Remember Mark Field? Let me remind you: he was the Tory MP who was suspended from his Foreign Office post after manhandling a female protestor at a Mansion House dinner. There was a big furore when it happened a few weeks ago, with his apologists claiming that he had acted instinctively with regard to someone who could have been a terrorist. But the question we should really have been asking about Mark Field, wasn’t whether he acted because he perceived said protestor as a threat, but whether he would have done the same thing if she had been an obvious threat. After all, it is one thing to grab a woman in an evening dress, clearly not substantive enough to conceal any kind of weapon, by the neck, quite another to tackle, say, a knife-wielding crazy terrorist with explosives tied around his waist. (Because, if terrorist attacks like those on London Bridge and Westminster bridge have taught us anything, it is that real terrorists actually do look like the stereotyped crazed fanatics waving knives and threatening to blow themselves up). So, would he have thrown himself onto a suicide bomber in order to save everyone else in the room, or attempted to disarm a knife man? Or would he have hidden under a table? It’s a question we should probably all ask ourselves. I suspect that most of us would either be under that table or frozen with fear and indecision. There are a few people who act decisively, or perhaps just instinctively, during such situations and meet the threat head on. I have a strong suspicion that Mr Field wouldn’t be one of them. Why? Well, because the sort of person, in my experience, at least, who reacts so violently against someone who patently isn’t posing a threat, is a bully rather than a hero. Their calculation as to whether to intervene or not is based upon the perceived weakness of their target in respect to themselves.

Now, I might be doing Field a disservice here, (although I doubt it). But the whole defence of his actions – that he was responding to a potential terrorist threat – sounds like an excuse cooked up later to justify actions that, on reflection, he realises were a complete overreaction to the situation. Certainly, it seems mainly to have been promulgated by the Tory supporting press and various media figures sympathetic to the right, desperate to try and bail out a Tory MP who has clearly overstepped the mark. The truth, I suspect, isn’t that Field ever viewed the protester as a threat, but rather felt outrage and indignation at the thought of some leftie pleb gatecrashing what was meant to be an exclusive event for the great and the good, (not mention right-wing). Fuelled by self-righteous indignation and anger (which he clearly has trouble controlling) he lashed out violently. It is that simple. I’m sure that most of us have, under certain circumstances, also felt that rush of anger, but we’ve learned to control it, (usually because, when, as children, we’ve exhibited it, we’ve either been punished by parents, or been smacked back in the face by our target). The problem here is one we increasingly see with people in positions of privilege and authority – they have never learned to curb those violent, angry outbursts. They haven’t had to and grow up feeling that, as they are socially superior, don’t have to. Nevertheless, despite all the attempts of the media and right-wingers to tell us otherwise, they do have to curb these impulses, and when they don’t, they are as accountable for their ill judged actions as the rest of us.

But hey, if we’re to follow the logic of that ambulatory tub of lard currently occupying the Oval Office, Field’s assault on that woman was undoubtedly the fault of London Mayor Sadiq Khan. In one of his increasingly deranged Tweets, Trump retweeted some offensive shit from the despicable Katie Hopkins, generally considered a right wing extremist who will say just about anything in the name of self-publicity, and included a witless jibe about London being ‘Londinistan’ under Khan’s mayorship. But let’s look more closely at what Trump seemed to be trying to say about Sadiq Khan, namely that he is personally responsible for the most recent spate of knife crimes in London. Which is a rather curious implication. After all, being some kind of vigilante, fighting street crime across the metropolis isn’t actually an elected official’s job – it’s the police’s job. And the size and scope of activities undertaken by the Metropolitan Police is dictated by its budget – which isn’t dictated by the Mayor of London, but rather the Home Secretary. So surely, to follow the ‘logic’, the Home Secretary should be held personally responsible for every crime committed, not just in London, but across the whole UK, shouldn’t he?

In fact, if you think about it, then the sack of shit currently occupying the White House must be personally responsible for all those school massacres and other shootings they’ve been having in the US since he seized power, mustn’t he? Perhaps the most disgraceful aspect of Trump’s Tweet was the clearly anti-Islamic bigotry it contained. A Tweet, incidentally, that former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Cunt was quick to endorse, saying that he ‘one hundred and fifty percent agreed with it’. Well, we hear a lot from the right (not to mention those self-righteous Tory lick spittles and right wing extremist enablers the so called ‘Liberals’) about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, will we now hear them condemning the Tories, and most specifically Cunt, for their naked Islamaphobia? Fat chance. (On a related note, just why were so many people trying to paint Cunt as some kind of Tory moderate during the recent leadership contest? Have we forgotten already his dismal and disgraceful record as Health Secretary?)

I’m well aware that, of late, I’ve become ever angrier and abusive when talking of these bastards, but I’m afraid that I’ve run out of patience – we’re lurching toward a very dangerous political situation indeed. Damn it, we’ve got the leader of a minority government suspending parliament to force Brexit because, God forbid, Parliament disagrees with them and they don’t have a majority to counteract it! This isn’t just unconstitutional and demonstrative of a wilful refusal to understand how a parliamentary democracy works, but it is the kind of talk one would expect from the tinpot dictators of banana republics. Dangerous days – it is time to stand up and be counted and to start calling these fascists out for what they are. Oh, and Mark Field? Well, as soon as Boris Johnson became Tory leader and PM he decided that Field had no case to answer and unsuspended him. Which really shouldn’t surprise anyone.