Tories Shoot Their Own Culture War Fox

It has become ever clearer in the past days and weeks not only that the Tories will go in to the next General Election campaign led by alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, but that they are so desperate that their campaign will consist even more than usual of smearing the opposition in order to deflect from their own shortcomings.

Jamie Wallis MP

So we are unlikely to be regaled by tales of how wonderful Brexit has been - because it hasn’t - and there will be little talk of the renewed prosperity Bozo and his coterie of ineptitude have bestowed upon us - because, for 99% of the population, there hasn’t been any. Instead, team Tory is retreating to its culture war bunker.

And that was intended to mean smearing trans people. For those out there on the right, there always has to be an other to demonise, and here the media class, to their shame, has uncritically taken the Tory talking points and run with them. Anyone from Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens is now routinely confronted with the same question: can a woman have a penis? Can you define a woman? What’s all this gender neutral toilets business?

Trans people are linked to sexual assaults; thus those on the right can claim they’re only wanting to keep women safe. Trans people are the new demons; Lucy Meadows has been conveniently forgotten, especially by our free and fearless press. The Trans Media Watch strapline “Accuracy … Dignity … Respect” remains ignored.

So it was that Bozo stood before a gathering of his MPs at the Park Plaza hotel earlier this week and declared “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, or as Keir Starmer would put it, people who are assigned female or male at birth”. Laugh? I thought I’d never start. But then, into this world of easy Labour bashing, came Jamie Wallis - a Tory MP.

Wallis, who represents Bridgend, put out a statement yesterday where he told “I’m trans. Or to be more accurate, I want to be. I’ve been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and I’ve felt this way since I was a very young child. I had no intention of ever sharing this with you. I always imagined I would leave politics well before I ever said this out loud”.

Cue laying of burning rubber as Bozo executed a 180 degree U-Turn in no style at all: “Sharing this very intimate story would have taken an immense amount of courage. Thank you [Jamie Wallis MP] for your bravery, which will undoubtedly support others. The Conservative Party I lead will always give you, and everyone else, the love and support you need to be yourself”. Which puts his talking points in a very difficult position.

Trans bashing while your party includes the first openly trans MP is not the cleverest of looks. It won’t deflect from Bozo’s lying, especially on Partygate and Russian influence. It won’t make all those families of Covid victims, who stood stoically outside the Park Plaza hotel as Tory MPs averted their gaze from yet another inconvenient manifestation of reality, vanish into the night. It won’t, whisper it quietly, last for many more news cycles.

So there will have to be more cheap and nasty culture war smears to dream up, more ministers shouting the odds about “Woke”, when they don’t even know what the word means, more pretending that poverty either doesn’t really exist, or that the EU done it.

But it might alert broadcasters to the next Tory con. They really have shot their own fox.

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