I’m pretty sure that the best moment of Ed Miliband’s election actually came shortly after he resigned, when he turned up at the Cenotaph to take part in the VE Day ceremony.
Here was a man who had just seen his career destroyed, a man who probably hadn’t slept for two days, and yet he still managed to put on a clean suit and make peace with his political enemy to pay tribute to the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives in the Second World War. The Sun called this moment "awkward", but I actually thought it was pretty awesome, a sign of all that is great about Britain and its traditions. It was just a shame that so many other members of the Left didn’t share his dignity in defeat.
Less than 24 hours later, anti-Tory protestors had desecrated the Women of World War Two memorial on Whitehall. “F*** Tory Scum” was the charming note left in red graffiti. Laurie Penny, a darling of the Left, tweeted that she didn’t have a problem with the vandalism – she argued that the real vandals were sitting in Downing Street, breaking up the welfare state.
Elsewhere on social media, Labour supporters spent much of Friday laying in to anyone who had voted Conservative. “Who are these ***** who voted Tory?” wrote one friend on Facebook. “To the selfish morons who voted for Cameron et al: I hope you are proud of yourselves,” wrote another. “I hope you enjoy your slightly lower taxes, you shameless, shameless human beings.”
Meanwhile, at the Baftas, a series of stinking rich actors in expensive frocks and suits lamented the return of the Tories before heading off to drink champagne at a lavish after party. And speaking of champagne, a picture of a man delivering a zillion crates of Moet to number 11 Downing Street started to go viral. “Tory austerity in all its glory” was the gist of the accompanying commentary.
Except the picture was taken in 2004, and the champagne was being delivered to Gordon Brown (anyone who has been to Downing Street in the last five years knows full well that they’re only allowed to serve wine that tastes like cat’s urine).
But the keyboard warriors didn’t have time to answer charges of hypocrisy. They were too busy bashing out angry tweets about the fact that only 37 per cent voted Tory, that a different voting system is needed – perhaps something similar to the one in place in, say, North Korea, that would only allow the British public to take part in the ballot if they happen to be left of centre.
Of course, proportional representation would still have given us a Tory government – just one in coalition with Ukip. Is that what the people marching on Westminster want?
And do they not remember the referendum for an alternative vote system four years ago, the one that the British public rejected out of hand? Have they forgotten the Labour victory of 2005, when the party only got 36 per cent of the vote? Where were the angry placards then? Where were the marches and protests and furious online campaigns for electoral reform? I’m guessing they were all buried under a massive pile of self-righteousness.
This caterwauling about the process being undemocratic is breathtaking in its glibness; it is the kind of thing that would get a politician lynched (and how unusual that the politicians have been more honourable in defeat than many of their supporters). Because the really undemocratic thing here is the process of trying to bully and silence people who happen to have opinions that differ from yours. It is screaming and shouting that everyone should use their democratic right to vote, and then boohooing when they use their democratic right to vote for a party you don’t happen to like.
I don’t think it is Tory voters who should feel shy and ashamed – it is Labour voters, and I write that as one of them. (Please don’t think badly of me; we have a very good Labour MP where I live in south London.)
Writing off 11.3 million people as nothing more than Tory scum is both insulting and arrogant. But then perhaps it is merely a symptom of the blinkers that social media has put on us.
When you live your life on Twitter and Facebook, and are only friends with like minded people on Twitter and Facebook, you are not living in the real world. You are living in a narcissistic echo chamber. No wonder it has come as such a surprise to so many that not everyone shares the same world view.
There is something profoundly cruel about vilifying a person for their democratic choices. When normal people become targets instead of politicians, something has gone very wrong. This then is the real politics of fear and hatred. It is espoused not by the Right, but the Left. And the people who are going to make the next five years truly unbearable are not the ones who make up the democratically elected government, but the ones who desecrate war memorials and spit bile at anyone who dares to think differently from them.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11597436/Stop-your-whinging-why-the-Left-are-such-bad-losers.htmlPutting this here because, although it is UK centric, the observations are universal.
