People are going hungry because of Tory policy – yet these MPs beam at the camera and pretend it has nothing to do with them
I’ve always found the Conservative facility for audaciously brazening out acts of sheer human callousness to be verging on the sociopathic. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are like the serial killers who taunt the families of their victims, but there is something bloodcurdling about such politicians’ willingness to visit, say, a homeless shelter, when they are responsible for cutting housing benefit. But this past weekend’s seemingly coordinated series of visits by Tory MPs to food bank drop-off points has reached new heights of cold-bloodedness. Could there be a better example of their villainous brand of cognitive dissonance than this?
Aside from such tactics giving the eerie impression of a looming election campaign – “We care as much about austerity as Corbyn does, guys, honest!” – it’s the brass balls of these stunts that floors you. Witness Dominic Raab MP – who voted in favour of the bedroom tax, against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices, and against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability – grinning in a tabard next to hardworking volunteers. “Thank you to Tesco in Molesey and the Trussell Trust for partnering to encourage customers to generously provide food collections for families in our community, who are struggling at this time of year,” he tweeted, with what was obviously a poorer grasp of the concept of irony than even Alanis Morissette. But, of course, to borrow Raab’s rationale, this food will only be eaten by “someone who has a cashflow problem episodically.”
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