The Cumbrian News and Star reports on rising star Tory MP Rory Stewart’s fulsome apology following some bizarrely gauche comments about his constiutuency to a journalist, including the remark: “Some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of twine and that sort of thing.”
His local paper says that the Tory MP’s put-downs:
… have been branded as arrogant and crass and the 37-year-old has since admitted he was ‘extremely foolish’. He said his remarks were merely meant to illustrate how some areas of the county were living in real poverty.
I have some, limited sympathy with Mr Stewart – I can understand the wish to exaggerate to make a point about northern rural poverty to a London-based metropolitan reporter. The “primitive” gaffe smacks of limited political media experience, I suspect, rather than a deliberate sneer.
However, his decision to invoke a real-life tragedy to illustrate his points with a colourful anecdote is undoubtedly tasteless:
I was in one village where a local kid was run over by a tractor. They took him to Carlisle but they couldn’t be bothered to wait at the hospital. So they put him in a darkened room for two weeks then said he was fine. But I’m not so sure he was.”
Today’s Mirror quotes the family in question:
Derek Daley, 76, whose son Noel died after his motorbike collided with a tractor, said: “I take great umbrage at what Mr Stewart has said. It is extremely distasteful.”
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7 Comments
We can expect a lot more crass and tasteless comments from Blue Tory M.P.s about their new constituents when Labour seats are subsumed into Tory seats following the boundary changes that the Orange Tories are supporting. How on earth can Liberals tolerate being in coalition with such people?
@MacK
That is what millions of LibDem voters are thinking right now including me, why are the LibDems in so deep with the tories who are the same old unreconstructed Thatcherite’s but a better PR machine. The second question LibDem voters are asking is why are the LibDems offering no resistance to the privatization of two of the most important pillars of the welfare state: education and healthcare. These “reforms” are nothing new, the tories tried them last time and we got the total mess that was the education system and the NHS in 1997.
Well said MacK.
The Liberals have merged with this rabble of foaming mouthed, right-wing idealogues. For Libe Dem Voice to post smug pieces like this, looking to criticise is not just hypocritical.
it’s disingenuous.
@Cuse – it’s precisely those “foaming mouthed, right-wing idealogues” whose influence the Lib Dems seek to minimise, surely?
It is a great shame this has happened as Rory Stewart is the only MP I know who understands what is going on in Afghanistan and what should be done about it.
Yet his comments here are what you expect from an upper class Tory toff.
You can perhaps blame his private education for that, but given his travels around the Middle East I would also suggest he has a better understanding of how ordinary people live in the poorest parts of the world. I would not expect him to be so aloof after that.
Still he has apologised and I hope that since we are in a coalition with the Tories he will be judged on more substantive foreign policy issues in the future.
@Keith Jones
I don’t see much minimisation going on, the ideologues are in charge of education, healthcare and welfare they’re not foaming at the mouth in public but that makes them even more dangerous. They’re using the reputation of the LibDems as a cover for introducing the same old failed policies that led to the disasters of the 1980s and early-90s.
I’m centre-left but not a tribal party supporter, I am tribal anti-tory as they messed me and my family up severely when they were last in power.
Hysterical. I fully endorse Mr Stewart’s remarks and wish him all the best in his new career. 🙂