RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Politicians should stop exploiting grieving mums for cheap photo-ops
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Politicians should stop exploiting grieving mums for cheap photo-ops
Back in the 1980s, then PM Margaret Thatcher made a habit of visiting the hospital bedsides of victims of everything from motorway pile-ups to IRA bombings.
Her intention was to show sympathy for their suffering and express support for the emergency services.
That it demonstrated the compassionate side of a formidable female politician derided by many for the harsher effects of her economic policies formed no part of the calculation, heaven forfend. Or so her apologists insisted.
Naturally, Thatcher’s opponents cast doubt on her motives, accusing her of exploiting these unfortunate folk for political advantage. Even some of the injured felt they were being used.
In response, the satirical magazine Private Eye produced a ‘Thatch Card’ which could be carried in your wallet and handed to the hospital authorities on admission, should you ever have the misfortune to be blown up by terrorists or seriously injured in a multiple car crash.
Rishi Sunak with Olivia Pratt Korbel’s mother Cheryl. Politicians are expected to go into full-on ‘I feel your pain’ mode in response to every random tragedy, writes RICHARD LITTLEJOHN
It read: ‘In the event of an accident, the holder of this card wishes it to be known that he/she does not wish to be visited by Mrs Thatcher under any circumstances whatsoever.’
Even many of her ardent supporters were disquieted by her somewhat stiff bedside manner, which they feared could trigger a relapse in some of the survivors. They felt the humanitarian glad-handing was best left to a member of the Royal Family, preferably the Queen.
It’s a view I shared at the time. And still do. If you’re lying in intensive care, swaddled in bandages like an Egyptian mummy, with your neck in a brace and wired up to an intravenous drip, the last thing you want to see is a politician, with full entourage and a camera crew in tow, bearing down on you like Sir Lancelot Spratt in the Doctor films.
Sadly, since then the exploitation of other people’s misery for political gain has got, if anything, even worse. In these post-death-of-Lady-Di days, emoting publicly has become compulsory. Politicians are expected to go into full-on ‘I feel your pain’ mode in response to every random tragedy. Look how Theresa May was monstered for not racing to the scene of the Grenfell Tower fire to ‘comfort’ local residents.
There have been a couple of glaring examples this week. Yesterday, we were treated to pictures of Rishi Sunak hugging the mother of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, who was killed in a gangland shooting in Liverpool.
Her murderer, Thomas Cashman, was given a 42-year jail sentence, but refused to stand in the dock for sentencing. Olivia’s mum, Cheryl Korbel, has been campaigning to force convicted killers to face the families of their victims in court once the verdict is in.
So arguably it was appropriate that the PM might include her in his announcement that the law is to be changed to compel the guilty to hear their sentence handed down in person.
But was the hugging really necessary? At least Rishi didn’t copy the Spanish football president and give her a kiss on the lips.
Would he have acted so decisively had there not been such an outcry over the nurse Lucy Letby, who murdered seven babies, refusing to attend court to hear her sentence?
Rishi Sunak hugging Cheryl Korbel, the mother of nine-year-old Olivia who was shot in her home last year
As it is, the new law will apply solely to those convicted of crimes carrying a life sentence. And the only sanction they will face if they refuse is an extra two years tacked on to the end of their sentence — which if they’re doing life anyway is neither here nor there.
Can you really see prisoners being dragged screaming and kicking into the dock to hear their sentence? Me neither.
Just wait until the yuman rites gang start howling and running to a sympathetic European judge to get the law overturned.
This latest initiative may turn out to be as effective as some of Rishi’s other promises, such as stopping the boats and slashing NHS waiting lists. Elsewhere, in an especially cynical stunt, London mayor Genghis Khan wheeled out the mother of a child who died of asthma to reinforce his deceitful, anti-democratic imposition of the hated Ulez charge on Outer London.
Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s nine-year-old daughter Ella was the first person to have air pollution listed by a coroner as a contributory cause of her death.
Ella, who lived near London’s South Circular Road, had been admitted to hospital 27 times before she suffered her fatal attack in 2013. Her mother has been campaigning for cleaner air ever since, but even she voiced reservations about the impact of Ulez on poorer Londoners who can’t afford Khan’s £12.50-a-day charge. She certainly conducted herself with more honesty and decency than the mayor himself.
Genghis has seized upon Ella’s tragic death to justify his wholly misleading claim that 4,000 people in Outer London die prematurely from air pollution. This figure is based on a 2019 study by Imperial College, which has received £891,000 from the mayor’s office and has come under pressure from one of his deputies to dress up the evidence to exaggerate the effects of exhaust emissions.
The ‘independent’ academic chosen to review the study turns out to be an environmental activist who writes The Guardian’s Pollution Watch column. You couldn’t, etc. Whenever Khan is challenged, he resorts to shroud waving, clearly hoping that by citing Ella’s death and repeating the spurious claim thousands will die before their time, the widespread opposition to Ulez extension can be crushed.
Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah pursues an honourable campaign from the purest and most understandable of motives.
But the same can’t be said of that two-bob chancer Khan.
His shameless exploitation of Ella’s death and her mother’s genuine grief to justify his despised money-grabbing racket is deplorable.
Expropriating human misery for the sake of a cheap photo-op or to enforce a wildly unpopular policy is a disgrace, from whichever side of the aisle it comes.
Mrs Thatcher may have visited the victims of motorway crashes and IRA bombs in hospital, but somehow I can’t ever imagine her stooping so low as hugging bereaved mothers or co-opting dead children for personal political gain.
Khan’s shameless exploitation of Ella’s death and her mother Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s (pictured) genuine grief to justify his despised money-grabbing racket is deplorable
Lady Victoria Hervey has been defending her former boyfriend Prince Andrew’s notoriously rude manners, Ephraim Hardcastle reports. ‘I think it’s to do with the military, he’s very abrupt.’
I wonder if this extends to his approach to romance. When I read the story I thought of another ex-military character, Mr Mackay, in Porridge, who served in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders before joining Slade prison. Who can forget Fletch teasing him about his love-making technique?
‘Stand by your bed. Wait for it, wait for it . . . two, three . . . knickers DOWN!’
First it was the NHS, now it’s the turn of the fire service to obsess over pronouns. Quite why anyone would worry about being misgendered when they’re being rescued from a blazing building is beyond me.
But Kent Fire and Rescue chiefs are insisting on officers using gender-neutral language during emergency callouts. Out go ‘he and she’, in comes ‘they’. The modern fire service is committed to ‘embracing diversity’.
At this rate, even the Trumpton Fire Brigade will be getting a woke makeover . . .
Pru, Pru, Barbie McGrew, Cuthbert, Izzard, Grubb.
A Scottish joiner who Tasered his girlfriend of seven years because she wouldn’t get out of bed the morning after a heavy drinking session has been jailed for 22 months.
Kenneth Donald, from Stirling, told Stephanie Patton: ‘Get up or I’ll Taser ye,’ before zapping her with an electric stun gun.
Who said romance is dead?
References
- ^ Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk)