The reaction from some Conservative MPs to Marcus Rashford’s campaign shows a very different mindset to the one your average parent displays at the school gate
It was the day after 322 Conservatives voted against feeding the nation’s poorest children over the holidays. Social media, indeed all media that way inclined, had been full for many hours of people wondering how these MPs could possibly live with themselves. (The children’s minister! How can a children’s minister vote this way?) Certain Tory MPs – for brevity, the dumb ones – had taken to Twitter themselves to meansplain to the campaigning Marcus Rashford that the responsible stewardship of a nation involves keeping children hungry. Because numbers. And they say so.
I tried to work out which Tory war game this related to. Are we talking your basic Sun Tzu: when your enemy is choleric, make him angrier by interning 1.3 million kids in a state of famishment? Is it more of a culture war: really whip up that base of people who hate virtue-signalling by selecting one fundamental human virtue, empathy, and kicking it to death? Which Facebook subculture is this meant to appeal to?
