"I've never seen anything like it!"

Where was the great outpouring of media indignation when UKIP councillor Tom Bursnall (formerly Chair of the Young Tories) suggested that unemployed people shouldn't be allowed to vote? Does that sound very respectful to you?

Neither is respectful.

The Labour MP shot her party in the foot.
She sounded like some Conservative MPs.

^Perhaps we should all start putting English flags up and completely confound UKIP in their search for potential converts! grin

Perhaps I won't do that, whenim, as an English person living in Wales

I would have expected no better from a conservative politician. nightowl that sounds like a very prejudiced view!

I think very many labour politicians are completely out of touch with what could be termed 'normal life' for many of the UK population. In fact, many politicians of all parties are completely out of touch, that is why Nigel's blokey image (and I think it is a carefully constructed image as are the images of most politicians) has gone down so well because he knows exactly what is worrying many sections of the general public.

Thanks for elucidating Gracesgran. I'm still not sure where anyone said that it is only those who work with their hands that count as workers (or something along those lines). However I was brought up to know that manual work was the least well paid and the least well valued work there was, and that my ticket out of that was education to enable me to work with my brain. It was in that sense that I referred to generic 'white van man' as the descendant of the working class men I knew. Of course, that is a huge generalisation because there is no reason why white van man may not be a highly educated and prosperous business man, but anyway.....

Where was the great outpouring of media indignation when UKIP councillor Tom Bursnall (formerly Chair of the Young Tories) suggested that unemployed people shouldn't be allowed to vote? Does that sound very respectful to you?

Thank you Miceelf for the timely reminder that the Labour Party was "founded to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the just rewards for their labour and the equitable distribution thereof." This, Nightowl is what I was commenting on. Many posts, seem to be saying "hand - backbone of society, brain - never done a days work in their lives".

If those who labour for their bread and yes, sometimes butter and jam, or sadly sometimes for their poverty, cannot hang together then a blatant capital driven economy will thrive.

"Raised on benefits, secondhand clothes and food parcels, Emily Thornberry joined the Labour party at the age of 17 because she believed that “it wasn’t fair that things had been so hard”.

She went on to become a human rights lawyer and in 2005 a member of parliament, when she was elected by a majority of under 500 votes to represent Islington South and Finsbury, a north London constituency with large disparities in wealth which has sometimes been seen as a metaphor for New Labour.

While her mother was a teacher and her father an international lawyer who taught at the London School of Economics, Thornberry has described a far from comfortable childhood after they divorced when she was seven and she and her siblings moved to social housing in Guildford with her mother, who later became a Labour councillor and mayor."

Just for you, Ana, as I know you do not like reading my links.
The relevant bit is in the first paragraph, just in case you cannot be bothered to read further.

POGS Islington is the 8th most deprived area in the country with one of the highest proportion of social tenants and relatively few home owners.

Soontobe

She was there canvassing for Labour on the day of the election.

No Islington is a high end living area.

I think I'm right in saying she moved into her home at about the same time as the Blair's, the same street possibly, just going from memory so I could be wrong.

Is the borough of Islington anything like the borough of Rochester?
Why was she even commenting on Rochester?

I have to say Ed Miliband has risen in my estimation on account of this incident, on the basis that he does indeed seem to 'get it'.

Of course a 'working man' is not just someone who drives a white van Gracesgran. Nor are all working people 'men' or ever have been, but it was the men I was talking about. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make in relation to my post.

As a point of information the Labour was founded to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the just rewards for their labour and the equitable distribution thereof.

Is a "working man(?)" only someone who drives a white van or "the working men(?)" you grew up with nightowl? Surely most people work for a living with only a very small percentage able to live on the returns from capital. There seems to have been at least as many of the people you are suggesting are looked down on by the "middle classes" looking down and casting aspersions on those they see as the "middle classes" and it has got very nasty recently, in tandem, I believe, with the rise of UKIP.

The party of labour is struggling, partly because the class system which helped all the parties out is now very blurred - although it has definitely not disappeared. Perhaps it is the time for more, smaller parties who can be clear in what they stand for. This would only work though, if people accepted that compromises have to be made by parties getting together to have enough power to get anything of what they believe through parliament.

This whole thread is pure irony.

Emily Thornberry had no reason to tweet that photo and caption other than to take the p--s. She thought it amusing and she was caught out. She is not a child, she was the Shadow Attorney General of the Labour Party, the Party of the Working Man.

The stupidity of blaming the right wing press has reared it's head but the fact is it was a backlash on twitter that was picked up by the media and it was all over the t.v 'before the newspapers were even printed for heavens sake. Not that facts matter of course. 'If loosing the arguement blame the Daily Mail or the Sun' and try to deflect the debate.

I feel sorry for Thornberry if after her parents divorced her mother and siblings went to a council house and survived on free school dinners. I am sorry for her as her mother was a teacher and her father had a fairly prestigious career indeed. He was a visiting proffessor at Kings College and he was a UN Assistant Secretary General to NATO so it must be assumed there are issues we don't know about.

Having said that I was brought up in a council house and I don't know what my parents paid for my school dinners I thought they were free as I never took any money to pay for them. Come to think of it I never felt sorry to myself.

I don't find her upbringing is a fact to distance her from being so stupid rather it makes the whole episode worse. It's another own goal for saying 'she should know better then'.

I repeat what Labour MP Chris Bryant said about her resignation during the Rochester and Strood count :-

"The first rule of politics is 'surely you respect' the voter."

"Look, the Labour Party was founded to try and say that everybody is 'EQUAL' in the world and you shouldn't 'SCORN' anybody else. You shouldn't suggest that anybody is any different and you shouldn't 'JUDGE' somebody according to whether they have a flag outside their house.

There have been numerous Labour MP's who understand how this crass tweet causes offence and the potential PR disaster that would follow. As Edward Miliband would say and for once I agree with him "I get it".

Edward Miliband also wrote on this matter:-

"Respect is the basic rule of politics"

If you can't see why this has caused such a furory you never will because the tweet represents your view and thereby lies the difference between the posts. It is what it is.

Oops nightowl

Well said * nightowl*

Who is judging that these people have never done a days work gillybob? You, yourself say that these are people who "... represent the ordinary working people". There is no "claim" about it, they are doing a job and you are making a judgement about whether they are working at it or not. The fact that they are not giving you what you want is nothing to do with whether they are "working" or not.

Your second point is just inverted snobbery. No one can help the situation they are born into. As for accumulating wealth - what do you want? No successful socialists or them to give it all away? You also include the sweeping statement that they haven't "the remotest clue what it is to have a to budget". If that is not dog in the manger I don't know what is and you (or I) can have no idea about their lives other than, it seems in your case, what the Daily Hate tells us.

When I see this sort of post or hear people talk in this way it sounds to me as if the only people the commentators want is politicians made in their own image. I am not sure who made them God or why every person with a different background and life is lesser by comparison to them.

As a lifelong socialist I'm finding myself in a very strange position on this thread. I think it just confirms the fact that there is no socialist political party in this country (no great surprise there).

I was wondering why I feel so strongly about 'white van man's' right to fly any number of flags outside his home even though I wouldn't choose to do so myself. I think it's because white van man is the descendant of the working men I grew up with and had respect for (yes Ed Miliband, respect does matter). I may not have liked some of their ways - hard drinking, chauvinistic - but I hated it then when the middle classes looked down on them and I hate it equally now. You will never win hearts and minds by sneering at the people you purport to represent.

We certainly seem to have a "my views are the only right ones" mentality amongst politicians of all flavours, including certain Labour politicians such as Emily Thornberry who is after all the person who caused all this furore.

I don't care that she's well off - good for her (though she didn't exactly pull herself up by her bootstraps, as others have pointed out) but I do care about her judgmental attitudes to those who don't follow her narrow view of how people should behave. I'm afraid Tony Benn was a marvel petallus, and we will never see the like of him again.

I don't agree with the "if I haven't got it you shouldn't have it" attitude Gracesgran but I cannot take a (so called) "socialist" party seriously who claim to represent the ordinary working people of this country who have
a) Never done a days work in their life.
b) Been born into or have accumulated huge wealth so as not to have even the remotest clue what it is like to have to budget.

It used to be that the Labour Party would mock the Tories for being out of touch "toffs" all privately educated, and hugely wealthy telling us normal working class people how we should live our lives. When in fact they are exactly the same.

I have to agree with you Eloethan. We used to have a fundamental liberalism (with a small "l") in this country which would accept that you are different to me in some ways but that's OK.

We now seem to have a "my views are the only right one's" fundamentalism which means that we can be castigate people for what they think because a photo is tweeted with a simple title, and many, many right wingers including many UKIP foot soldiers - rather than PR savvy leaders - are telling us that the only right way to think is their way.

You only have to read the Daily Mail article that gillybob flagged up to see the "I hate you for being different" mentality.

I do think the Labour party should stop apologising. If you belong to a party which believes in equal opportunity and being able to achieve through your own efforts some people will actually do that and surely it is a good thing that they then stay in a party which wants this for more people.

There is a really dog in the manger attitude which thinks saying that "I haven't got it so you shouldn't have it" is political thinking.

Some politicians manage. Tony Benn was from a very privileged background but really cared about the disadvantaged.

I don't imagine he ever sneered at the non-u goings on of the 'lower orders'.

It seems that left wing politicians are always in the wrong - if they are well off they are branded "champagne socialists" and hypocrites, and if they have more modest backgrounds and means they are accused of being motivated by the "politics of envy"

Emily Thornberry tweeted a photo with the caption "image from Rochester". I don't see why that makes her a "bad apple" but, of course, if the right wing press gets its teeth into someone everybody else has to follow suit - including, stupidly, Ed Miliband. I expect the gentleman whose house it was has been suitably compensated as he apparently entered into an exclusive deal with the Sun.

She just tweeted a photograph, with the caption "image from Rochester". Apparently, once the Sun got wind of this "story", they made an exclusive deal with the gentleman involved - who suddenly became very indignant about the whole thing.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2845737/The-Thornberry-Set-million-pound-homes-Ed-s-elite-live-cheek-jowl-leafy-north-London.html#email

Just about sums the hypocrites up !