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Nadine Dorries launches class war attack

March 7, 2012 10:48 am

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Mark Ferguson

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I’ve never been one for attacking people based on the school that they went to. For a start, which school you attended is rarely something that you have any choice over.

But you can bet if I did attack someone for – say – being a “public school boy” (a trap I hope I never fall into), I’d be accused of “class war”. The right loves to shout “class war”. So I assume they’ll be saying the same about Tory MP Nadine Dorries, who told the FT:

“The problem is that policy is being run by two public school boys who don’t know what it’s like to go to the supermarket and have to put things back on the shelves because they can’t afford it for their children’s lunchboxes. What’s worse, they don’t care either.”

That’s “class war” right? Or have I misunderstood the rules of the game…?

treborc
But she is right.

Johndclare
Ditto – my immediate thought entirely
Hamish
Tritto.
However, Mark’s point is fair that we don’t choose the school we went to.
We choose the schools our children go to.
A few Labour politicians have cause to hang their hewads over that,

Steve Lee
Not sure of the context of her quote, but she’s right on this one isn’t she?

Chilbaldi
I doubt she is. Buying in to a false stereotype more likely.

treborc
But it’s how the poorest are living and even if she is guessing she is guessing right. Not to many MPs today struggling to pay for the gas water and electricity i can tell you we are.
Steve Lee
Which of the stereotypes do you think is false? The callous and ignorant public schoolboy, or the poor person who struggles to afford the weekly shop? I’m sorry to say that both these stereotypes do exist.

Dave Postles
I seem to remember that Cameron had his bike stolen whilst he did some shopping at a Tesco local shop – or was that a stunt?

treborc
Nope Boris took it……..
treborc
Nope Boris took it……..
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7Z2KKBHSH4VQSKABV7ZSI3CVDQ WILLIAM
He did have his bike stolen, because Dave, being the brainless goon is he, tethered it to a three foot high post. The thief simply lifted it off the post and made off with it. The Sunday Mirror somehow managed to track down the bike and return it to Cameron. Cameron was somewhat tetchy about it, suspecting that the Mirror wanted to get mileage out of him looking like a tit.

treborc
Watch out, watch out, theirs a Boris about, and he wants your bike….

http://twitter.com/Iain_31 Iain
This is the woman who went on to Channel4′s “tower block of commons” and despite having live on the amount people on benefits have to live on, she couldn’t do it and tried to cheat hiding £50 in her bra. So I don’t think she can really lecture anyone about not knowing what its like in the real world.

treborc
Perhaps she did know what it’s like hence she did hide the money, people who do not know may have thought they could have done it. I know what it’s like because I’ve been on benefits now for ten eyars.
treborc
Perhaps she did know what it’s like hence she did hide the money, people who do not know may have thought they could have done it. I know what it’s like because I’ve been on benefits now for ten eyars.
Steve Lee
The points isn’t whether she can take the moral high ground or not, but that we are ruled by a priveliged elite who have not the vaguest inkling of what the lives of those in and on the margins of poverty are like.

AlanGiles
I think Ms Dorries is the new Edwina Curry – in a few years time she’ll be on radio and TV all the time, being “outrageous”, or dancing a la’ Widdicombe, but on this occasion, for whatever reason she said it, she is right.
The problem is, I very much doubt that many of the front bench of the shadow cabinet has much more idea than the cabinet. Since the hoity-toity days of Blair you get the feeling that many of them are just as out of touch.
It goes back to what many people were saying a few days ago about AWS. it doesn’t really matter what sex you are, if you went to Oxbridge and took the “think tank/researcher” route to politics, you will be out of the same mould. We need MPs, of either sex, who have lived in the real world, men and women who know how some people have had to stop shopping at Sainsburys and go to Lidl, because they have less to spend. Empathy is more important than sex or a first class honours degree. (Guy will hate me for saying that!, but I’ll live with it)

girlguide
Late to the discussion, but to me you have expressed exactly where the main problem lies with Labour at the moment – that the movers and shakers are removed from the realities of daily life. Today I need to fill my car with petrol, and the price is now £1.38 a litre. For the first time ever, since being a student 30 years ago, I’m going to have to put in half a tank, and eke it out until I get paid. For other people it will be even worse.
Has anyone in the Shadow Cabinet ever experienced trying to prioritise one bill over another, whether they can pay the mortgage or rent at the end of the month, or having to put stuff back on the shelf in the supermarket because it breaks the budget? Until we get people who have real life experience, Labour is as out of touch as any other party. The route to success in the Labour Party seems to be – Public school or top class comp, PPE at Oxford or Cambridge, research assistant to MP or intern, MP and then Shadow Cabinet.

Dave Postles
I always only half-fill my petrol tank for two reasons: (i) more fuel-efficient as less weight for the car; and (ii) I pay cash so that I know where I stand financially minute to minute.

KonradBaxter
“have not the vaguest inkling of what the lives of those in and on the margins of poverty are like.”
True but the majority of us don’t either.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7Z2KKBHSH4VQSKABV7ZSI3CVDQ WILLIAM
Depends what you mean by ‘the majority of us’. There’s an increasing number of people who fall within the margins of the poverty bracket, people who’ve previously lived fairly comfortably and find it a real shock.

treborc
be even better to have it said by somebody in labour, sadly not.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=697126564 Paul Halsall
There is a class war – a massive one being waged by the wealthy on the poor.

http://twitter.com/gonzozzz dave stone
Brings to mind an old saying: They only call it class war when we fight back.

Mike Murray
Yes, If you oppose a Tory they will always accuse you of being political.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7Z2KKBHSH4VQSKABV7ZSI3CVDQ WILLIAM
Labour MP Sharon Hodgson quoted Mrs Dorries’s comments at PMQs. Cameron dismissed them as ‘whatever nonsense that was’. It’s interesting that Nadine Dorries seems to be making an enemy of Cameron. She was quite right with her comments. She may also feel she’s been stitched up as her constituency of Mid-Beds is going to disappear as a result of the ConDem gerrymandering of the constitencies.
http://twitter.com/robertsjonathan Jonathan Roberts
If the test for becoming Prime Minister is that you have to know what it’s like to not be able to afford food, then the potential pool from which future Prime Ministers can be chose will be somewhat small.
Anyone who indulges in class war in my opinion only does so because they can’t be arsed to think of a real reason why they believe what they believe. I couldn’t care less what your class is or where you were educated. It’s what you do that matters, and any criticism of Government policy should be based on the merits/demerits of the policy itself, not on the childhood of those who devise it.
Mike Murray
If Nadine Dorris has such huge reservations about supporting a government of millionaire public school boys who want to pay for the huge debts incurred by their class by taking paltry sums of money from the poorest, the disabled and the most vulnerable in society she should do the honourable thing and cross the floor and join us in opposition. She might then persuade that other “facing both ways” “no blood on my hands” semi detached critic of the coalition Vince Cable to do the same.
SR819
She is from a working class background, but she also said on Question Time that she’s a committed Thatcherite and a believer in “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps”. Tories sometimes like to present themselves as the party of the working class, and claim that the Labour Party represent the metropolitan, middle class liberal elite who like to micromanage the lives of those whom they deem inferior and therefore in need of guidance. The same Conservatives then say that the Tories are pro-poor, because they believe in the free market which in their opinion is the great leveller.
We shouldn’t think that these right wing Tories share any of our values, or that they care about the working class. They’ll use language like this to obfuscate genuine issues, and we shouldn’t think they’re on our side. Dorries is opposed to Cameron because she doesn’t think he’s right wing enough on welfare reform, immigration etc!
Look at the Tory activists on Conservative Home who claim the Tories are on the side of the “working” poor. It’s divide and rule tactics again, setting up in their minds the contrast between the “hard working” working class (Tory) voter on the one hand, and the benefit “scrounging” immigrant/workshy family on the other.
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Dmhuk2001
How else would you describe it?

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