I have been taking anti-depressants for nine months and for the first half of this year was attending regular sessions at the Cambridge University Counselling Service. I want you to remember that as you read the following.
For a storm is brewing in the teacup of Merton local politics. On Saturday Baroness Warsi gave an interview to the Guardian in which she suggested that Labour should be asking why she was a Tory. In what was probably not the wittiest comment I’ve ever made, I posted the following on Twitter:
Warsi in the Guardian today thinks Labour should be asking why she’s a Tory. We already know, Sayeeda, it’s because you’re mental.
As I say, a not especially witty, throwaway, sub-late night stand up comedy joke, but the best I could come up with during a busy day. In a separate incident, Cllr Linda Kirby (Labour) of my local council posted the following two hours later:
Me too, she’s one sanctimonious bitch.
No mention of me or my tweet, and I don’t know what she was referring to. Maybe it was to my tweet, but she says not and she’s the best judge of these things, so I’ll go with her version.
So far, so not particular amusing tweeting. Then the local Tories got involved. Deciding that these tweets were definitely connected, and that describing Warsi as ‘mental’ was offensive to people with mental health problems (remember that first paragraph), Cllr Richard Hilton and Cllr Debbie Shears, Merton’s Tory leader, wrote to the leader of Merton Council to demand Kirby’s resignation. As the member in charge of adult social care and health, they argued, it was inappropriate for her to agree with my apparently offensive comment – not that there’s any evidence that that’s what actually happened.
There are many things I could say to this. I could, for instance, say that this is shallow political spin, taking two events that may or may not be connected, deciding unilaterally that they definitely are, and blowing everything out of proportion. Or, perhaps, I could say that this is exactly the sort of comment comedians make every night and, indeed, MPs make (see, for instance, the Tory MP for Stone, William Cash, who said on the 8th of November ‘That is the manner in which our system is run. It is completely mad.’) and that Cllr Hilton and Cllr Shears have probably made countless times themselves. I could even point to a story on the Merton Tory website from last April calling a Labour policy ‘crazy’. All synonyms for ‘mental’.
But I won’t do that. What I shall say, however, leaving the hypocrisy aside, is this.
It is utterly ridiculous for Cllr Shears to assert that mental health organisations would be outraged (and for Cllr Hilton to describe me as ‘outrageous’) and then to use this for cheap political point scoring. Mental health problems are a serious issue. I should know, I have one. But this posturing from Merton’s Tories is not only useless, it is also more than slightly offensive. Taking this non-event and using it to portray themselves as some sort of morally superior group who care deeply about mental health issues doesn’t show such deep care, what it shows is political opportunism at its worst. I think mental health organisations would be more outraged that their cause, their desire to limit the misery and suffering that these problems bring to countless people, is being used as a prop in the minor game of Civic Centre politics.
I don’t believe Merton’s Tories are all that serious about mental health. Trying to get help back in 2008 when they were in charge was a nightmare, and it doesn’t seem to have been on the agenda all that much. They only show an interest, it appears, when there is something for them to gain in their Civic Centre bubble, not even some battle to be won on the ground, in the real world where people’s lives will be materially improved.
What I said was not particular funny. But to demand the head of a hard-working public servant out of a desire for a political win rather than a deep-seated belief in the cause they claim to be arguing for is shocking in the extreme. It is not how politics should be done.
