What on earth is wrong with a country—and its leaders—when the two main candidates for the post of Prime Minister after the next election feel that it is necessary to declare their level of deprivation in childhood? It is impossible to imagine this happening anywhere else in the world.
Across Europe, the Far East, Middle East and certainly in the United States success is, if not flaunted, clearly nothing to be ashamed of. If humble origins are referred to it is usually to indicate the relative level of success, financial or influential (and often both) that they have attained. ‘He may have started selling fried locusts on the end of a stick in Beijing, but look at him now, he owns Tik-Tok.’ (I made that up).
In the United States in particular, financial success is most definitely celebrated as the successful one is then expected—and most likely will—part with swathes of their success in favour of philanthropic causes. I have been to fundraising events in North American universities where millions of dollars have been raised over the course of an evening, usually accompanied by shockingly bad wine and incredibly boring speeches. I well recall one of the universities where I worked in the UK, celebrating the fact that it had raised the grand total of one million pounds over the course of a year. That’s what comes of heaping shame on success.
But back to our incumbents in the present race to the bottom of UK politics. Sir Keir Starmer never stops banging on about how his father was a toolmaker. We can see that he certainly made one tool, a complete tool, in the shape of his nasally challenged son. Sir Keir, who unfortunately sounds like he is speaking through a snorkel from the bottom of a swimming pool, also adds that his mother was a nurse. So what? You have been the Director of Public Prosecutions; result! Your correspondent is a Registered Nurse, I’ve paid my mortgage and brought up eight kids, my wife did not go out to work and there has always been food on the table. I went into academia from clinical nursing and took a massive pay cut to do so and took over a decade to make up the deficit. Just for the record, my father was a grocer. But do I go on about it?
While we are at it, did you ever hear that Sadiq Khan and Sajid Javid’s fathers were bus drivers? Thought you might have. These guys come from different ends of the political spectrum and, while I cannot imagine that people keep reminding them of their humble origins, they feel the need to keep reminding us. I have a cousin, once an ordained Catholic Priest and well-paid teacher at a leading Catholic school in Australia, who chucked it all in to become a bus driver and absolutely loved it.
Then we come to poor little multi-billionaire Rishi Sunak who, when asked if he had had to do without anything when he was young said ‘lots of things, including Sky TV’. And there is even some doubt about that claim which, in fact, completely misses the point. Again, so what if he didn’t have Sky TV or had to do without anything? You’re married to one of the richest women in the world. How much more respect would the voting public have had for Rishi if, on being asked about being deprived in his childhood he’d simply have responded, ‘No. And you know what, it was f*****g great!’
The fact is that not a single candidate will probably win a solitary vote based on claims about either their humble origins or what they did not have as a kid. I’ll eat one of my many hats if, on exiting a polling station someone is asked who they voted for, and why, and says, ‘Rishi Sunak as the poor little bugger didn’t have Sky TV when he was a kid.’
Sadly, we still have two weeks of unending drivel to put up with until the election takes place. It would be sublime irony if there was an interview with Sir Keir Starmer’s parents where they were asked what they thought of their son, and they replied, ‘Don’t know, he left home and we have no idea what happened to him.’
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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Trying to outdo each other’s poverty porn ratings isn’t perhaps entirely new (can’t though wait for the Mogster to join in the fun). Not so long ago Prezza was taunted in HoC by calls of ‘Steward!’ In some dyed in the wool Labour places (Hull!) fake reverse aspirational stuff still goes down well with those who wear their self-declared poverty as a badge of honour. Perhaps Dame DJ will up her appeal by claiming she once went into Heron in a fruitless search for EV Olive Oil?
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