Polly’s Privileged Life of Struggle

Polly Toynbee laments how her privileged background left her without redemption…

“…to live a well-heeled life on the left is to live with inevitable hypocrisy and painful self-awareness, with good intentions always destined to fall short of ideals, social concern never enough, struggling to be good but inevitably never good enough. I hunted hard for any redeeming twig of a working-class branch of my family tree, without success. Confessing a background of privilege comes hard to the likes of us, who can claim no “merit”, no handy pulling-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps rugged path to our good professional jobs as writers, academics and teachers, set on our lucky way at a young age.”

mdi-timer 22 May 2023 @ 15:03 22 May 2023 @ 15:03 mdi-twitter mdi-facebook mdi-whatsapp mdi-telegram mdi-linkedin mdi-email mdi-comment View Comments
Pundits’ Patronising Takes on Truss

Hardline centrist pundits who consider themselves to be homme sérieux have wasted no time in rushing to judgement on Liz Truss’s character and prospects:

  • Failed stockbroker and former Observer editor Will Hutton set the tone when he lamented that “Truss prepares to form a cabinet populated by misfits, failures, ideologues, third raters and opportunists to manage one of the greatest economic and social emergencies since 1945. A titanic constitutional and democratic failure.”
  • Anti-Brexit obssessive Ian Dunt tweeted “Her brain is made of rusty crankshafts and cobwebs and it’s going to doom us all.”
  • Part-time amateur psychiatrist and columnist Matthew Parris opined that “Liz Truss is a planet-sized mass of overconfidence and ambition teetering upon a pinhead of a political brain. It must all come crashing down. She’s crackers. It isn’t going to work.”
  • Edward Luce, the FT’s associate tweeted his character analysis “Liz Truss is a charlatan who has bullshitted her way to Britain’s top job.”

“No vision, no charisma, no real plan: Labour has nothing to fear from Liz Truss” is the headline on Polly Toynbee’s article that will no doubt set the tone for many Guardian stories to come.

As Allister Heath pointed out this morning:

“It is astonishing that pundits with no understanding of economics dismiss the Prime Minister’s ability in this area: she actually worked as an economist for Shell (ideal in the current climate) and as an economic director for Cable and Wireless. The first accountant ever in No 10 – she holds the qualification from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants – she is more financially literate and comfortable with complex policy matters than almost all of those who patronise her. The fact that she is reflexively written off as lightweight, a dilettante even, is more a reflection of the bizarrely misogynistic and classist minds of some of her more extreme critics than of any objective reality.”

Britain faces challenging economic times, in Liz Truss we have someone far better qualified to address the nation’s troubles than are her opponents. Her enemies are likely to find out, not for the first time, they underestimated her.

mdi-timer 8 September 2022 @ 15:45 8 Sep 2022 @ 15:45 mdi-twitter mdi-facebook mdi-whatsapp mdi-telegram mdi-linkedin mdi-email mdi-comment View Comments
Remainers Launch Tasteless ‘Deatherendum’ Site

Fanatical Remainers have launched a tasteless website predicting the result of a referendum vote today based on deaths of Leave voting older people. The counter predicts that over a million young people who have turned 18 since 2016 would vote remain, and says 800,000 leave voting older people have died. Their site assumes not one remain person has changed their mind…

This isn’t just a feature of the fringes of the FBPE movement. This is one of their mainstream arguments. Even today Polly Toynbee has been thoroughly ratio’d on Twitter for her crass suggestion that “the will of dead [is] ruling over the will of the young.”

Also this week, has-been singer and People’s Vote campaigner ‘Jamelia’ took to the airwaves to argue that there should be a maximum voting age, preventing older people for voting, because “I don’t think it’s fair that you have a vote when you’re not going to experience the consequences of that vote.” Presumably she thinks the same of the disabled and terminally ill..?

mdi-timer 17 January 2019 @ 14:24 17 Jan 2019 @ 14:24 mdi-twitter mdi-facebook mdi-whatsapp mdi-telegram mdi-linkedin mdi-email mdi-comment View Comments
Toynbee: No More Referendums… Except This One

The Guardian’s second referendum supporting Polly Toynbee got into a sticky situation on Politics Live when Andrew Neil revealed her own words from just last year “never try another referendum.”

Her response? “Well, except possibly this one.”

Inspired.

mdi-timer 24 October 2018 @ 12:01 24 Oct 2018 @ 12:01 mdi-twitter mdi-facebook mdi-whatsapp mdi-telegram mdi-linkedin mdi-email mdi-comment View Comments
Polly Toynbee: Sinn Fein Can Save Britain

Hot take of the day: Polly wants Sinn Fein MPs to take the oath of allegiance and block Brexit…

mdi-timer 1 March 2018 @ 15:55 1 Mar 2018 @ 15:55 mdi-twitter mdi-facebook mdi-whatsapp mdi-telegram mdi-linkedin mdi-email mdi-comment View Comments
Fraser Burns Polly

Zinger from Fraser Nelson as Polly Toynbee went after Toby Young’s record on free schools:

Polly: “He wanted to create a school for his kids.”

Fraser: “Yes, it’s better than sending them private like some columnists I could mention.”

Remember Polly sent two of her children private. Zing…

mdi-timer 7 January 2018 @ 10:27 7 Jan 2018 @ 10:27 mdi-twitter mdi-facebook mdi-whatsapp mdi-telegram mdi-linkedin mdi-email mdi-comment View Comments
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