In the wake of the odious BNP’s election success this week, the knives are out for Margaret Hodge.
Margaret Hodge, the Employment Minister, is facing possible disciplinary action from her local Labour branch in East London for comments that are thought to have helped the BNP gain make stunning gains in yesterday’s local elections.
The far-Right party picked up 11 seats on Barking and Dagenham the council, winning all but two of the wards it contested and it may end up with 12 councillors after a recount in one ward, making it the main opposition party.
Firstly, as an aside, can we please stop talking about the BNP as a far right party? They are if anything, far left.
Okay, that little rant aside, I’m going to depart from my norm and defend a Labour politician.
Defending her comments last night, Mrs Hodge said that all she had done was to reflect what she was “picking up on the doorstep” during the campaign.
That was exactly how I interpreted her comments when she made them during the campaign. A simple statement about the comments made to her on the doorstep. In other words, she was passing on the message she had received from voters when speaking to them. Pointing out that many people had decided to vote for the BNP is not giving them the oxygen of publicity, nor is it likely to have made one wit of difference to their success. Are we supposed to believe that because Ms Hodge pointed out that voters were telling her that this was their preferred voting strategy that everyone else (at least sufficient to give the BNP a significant success at the polls in Barking) jumped on the bandwagon? Are politicians’ statements really that influential? Really? Oh, come on, pull the other one.
One of the victorious Barking candidates, the BNP’s London organiser Richard Barnbrook, thanked Ms Hodge for her help, saying that she had given the party a million pounds worth of free publicity.
Are we going to take what this turd has to say seriously? Well, are we? Disciplining Ms Hodge will be a propaganda coup for these people.
And, even if it was the case that her comments swung the election in the BNP’s favour, that is still no reason for disciplinary action. She was simply passing on what she had been told. If we start disciplining people for doing that, people will cease to pass on information even if it is crucial.
There are all sorts of reasons to despise senior Labour politicians. This isn’t one of them – unless you think that freedom of speech is not something we should value.
Again, I’m in total agreement with what’s been said. We are living in an era where incidents such as this are increasing, to the point where people are afraid to air their views lest someone is offended or it’s twisted out of all recognition into something else.
You only have to watch certain news programmes to see this highly polarised way of looking at the world in effect. People are either evil or they’re saints, to agree with something someone has said who happens to be on the ‘evil’ side of the spectrum in the media’s eyes in saying that you too are in some ways excusing said ‘evil’.
It’s utter complete nonsense.
I can rememeber a chap last year stating in an interview that Hitler was a gifted artist, a vegetarian and cared passionately for animals and the chap next to him said (and I quote) “are you saying that what he did was right then?” A question of such blinding stupidity to not be believed.
What he was saying was a separate statement entirely yet within seconds, almost everyone had rounded on him and were asking him to withdraw what he’d said. But what had he said? He’d stated a truth about someone who was less than palatable. Saying someone could wield a paintbrush successfully is hardly excusing the Holocaust is it?
We must get away from this unhealthy way of looking at the world. No one is totally good or totally evil, just as people are going to not like what others have to say, if that’s the case switch off from it and get on with things, don’t stand there and moan about how things should be. We live in a less than perfect world, deal with it.
Longrider,
You are absolute right to raise this, and thank you.
Even mooting the idea of Hodge being investigated for merely making a pertinent observation, which has since been proven to be well-founded, shows how desperate the Labour Party is. They’re not to proceed to see that they’ve lost heavily as a result of their own failings, so they’re looking for a scapegoat, possibly for a show trial.
They are totalitarians at heart.
LR, give me some pointers as to what makes the BNP a “far-left” party. I’m genuinely interested in your definition.
[Comment ID #1010 Will Be Quoted Here]
Sure,
The BNP favour greater state control over the markets. They favour, for example, nationalisation of the railways and postal services. They talk of “profit hungry multi-nationals”. This puts them pretty firmly on the left of the economic scale.
Racist policy is not the preserve of the right. If anything the BNP are closer ideologically to Stalinist communism than the far right.
Read their manifesto – if your stomach is strong enough 😉
I’ll not provide a link as I don’t wish to increase their rankings. A quick google will do the trick. Mind you, much of it is so rambling that doesn’t make much sense.
Ah, OK. I was worried you might be falling into what I call Tebbit’s Fallacy (I name it that because Tebbit was spouting some rubbish on Any Questions? about how only socialist governments have ever been anti-semitic).
There comes a point where extremists on both wings of the spectrum become so extreme they sort of meet in the middle, in a paradoxical way. Stalinism and Fascism had so much in common…
Oh, footnote: have you seen this?
Tee hee.
Chortle. Of course is is…