Most sensible folk know there are some bad and violent people who need locked up, but it’s taken until now for the progressive left in British politics to make the leap from being hand wringing softies on criminals to becoming “lock them up and throw away the key” merchants.
There are no complaints from me about putting dangerous thugs behind closed doors where the public are safe from them, but the fact it took riots where police officers were being battered and abused, and private and public property wilfully destroyed, for a change in thinking, says much for the hypocrisy of so many in the Labour party and other supposedly progressive folk.
Once the first brick was thrown and they could attach the label of right wing to those in the vanguard of the riots, those self-styled progressives revealed their true colours.
Lusting for vengeance, they swiftly segued from their previous concern for the incarcerated classes in prison for offences like murder, rape, and robbery, to demanding lengthy sentences for anyone who had so much as nicked a steak bake from the bakers or uttered nasty words on social media.
Suddenly they’ve developed amnesia over the twin pillars of poverty and deprivation, for so long the go-to excuses for middle class left wingers to exonerate the very worst behaviour of the criminal classes; that’s now been jettisoned in favour of knee-jerk demands for swift justice and harsh jail sentences for those labelled as right wingers.
The Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, when he eventually emerged blinking into the sunlight like a released captive, chaired Cobra to work out a strategy to deal with the spiralling violence, while his Home Secretary Yvette Cooper came close to dismissing the idea of due process and independence of the judiciary in promising the courts would issue swift justice for rioters.
Now, in fairness to Starmer, he’s scarcely had time to choose the wallpaper in 10 Downing Street, but the rhetoric from some in his party and others on the progressive left is at complete odds with the noises that they’ve traditionally made when applying kid gloves treatment to violent offenders.
‘Plastic progressives have become illiberal’
The condemnation of the rioters, some of whom have quickly been identified by their previous convictions as habitual ne’er do wells, was echoed in Scotland too where the posturing and double standards of some folk was equally swiftly revealed, as they rapidly changed horses in mid race from the liberal to the illiberal.
Former First Minister Humza Yousaf went into fullblooded authoritarian mode demanding that the army was brought in to deal with rioters.
You might think that Scottish radicals brought up on tales of Churchill sending the troops into George Square in Glasgow to quell working class protests, would be horrified at such a draconian response from a supposed progressive politician, but his autocratic plea appeared to resonate with many plastic progressives.
Remember this was a man who as Justice Minister squandered £6m on mobile phones for prisoners, some of which were used for nefarious purposes such as drug deals and gangland threats to those outside prison walls.
I’ve no time for those who rioted and assaulted and attacked folk on the basis of the colour of their skin, their religion, or the uniforms they wore, but some of us have been consistent in our approach to such criminal behaviour, believing tough policies work.
And, compounding their hypocrisy, the progressives favour early release of some prisoners who’ve committed brutal offences to accommodate those who’ve just committed equally serious crimes.
You couldn’t mark their progressive necks with a blowtorch.
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