Urgh

I try not to be confrontational. But today I told somebody to fuck off. I told her very loudly and frustratedly. And then I turned off the radio because I couldn't bear hearing her speak any more.

This person was Baroness Warsi.

She was being interviewed on Five Live about the threat of mass strike action over the government's proposed spending cuts. She said the unions were being irresponsible. The interviewer asked why the coalition are bringing in spending cuts that will hit the poor hardest and leave the rich alone. The Baroness dodged the question and started attacking Labour, accusing them of lowering the debate to the level of tribalism. The interviewer countered that perhaps the Tories were the ones guilty of tribalism in that they seem to be picking on the group of people least able to defend themselves. If you listen to the interview (2 hours 6 minutes in), this seemed to me to be the killer blow.

And at that point, some honesty might have been nice. Perhaps the Baroness could have pointed out that her party's ideology is based on protecting wealth for those who have accumulated it, by whatever means. I would have at least respected that on some level. But no. She instead chose to give the story of her background. Apparently she is from Yorkshire. And her dad worked in a mill. Therefore(?!), "I would never want anyone to lose their job if it could be avoided", she said. And then she resumed her theme of not wanting this debate to develop into an "old-fashioned class war".

This is the point at which I swore and switched off . I know spin has been endemic in politics for years and years now, but this was a particularly brazen specimen. On job losses: if it could be avoided. Well, it can be avoided. By doing the very thing (taxing the rich) that the interviewer mentioned in the question. But by placing a gap between the question and the response, especially a gap in which the Baroness gave an (entirely irrelevant and unasked-for) impression of herself as empathetic with the working class, she gave herself the freedom to ignore the question and just continue her tired and flawed argument.

Perhaps spin bothered me less under Labour. Perhaps I just cared less about politics when the (marginally) less right-wing of the two main parties was in power. But if this is how dirty things have become, then I am quite deeply saddened.