showing the result of no one going to work, with pictures of cavorting communities enjoying their impromptu holiday.


They must have lightened up, because before, if even one part of the workforce was off because they were on strike, we'd be told this was wrecking the lives of everyone in the country. So you'd expect their response to the joviality would be, "Callous snowman-builders cost Britain BILLIONS!" and to quote a mother saying, "My son was hoping to be a barrister. Now because of this day off school he'll have to make do with spending his life as a penniless nomad."


But now they've seen what fun it is for everyone to stay off work they'll suggest we should all have a general strike. Then they'll fill their papers with feelgood stories about council workers skipping through the bushes, as they don't have to spend their day driving vans and digging graves. Ann Widdecombe will be thrilled at the community spirit, as old and young link arms with a cheery "Good morning", and everyone agrees this a far better way to live, and wonders why no one seemed to think of it before.

First published in The Independent on 4th February 2009

The Tories fight against the filth by Mark Steel

Mark Steel

All of a sudden, Tory MPs sound like radical students from the 1970s

Strangely, the past 30 years of police abusing their powers have passed the Tories by. Now, all of a sudden, they are sounding like radical students from the 1970s. Tory MPs will start making speeches in Parliament that go: "Mister Speaker, would the honourable member for Wilmslow not agree that, in the light of recent findings, the pigs are out of control, man? And would he not draw the conclusion, accepted by all decent citizens, that the only remedy is to fight the filth, fight the filth, fight the filth, they're FASCISTS, man, FASCIST SCUM, FASCIST SCUM."

Maybe they'll start turning up to protest meetings called against police behaviour, where they can make statements such as: "I think we can forgive them for lying to convict the Birmingham Six. And laying siege to the nation's mining communities was the sort of over-exuberance we have all taken part in when spirits are high.

And who among us can honestly say we haven't, from time to time, shot dead an innocent man on the Underground and rewritten evidence to cover our arse? But CHECKING THE COMPUTER OF A TORY MP??!! ASKING HIM QUESTIONS??? WHAT IS THIS – CAMBODIA UNDER POL POT????!!!!!"

Several MPs, including Michael Howard, have told us the intrusion of the police into Damian Green's office was similar to the attempted arrest of MPs in 1642 that led to the Civil War. They've got a point, because if it turns out the police were acting on orders from the Queen, who wants to regain total control of Parliament so she can rule by divine right, and Mr Green heroically uses his computer to mobilise the common people to stop her, then yes, it's exactly the same. Soon they will tell us the arrest was identical to the imprisonment of opposition leaders in Nazi Germany.

Michael Howard is the MP who has undergone the most spectacular conversion to anti-police activism. When he was Home Secretary, he was notoriously stubborn about refusing to refer cases to the Court of Appeal, even when it was obvious the wrong people were in prison.

For example, he was "not minded" to refer the case of the men convicted of killing the schoolboy Carl Bridgwater, who stayed in jail another year before their convictions were overturned. So maybe he is unsettled because this time the police have got the right person. His full statement will say: "The police have disgracefully breached legal procedures. What they SHOULD have done is arrested a dustman from Ipswich, yelling, 'Don't lie to us, we know you're the shadow Immigration spokesman', and not let him out until 2021."

Howard also insisted he would not implement the recommendations of the Macpherson Report, which he called "sociological mumbo jumbo" – whereas the arrest of Damian Green is clearly far more serious than bungling the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry.

So now they do want a thorough investigation, which presumably will expose the scandal of institutional anti-Tory MP-ism within the force. And maybe it will turn out that every day, as Tory MPs innocently hang around at garden parties, officers taunt them, sneering: "I know you. Prospective candidate for Epsom and Ewell, isn't it? Come on then, let's have a look in the boot of your car; I suppose it's full of leaked documents, is it? Right, which one of you called me 'Babylon'? Get in the van."

First published in The Independent on 10th December 2008

Never mind the baby, just get back to work, The next thing will be an exciting new scheme known as the 'workhouse' by Mark Steel

Mark Steel

You can tell what they've got in mind when they begin an article, as the Work and Pensions Secretary did yesterday, by insisting they have to make tough decisions. It means they're tough enough to cut benefits for the weakest people in the country, because they're hard.

It's like if Ricky Hatton did an interview at the start of a fight, saying "I'm going to show the world tonight just how tough I am", then walked into the audience and smashed an old woman in the mouth.

The Minister insists "future reform will ensure that virtually everyone has an obligation to work". But the genius of the latest plan is that it extends to single parents who look after one-year-old children, who will have to demonstrate a plan to find work or risk losing 40 per cent of their benefits. Because that's who's been swiping all the wealth of the country – single parents of one-year-olds. And the rest of us have had enough of them using their vast bonuses to buy Ferrari pushchairs and Gucci jump-suits.

You can hardly walk past The Ivy without hearing a waiter say, "I'm sorry Mr Abramovich, there's no tables this evening, as they're all taken by single parents of one-year-olds", followed by a squeal of "Here you are darling, truffles sprinkled with gold leaf all mashed up in milk with banana – down it goes".

An interview to ascertain why a single parent with a one-year-old hasn't got a job must be the most pointless interview ever. Presumably it will go: "Well, single parent of a one-year-old, why haven't you found a job?" "Because I'm a single parent – with a one-year-old."

Or maybe this is only the first part of the plan, and the next stage will be to interview the one-year-old as well. Then an officer will compile a file that goes: "The interviewee shows no willingness to co-operate. Asked why he hadn't sought work he replied, 'Cat cat cat, I got cat, wee-wee, done wee-wee', and displayed no interest when I suggested he attend a training course in accounting."

The Minister, when asked on the radio how he could justify the benefit sanctions, said: "We don't want to impose sanctions." Well, if he doesn't want to impose them, why doesn't he not introduce them then? Has he got some strange neurological disease where he can't help doing things he doesn't want to do? Perhaps at night he sits on the floor setting fire to worms, and when anyone asks him why he's doing it he says: "I don't want to set fire to worms."

Then he said: "Most people, when asked, thought the sanctions were justified." What people were they then? He seemed to suggest the single parents themselves had said that, but that's unlikely, unless he carried out his survey in the single parents masochist society. And all night they came up to him saying: "Oh minister, I've been a very naughty claimant. Sanction me minister, sanction me, not 20 per cent minister, I've hardly looked for work at all. I deserve more than that, sanction me FORTY, yes FORTY per cent, oh that's so JUSTIFIED minister."

Throughout these proposals is the insistence the cuts are part of an overall plan to help the jobless find work. Which is why it's essential to insist, whenever they start on this track, that the reason unemployment is going up is because there's a bloody recession, and not because people have suddenly become useless at finding work. It would be more honest if these interviewers at job centres called in the unemployed and said: "I've studied your records, and the main reason you seem unable to find work is you're living through the start of a slump. So I'm sending you on a course that can teach you how to be in 1998, or if you prefer 1957, when you should be able to get a job as a bus conductor or chirpy coalman with no problems at all."

They know these proposals will, at most, effect which people are unemployed, but make no difference to the total of unemployed. They might as well announce a plan to send a pack of rabid dogs after anyone claiming benefits, while insisting: "This scheme will assist claimants by forcing them up trees where they might be offered a job as a tree surgeon or ornithologist or member of the paparazzi."

And it's all sold as a part of the New Labour plan to modernise everything, by modernising us into an idea that would have been at home in the 1930s. Next week they'll announce: "To modernise our welfare system even further we're proposing an exciting scheme known as the 'workhouse', followed by a modernisation of housing benefits, in which tenants will pay tithes to a baron, and those in arrears will be placed on a 'ducking stool', which most people, when asked, thought was justified, because we're prepared to be tough."

First published in The Independent on 3rd December 2008