We Were So Concerned That We Left Them There

Cometh the poll, cometh the token pretence to be human. In today's case, since the polls are merely for local authorities and Europe, it has fallen to Sarah Vine, the wife of Michael Gove, to trot out the Love Us For We Are Victims Too schtick. Apparently the next generation of Goves are suffering playground persecution; not because of any normal and legitimate reason such as their size, skin colour, appearance, physical or mental disabilities, idiosyncrasies of speech or personality, or their parents' income, but because of the all-too-well-advertised fact that their father is a malignant nincompoop. Vine, who is a paid driveller for the London Evening Bozza, also claimed (or "revealed", as the journalese hath it) that hate-crazed socialists had been swamping her mailbox, and that she had considered dispatching her children to Italy so that they could see what a well-run democracy really looks like. Since the persecution of her children is so very newsworthy, Vine decided against it; a good professional decision, as it enabled her to imply that her husband's eternal enemies, the dreaded qualified teachers, were behind the bullying: "If it is a toss-up between the teaching unions and my mum, I think the unions are less scary." In the fragrant league table of political posturing with children as human shields, this may not quite rank with Daveybloke's co-opting of his dead and disabled son as an unpaid intern in the propaganda department; but anyone who cares about education will certainly hope that Vine is correct in her prediction: "at some point there is going to be payback."