Recently appointed Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Lee Anderson has been attacked for doing the worst thing you can do in today’s politics: he has said what most people think.
Anderson’s pro death penalty comments, namely that “Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed” will be welcomed by over half of the country, who, according to polls, believe in capital punishment for certain heinous crimes such a multiple murders, terrorist murders and child murders.
Beyond the media hysteria, it is a reasonable position. Consider the case of Arthur Hughes, the six year-old child who, at the time of death, was covered in 130 bruises, and had been poisoned with salt. Much of the abuse was captured on camera. Why should his killers get to live?
In a world where things like CCTV can give us incontrovertible evidence, there is a stronger case for the death penalty than ever. Modern technology, where available, deals with the legitimate fear of wrongful execution. If we could agree to employ capital punishment only in such cases where the evidence was undeniable, this common objection is removed.
Readers of this site may also be concerned with handing the state that kind of power, and yet we already have a military entrusted with dealing out death, and far less sparingly (at least, assuming our military ever functions again).
Many also seem to forget that the abolition of the death penalty in this country was pushed through by the radical socialist Sydney Silverman, to the point where opposing capital punishment is now taken for granted as the only acceptable position by allegedly conservative commentators like Isabel Oakeshott.
But whatever your views on the death penalty itself, the attacks on Lee Anderson for daring to give his opinion on the subject are yet another example of the radical divide between the people and the political and media elite.
Rishi Sunak has already distanced himself from Anderson’s comments, stating: “That’s not my view, that’s not the Government’s view.”
So it seems that once again the long-standing views of ordinary British people are simply not allowed. More than that, they are despised.
Self-described “progressive liberal” and former editor of the Sun David Yelland called Anderson a “neanderthal northerner”, though he misspelt “neanderthal”, and apparently didn’t realise Anderson is from the Midlands. Thus Yelland managed to use a two word phrase in which both words were wrong. Almost impressive.
Geographical error aside, the intention was clear, and as a proud Cumbrian Homo sapiens I take it extremely personally. The north remembers.
And the people will remember. Lee Anderson will be hounded by the media and political class, while voters silently register their disgust, and vote accordingly.
Only to get a Labour Government even more in thrall to the metropolitan elites than the Tories, but that is for another day.
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