Labour is Becoming an Army of Power-Mad Killjoys

Whilst medical science has made great strides in eradicating many common illnesses, there is regrettably no cure in sight for the well documented but little understood malady imbecility – or to give it its correct nomenclature footinmouthus.

Whilst this condition might lie dormant for months and sometimes years, it can present itself spontaneously and appears to be aggravated when the sufferer must speak in front of an assembled group.

The Prime Minister himself was not immune to this unsettling syndrome when recently at the Despatch Box in the House of Commons he blurted out the nonsensical phrase “national security cannot come at the expense of social security”. It was a moment for doctors to observe this malady captured on camera.

Only this week, the down-to-earth sounding Nature Minister Jenny Riddell Carpenter asserted that the thought of the far Right weaponising the countryside at the next election, kept her awake at night. Really?

She went further, declaring;

It’ll be that warm ale, a black Labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist, and with symbolism of fox hunting all around them. It’ll be a very far-Right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don’t want to have, [that] never really existed.

Now, I realise that not everyone sees life through the fuzzy haze of rose-tinted lenses, but most take life as it comes. But what is it about those on the Left where absolutely everything is viewed through the distorting prism of malevolence and misunderstanding?

Every aspect of life – trivial or great – cannot escape being microscopically examined and larded with the far-Right or racist epithet. Nothing can be seen simply for what it is, there must always be some hidden agenda.

The most inoffensive British Countryside was called out in 2024 by the Wildlife and Countryside Link (a group with 80 members including the WWF, RSPCA and National Trust) as being a “racist, colonial white space” in a report to MPs.

This continual onslaught is, I would imagine, greeted with a wearying sigh and eye-rolling by most of the population, who have been gifted a certain degree of herd immunity by regular exposure to this preposterous nonsense.

But does Riddell Carpenter’s assertion hold water? Interestingly, she chose to single out the colour black for the Labradors – an odd selection given the Kennel Club recognises that:

The only correct colours are wholly black, yellow and liver/chocolate. Yellows range from light cream to fox red, livers/chocolates range from light to dark.

One can only posit the question why did the delightful yellow and liver/chocolate breeds escape her sweeping opprobrium?

Dogs have been part of our culture and fabric of society for hundreds of years, from Crab in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Montmorency in Three Men in a Boat to Bill Sikes’ Bullseye in Oliver Twist.

Yet for most people, it was her muddle-headed denunciation of pubs that was quite patently ludicrous. Having spent a goodly part of my life propping up bars, I always found taverns to be a real melting pot of people and, more importantly, opinions. Not once was I aware of latent far Right individuals goose stepping to the pool table or rounding on the landlord for not having the Horst Wessel Lied on the juke box. Drinking beer – yes, warm ale – and chatting to people of very different ages and backgrounds was one of life’s pleasurable educations.

Pubs, sadly closing at an alarming rate, due in no small measure to Labour’s indiscriminately applied taxes, might become a rarity if not outright extinct. What a pity if an institution so beloved and vital to many rural communities was to disappear forever. Maybe Riddell Carpenter would rejoice at such an outcome, removing as she sees it a hotbed of far-Right activism.

Dogs and pubs are a well-worn trope stretching back through the years and walking your dog to the pub is still, for a great many people, one of life’s pleasures – enjoyment that Labour killjoys seem bent on erasing.

The now defunct brewery John Courage recognised the value of dogs in one of its TV commercials where in a bucolic cricketing scene, shot in soft focus, the narrator waxed lyrical of “a dog barking somewhere in Sussex can be heard from a village in Kent”.

For more canine-beer tomfoolery, John Smith’s ran a series of TV ads featuring the actor John Rollings as the long-suffering Arkwright who sought refuge from his nagging wife by escaping to the pub with his dog Tonto – a Jack Russell required to perform several tricks, enticed by his owner with the words “Fancy a drop of John Smith’s?”

At the mention of a pint, Tonto juggles some balls, balances a bar stool on his nose, jumps into the air and stands on his head. “He just needs the right motivation,” says Arkwright.

Funny and warm, it evoked a scenario that was instantly recognisable to millions up and down the country – well maybe not the juggling dog!

What a pity that there is an army of killjoys who, far from embracing innocuous and pleasurable activities, derive enjoyment from exercise power and control.

No doubt Riddell Carpenter’s next well-deserved target will be Sat- Nav guidance systems with their unpalatable demands to “turn right”, “go right” and “bear right” – another thing to lose sleep over.

Alexander McKibbin is a retired media executive who worked across domestic and international media.