Calling names

"Left-wing economic establishment" now, is it?

Yes, Liz Truss is BACK baby, and absolutely none of it was her fault, as it turns out. The fever dream that was her premiership, with mortgage rates soaring, markets crashing and billions wiped off pension funds was nowt to do with her. Rather, it was that her policies were thwarted by the *checks notes* "Left-wing economic establishment."

Leaving aside the obvious jokes about the bonds markets being hotbeds of Marxism, Our Liz's spectacular re-engagement with politics is an absolutely prime example of one of the few things this Government's ever been any good at, to whit, calling people names.

If you can remember far enough back, I think it was George Osborne that started it, when he attempted to demonise everyone on benefits as "shirkers". It didn't really stick, largely because it sounded like something out of a minor Dickens novel.

Big Tegsy May had more luck with "Citizens of Nowhere", her rather dog-whistling slogan designed rather successfully to deepen the Brexit divisions which have riven our country these last six years (is that all? Feels like millenia). "Citizens of nowhere" became of a piece with "Liberal metropolitan elite", all labels intended to rile the sort of Brexit voter that refers with a growl to "that London". The cynicism of this ploy, and the rather patronising assumption that no-one outside the capital is capable of ordering a flat white, worked distressingly well. Even more ugly was its cousin "North London Liberal Elite" which basically meant: Jews (though no one would admit to that).

By now, they fully had the bit between their teeth. May begat Johnson, who is never shy of a neologism or two, but under his administration it was the thrusting young pillock, Suella Braverman, who most assiduously pursued name-calling. Always fond of chucking the word woke around, she finally reached her apotheosis after Johnson was defenestrated with the mighty "Guardian-reading, Tofu-Munching Wokerati" and was then promptly sacked. I mean, how could you top that? At least she'd also had the opportunity to repeatedly name the enemies of Truss as "The Anti-Growth Coalition" before she was dumped, but that one never really stuck, after all, by crashing the economy, it was fairly obvious that Truss and Kwarteng had done more to destroy growth in the British economy than any number of Guardian-reading tofu-munchers.

The purpose of all this tiresome name-calling, of course, is to sow division, by attaching a label to something, one can classify it, and if it's not "us", then it must be "them." And "they" be they "loony-left", or "woke", or "metropolitan elites" are to be feared and hated, electorally speaking.

There is, however, an even darker side to these rhetorical tricks, and the upshot could be witnessed in Knowsley last night, as a mob gathered outside a hotel housing asylum seekers and rioted. All the insults I've detailed above have mostly been used in the internecine warfare of British party politics, and are also, for want of a better word, lame; where name calling turns even more rancid is when it's deployed against actual others, to wit, those coming here fleeing persecution, war, whatever it is that motivates them to try to make it to Britain for a better life (which does sound like a bit of a hollow joke at the moment, but do bear in mind that however much of a mess this country currently is, it's still a sight more stable than, say, Afghanistan).

The name-calling directed against asylum seekers is of a different order of seriousness altogether, and the Home Secretary is particularly culpable in this regard. It's an old, old trick, get a group of people to blame for people's lives being bad and hope that no one spots that it's actually you that's been in charge for the last 13 years. It worked with the EU, then Brexit turned out to be a disaster and we needed a new scapegoat. People in little boats were perfect. Call them an "invasion", call them a "swarm", deny all knowledge when violence is visited upon them.

Language is important, and how people are labelled is important. Note the regular usage of "illegal" ahead of "asylum-seeker" even though there is nothing illegal about seeking asylum. It is name-calling of a different order. What was intended to be a fairly cynical, but relatively light -hearted blog about the return of Truss (I started it last week, but I've been a bit busy) has been recast in the light of a burning police van. Calling people names has real-world consequences. It's time they stopped.