Don’t Menshn Refugees

Yesterday showed once again that the combination of rank ignorance, self-importance and residing thousands of miles away in over-comfortable Manhattan exile has conspired to show (thankfully) former Tory MP Louise Mensch to be not merely appallingly out of touch, but downright intolerant with it, as she tackled a range of subjects from the 2003 Iraq war to the Syrian refugee crisis (and, predictably, failed to connect the two).

(c) Doc Hackenbush 2014

She gets off to a bad start by responding to Tony Blair’s assertion that the UK was fed duff intelligence in the run-up to the 2003 conflict by scoffing “Woah. You better be able to back that up, buddy. Because blaming our spies, who can’t stick up for themselves, is the lowest of the low”. It has bugger all to do with “our spies”. Most of the rubbish came from Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. This is well known (except to Ms Mensch).

But the truly distasteful stuff comes when she whines about having to go to the theatre (or perhaps that should be theater, given her current residence Stateside). These actors - they should stick to the script, says Ms Mensch. “PITY the poor audience trapped in the cheap seats at Benedict Cumberbatch’s sold-out Hamlet. ‘To flee, or not to flee’ – that was the question, as the star subjected his captive audience to a barking-mad rant about Syrian illegal immigrants”. Er, Syrian WHAT?

“He says ‘refugees’. I say illegal immigrants and their dangerously trafficked children. Has this overpaid luvvie got a migrant living in his house? No? Well, shut up then”. Ms Mensch does have a fixation with “trafficking”, a term she used extensively - and wrongly - when ranting about Edward Snowden and his trove of information. She is also plain flat wrong, and distastefully so, about Syrian refugees.

Leaving aside the tired canard about only being able to talk about refugees if you are prepared to share your house with them, there is, in reality, no such thing as an illegal refugee. The idea that a Government can pass a law and Johnny Foreigner then has to remain in his own country is not credible - especially when everyone from Bashar al-Assad to ISIS to the Russians are bombing the crap out of the place.

Millions of Syrians have been displaced from their country by the constant fighting. Many face a desperate winter in refugee camps. But Ms Mensch isn’t interested: “I go to a lot of plays because my husband loves them … all too often after the curtain call the stars will 'regale' us with their thoughts on the issue of the day … Then too often there is an endless charity appeal that can take upwards of 20 minutes”.

Oh, the suffering! And there’s more: “I’ve been sitting down for two hours in a cramped red velvet seat, I want the loo and my posterior is aching”. Good to see that she doesn’t just give others a pain in the arse, then. But the lack of self-awareness is staggering: refugees don’t get expensive theatre visits. They don’t get velvet seats. They don’t even get toilet breaks. They are lucky to get away with their lives.

It’s sad to see that Louise Mensch just doesn’t care. But then, she is a true Conservative.