Much has been made of Kerber's cartoon which has been described as "racist" (Javid is depicted at his new desk at the Home Office saying: "I just want to settle in, get organized, then deport my parents!"). It is rather a savage attack on the racism of Mrs May's Conservatives and the permanent staff of the Home Office.
More to the point, the ostensible reason for his appointment - to maintain the balance in the Cabinet between Europhiles and Europhobes - is rather tenuous. Although he joined David Cameron in supporting the Remain side in the referendum for pragmatic business reasons as well as presumably loyalty to the man who appointed him to government, his basic Euroscepticism has come to the fore since June 2016. It seems therefore that the government line against any cooperation with the EU27 will harden.
But BBC Radio's "World this Weekend" yesterday drew attention to possibly the most worrying aspect of the appointment: Javid is a devotee of Ayn Rand, the Russian-born American "philosopher" who espoused "rational egoism". He seems to have been turned on to her by watching the film of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead starring Gary Cooper, who must have found the part of the self-obsessed architect much to his liking. Cooper had clear fascist sympathies and was one of the leading supporters of the HUAC drive to rid Hollywood of liberals and socialists.
WtW could not trace any disavowal of Rand's philosophy on the part of the new Home Secretary. The programme also implied that he was not the only Conservative MP to be influenced by the philosophy which also drives the Tea Party movement in the US.
No comments:
Post a Comment