Presumably Tom Harris thought he was being brave and clever by channelling the spirit of Peter Lilley and attacking young mothers yesterday. He also probably thought he'd get some tabloid kudos for outflanking the Tories to the right, and the Mail did indeed back him. However, he also got a doing in the Record, and rightly so.His diatribe was built around a peculiarly hypocritical core. In one breath he says teenage girls "have been indoctrinated with the lie that they'll never amount to anything, and have fulfilled that prophesy by making no effort to achieve any qualification", then he goes on to tell them that their choices "result in a greater burden on the state, and lead to the continuation of the underclass". No room there for self-awareness.
And, as Patrick said in the Record piece, where are Harris's admissions of Labour's failures on poverty, on sex education, on the pay gap, etc? Where is the basic biological acknowledgement that babies have fathers as well as mothers?
Harris's courage is the typical courage of the right, brave assaults on the most vulnerable in society, brimming with sexism and class hatred. Yet again he's proved how utterly out of touch he is.
The worrying thing is how many petty minded little thugs appear to agree with him.
Read the comments from people who have clearly escaped from an Al Murray Skit.