A case study in socialist doublethink

I’ve made the case, in the past, that hypocrisy, for better or for worse, is a pillar of the human condition.

What you’re about to read isn’t hypocrisy by any traditional definition. It’s doublethink. Newspeak. Saying day is night, black is white, stop is go, up is down. Manifest bollocks, in other words.

Via the Daily Mail, I spotted a piece about Diane Abbott.

I knew not to trust their interpretation, so I read enough of their bile to learn that the accusation comes out of an interview she gave to the Daily Mirror. Here it is:

BRIAN READE You’ve said that going to Cambridge University politicised you because you saw a lot of rich kids walking into Oxbridge at the expense of those from state schools.

Yet you sent your son to public school. Why?

DIANE ABBOTT Well, since I made that decision Labour built five new secondary schools in Hackney, one of them with some of the best GCSE results in the country. I wouldn’t have to make the same choice today.

BR But why did you make that choice at all?

DA I’d done a lot of work on how black boys underachieve in secondary schools so I knew what a serious problem it was.

I knew what could happen to my son if he was sent to the wrong school and got in with the wrong crowd.

I realised they were subjected to peer ­pressure and when that happens it’s very hard for a mother to save her son.

Aha… here we go…

Once a black boy is lost to the world of gangs it’s very hard to get them back and I was genuinely very fearful of what could happen.

Or, to put it another way, because the way you brought your son up failed to instil sufficient moral courage in him, you felt you had to send him away to a school where there would only be RICH black boys.

Are you ready for some gobsmackery now?

BR But you criticised Harriet Harman and Tony Blair for sending their kids to selective schools then you went and sent yours to a fee-paying one?

DA I didn’t really criticise Harman.

BR You said what she did made Labour look like they’re saying one thing while doing another.

DA Yes, I did say that. But that was the only criticism I made.

“You criticised Harman.” “No I didn’t.” “Yes you did – you said this.” “Ah but I only did it once.”

How many times before it counts, Diane?

BR But couldn’t you see why there was anger? People on the left thought ‘we’re not surprised that Blair and Harman did it but we don’t understand why Diane Abbott did it because she’s one of us’?

Ready for the B-bomb?

DA Yes, but they didn’t understand me. I’m a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.

Whereas, what? Mums from other nations and cultures will happily let their children rot in a state hellhole, like the neglectful peasants that they are?

It’s that kind of atavistic streak that we have. I can see them in the market on a Saturday morning. A kind of ‘touch my children and we’ll turn quite difficult’.

Atavistic, huh?

The term atavism  (derived from the Latin atavus, a great-grandfather’s grandfather; more generally, an ancestor) denotes the tendency to revert to ancestral type. An atavism is an evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations ago. Atavisms occur because genes for previously existing phenotypical features are often preserved in DNA, even though the genes are not expressed in some or most of the organisms possessing them.

Well that’s just dandy. If I published a piece that said “West Indian mums have an atavistic quality about them” I’d have the offence seeking left up my ass faster than you could say “Vote Balls”.

Diane continues…

Interestingly, until now, it’s the one thing that’s got me the most positive response from black women locally. They would come up to me and shake my hand. Because ultimately in their eyes it’s about doing the right thing for their children. But obviously people from other cultures didn’t see it that way at all.

Obviously not, Diane. Try this for size though, you ludicrous buffoon: This is Britain. We have British culture. Labour’s socialist multi-cultural balkanisation of our society has to stop and it has to stop right now.

BR I’m guessing those black women couldn’t afford to do what you did yet you’re saying they shook your hand?

DA Exactly. Yes. That’s what you and some of my colleagues on the Left would never understand. In the end you’re coming from a culture where whatever you can do for your children you do.

I don’t care if you’re coming from the moon. Britain. British culture. You are insulting people of every origin but your own.

I can see I’ll be patting myself on the back if I can get to the end of this piece without typing something beginning with the words ‘go back’. But, of course, Diane was born in England.

BR But weren’t you effectively letting the other black boys sink while helping your own son to swim and not really caring about what happened to those left behind?

Yes, Diane. Yes you were.

DA No, no, no. It wasn’t about me saying I don’t care what happens to other boys. I’ve done so much work to help those kind of children. You can go online and check.

If this ‘work’ you have been doing had amounted to a hill of beans – you were elected as an MP in 1987, before you even had your son – you wouldn’t have felt the need to send your kid private, so your argument fails again. Best of intentions mean diddly-squat when the outcomes are non-existant.

BR So why did you say at the time that what you did was indefensible?

Yes – why, Diane?

DA Well it was intellectually indefensible. The idea that you have to pay to send your child to school is.

Oops. Straw man.

But when it came to having to make a very difficult decision for my son, I had to choose between him and my career and I chose my son. For me, of West Indian origin, that was a no-brainer.

Well for that, I can respect you, but all the attendant nonsense-speak and bludgeoning us with your race card is just too much.

BR But you’re now standing to be party leader at a time when education is such a massive issue, particularly with two public schoolboys running the country.

If you became leader how could you take Labour’s total belief in state ­education to the country knowing you’ve done something with your own son that you called indefensible?

DA Well it’s no more a problem than it is for Ed Balls who actually went to a public school. I didn’t go.

But you went to Cambridge for ‘free’. And Ed Balls cannot be held accountable for the decisions his parents made. In your case, YOU are the one who made these decisions.

I could go on – you should read the whole howling episode. I’ll just give you this one last choice quote.

BR Currently you’re being described as Labour’s “token” candidate, which, considering you’ve been an MP for well over twice as long as all the other leadership rivals, is an insult on many levels.

DA There’s always this assumption if you’re a black person who’s done something, that someone has given you a bye.

Someone. Did. Give. You. A. Bye.

Jesus wept.

AJ

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