Politics

David Wright MP might be a very nice man in person. He might not really consider members of the opposition party to be “scum-sucking pigs.” However, it has to be said, he’s not doing particularly well to defend his position.

In response to a trending hashtag on Twitter yesterday, Mr. Wright made this comment:

[you've never voted Tory] because you can put lipstick on a scum-sucking pig, but it’s still a scum-sucking pig. And cos [sic] they would ruin Britain.

It’s an obvious mirror of a comment Barack Obama made about Sarah Palin last year, and with it, it brings in the nasty, American breed of political campaigning, where personal smears, lies and deceitful horseshit is generally the order of the day. This is one of the reasons I’m proud to be British – we could descend into this dung-slinging contest every election run-up, but this fecal peddling is mostly left to the Daily Mail and co.: mainstream politicians are way too polite to do so, and when they do cross the line, there is invariably uproar.

So, naturally, this was a nasty comment that got some attention. So what would Mr. Wright do? Apologise? Publish a retraction? Justify it? Why bother, when you can just cop out and blame it on a hacker?

“I put up on twitter a message linked to Barack Obama’s comment in the Presidential race last year about conservative policy, which is you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig. It looks like somebody, a third party has gone into my account and made it more offensive.
“I think it was a legitimate comment and I mean twitter is edgy and you know it provokes debate, it looks on this occasion as if it has caused a serious problem and we need to go back and look at that.”

Hmm… I don’t know why, but I (and several others) certainly think I’ve seen this defence before, somewhere. Moreover, Guido has helpfully pointed out that the fact tweets cannot be edited blows an awfully wide hole in his excuse.

This is exactly the reason people lose faith in politicians. In this case, while a simple apology could have been in order, he instead chose to blame it on someone else. Trouble was, this pitiful attempt at arse-covering was so obvious and half-baked it was bound to backfire.

Is there a moral in this story? Yes. Two.

1. You may disagree with someone, but you’re still British. No matter how heated the discussion gets, you don’t resort to name-calling. This is not a teabagger meeting.
2. For god’s sake, stop blaming any slightly embarrassing incident on a hacker. It’s not working for Rod Liddle, there’s no reason it would work for you. The electorate is not stupid, and certainly does not like being patronised like this.