Dorries And Mensch Workshy Smear Harmony

One might have formed the impression that Tory MP for Mid Bedfordshire (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries and her former back bench colleague Louise Mensch, now representing the distant constituency of Manhattan Upmarket, were staunchly opposed to one another. But on one subject they are united in purpose, determination, and sheer blundering cluelessness.

And that subject is getting all those workshy benefit claimants out there to shape up, ship out and get themselves into work prontissimo. While Ms Mensch is new to this game, the fragrant Nadine has significant previous when it comes to mistakenly claiming that someone is a “scrounger”, whipping up a hate campaign against them, finding herself in the wrong, and not bothering to apologise afterwards.

Back in September 2010, Ms Dorries found that one of her constituents was an enthusiastic user of Twitter, but was not at the time in work. This, she declared, was so bad that the person concerned – one of her own constituents – should be outed, and to no surprise this was then obediently done by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog.

Still unrepentant ... this is from yesterday

Experienced medical practitioner Staines, accompanied by his odious non-doctor tame gofer, the flannelled fool Henry Cole, said that the formidable Ms Humphrey Cushion “claims that she has chronic arthritis but it clearly isn’t affecting her thumbs. If she can operate Twitter there are plenty of jobs she could be doing on a computer”. She had arthritis in both feet, and in her neck. Nice one, Fawkes folks.

Ms Cushion was also a carer – the kind of job the Fawkes rabble would get a chap in to do – who wanted to work, if only she could get the operation that the lengthening waiting list prevented her from having. This was an attack utterly unworthy of a serving politician, but neither Ms Dorries, nor her chosen boot boys, have apologised. So that’s a high bar for Ms Mensch to reach.

But, cometh the hour, cometh the opportunity, as there was a Tory policy to defend, and for Ms Mensch, all Tory policies must be defended to the exclusion of all else – including reality. “Nobody should pay for you. You are capable of working” she told one Tweeter without seeing her case notes, following up “I see you writing on Twitter all day long: ergo, you can do clerical work”.

As has been pointed out to her, some Tweeters are bedridden and often not mobile. For them, this medium is a lifeline, and that they are able to communicate using it does not translate into fitness for work. But Ms Mensch is not for listening, although fortunately she no longer sits in the House of Commons, unlike the still unrepentant Nadine Dorries, populist Tories both. Are all Tories like that, I wonder?

You might wish to speculate thus. I couldn’t possibly comment.