Van Damned
Rachel Reeves instructive encounter with white van man
Labour’s contempt for the demographic known as ‘white van man’ has been evident since at least 2014, when, during the Rochester and Stroud by-election, salt of the earth Labour char Lady Nugee, Emily Thornberry tweeted her sneering disdain for a house covered in St George’s flags, with a tradesman’s transit parked on the driveway.
To be honest it’s hardly surprising that the party has a difficult relationship with ‘white van man’. After all, he represents everything the modern Labour Party abhors.
He is always working. As opposed to wallowing in victimhood, while subsisting on hand outs and benefits. He is self reliant. And keen to acknowledge, often through the medium of a blasting Colonel Bogey car horn, the biological sex differences between men and women. He is patriotic, male, and generally, though by no means exclusively, white.
Last week the self styled ‘party of working people’ once again revealed how out of touch it is with actual working people, when our maths mangling Chancellor, price fixing fantasist Rachel Reeves, fell victim to a drive-by heckle as she stood talking utter nonsense on a petrol station forecourt.
While she bigged herself up in front of the camera for effectively ‘cutting’ fuel duty by 5p (Yes. Be assured, we’ll get to that) a couple of likely lads in a white van drove by, pledging allegiance to Nigel Farage, demanding the end of the Starmer government, and generally berating Reeves for being rubbish.
The driver then pointed out that his van was festooned with England flags, and invited Rachel Reeves to have him arrested for it.
Which I thought was genuinely pretty funny.
The joke landed because there is so much truth in it. Palestinian flags, trans flags, BLM flags, Ukrainian flags, each are hung from lamposts, swung from NHS lanyards, posted on government websites, or unfurled from council office flagpoles, with the express consent, and high minded acclamation, of our governing classes.
It is only when a few thousand Brits drape themselves in the actual national flag, and take to the streets to express their patriotism, love of native British culture (Newsflash Guardian readers -Yes we have one), and antipathy to what has essentially become the Asylum Seeker Industrial Complex, (four hundred desperate refugees from war torn France arrived on these shores just last Friday alone, and you will be paying to clothe, feed, and accommodate every single one of them, probably forever), that our blank eyed Prime Minister springs into action to express his principled distaste and huffy disapproval.
Even before the second Unite The Kingdom event had taken place, lame duck dunce Keir Starmer launched himself onto X to condemn the marchers, as ‘far-right extremists’, hellbent of ‘peddling hatred and division’.
Though fair enough I guess.
We are all aware how Britain’s Jewish community lives in fear of Union Jack wrapped nanas stabbing them in the streets, threatening to rape their daughters, and firebombing their ambulances.
How peace loving citizens exist in a constant state of high anxiety. Vigilant to the ever present danger that a British builder, scaffolder, or plumber is going to drive his van full of tools into a crowd of commuters crossing London Bridge (twice), or families of shoppers at a busy Christmas Winter Fest market.
Or how law abiding British students are terrified of being handcuffed, then arrested as racists, after being stabbed by British plasterers, who are unaccountably free to wander English streets with eight inch ‘ceremonial’ daggers in their belts, in the name of ‘diversity’.
At first Reeves attempted to deflect the heckle by robotically repeating the unconvincing mantra ‘I love this country,’ even while giving every impression that whatever the name of ‘this country’ actually was, it had momentarily escaped her.
But not to worry, she soon recovered. And once the van was safely out of earshot, declared that such mild insults as had been gently lobbed her way, were ‘not very British.’
Of course Reeves is using ‘British’ in the same way that our ruling classes use the word ‘democracy’. You might think when they say it, that they are referring to the same thing as you, but they are absolutely not.
For them ‘Our Democracy’, denotes a political system where everyone (including children, and foreign nationals from countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, and Lithuania) votes at election time, for different parties standing on platforms of near identical policy proposals, all designed to ensure the continuity of the sclerotic technocratic state, and the continued primacy of the pampered elite class, which suckles greedily upon it.
Where each successive doppelgänger government exists within an ever narrowing Overton Window, which ratchets inexorably leftward, from freedom loving market economy, to jack booted socialist tyranny.
Now the progressive class which ruins runs everything is trying to hijack the very concept of ‘Britishness’ in the same way.
It never tires of presenting ‘Britain,’ the proud nation of Nelson, Wellington, Mrs Thatcher, William Shakespeare, and Charles Hawtrey as their fantasy land made real, a place where jolly multiculturalism bestows the cost free benefits of spicy food, Zumba dance classes, and unchecked sexual misconduct on a grateful rainbow nation.
A happy land where lovable raggamuffin shoplifters, rendered cashless by cruel ‘Tory cuts’ are compelled to satiate their desperate need for six bottles of Hennessy under the benign gaze of ever indulgent, hands-off, security staff.
While hairy arsed men in bad wigs and worse make-up merrily exercise their human right to wander stark bollock naked through the changing rooms of Brandy Melville.
Many commentators, even a few of this government’s critics, have taken Reeve’s side. Agreeing with her wonky assessment that it is somehow ‘unBritish’ for men to shout at women from vans.
Implying that such boorish behaviour is a new development, the inevitable result of Andrew Tate sucking ever more impressionable young men over the event horizon of confected ‘toxic masculinity’, into the black hole, of the largely imaginary ‘manosphere’.
Well that is plainly not true. British men have been shouting at women from vans for as long as I can remember.
A bit rude yes. But in terms of actual misogyny I wouldn’t exactly put it up there with, say, I dunno, prevailing on multiple government agencies and institutions, including the police, and social services, to formulate a decades long, co-ordinated cover up of the industrial scale abuse of countless white, teenage girls.
But maybe that’s just me.
And just how nasty, objectionable, and unacceptable were this particular van driver’s insults, that they might offend the patriotic sensibilities of our high-minded Chancellor?
Well, he didn’t attempt to restrain Reeves physically, prevent her from going about her lawful business, impinge on her freedom of speech, or attempt to have her locked up for disagreeing with him.
All things that this government regularly does to people of his class who dare to dissent against her rancid regime’s maladroit rule.
Instead he distilled his criticism into a couple of witty, if forthright, soundbites, chucked in a couple of swears, and drove off.
Presumably he didn’t have time to hang around for a more cultured, scholarly debate.
Because he had to put in a day’s work to earn the wages Rachel Reeves would then confiscate through Britain’s ever more punitive tax system, so she could shower it all on sad benefit claimants, polygamous welfare recipients, slow speed rail lines to nowhere, and state funded trans charities.
I’d also suggest that these days, shouting from a van is about the only way a member of the tax paying classes can get a ‘top politician’ like Rachel Reeves to listen to them.
Our Westminster elites certainly won’t take any notice when we’re fool enough to pick the wrong side in a referendum.
They will studiously ignore us when we consistently and continuously vote for what we actually want (lower immigration, a functioning health service, less David Lammy) in general elections.
And they most assuredly won’t listen to us when we spill onto the capital’s streets to loudly protest that they won’t listen to us.
So if shouting from a van window is the only way to make our cloth eared bosses actually pay us any attention. Then so be it.
Lost in this whole confected controversy was why Rachel Reeves was standing outside a petrol station in the first place.
She was actually there to congratulate herself for ‘cutting’ fuel duty by 5p. (Actually she was announcing a delay on imposing an increase.)
Which she presented as an example of her beneficent government’s generosity and largesse during a punishing cost of living crisis which she herself largely precipitated has been caused almost solely by Donald Trump.
This means that thanks to Rachel’s munificence, the ‘fuel duty’ (tax) charged on a £1.50 litre of petrol is now only making up a measly 35%, (55p) of the total cost.
Which I hope you’d agree seems very reasonable.
But let’s not forget that drivers are also charged 20% VAT (25p) on the overall cost of each litre.
Which means the government is not simply taxing you an inordinate amount for the privilege of taking your kids to school, popping down the shops, or going to work, it is actually charging you an additional tax, on top of that tax.
It is literally like the government forcing you to pay 20% VAT on your income tax.
As Keir Starmer himself says, ‘Labour will always protect working people.’
And what he is protecting us from, is having too much annoying money in our pockets, to fritter away on pointless luxuries like food, rent, and electricity.
But maybe I am being unfair.
Alert to Britain’s crushingly expensive energy prices, Starmer has decided to relax sanctions on Russian fuel.
Which is great news. I guess.
This means we will now be paying Russia for oil which we could potentially drill for ourselves. While still spending £13bn of Britain’s tax take, subsidising the Ukrainian war effort.
So thanks to the wise leadership of Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, and Eco Dunce Ed Miliband, British consumers are now paying soldiers on both sided of the Ukrainian/Russian war to kill each other.
It’s nuts.
It makes about as much sense as making Greg Wallace Minister for Women and Equalities, Gemma Collins a spokesperson for education, or Andy Burnham Prime Minister.
Meanwhile Reeves is busily promoting another clever wheeze to help out hard pressed British consumers; her ‘Great British Summer Savings’ initiative.
So how is this latest scheme going to ease the financial burden on struggling Brits?
Is she planning to reverse her own punitive, job destroying increases to National Insurance? Help renters, and independent landlords, by dropping her government’s catastrophic, counterproductive ‘Renter’s Rights Bill’? Or giving the housing market a boost by abolishing stamp duty?
The answer, of course, is D.) None of these.
As reported in the Telegraph, Reeves has instead announced
Don’t mock. This is not an insignificant amount.
After all, a family of four on Universal Credit visiting the Tower of London will see the cost of their ticket slashed from an extortionate £4. To a much more manageable £3.58
Not for you though. Assuming you are one of the dwindling band of idiots who actually work for a living, you’ll still have to fork out around £100.
Just to see King Charles’ hat.
But let’s take the win. Because while she’s made British tourist attractions marginally cheaper, our bighearted chancellor has ensured that travelling abroad will, from now on, become significantly more expensive.
Because Reeves has also just announced she’s adding 20 % VAT to the fees airlines have to pay the government to use British airports.
Of course airlines won’t be paying that 20%. They will simply pass it on to you, the consumer, adding it to the cost of your plane tickets.
Sorry kids, you can forget Disneyland this year, instead we’re spending two weeks, visiting the world famous, and equally exciting, Derwent Pencil Museum.
Hurrah!
With her ‘cuts’ to fuel duty, her temporary slashing of VAT on zoo visits, and money off tickets to overpriced British tourist attractions, Reeves is at pains to present herself as a great benefactor, a generous patron, and a cash dispensing consumer champion. All because, for this summer at least, she’s not stealing quite as much of your wages as she normally does.
Of course it’s a total fiction. The reality is that Reeves is like a mugger who steals your phone, credit cards, and wallet, and then expects you to be grateful, when they graciously leave you with just enough change, for the bus fare home.
As one erudite political sage recently put it,
‘Get Starmer out!’
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LSO
A superb piece of writing. I lolled many times in between the suicide attempts
Have wanted to go to visit the pencil musuem ever since I saw it in the film sightseers. But alas, I am a PAYE wage slave with minimum annual leave allowance, fun trips like this will have to wait until retirement!