I’m aware this could be considered a discordant view, but – bear with me – I am impressed with the Conservative party. Very impressed. I have never known a party – and this includes the college parties where an earnest guy whips out an acoustic guitar; or the sixth-form party where someone loses their virginity in a garage on a cobwebbed camping mat; or the primary school party in which the ritualised anxiety that is musical chairs lasts for 45 minutes – that is so unrelentingly, unquestionably awful.
Since the 2017 election (and let’s not dwell on that campaign, because there’s way too much fodder to take the piss out of), the government has lost five members of its cabinet. I fully got bored assembling a cabinet in my new flat, decided 10 screws would be fine rather than the mandated 18 (madness), and that cabinet has still held longer than this government’s front bench.
Then there’s the institutional racism of the Home Office’s hostile environment policy (architect: one Theresa May), where British citizens have had to pay through the nose to apply for citizenship they already hold, but foreign oligarchs are fast-tracked for citizenship if they cough up what amounts to little of their net worth. We have a liability for a foreign secretary; a circus of clowns for a Brexit committee; and a bunch of opaque policies always outlined by the PM with “let me be clear”. But we have now reached peak theatre of the absurd.
In the run-up to Thursday’s local elections, a leaflet was produced on behalf of Kamran Razzaq, a prospective Tory councillor for Dudley council, which blames Labour for … hepatitis. Actual hepatitis. The precise wording is that Labour has “delivered” hepatitis. Please, if you could, imagine a stork carrying an often symptomless STI. The other thing Labour has delivered is “decline of our area”, which is so vague as to be meaningless, and is also a description of everyone’s personal grooming atrophy in winter.
Razzaq is a former member of the hepatitis-spreading Labour party who made the switch to the Tories, a disease of its own kind, which doesn’t usually take hold until middle-age.
But there is more gold to be gleaned from the leaflet. Including that Razzaq is “fighting for our commnunity”. COMMNUNITY. Hey, who loved that show, COMMNUNITY? Who doesn’t love a feel-good commnunity spirit? There is also shade thrown at Ukip, for the apparent sin of installing defibrillators. Defibrillators are an unquestionable good thing, given that their public installations frequently save the lives of members of the public having a cardiac arrest. But Razzaq isn’t having any of it.
But, returning to hepatitis, as I think we’ve all been keen to do: there is actually a context here. There has indeed been an outbreak of hepatitis A in the Cradley and Wollescote ward (the ward Razzaq is standing for, there are 24 in total), as the Stourbridge News reported. But it’s not concocted by Labour. It is in fact down to pockets of poverty and poor sanitation, with one example being the utterly depressing fact that 25 people were found to be using a single toilet. Now, this would have been a salient point for Razzaq to make. Although what with the Tories’ lust for austerity, 25 people to a single toilet looks a little too much like luxury living. Who can really rule out the possibility that the Tories’ next move wouldn’t be to replace that toilet with a chamber pot and a single roll of loo paper?
Anyway, I would say good luck to Razzaq, the Superman to hepatitis’ Lex Luthor. But after Christian Calgie, a Conservative parliamentary aide, brought the leaflet to widespread attention on Twitter, because he was embarrassed, Razzaq has been suspended and an investigation opened. Razzaq is yet to comment, but it’s possible he was too busy booing people entering a local GUM clinic.
Pete Lowe, the local Labour leader, told HuffPost that the leaflet was “the most bizarre I have seen in my 30 years in politics”. He stopped there, after commenting: “words fail me”. As far as we know, that’s not a sign of hepatitis.
- Hannah Jane Parkinson is a Guardian columnist
