Letts talk (more) rot

The Daily Mail political sketchwriter obviously misses removing corns off the Queen Mother's toes. Diana was "a danger", Greg Dyke "wrecked Britain" for moving the 9 o'clock news to 10pm. And Enoch Powell was a hero.

There's a specific category of writers. They have few but well-defined characteristics. Generally from an upper-middle class upbringing, they are convinced the world's constantly out to get them and despair change. They miss their little teapot they used to play with as kids and are afraid the newest generations will never savour the pleasure of bangers & mash, blighted as they are by all that foreign food. They still can't get their head around the demise of timber framing. Their living room is adorned with pictures of a smiling Prince Charles, a beguiling Queen Elizabeth and a smug Maggie Thatcher standing at Southampton dock. Their favourite moment of the last fifty years was the Falklands' war when bombing the Argies made them 'feel British' again. Diana was a slut and the enemy's fifth column planted right in Buckingham Palace. They say they're not racist but there's too many immigrants now and there were always too many since the moment the first "wog" set foot in Dover...

If you read the Daily Mail this will sound disarmingly familiar.

Especially with Quentin Letts' serialised "Fifty People that wrecked Britain", an adaptation of his forthcoming book Fifty People Who Buggered Up Britain.

There are times you envy people like Quentin Letts. His world must be an extraordinarily easy one. Few things. Black and white. Good and bad. Friends and foes. Brits and foreigners.

Look for example at what he says about Greg Dyke, one of those who allegedly "wrecked" Britain, guilty of "moving BBC1's main news bulletin of the day from 9pm to 10pm". Letts also sees the late Princess Diana as "a danger to the stability of our kingdom. She mixed in circles that were disreputable and, in some cases, neurotically anti-British".

He then slams former PM James Callaghan for introducing decimalisation in 1971 and bringing to an end the era of the bob, the shilling and the sixpence that had been in place since Henry VII". Check this out:"For centuries our kingdom had maintained a quirky duo-decimal system of currency which sharpened our mental arithmetic, burnished our national identity and baffled foreigners. It had survived the Norman invasion, the Hundred Years' War, plague, Oliver Cromwell, the Industrial Revolution, Napoleon, the Luftwaffe". You find he'll probably tell you that had it not been for those bloody Unions, and the foreigners (of course), barter would still be with us.

Foxhunting? What would Britain do without a bunch of inbred toffs dressing up like nonces on a Sunday to go about business and rip foxes to shreds? Letts' dripping bile is exhuded by the bucketful when he writes about one of the people behind the foxhunting ban, Alun Michael: "a careworn creature with the hunched shoulders and lank hair of a natural loser. On hunting, he got his way. Ill-informed, emotive arguments defeated common sense. But he still looked flea-bitten as he led the canter towards the ban. He still looked miserable, mangy, weak". A finely crafted pro-hunting argument there, well done.

And of course more against Gordon Brown, the creators of EastEnders and any person who never removed a single corn off the Queen Mother's toes. But the best one comes with his passionate defence of Enoch Powell, the hero of many a BNP activist. Quentin Letts blames former Prime Minister Ted Heath for "slamming the desktop so hard on Powell's fingers", adding that "[the] decision made it almost impossible for British politicians to criticise immigration for the next 40 years. Heath created a climate of political terror about immigration"
Bring back the days of 'Paki' yelled across the streets, shall we? "Love Thy Neighbour", "nig-nog", "Sambo" and bananas chucked at Viv Anderson in our football grounds? How we miss all that, don't we Quentin?