An oath for oafs

Sajid Javid simply loves the idea of an oath of allegiance to British values! He is all excited after reading Dame Louise Casey's report on social cohesion because it recommends public office-holders take such an oath. Elected officials, civil servants and council workers would be expected to take this oath, should it ever become a requirement, according to the report.

But Sajid has taken an already scarily Orwellian idea one step further and said that all migrants, not just those seeking UK citizenship, should take the oath. 

Yep, he is mad about the oath. Sajid would rather talk about this oath instead of, oh, I dunno, his own decision to vote against landlords requiring their properties to be fit for human habitation while he is an actual landlord. But, hey, letting hard-working people pay through the nose to live in squalor is clearly a British value! Am I right, Sajid? Jolly good show, old chap! 

Hell, he is so keen to advocate for an oath that he has even started spitballing a few ideas for it. What a guy! I am so glad that as a permanent resident of Britain, owner of property in Britain, married to a British citizen, working, paying my taxes and voting in Britain, that Sajid is here to tell me how I can best direct my loyalty.

Sajid said the oath might include phrases such as "tolerating the views of others even if you disagree with them" as well as "believing in freedom of speech". OK, fine. So I have the freedom to say I find the vile and racist rantings of, say, Anjem Choudary or Jayda Fransen are utterly repulsive but I still must "tolerate their views"? I have zero tolerance for racism. If I had to take this oath, would I really mean it? What would happen to me if I publicly said I didn't tolerate the crap people like Choudary and Fransen come out with it? I'd be exercising my freedom of speech, as per the oath, but breaking the bit about tolerance.

"Freedom of religion" was another of Sajid's helpful suggestions. Yep, you can believe in whatever deity you like but what about freedom from religion? I am unimpressed, for example, that certain politicians voted against marriage equality with their religious beliefs being a factor in their decision. I find that sort of church-state crossover hard to tolerate - whoops, there I go again, being intolerant! Indeed, while we're talking about religion, would I be breaking the oath if I dared suggest that it is high time the Church of England was disestablished? If I say so, am I breaking the bit in Sajid's imaginary oath about believing in freedom of religion?

Sajid also suggested "freedom from abuse". If he means physical abuse, we already have laws against assault, rape and murder. These are laws everyone is expected to obey, whether or not they are a public official or not, and regardless of whether they were born here or came here from somewhere else. 

Or does he mean verbal abuse? If so, there are already laws against hate speech and death threats? Do the anti-hate speech laws contravene the "freedom of speech" part of the oath? Honestly, Sajid, this is a minefield! It's almost as if you're making this up as you're going along rather than thinking it through rationally.

Then Sajid said "a belief in equality, democracy and the democratic process" should be chucked into the oath which, the more I think about it, the more it starts looking like having about as much credibility as a pinky promise. Sajid, we currently have an openly misogynistic homophobe on the Commons Women and Equalities Committee in the form of Conservative MP Philip Davies. This is a man who this week tried to filibuster a bill to ratify the Istanbul Convention because men are victims of domestic violence too - even though the convention covers violence against men and women. If only there was a senior woman in the Conservative Party with the power to prevent ridiculous appointments to committees...

As for a belief in "democracy and the democratic process", sure, I can get on board with that. My belief in democracy extends to believing that the monarchy is undemocratic and has no real place in a modern society and that the House of Lords needs urgent reform. I am, apparently, free to say this but does the oath cover democracy and the democratic process as it currently exists or is there some wiggle room on that one, Sajid?

And finally, he suggested "respect for the law, even if you think the law is an ass". So this oath would mean that we must respect all laws at all times, no matter what? Blind loyalty for the win, eh Sajid? What if a public official who had to swear this oath found that stupid laws made their job impossible or compromised safety or would put a vulnerable person at risk? How would swearing to this part of the oath help whistleblowers who expose things that may well be legal but are morally wrong or dangerous or just plain ineffective? 

Sorry, Sajid, you're going to have to work much harder to convince me that this idea for an oath is not just creepy and chilling, but also that it is not completely and utterly useless. Would this sort of lip service really help different groups in communities come together or get along better? Would this prevent a single act of terrorism? Nope. And nope. 

What I do know is that I have lived here long enough to know this sort of forced patriotism, this ridiculous, ill-thought-out jingoism is just a stupid distraction by Sajid Javid and if it ever happened, it would not do a damn thing to improve anything.

  

Photography by Karen Arnold

So, who is allowed to say what we're all really thinking?

Every time Katie Hopkins vomits a deliberately outrageous tweet or Nigel Farage says something about not wanting to live next door to a group of Romanian men or someone, almost always from a right-leaning perspective, creates an outrage, someone will always rise to their defence by saying: "They're only saying what we're all really thinking.".

Obviously, this statement is not literally be true. Nobody can ever say something that echoes the thoughts of every single one of us. But someone like Hopkins or Farage is frequently afforded the "TOSWWART" defence, as if they are speaking out for a silent majority too scared to say something that might cause offence.

But the TOSWWART defence is not applied equally. Witness the debacle this week over Emily Thornberry's ill-considered tweet that caused her to lose her job as Shadow Attorney General. All the tweet said was "Image from #Rochester" with a photograph of a house festooned with St George flags and a white van parked out the front. It was a tweet that was open to interpretation but the mob verdict - which was ultimately the only verdict that mattered - was: "Check out the north London Labour snob looking down her nose on a working class household." 

And Thornberry may well have rolled her eyes as she passed the house. Or maybe she was just sharing the sights of the electorate. Here is a tweet she cooked earlier. Whatever the case, she probably shouldn't have tweeted anything more controversial than a selfie with the Labour candidate, but what's done is done. Ed Miliband said the tweet made him "furious" - so furious, in fact, that she had to jump before she was pushed, thus keeping the story in the news cycle all bloody weekend. 

Honestly, Ed, there are million things more infuriating than that tweet, and now you've lost a woman from a working class background, an MP who is popular in her constituency and largely seen as someone who does a good job, from your shadow cabinet. Cue a slow hand clap for the Member for Doncaster North.

An apology would have been sufficient. That would be an apology to the same mob that routinely calls out the left for being nothing but a homogenous rabble of sandal-wearing, muesli-knitting professional outrage-takers. An apology to one stereotypical group that stereotypes another group who stereotypes those who disagree with them in return. And so we have a cycle of stereotyping that rinses around the news cycle and the world of social media and achieves absolutely nothing.

Predictably, The Sun pounced on Dan Ware, the flag-flying, white van man who admitted he doesn't vote and didn't know there was a by-election on in his own town, and published his stage-managed manifesto. It was an incoherent splattering of ideas that basically boiled down to: "Send 'em all back where they came from, lower taxes but make public transport cheaper and build better roads, and while I'm at it, let's bring back the cane in schools and spend more public money jailing anyone who burns a poppy!".

Good to see Ware surprised everyone by completely shattering the stereotype of the English flag-flying, white van man, then.

Is that ridiculous manifesto really what everyone is secretly thinking and only Ware has the courage to say it via The Sun? 

I doubt it. Ware is being used by The Sun to push their agenda in the lead-up to the election and it is one that plenty of people can see right through. The paper had Ware photographed outside Thornberry's "£3 million house" because apparently you can only live in a big house if you were born in one or you play football.

But why can't Thornberry also be afforded the TOSWWART defence? 

Either by accident or design, Thornberry shone a light on the thoughts that cross many people's minds when they see a house like Ware's. It is naive to think that none of us stereotype or make assumptions. We all do, regardless what our politics might be. I know people from across the political spectrum whose hearts sink when they are out canvassing door-to-door for their party and they come across the house with the St George flags flying. They expect a difficult conversation, possibly about immigration, and this is often precisely what happens.

Of course, the challenge for all the major parties is to find ways to engage with people whose choice of home decoration causes them to pause before knocking on the door, especially if they feel they are so far removed from the political process that they never bother to vote. Knee-jerk reactions, such as forcing someone out of a job over a three-word tweet and slamming that same person as a champagne socialist who would only have any political credibility if she lived her whole life in an unheated council house, are equally unconstructive. 

It's time we all grew up. Twitter is a great source of breaking news, of getting quick reactions and engaging with our politicians. But when the news cycle is bogged down for days in the fallout from one tweet, regardless of who sent the tweet, we have a serious problem.