Nick Clegg’s foreign blood
Sometimes the Daily Mail, and other tabloids, use dog-whistles. Then at other times, they put a pound of fresh steak on a plate on the floor and slap their thighs, shouting "Here boy!"
This is one of those occasions, in a primary school playground attempt at a hatchet job on the suddenly popular Nick Clegg*:
Despite his Anglo-Saxon name, Nick Clegg is by blood the least British leader of a British political party, the son of a Dutch mother and a half-Russian merchant banker father.
Horrors! How dare he hide his evil foreign blood in the Trojan horse of an Anglo-Saxon name! And it's tempting to offer a few 'Anglo-Saxon' phrases of your own in response to that kind of thing. I know you have to look at it in the context of the article - in which Clegg is viewed with suspicion by the Mail for being exactly the class of person they would ordinarily like but somehow hypocritical by mentioning that he's from the North of England... as if it's impossible to be both posh and Northern, somehow. But come on... a Dutch mother and a half-Russian father? Does that really taint his 'blood' somehow? (Did Michael Howard get the same kind of sneery treatment for his European background?)
But it doesn't stop with Clegg himself:
Away from Westminster, it is Clegg's Spanish-born wife Miriam who has been hailed as the real breath of fresh air. In a sly dig at Samantha Cameron, who has put her job as creative director of stationery firm Smythson on hold for the campaign, Miriam has said: 'I don't have the luxury of a job I can simply abandon for five weeks, and I imagine that is the situation for most people in the country.'
Spanish-born! Eeek! It's that whole idea, commonly expressed through Mail articles about immigration, that people who aren't born in Britain aren't properly British - and that people with immigrant backgrounds aren't properly British either. It's not so much a dog-whistle as a squeaky toy. Here's this man who has an Anglo-Saxon name, but *whisper, knowing look* his parents were foreign. And his wife... she's foreign as well. (She doesn't even take five weeks' holiday off work to help her husband - how dare she not? - and then when she explains that's impossible for her, that's a sly dig at Samantha Cameron - what a bitch!)
It may not matter to you. It doesn't matter to me. But then this is a newspaper that constantly seeks to create a distorted image of immigrants and immigration, a newspaper in which it was said in a news story rather than a comment piece that the 'impact of immigration' could not be assessed because British-born children of immigrants were not counted as immigrants - as if that was somehow wrong. The Mail knows what it's doing with this kind of thing.
* UPDATE: The headline in the dead-tree version was 'His wife is Spanish, his mother was Dutch, his father half-Russian and his spin doctor's German... is there ANYTHING British about Nick Clegg?' - which drives the point home even more heavily than the online version. The answer to the question is of course 'Yes, he was born and raised here, he lives here, his parents lived here - that's what British is, unless you've got a borderline racist definition of British'.
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April 18th, 2010 - 11:15
I wonder why the Mail has not been renamed The Daily BNP yet?
April 18th, 2010 - 11:17
Although I think Nick Clegg is a prick, I still think that this Mail article is completely unfair and retarded. This weird talk about ancestry has me wondering about what they’d do if I was standing as a leader of a political party, as all of my ancestry is British yet I was born in South Africa (along with parents and 3 of my grandparents). Would be interesting to see if they’d treat me as more British than an Asian person who was born here or Nick Clegg’s wife. Would at least finally mean that the Daily Mail is fully coming clean about being a racist, vindictive shitrag of the elite, far-right heads of business who long for the days when they’d have black people picking their cotton and children working in mills processing said cotton.
April 18th, 2010 - 12:32
Anyone recall if they had a similar problem with Howard’s Judeo-Polish roots?
April 19th, 2010 - 08:14
Or Portillo’s Iberian heritage for that matter?
April 19th, 2010 - 19:44
Howard’s family are actually Romanian, not Polish – hence the vampire references towards him – but given his stance on law ‘n’ order the Mail were generally happy with him
April 20th, 2010 - 19:16
Ah that’s right, he was so dull, the main thing I remember about him is a Rory Bremner impression where he was wibbling on about poles, hence, confuzlement.
Churchill of course, American, if we’re playing by Jewish (maternal) rules.
April 18th, 2010 - 14:13
The Mail are also colour blind. Regarding the recent polls they said “They’ll vote orange.. but get Brown”. Now, I appreciate that being a LibDem myself I’m biased but I was under the impression that any moron could tell our party colours are *yellow*.
April 20th, 2010 - 13:27
Used to be Pantone 116 (Gold), which is quite orangey; but the recent rebranding seems to have picked a paler yellow (& added more blue, hem hem): . LibDem window/garden posters are definitely orange, though.
If only the Mail were really colour-blind. I wonder if they check people’s skin against a Pantone chart before deciding whether to be racist about them or not.
April 19th, 2010 - 09:52
They don’t seem to mind our Royal Family who, let’s not forget, are of German and Greek ancestry.
April 19th, 2010 - 10:15
According to a certain Interwebs Encylopaedia, Mrs Clegg is not a UK citizen and thus should not only be deported back to Abroad where the FOREIGNS come from, but can’t actually vote for her husband…
April 19th, 2010 - 18:38
8 Terry Butcher
There aren’t many images of England footballers more iconic than that of Terry Butcher in his blood-soaked shirt during a World Cup qualifier against Sweden.
Singapore-born Butcher was a key figure in Ipswich’s Robson era and won most of his 77 caps under the great man.
THE LIST: Sportsmail’s top 50 footballers to have played under Sir Bobby Robson, Nos 10-1, MailOnline, 14th August 2009
April 20th, 2010 - 22:16
It’s long overdue for Britain to be once again run by the British for the British.
To insist that Nick Clegg is true British just because he was born and raised here is tantamount to denying there is such an ethnic race as the native British, ethnic English, ethnic Scottish, ethnic welsh and ethnic irish. These people are the true British of these islands and it’s about time they stood up for their inherent rights as the indigenous natives.
April 21st, 2010 - 08:41
Fuck off.
April 22nd, 2010 - 12:07
You’re right! It’s high time we traced everyones roots back as far as possible and if they even have a tiny bit of forrin in them we should stick them on a boat and fire a torpedo at it!
Twat
May 7th, 2010 - 22:04
Here here. Deport anyone with Celtic, Roman, Angle, Saxon, Jute, Viking or Norman blood, for they are all descendents of invaders and not indigenous. The only indigenous peoples of these islands were the Picts, long wiped out.
Vote PICTISH NATIONAL PARTY!
Or as the other guy said in a slightly cruder way: “bog off”.
May 2nd, 2010 - 14:32
Since so many of our famous people-Churchill,Royal Family etc are not “full” English, I am intrigued to know where the Clegg name comes form. With Russionas and Dutch in the background where does the Clegg line come in?