Labour’s expensive new wheeze to ensure white working class men aren’t left out is doomed to fail – here’s why

OVER the years, successive governments have done their best to ensure that life is as fair as humanly possible for everyone. Black people, brown people, lady people, homosexual people, trans people, disabled people; they’re all people and they must be treated equally. Labour’s plan to support working class white males sounds laudable but is flawed Credit: Getty The problem is that most Labourites aren’t even completely sure how to define a male Credit: Getty And now, the Labour government has set up a new unit to ensure that white working-class males are not left out. This may sound laudable but I foresee a couple of problems, chief among which is this: Most Labourites aren’t completely sure what a male is. And they’re even more baffled by the concept of “working class”. Sir Starmer said recently it’s someone who “earns their living through daily work”. I see, so James Blunt is working class. And so is the Duke of Beaufort. James Blunt is working class according to the Labour government Credit: Getty Labour think working class men are all like Tommy Robinson Credit: AFP But, anyway, they’ve got their new unit and doubtless it will chew through millions of pounds from all the exciting new taxes that Councillor Burnham is doubtless dreaming up at this very moment. But what will this unit do? To try to understand, I consulted the Socialist Workers Party, but they described any such move as a “racist dog whistle” which wasn’t very helpful, as I don’t know what a racist dog whistle is. So I turned to The Guardian, which has printed a lengthy piece on the matter. I’ve read it twice and I’m still baffled because it says the unit will be focused on white working-class people but will not dedicate itself to them. And social class will not become a protected characteristic under the Equality Act. Like being gay or disabled or black are. So again, I ask, what will this expensive new unit do, apart from have meetings where everyone spends an hour talking claptrap while munching on taxpayer-funded biscuits? Are they going to insist, for example, that if your company is running a TV ad featuring someone in a turban and someone in a wheelchair, there must also be someone called Dave in a hard hat? I wouldn’t put it past them. But I suspect that what they’re actually going to do is . . . nothing. Because if you say “white working-class male” to a Labourite, they don’t immediately picture a decent, hardworking miner, trudging home in the rain from the pit. They picture Tommy Robinson, they see “far-right thugs”, Reform voters, people who tie England flags to the aerial on their van. They see people they despise. FOCUS ON THE GUNS, ANDY Andy Burnham said that ‘national security cannot come at the expense of social security’ Credit: Getty Putin and Russia can’t stop making threatening noises towards the UK Credit: AFP I LITERALLY couldn’t believe my ears. Councillor Burnham stood up in the House of Commons this week and actually said, out loud, that “national security cannot come at the expense of social security”. Those were his words. Now this is a man who performs well on TikTok with his footy and I-like-a -pint-in-t’-pub-me shtick. He’s also great when he tells friends in his ward that he likes to play a bit of guitar, me. He’s good at that. And that’s why he’s not doing badly in the polls. But holy mother of God, when he’s forced to say something political we see what he’s really thinking. And that is truly scary. Because what he said, and he hasn’t subsequently retracted it, is that he thinks it’s more important to give someone with a bit of anxiety a BMW than it is to buy the Army some new guns. He knows Putin is making threatening noises about the UK. He knows that the director of the CIA recently paid a highly unusual visit to Moscow. He knows that Iran is far from defeated and that there is an actual killing war going on in Europe. He knows that a British base in Cyprus was recently hit and we had to wait six days before the Royal Navy could respond. Six days!! He says he can’t really do anything about any of this if it means cutting someone’s benefits. Well now look, Councillor. No one is suggesting you cut everyone’s benefits. No one is saying that you must stop feeding old ladies who are too infirm to look after themselves. But what about all the people fraudulently sponging off the state? We read only last week that just one per cent of asylum claims are genuine, and that’s before we get to the fortune being paid out every week to people who are a bit unhappy. Trust me on this, Burnham. They’ll be a lot more unhappy if Putin, right, drops a bomb on them. Experts revealed this week that LG televisions have been recording owners – even with settings turned off VERY regularly, we see sensational headlines asking, “Is your air fryer listening to everything you say?” Well, there’s no need to ask that question about your LG TV because experts told us this week – it is. Every time you use the voice command facility, it records your request, and keeps on recording afterwards. And then this is all fed into some water-hungry data centre. You might imagine that, if you disconnect your set from the internet, all will be resolved. But if you do that, you won’t be able to watch anything on it. Plus, it still records you and saves the conversations you’ve had until it’s plugged back in again, when they are bundled up and sent off to the data centre. It’s scary. Or is it? Because the truth is that I rarely discuss matters of strategic or military importance in my sitting room. I bet you don’t either. All LG will end up with, then, is a million wives saying: “Are you watching bloody football again?” Jeremy tried to have a drink of Hawkstone’s new, regeneratively grown Wildthing lager On-set food stylists put washing-up liquid in it to create a foamy head Credit: Oliver Dixon THE Times newspaper took a photograph of me last weekend, drinking a pint of Hawkstone’s new, regeneratively grown Wildthing lager. Except I wasn’t. Because to make it look good in the picture, the on-set “food stylists” – who knew such a job existed? – had created a long-lasting foamy head using washing-up liquid. Good job it wasn’t a video. Because after the first sip, I spent the next ten minutes retching violently into the lavatory. TIME TO DOWN TOOLS FIFTY years ago, scientists noticed that the Earth was slowing down a little so, to make sure our clocks remained accurate, they introduced the leap second. Which was deployed when necessary. However, for reasons that are not clear, the Earth has now speeded up a bit, so we may need to skip a second. And that’s a worry because the modern tech found in, say satellites, might not be able to cope. It’s such a problem that the matter will be discussed next month when the General Conference on Weights and Measures meets in Versailles – put me down for a ticket for that one!! Happily, however, I have a solution. Instead of using the sun to decide what time it is, or the vibrations in caesium atoms, which is what they actually do these days, simply check in every day with my builders. Because at precisely 4pm every afternoon, they down tools.It’s unbelievable. They are better time keepers than the speaking clock. Jeremy proudly won a National Television Award this week Credit: Handout I WAS, of course, honoured and delighted to win a National Television Award this week but ashamed to say that I was pretty much the only person in the room that I recognised. The problem is that, last year, the thing I watched most of all on television was the feed from a camera that was either inside my heart or up my bottom.