Margaret Thatcher – Three Stops Past Barking

I laughed out loud when I read the other day that 1980s Conservative back-benchers had the nickname ‘Daggers’ for their illustrious leader Maggie, because of Dagenham being three stops past Barking. However, when you take a close look at Thatcher’s front bench you can see the reason why.

Just looking at the above image of Tebbit, Knott, Joseph, Howe, and the odious lady herself. You have to shake your head in disbelief. How could that dubious lot manage to pass themselves off as credible leaders of one of the world’s richest and most powerful countries (at that time)? They shouldn’t even have been allowed out unsupervised.

The contempt that George Orwell harboured for middle-class, bohemian socialists is well known, and God knows what George would have made of the present Labour front bench. But while pseudo socialists are undoubtedly largely contemptible, they are nowhere near as obnoxious as pseudo-Tories like Thatcher and her ilk, and probably the majority of current parliamentary Conservatives.

The fact that anyone of humble birth, and by that I mean anyone outside the upper classes (as Orwell defined them), could aspire to conservatism I find totally beyond reason. But that there are many who do explains why the Tories, generally, are such a contemptible lot. Genuine ‘toffs’ I have no problem with, but oddballs like Thatcher and company in the above image are the worst examples of lowborn Tory. In fact, in analysis, isn’t it a fact that most ‘man in the street’ Conservatives seem a bit odd, or should I say, a bit odious?