HAVING just finished reading Tim Pat Coogan’s excellent book on the Irish famine, it is not a little perturbing to consider how little the mindset and ethics of the English ruling classes have altered since that time. The total disregard and lack of understanding or compassion for anyone not directly within their own class of people appears to be just as profound today as it was in the mid 19th century, as does their sense of entitlement and conceited “born to rule” demeanour.
Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg would certainly not have been out of place in belief or sentiment as a member of any Tory administration over the last 170 years. He inhabits a world of overwhelming privilege and knows or cares as much about the daily travails of ordinary people as former politicians and landlords like Palmerston and Landsdowne did during the appalling famine in Ireland.
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He has previously denounced working-class people as “thick as potted plants”, no doubt to schoolboyish guffaws from his Tory colleagues, and his statements that food banks provide a sense of community and zero-hour contracts help workers’ flexibility demonstrate a complete lack of empathy or regard for people not in his sphere of influence.
However, just as the Times newspaper and Punch magazine reinforced the xenophobic and prejudiced perspective of the governments of the time, Rees-Mogg knows when he jokes about face masks that his allies in the media will remain supportively uncritical of his ridiculous, unacceptable and lamentable behaviour.
Just as upper-class politicians like the Leader of the House voted to cut poor relief to the Irish peasantry during the worst of the famine conditions, he himself has previously lobbied to cut spending on benefits like Employment Support Allowance and recently was a leading voice in slashing Universal Credit payments for the most vulnerable in the UK.
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Mr Rees-Mogg makes no secret of his extreme right-wing views, advocacy of libertarian capitalism and disdainful distaste for SNP MPs, whom he ridicules at every opportunity. He is a walking and talking advertisement for Scottish independence and represents a government and party that is beyond parody yet still supported by the majority of English people.
Perhaps the last word on the anachronistic Rees-Mogg should come from the journalist Victor Lewis-Smith: “He is a minor PG Wodehouse character, a humourless dullard from the Drones club with inherited money and no flair, the epitome of unearned, upper-class privilege.” He and his government are as alien to the Scottish people today as the landlord class was to the Irish in the 19th century. It’s time to leave their faux traditions and condescending political exceptionalism behind us. Now’s the hour.
Owen Kelly
Stirling
IT’S unusual for me to agree with Tory toff Jacob Rees-Mogg MP but I couldn’t disagree with him when, during a news interview on the state of the Palace of Westminster, he described it as a symbol of our democracy. How right he is! The place is a ruin, falling apart at the seams with sewage streaming down walls. and essentially beyond repair. For once Mr Rees-Mogg highlighted what is wrong with the so-called democracy we have to endure under the Union.
Put simply, it’s not fit for purpose. We have a UK Government saddled with corruption, handing contracts out to their pals while public services suffer and people die of a pandemic which almost every other country in the world has managed to control.
We have a obstinate UK Government who won’t listen to reason but will cut banks tax bills while removing an essential miserly £20 per week from those in most need, and of course this same Tory government refuse to listen to the demands for a referendum – effectively telling Scots that their votes don’t count. The only way to escape this cesspit of British politics is to move to independence as soon as possible.
Cllr Kenny MacLaren
Paisley
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