Tory MPs
beware: if you whip up an angry mob, they may end up angry with you
Marina Hyde
Dominic
Cummings wants a ‘people v parliament’ election. But what happens afterwards?
You, then, are ‘parliament’
@MarinaHyde
Fri 27 Sep
2019 17.45 BSTLast modified on Fri 27 Sep 2019 21.45 BST
Drawn
increasingly into darkness and rage, the UK government functions as a
promotional tie-in for the controversial Joker movie. Out next week, kids.
Think of it as a Tory conference chaser. For now, it’s great to see everyone’s
favourite political incel break cover, as Dominic Cummings makes a series of
appearances among the chaos to announce: “We are enjoying this.” Such a
self-styled antihero. He used to think what happened to his Brexit was a
tragedy, but now he knows it’s a comedy.
The latest
clip ends with Cummings blowing a kiss to the news cameras, a reminder that
politics allows some people to play out a wishful version of themselves that
would be laughed out of town anywhere normal. In any sane arena, Dominic is the
answer to the inquiry: “What would happen if you shaved Quentin Tarantino’s
head but kept everything else much the same?”
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this line
“the revolution devours its children”? That’s you, babe.
He is a
political geek. As one of his friends told Tim Shipman for his book All Out
War: “Dom watched [Bill Clinton campaign documentary] The War Room, I would
guess, 40 to 50 times. He would sing the theme music. The missing Dom years
were basically spent in a bunker under the Pennines watching The War Room on
repeat.” Yet here he is blowing kisses, giving us his hot movie villain. You
can stand down, Hollywood – the spad in the gilet’s got this covered.
It is
thanks to Cummings that the Palace of Westminster this week resembled a sort of
meth-addled Hogwarts, and yet Conservative MPs cling to him even though they
know he hates them. More on these imbecile henchmen later. Only a political
incel could rage in entitlement against “Project Fear”, yet orchestrate “senior
allies of Boris Johnson” – including a cabinet minister – to inform Friday’s
Times that there would be a “violent, popular uprising” if they don’t do what
he wants. Thank you, Anonymous Secretary of State, for treating public life
like an angry online forum. Save it for your 10-page manifesto you mail to the
newsrooms.
Of course,
the thing about incels (metaphorical and otherwise) is that while a huge part
of their self-mythology is claiming they represent the unheard, the reality is
that people really listen to their shit. Consider the case of the man accused
of driving a van into pedestrians in Toronto last year, killing 10 people, who
warned in a police video (released on Friday) that he’d start an incel uprising
with it all. Nine days – nine days! – after that mass murder, I read an
extremely serious column in the New York Times that used the event to discuss
the “redistribution of sex”. As its author put it: “Sometimes the extremists
and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and
moderate and sane.”
Well, it
was an admiring “wow” from me. Men’s rights is wild. These guys really get
stuff done. Women have been fannying about for decades asking peacefully for
their rights, and we still can’t be in charge of our own bodies. Ten people get
killed, and before the fortnight’s out there’s a chinstroker in the world’s
leading liberal newspaper wondering how we can address the needs and concerns
of the suspect.
Like
Cummings, the “big thinkers” who pander to these instincts are never going to
be the ones getting hurt. Just as the guy who wrote that New York Times op-ed
truly has my blessing to go and wank off whatever inadequates he likes as a
public service to stop male terrorism or something, I suspect he thinks it’s a
job for ladies. Not his problem. He’s thunked the thinkpiece, and it’s up to
the patsies to enact it.
There is so
much of this to Cummings’ “people vs parliament” brand of politics, but the patsies
– the Tory MPs – are yet to catch on. While most women could read that New York
Times column and work out what it basically meant for them, a lot of
Conservative MPs are dutifully spouting Cummings’ lines, but don’t yet seem to
have worked out where they leave them.
But listen,
Tory mooks – I’m here to help. While you’re getting a tiki torch and standing a
post, let me tell you what a “people vs parliament” election ultimately means
for you. First, if you whip up an angry mob, why do you assume they won’t end
up angry with you? Do you think the mob is going to come upon an MP and go,
“Wait, wait – this is so-and-so. He voted for Meaningful Votes 2 and 3, so we
should, you know, definitely not put our pitchforks up his arse”? Eventually,
you’re going to get a pitchfork up your arse either way.
To adapt
that phrase of the alt-right to whom you tack closer every day: mobs don’t care
about your feelings. If I had to come up with an adjective to help you
understand mobs, it would probably be mob-like. Very mobby. Mobtastic. If you
go to the country in a people v parliament election, you may indeed get elected
and be part of a triumphant Tory majority. But when you have been elected, and
when you’ve “got Brexit done” – which is to say, when you’ve either taken the
UK off the no-deal cliff, or opened up the next however many painful years of
trade negotiations fuckery-pokery, which is never going to solve the problems
it is magically supposed to – you, then, are “parliament”.
The even
angrier people are then versus YOU. That’s when they come for you, because you
asked them to. You invited them in. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this line
“the revolution devours its children”? That’s you, babe. Second, I know you’ve
already only read about one war, but bad news: it’s the wrong war. You need the
first world war, not the second. By way of a crash course of what Dom’s got
planned for you, take the line in Blackadder, where the general brays to the
guys he’s sending over the top: “We’ll be right behind you!” and Blackadder
mutters: “About 35 miles behind you.” You’re the cannon fodder, you’re the
Twenty Minuters. But, hey – enjoy it out there.
Third, as
is blindingly obvious to everyone else, Cummings is one of those masterminds
who hates his henchmen. He hates the Conservative party. He believes he’s surrounded
by idiots. Again: that’s you, babe.
What’s
amazing, given he’s written all of this stuff down, and at length, is the
selective deafness of the Tories going along with it. They hear the stuff Dom
is saying about things being swept away. But they don’t hear the bits that will
eventually mean them.
Consider
the irony of the European Research Group currently obeying a man who described
them as a “narcissist-delusional subset”, adding: “You should be treated like a
metastasising tumour and excised from the UK body politic.” It’s not a hugely
opaque statement.
More
moderate Conservatives should realise where they’re travelling with this stuff.
Some people just want to watch your bit of the world burn. You bow to them at
your peril – and ours.
• Marina
Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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