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Laugh at the black shorts now, they may rule later
Peter Hitchens finds the balaclava brigade ridiculous, then argues that ridiculous movements are the ones inheriting a rotting politics.
In brief
Peter Hitchens finds the balaclava brigade ridiculous, then argues that ridiculous movements are the ones inheriting a rotting politics. The street militias and the insurgent parties are both symptoms of collapsing mainstream politics, and neither will fix the thing they promise to fix. Originally reported by…
Hard not to laugh
Masked men in black were deployed on British streets last week, including outside the Mail's own offices, by a new national figure known as Tommo.
“It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the lumpy stormtroopers deployed on our streets”
Spontaneous, allegedly
Kent Police called the carefully-planned Dover turnout last weekend 'spontaneous'. Hitchens finds the word choice as funny as the marchers.
Who Tommo actually is
Real name Daniel Thomas. A retired kidnapper who failed at that trade, and now, we are told, a born-again Christian.
Waiting for the video
Hitchens pictures Thomas singing 'Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam' in whatever church, chapel or tent he uses, and awaits the publicity film with sanctified soundtrack.
“I await the moving publicity video with sanctified soundtrack”
Why the shorts
The black-clad followers wore shorts rather than proper trousers. For a privately educated man, an odd costume choice to land on by accident.
“Did you notice his black-clad followers wear shorts rather than grown-up trousers?”
Wodehouse got there first
The Black Shorts were a fictional 1930s fascist militia invented by PG Wodehouse, led by the absurd Roderick Spode.
A gorilla, nearly
Wodehouse wrote that Spode looked as if Nature had set out to make a gorilla and changed its mind at the last moment.
“as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla and had changed its mind at the last moment”
Undone by the underwear
Spode's glowering menace collapsed because of his secret sideline selling frilly ladies' underwear. The joke is that the strongman is always a bit ridiculous.
The burqa and the balaclava
The same people who demand a burqa ban cover their own faces with balaclava helmets. Hitchens notes the resemblance.
“while themselves wearing a garment which is rather like a burqa, the balaclava helmet”
But dare we laugh
The joke stops there. As the conventional parties collapse, above all on immigration, people of this sort will get nearer to real power.
“But dare we laugh?”
Europe is already moving
France's National Rally edges towards office. Germany's AfD does the same, carrying what Hitchens calls creepy connections.
Trump as warning sign
In the USA an increasingly erratic Trump stomps across the country and the planet, in Hitchens's phrase, like a giant with a sore head.
“like a giant with a sore head”
Meloni proves the point
Giorgia Meloni won office posing as the scourge of migrants and has done almost nothing about it. Mass immigration has already happened.
“Mass immigration has already happened”
Miracle cures we discard
These movements work like patent remedies. We buy one, it fails, we throw it out for a stronger one, until we admit the cure is worse than the disease.
“These movements are like miracle cures which we buy in the hope they will work”
What rot leads to
A political system losing confidence makes poverty, disorder and an intolerant strong state likelier by the day. Thirty years of governments earned this.
“The governments of the last 30 years have much to answer for”
The coalminer's daughter
Diane Reay, now emeritus professor of education at Cambridge, grew up on a Leicestershire council estate and got out through a girls' state grammar school.
That route is closed
Reay's grammar school was abolished in 1972. The ladder she climbed cannot be climbed by anyone else now.
“What is not so wonderful is that it can never happen again”
The BBC left it out
Reay appeared in a Radio 4 documentary on the comprehensive revolution, and her grammar school story went unmentioned.
Not a rare case
The 1954 Gurney-Dixon report found almost 65 per cent of grammar school pupils came from working class homes. The programme also dated the war on grammars to 1976, not 1965.
“almost 65 per cent of grammar school pupils came from working class homes”
No selection supporters asked
The programme interviewed plenty of comprehensive supporters, including Fiona Millar, and not one defender of selection at 11. Hitchens has written a book on it and is easy to reach.
“But it did not interview a single supporter of selection by ability at 11”
Here's the gist
The street militias and the insurgent parties are both symptoms of collapsing mainstream politics, and neither will fix the thing they promise to fix.
