Nige thinks Pochin’s comments were ugly and unpleasant. But he agrees with them | John Crace
It’s the hottest new competition in Westminster,The accolade some MPs will do anything to win,It’s Racist of the Week,To Robert Jenrick’s intense annoyance, the Tory whip Katie Lam won it at a canter last week,Chin up, Honest Bob.
Your time will come again,Though probably not this week,It may only be Monday but the Reform MP Sarah Pochin has already stretched out a commanding lead,It will take an immense effort from someone to knock Nurse Ratched back into second place,Weirdly, it always seems that those people who complain the loudest about political correctness gone mad and how you can’t say anything these days are the ones who seem to find a way to let everyone know how they feel.
It’s almost as though they do protest too much,Poor Sarah,Think how she suffers,Imagine the things she might come up with if only she didn’t have to hold herself back,She is just too good for such a cruel world.
To recap, Nurse Ratched was appearing on TalkTV when a viewer phoned in to complain about the demographics in adverts.This turned out to be a tipping point for Sarah and there was no stopping her.Her whole life had been blighted by having to see so many brown and black faces on TV.It was like a form of torture for her.She couldn’t even bring herself to pause the ads and then fast forward.
Every black face she saw was like a knife to the heart.The number of black and brown faces drove her mad, she said.What Sarah wants is a world of whiteness.Even a Hovis advert is a trigger for her.What’s wrong with Warburtons’ thick white sliced? That’s the proper bread for a traditional English breakfast.
Even our food is now subject to diversity, equity and inclusion laws.At some point over the weekend it was pointed out to Nurse Ratched that what she had said was racist.Sarah was horrified.She had never meant to be discriminatory.She had just phrased her thoughts clumsily.
When she had said that she had had enough of black and brown faces on TV adverts, what she had really meant was that she had had enough of black and brown faces on TV adverts.All of which is immensely troubling to Nigel Farage.Because Nige has always been clear that Reform is no place for racists.He finds it baffling that those people who do have racist views seem to be invariably attracted to his party.He’d like to get rid of them but you can’t give everyone a questionnaire.
And there will always be a few bad apples in any party.There again, the benchmark for racism in Reform may be higher than elsewhere.On Monday, Nige was in London to give a press conference on grooming gangs but the event was largely overshadowed by Pochingate.Would Nige like to condemn his MP? Maybe even suspend the whip? That would have sent out a clear marker that Reform had a zero-tolerance policy on racism.Or maybe not.
When you’ve already lost two MPs inside a year, I guess Farage is in no hurry to lose a third.So Nige chose his words carefully.What Nurse Ratched had said was “ugly and unpleasant”.He had let her know what he thought in no uncertain terms.But on balance, he had decided that what she had said was not intentionally racist.
She was just stating she was driven mad by seeing so many brown and black faces,This was a lower-order offence,One that was, when you came to think of it, not really racist at all,Basically, she had been right all along,There were too many black and brown faces in adverts.
For Nige, this was the sort of thing we all think but just keep to ourselves,If we all happen to be like Sarah,On grooming gangs, Nige had co-opted one of the survivors – Ellie-Ann Reynolds, who had stepped down from the inquiry – to join him on stage,Here was his plan: forget what he had said a few months ago about wanting a national inquiry,Now he had got one, he had come to realise it would take years to report, just as the government had said it would.
He went on to insist the inquiry was a cover-up,Ellie-Ann said some witnesses had been paid off,We never found out who, or by whom,What Nige wanted instead was an inquiry run by a committee of MPs,While the survivors couldn’t trust social workers and the police because they had been let down by them, they could apparently trust MPs.
Even though Ellie-Ann had just said she had previously also been let down by MPs,Then Nige declared he wanted to narrow down the inquiry by widening it to include all 250,000 victims,There was abuse taking place not two miles away from where we were sitting,Grooming gangs were rampant in London, he said,And it was so hard to find these gangs because … He left that sentence hanging.
The implication seemed to be that there were so many Asian men in London, it was hard to pick the guilty from the innocent,In northern towns they are presumably all guilty,It was almost as if Nige was just saying the first thing that came into his head,Heaven forbid,We ended with a question on Prince Andrew.
Now Nige made a plea for clemency.Andrew had had a rough time.Now was not the time to hound him.People should back off.This sounded suspiciously like the two-tier policing he has always condemned.
If you’re posh and white and accused of sex offences then you deserve an even break.Free the Prince Andrew One.A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar.On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back with special guests at another extraordinary year, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally.Book tickets here.
The Bonfire of the Insanities by John Crace (Guardian Faber Publishing, £16.99).To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.Delivery charges may apply.
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