Skip to main content

The Harm of Harriet Harman

Harriet Harman is a fairly typical British Labour politician. She comes from a wealthy, even aristocratic, background and was sent to St. Pauls Girls School- a private school- before studying politics at York University and joining a pressure group. She married a Labour activist- Jack Dromey- who she met on the picket line at Grunwick, but has maintained her feminist credentials in small things, such as retaining her maiden name, but betraying her Socialist credentials in large things: by sending her children to grant maintained and grammar schools, while publicly opposing the access to these institutions by others. So far, so unsurprisingly hypocritical.

As a minister she was reliably wrong on most issues: she supported keeping MPs expenses secret, she supported the Iraq war, she believes that undemocratic quotas are the best way to promote women and sexual minorities- as though they should be treated in the same way. All of this nonsense has been promoted with a straight face as a "fairness agenda". She has had her brushes with the law- speeding, and has been associated with questionable financial dealings concerning her bid for the Labour Deputy Leadership. Her husband's stewardship of Labour Party finances as Party Treasurer has also been attacked.

So far, so mediocre and slightly sleazy.

So what is it about this rather foolish, rather arrogant and rather mediocre politician that annoys so very many people in the UK?

Over the past few weeks we have seen here being abusive and disrespectful of other political figures: calling Danny Alexander a "Ginger Rodent" is not exactly the kind of right-on PC that she demands from other people. We have also seen her demonstrating the sense of entitlement and arrogance that should ultimately eliminate Labour as a political force.

By praising foreign people on benefits who send a proportion of their income back to their home countries to support their families as "heroes", she demonstrates a total ignorance of the justified anger of the British people towards a bloated welfare state that can not support this abuse. Benefits are paid by the taxpayer to provide minimum support for the needy in this country. The British tax payer already supports those in need overseas through the international development aid budget. If we are supporting the "third world" through our benefit system too, then sooner or later the system will collapse. Now, don't get me wrong here, I am perfectly happy for people in the UK to support their families overseas- with money they have earned themselves. However it is profoundly unreasonable to expect the British tax payer to be asked to do the same thing. Labour, however, would not allow foreigners who came to the UK irregularly, to work: they insisted that they should take benefits and not join the workforce.

Only a politician who has no understanding about how money is earned and wealth is created could say something so foolish. As usual, in her invincible ignorance and determined arrogance Harriet Harman shows that her view of the state is that it is a giant Santa Claus that can give every good child, and quite a few of the bad ones, a lot of sweeties whether they deserve them or not, or even whether they need them or not.

It is precisely this view of the state that has eroded British competitiveness and undermined fairness. She is not against discrimination at all- in fact she insists on it, provided it suits her social and political agenda. Her shallow vision of feminism was condemned by Erin Pizzey as a "staggering attack on men and their role in modern life".

Relevant Information: this self-regarding, poisonous, mediocrity is the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

Comments

Tim Fenton said…
Who are these "asylum seekers on benefit"?

If you're alluding to the article in yesterday's Mail On Sunday, you will know that not even Paul Dacre's finest used that term, although they did use the word "Immigrant", even though they clearly did not know whether the people concerned were immigrants, or merely people who had relatives living in Africa.

As I've already pointed out, had any of these people put donations into a church collection plate, or otherwise given to charity, the MoS - and you - would not have raised a peep about it. But because they sent money to help relatives living in Africa, the Mos - and you - have gone off the end of the pier.

The people concerned may be working - did you bother to check? So, whether or not they are in receipt of benefits, what is wrong with some of that earned income being sent to help their relatives?

You cite no source for your post, and much of it seems merely to be an exercise in sneering and sniping at Harriet Harman, with whom you clearly have a problem.

The whole post is utterly unworthy of someone who calls themselves "Liberal" and "Democrat". It is far nastier than the MoS article, and another sad example of gratuitous demonising of the least well off - just so you can kick a political opponent.

Is this the level to which Lib Dem supporters have now sunk?
Cicero said…
Well, I might have phrased things a little better, and have edited accordingly. I support the rights of refugees, both political and as it happens economic too. Yet I think the thrust must remain the same: welfare serves a specific and very limited purpose and while I understand that people may wish to help their relatives, I would far rather that they did so as members of the work force- I think it outrageous that people coming to this country are forbidden to work, but where it is the case, then benefits should be emergency money- not, as we have been told by Labour a necessary support for the needy.

You are right I do have a problem with Harman I think she is not only usually wrong, she is extremely obnoxious about insisting her wrong opinions are in fact right.
Dilettante said…
Could you link to Erin Pizzey's views on Harman?
Newmania said…
Well it will probably worry you to learn that I am entirely in sympathy with this post which touches on what a country actually is in a way that most Liberals find difficult. (For reasons that are actually class related. )I had supposed that concepts such as tradition memory allegiance and tribal loyalty even love were as distasteful to you as they are to the usual enlightenment lovin’ rationalist. Who knew .

It is equally unreasonable ,when British people, especially the young , are suffering badly that we are borrowing £15 billion to fling around the world as aid . In fact it is breath-taking that politicians should indulge their egomaniacal hobbies at such vast expense.
There is zero popular support for the whole deluded vainglorious farce so you are still a Liberal at heart . Congrats .
The root cause of the problem is excessive immigration which you support so I am not sure your point is terribly justifiable given the Liberal paradigm of undifferentiated humanity .

PS- Harman .. Just makes me laugh.
Cicero said…
This was the article Erin Pizzey wrote for the Daily Mail, attacking Harman:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1039445/Erin-Pizzey-champion-womens-rights-says-radical-feminist-plans-let-victims-domestic-abuse-away-murder-affront-morality.html

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch