Harriet Harman, who as Labour readers would be proud to know is the cousin of a duchess and a product of St. Paul’s school, has got into a spot of bother over calling a Liberal Democrat a “ginger rodent” and saying the Labour Party “never want to see again”.

I am ginger, but despite this and being one of the shortest in my class, being quite bookish and having a more middle class accent than many of my colleagues (as I managed to escape from any bullying.  I was also one of the few lefties in an overwhelmingly Tory school.  Twenty five years on and I still can’t work it out.  My mother thought it was the fact that I was very sharp tongued at that age, which frankly only adds to the mystery.

So my relaxed attitude towards “anti-gingerism” is perhaps unrepresentative.  The usually restrained to the point of dessicated Mike Smithson thinks so.

Other observers have been more worried about the idea that senior (in both senses) Labour politicians are calling opponents rodents and saying that they don’t want them to see them again.

I’ve just called an MEP a parasite so I can’t really speak.  But this is just knock about.  It’s not a new fact that Labour hate their opponents more than their opponents hate them.  It’s always been the way.  You just need to be unfortunate enough to follow the Labour twitter feed, which became sadly more civilised after John Cook left to increase the Tory majority in Norwich North.  It’s one of the reasons why Labour was so rubbish, in that until Tony Blair came along they could not nick other party’s clothes which the Tories and Liberals did shamelessly.  It looks like they’re back to that.

So in conclusion, gingers in my experience are big enough to look after ourselves.  Political knockabout is healthy.  And Labour dehumanising their opponents is normal.

Related articles

• Harman in ‘ginger rodent’ attack (bbc.co.uk)
• Harman Hits Out At Lib Dems’ ‘Ginger Rodent’ (news.sky.com)
• Harman apologises for ‘ginger rodent’ jibe (independent.co.uk)
• “Harriet Harman demeans herself by calling Danny Alexander a “ginger rodent”" and related posts (carons-musings.blogspot.com)
• Harman brands rival ‘ginger rodent’ (mirror.co.uk)
• Labour has a ‘laser focus’ on the future, says Harriet Harman (guardian.co.uk)