from the mail
Don't say I didn't warn you: The Labour Party promised us New Jerusalem... but they gave us Little Britain!
The Labour Party was born out of a burning desire to improve the lot of the working class. In its early years it wasn't just about pay and working conditions, it was about access to decent housing and education. When Labour came to power in 1997, it still aspired to that noble goal. Or at least it said it did.
'The development of an underclass of people, cut off from society's mainstream, living often in poverty, the black economy, crime and family instability, is a moral and economic evil,' Tony Blair declared.
But under him and Gordon Brown, social mobility has gone backwards. Labour's lumpen proletariat has been condemned to a desolate life on sink estates, slumped on sofas, gawping at daytime television, stuffing themselves with fast food, using welfare payments to subsidise their drink and drugs habits.
Britain leads the world in welfare cheats, drug addicts, feral gangs and obese children
Britain leads the world in welfare cheats, feral gangs and obese children
I remember being in Blackpool for a Labour Party conference and as I made my way from my hotel at 9.30 in the morning, I had to step into the road to avoid a family walking four-abreast on the pavement in the direction of the seafront.
Mum, dad, eight-year-old son and six-year-old daughter were dressed in matching turquoise shell-suits. They all had earrings and wore baseball caps. The father's cap was distinguished by a plastic dog turd stuck to the peak, beneath a logo which proclaimed 'Sh**head'.
They were breakfasting on fish and chips from polystyrene containers, washed down with Irn-Bru in the case of the children and Special Brew for the parents. 'What chance have these kids got?' I thought.
Now I may have been rushing to judgment. They could have been a blameless couple who had taken their children out of their fee-paying convent school for the day to go on a field trip.
Fish and chips for breakfast was simply a way of giving them an authentic working-class experience to broaden their horizons and drum home the message that not everyone starts the day with organic muesli from Waitrose.
The novelty baseball cap could have been an ironic, post-modern take on the nature of unbridled consumerism or a witty protest about societal stereotyping.
Then again, they could just have been scum. It was then that it dawned on me that the game was up for Labour. We've always had what sociologists prefer to call an underclass. But not on this scale and never so visible.
She had seven children by five different fathers
Labour promised a New Jerusalem. They've delivered Little Britain.
The Guardianistas condemn Little Britain's horribly accurate portrait of the underclass as cruel and making fun of a 'vulnerable' section of society. Maybe they've got a guilty conscience, but I shouldn't think so. The truth is, the Leftist bien pensants have built a land fit for Vicky Pollards.
Britain seems to have cornered the market in welfare layabouts, drug addicts, feral gangs of obese children and hideous, drunken scrubbers, littering the gutters of even our more genteel suburbs.
The women are the worst of the lot, giving birth to a procession of baybees by different, transient fathers and expecting - nay, being encouraged by - the state to pay for their upbringing.
The Government's preferred solution is to keep on throwing money at the problem, hiring legions of social workers and 'parenting skills advisers' to keep the scum in check, while importing hundreds of thousands of immigrants to do the jobs our indigenous idle are paid not to do.
Five million people of working age have not done a day's work since Labour came to power. And these figures did not include the millions on incapacity benefit, lone parents and youngsters not in education or employment.
Foreign fruit pickers were working in East Anglia for less than £6 an hour and sleeping three to a room.
When a local youth who had just signed on for his dole money was asked why he couldn't do the same as Poles and Slovakians, he just laughed. He wouldn't even get out of bed for that kind of money.
Which begged the question: if he wasn't willing to work, why was he getting out-of-work benefits?
Karen Matthews is taken to court in connection with the abduction of her daughter Shannon
One case in particular lifted the stone on Britain's burgeoning underclass. In 2008, a young girl called Shannon Matthews went missing from her home in Dewsbury for 24 days. It turned out that, in the wake of the Madeleine McCann abduction in Portugal, the family hoped to sell their story to the papers for £50,000.
Further investigation discovered that the girl's 32-year-old mother Karen was like a modern version of the Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe. She had seven children by five fathers, had never had a job in her life and received £400 a week in benefits. She was living with a 22-year-old bloke who was described as Shannon's 'stepfather'. In what sense would that be, then?
Ultimately, Karen Matthews was found to have made the whole thing up and she was jailed for a 'despicable and inconceivable' plot to kidnap the schoolgirl.
Labour has spent a fortune shoring up single motherhood, rather than supporting traditional two-parent families. It is the children who have come off worse.
They aren't poor in any financial sense. They have mobile phones, iPods, computers, plasma TVs. They're well clothed, they don't go hungry and their bills are paid by the state.
But they suffer the most appalling moral poverty because they have no family stability, just a procession of 'uncles' and 'stepfathers' who stay long enough to get their mothers pregnant again before shuffling off in search of greener pastures. The children are left to fend for themselves in a feral parallel universe.
Frankly, I see no immediate prospect of things getting better any time soon. We're on to second- and third-generation scum now, sustained by a patronising and 'nonjudgmental' welfare juggernaut.
By and large, welfare cheats on sink estates are left pretty much to their own devices because officials are frightened to confront them. There would also, I don't doubt, be issues of human rights raised if a strong line was taken.
'Yuman rites' is another New Labour big gun that's drastically backfired. There's no escape from it, not even behind bars. Being banged up for a serious crime doesn't prevent even hardened villains benefiting from the com-pen-say-shun culture.
Legal aid is lavished on cons with the most bizarre and unwarranted grievances. More than £20million has been paid out to convicted prisoners for everything from being refused heroin to the wrong kind of toilet paper. Two hundred were awarded £10,000 each after complaining that they were refused recreational drugs in jail.
Over the years, I've paid the occasional visit to Slade Prison, to see the modern prison system through the eyes of Norman Stanley Fletcher.
Imagine that Fletch is in his cell when Mr Mackay enters.
You can't escape 'yuman rites', not even behind bars
'Put that filthy cigarette out, Fletcher. Don't you know our new lady governor has declared Slade a smoke-free zone?'
'I'd love to Mr Mackay, but I can't. You see, I'm addicted to nicotine and you have no right to stop me smoking.'
'Who says so?' 'Articles 3 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights ban discrimination, torture or inhuman, degrading treatment and punishment. Oh, and Article 8 enshrines the right to a private life, so if you don't mind I shall have to ask you to leave.'
'Human rights for prisoners? I've never heard anything so absurd.'
'Serves you right for voting Labour.'
'I didn't vote Labour, I voted SNP.'
'So did McLaren in the next cell.'
'How did he get a vote?'
'Postal vote, Mr Mackay, we all did. Very big on your postal voting, Labour.'
'But prisoners can't vote.'
'That's where you're wrong, Mr Mackay. Judges at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that prisoners are just as entitled to vote as all them on the out. What's more, I might even be in line for a bit of compensation-seeing as the Old Bill wouldn't fetch me a bacon sandwich when I refused to come down off that roof.'
'But you were breaking into a factory at the time, Fletcher.'
'That's as may be, Mr Mackay, but I was technically in custody, they had the place surrounded and the rules say all prisoners are entitled to proper meal breaks. I read that the Old Bill sent up a party bucket of fried chicken to one bloke on a roof. He might have been throwing tiles at the time, but he still had his yuman rights.'
'This is madness.'
It was madness, and it didn't stop there. When I was dreaming up that spoof in 2007, I also imagined drink and drugs freely available, pornography downloaded on to prison laptops by serial rapists, prisoners being let out to run pubs and one allowed out to marry his boyfriend in a civil partnership ceremony.
I didn't have to make it up. Most of this lunacy was based on actual cases and I thought I'd pretty much covered the waterfront. But even my warped imagination didn't stretch to lifers fathering children by artificial insemination. Or being given £27,000 in legal aid to demand the right to do so.
But a few weeks later, along came convicted murderer Kirk Dickson and his wife, Lorraine. Dickson was serving a life sentence for kicking a man to death in the street in 1995 because he refused to hand over his cigarettes. He met Lorraine through a prison pen-pal scheme while she was doing 12 months for benefit fraud. They were married after she was released in 2000. Bless.
Like any loving couple, they wanted an ickle bay-bee. When the prison refused to authorise sperm donation, they hired a solicitor to fight their case. The Home Secretary ruled against them on the grounds that their relationship had never been tested outside prison. So too did the High Court and the Court of Appeal.
They headed for Europe, maintaining that their right to a private and family life was being violated.
In my opinion, Dickson forfeited his right to a family life when he kicked a man to death. Why should he be legally entitled to a privilege which he so brutally denied his victim? As for Lorraine, perhaps she shouldn't have married someone serving a life sentence if she wanted another child.
Another child? Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that Lorraine Dickson already had three children by her first husband. It was failing to declare maintenance payments from him when making fraudulent benefits claims which got her banged up in prison in the first place.
The case came before the European Court of Human Rights, and the Euro-judges ruled that it was unlawful to stop jailed Dickson donating sperm for his wife to use in IVF treatment as it breached their right to marry and raise a family.
'Time for your IVF donation, Fletcher. I want you to deposit your sample in this test tube.'
'What, from here?'
In that same spoof, by the way, I had Genial Harry Grout as a heroin baron. Shortly afterwards it was revealed that not only were prison authorities turning a blind eye to heroin use, they were issuing inmates with Steradent tablets so that they could keep their syringe needles clean.
Oh, and homosexuals were given the right to view gay porn in prison following another yuman rites ruling.
But never in my wildest imagination could I have made up a woman prisoner doing life for killing her baby suing prison authorities for refusing to let her have a Native American drum so she could talk to dead animals.
After she was sentenced, the woman, who hails from Birmingham, announced she was a Red Indian. As you do - though last time I looked, there wasn't a Cherokee encampment under Spaghetti Junction and I haven't spotted any tepees on the halfway line at Villa Park.
Anyway, this madwoman now styled herself Chaha Oh-Niyol Kai-Whitewind and claimed, inevitably, that her yuman rites were being violated unless she got a drum, potions, spell books and a peace pipe to allow her to practise her religion.
She wrote to the governor stating: 'I do not believe in violence. I have respect for all life and individuality' - though this hadn't extended to her 12-week-old son, whom she strangled for refusing to breastfeed.
How long before some old lag in the Scrubs claims to be the Last of the Mohicans? Give it time: they'll have their own happy hunting ground on the playing fields at Ford Open.
If you think this is a bit farfetched, it was also reported that the Home Office is considering building special prisons for Muslims, so that convicted terrorists don't have to mix with filthy infidels.
Why stop there? Why not separate nicks for Rastafarians, complete with steel drums, complimentary ganja and a drive-by shooting range?
Or jails where traditional East End gangsters can celebrate their culture; sipping gold watch round the old joanna, singing Knees Up Muvva Brahn, sawing the barrels off a pair of matching Purdeys in the workshop and feeding each other to the pigs on the prison farm?
Speaking of traditional East End gangsters, it emerged from official archives not so long ago that Reggie Kray attempted to make a fresh start while he was banged up in prison for life. He sounds like a perfect role model for today's politicians.
You can imagine him being interviewed on the Today programme and using what we have come to know as the Gordon Brown defence to any suggestion that he might possibly have been at fault about anything whatsoever.
'Good morning, I'm Evan Montague, and my guest in the studio today is the East End businessman Reginald Kray, who with his twin brother ran organised crime rackets and was responsible for a wave of violence and murder.'
Reggie Kray is a role model for today's MPs
'If I could just stop you there, Eva. Our old mum brought us up with a firm sense of right and wrong, to tell the truth at all times - except to the Old Bill, obviously. We only rob those what can afford to pay their fair share. We are taking necessary steps to support our community, providing much-needed jobs to help people in these difficult times.'
'Such as?'
'Croupiers, strippers, prostitutes. Our record in expanding the service and leisure sector is second to none. We are also financing traditional East End trades, such as armed robbery, safe-cracking and demanding money with menaces.'
'But you murdered Jack "The Hat" McVitie and your twin brother Ronnie shot George Cornell in the head in the Blind Beggar after Cornell called him a "fat poof". You both deserved to go to prison. No one should be above the law.'
'Why not? Parliament is. And at least we've got a code of honour. If some of them MPs had stolen from us like they stole from the taxpayer, they'd be propping up motorway flyovers.'
'But, Mr Kray, the public is demanding that the East End is cleaned up, especially the blood on the pavement outside the Blind Beggar.'
'And I agree with them. That's why I am getting on with the job. Who better to clean the place up than those what created the mess in the first place?'
'With respect, Mr Kray, you've had 13 years to clean up your act, but you've chosen to steal, kill and get rich on the proceeds of crime.'
'Look, people don't want to dwell on the past, they want to know what we are going to do in the future. Things is going to be different around here from now on.'
'So what next for you, Mr Kray?'
'I'm thinking of standing for Parliament.'
'What makes you think the public would vote for a criminal as their MP?'
'Silly question, son.'
