Story: Jacob Rees-Mogg says the victims of Grenfell lacked common sense.
Reasonable take: The fact that people like Jacob Rees-Mogg are anywhere near a government meant to look after the people of Britain is astonishing.
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Brain rot: Actually the victims of Grenfell died because they were stupid, and they were stupid because they were poor – Tory MP Andrew Bridgen.
When Etonian Slenderman Jacob Rees-Mogg spoke to LBC’s Nick Ferrari on Monday, he ghoulishly stated the “real tragedy” of Grenfell was that the victims lacked the “common sense” to ignore fire brigade instructions to stay in the building and escape. Which isn’t so much a “bad opinion” as it is another reiteration of Tory MPs apparent hatred of working class people. He also went on to claim that if he found himself in Grenfell Tower, he’d have survived – presumably because of his innate intelligence as a social better.
This glimmer of insight into the mind of Rees-Mogg displayed with clarity how Government ministers don’t actually recoil in horror at the failings that lead to tragedies like Grenfell. They merely get frustrated that the dumb, scrabbling povs in their supermarket tunics die and have the temerity to make them look bad.
Unsurprisingly, shortly after this shambles, Rees-Mogg was forced to issue a “profound apology”, which BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg wasted no time excusing his comments as a mere “gaffe” and dubbed his back-peddling as “one of the quickest apologies in political history”.
A “gaffe” is Scott Carson fumbling a daisy cutter into his own net on Danny Dyer’s Football Foul-Ups, not this smarmy toff bastard feeling obliged to “remind us” that the victims at Grenfell didn’t die because of systemic failings of the state, but because they were poor. I’m sceptical that Rees-Mogg would have the same energy to question the survival instincts of his buddies in finance at the World Trade Centre. “Terrible gaffe from Tony Blair with the Iraq War!”
Amazingly, the story doesn’t end there. In an attempt at damage control, the Tories deployed fellow MP Andrew Bridgen as the fixer to quell yet another self-made controversy, which ended up being the equivalent of ‘The Wolf’ in Pulp Fiction being replaced with an EDL Mr. Blobby.
As BBC’s Evan Davis explained to Bridgen that people’s anger stemmed from the fact Rees-Mogg suggested he wouldn’t have died because “he would have been cleverer than the people who took the fire brigade’s advice,” Bridgen sighed, held a long pause as if he was a cast member in a Pinter play, even for a moment seeming as if he was going to recite a well rehearsed public relations riposte before scoffing: “But we want very clever people running the country, don’t we, Evan? That’s a byproduct of what Jacob is, that’s why he is in a position of authority.”
Simply astonishing stuff, I’m sure you’d agree. It’s as if all Conservatives during this election campaign are just blurting out their most reprehensible private opinions to a fake Saudi prince as they are being secretly filmed through a button cam at a business lunch at The Shard, not being broadcast live into the homes of millions of normal people. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised at this rate if Iain Duncan Smith gets caught loitering around back alleys stabbing the homeless like a bald and knackered Patrick Bateman.
This staggering contempt for the poor was addressed by Jeremy Corbyn who said: “The Tories say the victims of Grenfell didn’t have common sense. I’ll tell you what’s common sense: Don’t put flammable cladding on people’s homes. Don’t close fire stations and don’t cut fire fighters. And don’t ignore residents when they tell you their home is a death trap.”
As the fuck-ups continue to mount, you can sense the Conservatives beginning to panic that the working classes might vote in their own interests, as MPs and pundits pull out the tombola of ‘Corbyn slurs’ at Middle Class HQ.
“Well read it out, what does it say?”
“Czechoslovakian spy!”
“We’ve had that already, go again!”
“Corbyn is going to shoot the rich!”
“Perfectus!”
Of course, this would be less groan-inducing if it literally hadn’t actually happened when Boris Johnson launched his election campaign in the Daily Telegraph, stating that Corbyn is acting with the “vindictiveness not seen since Stalin persecuted the kulaks”. When Andrew Neil queried Business Minister Nadhim Zahawi about the prime minister’s outlandish statements by asking: “Stalin deported two million kulaks to Siberia. He had hundreds of thousands of them shot. He did nothing when five million peasants starved to death. The comparison between that and Mr Corbyn wanting to raise taxes on the rich is absurd. Isn’t it?”, Zahawi simply replied “no”.
Seeing this frantic straw grabbing shows us we have a Government that is completely devoid of ideas on how we can improve the lives of people in the UK. The Conservative Party is the embodiment of the “STOP BEING POOR” Paris Hilton t-shirt without the irony. The bedrock of Tory politics is exploitation of anyone from the wrong social class and carte blanche for ruling elite.
It’s fortunate the ruling classes still need us to pay taxes and do the donkeywork for the society they delightedly exploit – that and the fact those tech poindexters seem way too preoccupied about making lifelike androids that can make them cum instead of performing our arid tasks, because once they don’t need us, we’re fucking kaput and it’s second class straight to the glue factory.
I know it’s habit for them to bootlick, but watching the Tories put their foot in their mouth at every afforded opportunity makes it very hard not to get carried away with the idea that they will come across so badly, Britain might actually not vote them in. But I’ll never put it past the people of the UK to wilfully vote to work until they die, empty their pension, eradicate their healthcare and living standards all because Corbyn doesn’t look like he remembers hard enough at the cenotaph.