Hamish Champ: Labour's Cabinet's full of "left-wing extremists"? Oh do behave!

My JD Wetherspoon story last week - in which chairman Tim Martin was quoted blaming the government for imposing inflationary cost pressures on his business - sparked an almight row between ThePublican.com​ readers.

The spat centred around the political leanings, past and present, of current Cabinet members. The suggestion by one comment poster that the Cabinet was full of "left wing extremists" had me checking the date. Nope, not April 1. The chap must be serious then.

It was then suggested that many ministers were once card-carrying Communists. This was claimed as if some sort of criminal offence had taken place, much like the UnAmerican Activities Committee hearings of the 1950s, rather than an act of political naivety undertaken at a time when the people concerned were doubtless at university reading Rolling Stone magazine and learning how to roll spliffs using five cigarette papers instead of just the normal three.

Maybe they were​ members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, or some weird Trot lot. But so what? What about all the Tory opposition front benchers who had an expensive private education and yet claim to have tucked up their sleeves policies they claim will benefit the entire population of this country; rich, middle income and poor alike?

Unless urging racist policies, or conducting activities with certain types of farm animals that in some countries would result in a custodial sentence if caught, who cares​ what our politicians got up to when they were in their youth?

The fact that a Labour MP might have been a commie pinko pacifist drug-crazed loon in his or her formative years matters to me not one jot. It's what he or she does when in office that's important. If they do a good job when they're all grown up then they're alright by me.

And if they don't, then sure, it's not alright. Removing the 10p tax band thing from five million people, as the government did earlier this year, was enough to convince me that any remaining vestige of social-based even-handedness towards the less well off had been finally hoovered up and out of the party I've voted for since 1979. Yes, I'm sympathetic towards a Labour government. Just not this one.

But - and I know it's been said before, and not just by me - to those people who go on and on and on​ about how bad Labour is for everyone and how life in the licensed trade would so​ much better be under a Conservative government (one led by David Cameron??? Cue Deep Purple-loud hysterical laughter from my oak-panelled study in the west wing of Champ Towers), well, I ask them this. Which party was it that introduced the Beer Orders, the root cause of the pubco situation which many people find so galling to this very day?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address, etc...