RT’s The Wokies: Top-10 BRITISH virtue signalers of 2020 (including a cop and a cleric)

It’s been a great year for a bit of virtue signaling. There's been loads about which to show you REALLY care: Black Lives Matter, statue toppling, the pandemic, pick your poison. Here’s a look at the ten best hits from UK leaders.

Trust me. Vote for me. I care. Honestly. I really, really DO care.

Virtue signaling for politicians is the modern day equivalent of kissing a baby, downing a pint in a working men's club, going to church or hugging the wife. All for the cameras, of course.

Plus it's so very very easy to do. 

Just take the knee because Black Lives REALLY DO Matter or spout something Woke and with feeling - preferably on social media. You don't actually have to DO much of anything at all and you secretly don't even have to mean it. 

The definition of virtue signaling is 'an attempt to show other people that you're a good person.' Politicians never want you to think they're a bad person, do they?

Here's ten of this year's political best with a cop and a cleric thrown in for good measure:

10. Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, is ashamed of his church

Justin Welby isn't a Catholic, but he has spent an awful lot of his time in the confessional this year. 

"I am sorry and ashamed," the Leader of the Anglican Church said in February. "I'm ashamed of our history and I'm ashamed of our failure. There is no doubt when we look at our own Church that we are still deeply institutionally racist.

“I have white advantage, educational advantage, straight advantage, male advantage … I’m not ashamed of those advantages, I’m ashamed of not knowing I had them.”

May I make a suggestion? How about an 'unconscious bias training' course. It only takes a couple of hours, and you'll be cleansed. Just ask Keir Starmer (spoiler alert – he is also on this list).

9. Alan Pughsley, Chief Constable of Kent Police, takes the knee

Police officers in uniform should stay clear of making political statements in public. Indeed, the head of the Metropolitan Police Cressida Dick instructed her officers not to take the knee during protests in London. 

But Pughsley took the knee at an event in Gravesend, as 'an act of humility' - for the cameras, of course. He cares though, you see, he really really cares: "Our communities can be confident we listen, we work with them to solve problems and we are accountable for the service we provide. We are never complacent and always strive to be better."

Yeah, whatever Alan. Whatever.

8. Barry Gardiner MP, former Shadow Cabinet member, is as virtuous as Covid-19

All of a sudden, in January, an obscure little virus that had first been spotted in a market in an obscure Chinese city called Wuhan was cutting a swathe across the whole globe. For weeks, scientists seemed to know just about as much as the rest of us as it clawed and coughed its way towards every one of us, ie: nothing much at all

Barry Gardiner had been socially distancing, like the rest of us, from March. Then something more important came along than the health of himself and his neighbours: he had to join thousands of others and take the knee for a cause. An American black man was killed by a white cop... in America. But, well, Black Lives Matter. 

Only 48 hours earlier, he'd been on the radio saying lockdown needed to be extended.

There were others of course, including the MP Tobias Ellwood and broadcaster Piers Morgan, that didn't seem to quite get the hypocrisy. 

Covid 19 is a virtuous virus though, you see. Spend the day on the beach with your mates and the virus is hitching a ride back home with you on the train to infect everyone within a two metre radius. Take the knee close to thousands of others, however, and the little blighter's receptors know how just your cause is - and they don't attach. Funny that.

7. Loads of British MPs, including Sir Keir Starmer and his deputy Angela Raynor, take the knee en masse

How George Floyd died was abhorrent to most human beings. Only a racist nut or a true moron would think what that cop did was reasonable. Kneeling on a man's throat for almost nine minutes until he chokes to death is not restraint: it's murder. Plain and simple.

Taking the knee began as a protest against the unfair treatment of black Americans, and was made famous by NFL player Colin Kappernick and was picked up by the Black Lives Matter movement after Floyd's death - or, more correctly, after video footage emerged of what happened.

One doesn't actually need to take the knee to recognise and accept that what happened to George Floyd was an affront to humanity.

But... George Floyd was a black American man killed by a white American cop... in America. It was not within the jurisdiction of any British lawmaker. And it's funny how there is always a camera present at the crucial moment the knee touches the ground.

6. Birmingham City Council wants woke road names

"Excuse me mate, any nice cafes around here? I'm just gagging for a vegan latte!"

"'Course bud. What you wanna do, this time of night, is head down to the bottom of Destiny Road, left onto Inspire Avenue, cross over Respect Way, left onto Equality Road, right onto Diversity Grove and then next left. There's a Woke cafe at the bottom of Humanity Close." 

City planners in Birmingham asked locals where 5,000 new homes are being built on the site of the old university campus to come up with some street names, and this non-specific Woke piffle won the day. Say no more.

5. Nadia Whittome, Westminster MP, says debate leads to hatred

Nadia, my dear, sorry - but you were just too young to become an MP. At 24, you had virtually no life experience whatsoever, and you made it very clear how little you know by the dopey clap-trap you tap into your smartphone. Debate, you see dear, is not 'a foot in the door for hatred' it's a kick in the arse to totalitarianism

She tweeted: “We must not fetishise ‘debate’ as though debate is itself an innocuous, neutral act. The very act of debate in these cases is an effective rollback of assumed equality and a foot in the door for doubt and hatred.”

Righto Nadia, righto. But debating, err, isn't that actually your new job? Here's a quick lesson, you must have missed this one in school because you were too busy canvassing and putting up posters.

Parliament. Like so much of the old stuff in Britain, it began in French. The very word 'Parliament' is derived from the French verb 'parler' - 'to talk'.  Parlez vous français? Vous êtes membre du parlement.

4: Wera Hobhouse, Westminster MP, wants non-white-only Parliament shortlists

These days the Liberal Democrats have enough MPs to field a team in a Parliamentary football match - but only just, and they have no subs if anyone cries off with covid-19. Gone are the glory days when the party held the balance of power with 57 seats and Nick Clegg was kingmaker and deputy PM.

Wera Hobhouse is one of those 11 political superstars, and is the party's Justice spokesperson. (Everyone gets a post in the Lid Dems these days, there are more Cabinet equivalent jobs than MPs to fill them.)

And Wera's big idea for her tiny, pretty much irrelevant political party? Let's get more people from ethnic minorities into Parliament. Brilliant. Nobody else has ever thought of that one, Wera. The Parliament elected in December 2019 is the most diverse ever.

But she wants to go a step further, a step too far. She wants to make it legal to draw up shortlists of candidates that have no white people on them. She tweeted in October. "We cannot hope to beat racial injustice unless the people making decisions genuinely represent our diverse nation."

Here's a suggestion to white, German-born Ms Hobhouse for the new year: give up your own seat to a BAME candidate and hold a by-election.

3. Humza Yousaf, Scottish Justice Secretary, wants to police speech at home

North of the border, and be careful what you say after a little too much mulled wine grandma. 

As you grumble about a year filled with lockdowns, social distancing and Boris bloody Johnson around the table with the seven other people you're allowed to see on Christmas Day, keep an eye out for anyone writing it all down on a napkin. 

It won't be a letter to Santa 2021, it'll be evidence for the Justice Department.

Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf wants 'insulting' conversations at home between family and friends to be punishable. You'd still have 'the right to be offensive', he said, but “stirring up hatred” against others on the basis of religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, transgender identity or “variations in sexual characteristics” will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

“Let's just give an example, which is intentionally stirring up hatred against Muslims,” he said. “Are we saying that that is justified because it is in the home?”

So? You don't actually have the 'right to be offensive' at all, then? Unless it's offensive to someone who is white, non-religious, straight, not old and not disabled. Then, go ahead - fill yer boots. Got that, grandma? You can still slag off uncle Frank, I've never seen him in a dress. Have another whisky.

2. Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, wants police to recruit based on skin colour

It's an unfortunate but statistical fact that a disproportionate amount of violent crime in London is perpetrated by black youths - upon other black youths. But, that simple fact is a political minefield these days for any cop in England's capital city.

Stop and search, you see, disproportionately impacts upon... yup, you guessed it, black youths. Of course there must be a racist element to the stats plus you cannot discard the individual idiocy of some very stupid officers. But it's also pretty basic logic, it's pretty basic policing too: try to target the perpetrators.

But the number one job of a policeman in Mayor Khan's London is not to actually catch any bad guys or prevent crime, oh no, a cop's number one priority is to put a tick in an ever-lengthening row of boxes. He wants, for example, 40 per cent of new recruits to be of BAME backgrounds by 2022 and he also wants them to be from London itself. 

That's pretty much only a year away now, let's check in this time next year and see how you're doing with that one, Mayor Khan. That's if you don't get booted out in the Mayoral election in May.

1. Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of the Opposition, purges himself of ‘unconscious bias’

Sir Keir, bless him. At heart he's just a stiff and not very exciting lawyer with his Superman hairdo and nice blue suit. The single most interesting thing about Sir Keir is that he's not Jeremy Corbyn.

But the new Labour leader's Woke vital statistics were dented in the summer after he described the Black Lives Matter movement as a 'moment' - as in it wouldn't last long. Oops. (He insisted later he'd actually meant 'moment in time', ie: big and important).

Something had to be done to repair the damage amongst the perpetually offended. So Sir Keir lifted the proverbial baby out of the pram and gave it a big slobbery kiss, by signing up for a thing called 'unconscious bias training'. That's a course to re-programme prejudiced ways of thinking and assumptions about people because they can unfairly influence decisions, such as who might get a job.

"I think everybody should have unconscious bias training. I think it is important," he said in July.

So the 58-year-old Labour leader purged himself of a lifetime of subliminal bias - hey, it only took a couple of hours - in October, when his spokesman trumpeted that he had passed his unconscious bias training. One has to wonder, though, what does one actually have to do in order to fail? 

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.