Why Jeremy Clarkson blames Cilla Black for our dim | UK News

Jeremy Clarkson has launched a scathing assault on trendy British politics — and he’s laying the blame squarely at the ft of late TV icon Cilla Black. In a sometimes unfiltered column written for The Times, the outspoken broadcaster claimed that whether or not they’re Labour or Conservative, at this time’s politicians are more targeted on proving their humble roots than demonstrating capability — and he thinks Cilla began the pattern.

“As I’ve explained in the past, Cilla Black is to blame. Because on Blind Date, she became the first television host ever to sneer at educated, well-spoken contestants and give a comforting hug to idiotic shop assistants who couldn’t string a sentence together,” Clarkson wrote. “This caught on and now, in politics, education and erudition are seen as a bad thing. ‘I left school at three.’ That gets the voters onside in a heartbeat. Muddle up your ‘was’ and your ‘were’ and you’ll be in the cabinet by Tuesday afternoon.”

Clarkson pointed to figures on both sides of the political divide — from Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch to Angela Rayner and even Keir Starmer — accusing them of enjoying up their working-class credentials while downplaying their precise intelligence.

“To win hearts and minds now, you must explain, as Jenrick has, that your dad was a gas fitter or that you have an understanding of the working-class mind because, as Badenoch has pointed out, you once worked in McDonald’s.”

He continued, “We see a lot of this on the government benches, because they’re full of people whose dads used to make them eat gravel.”

Rayner, he argued, could also be savvy, but her appeal is constructed on her backstory. “I don’t think she’s thick. She’s actually quite savvy. But her grammar is all over the place, probably because, as she constantly reminds us, she left school at 16 and had a baby.

“That makes her a superstar in Cilla world, but do we want her representing us on the world stage?”

Even Starmer got here under fire. “We are led to believe he’s bright because he rose through the ranks to become head of the all-powerful Crown Prosecution Service. But hang on a minute. A lawyer who’s any good will make a fortune in the private sector. Only the hopeless ones end up working for the government. Unless they are deranged in some way.”

Clarkson saved his most brutal criticism for Foreign Secretary David Lammy, mocking his disastrous celeb Mastermind look and questioning why somebody educated at Harvard might get so a lot unsuitable — unless, he suggests, it was on objective.

“Much better in this day and age to seem thick, because then you’re a man of the people and Cilla’s going to put her arm around you. Something she’d never have done with Lord Carrington.”