The rankly partisan carks of all the Crows are distorted, diminishing echoes of a failing tradition—destroyed as much by Labour as by the Tories. A whole segment of England has been laid waste—with all its family traditions, economic security, local identity and pride, racing pigeons and pints of mild, Low Church respectability, brass bands and hand-sewn union banners that combined the iconography of class and nation. The tough, proud class of Saturday Night, Sunday Morning has become the class of The Royle Family—welfare-dependent and TV-enthralled, living on sink estates beset by crime, with no real hope for the future other than maybe one day being able to leave England for ever.
Faced with this devastation, all the “Awkward Squad” is offering is more of what is already offered by their supposed Labour friends and supposed Tory enemies. Far from helping the workers, too many trade union leaders are instead helping the politicians to export British jobs to the world and to import the world into Britain. But it seems what interests them most of all is helping themselves.
This blog is no longer active as of October 31, 2011
