As a History graduate, I used to respect David Starkey. Although Tudor history was not always my favourite subject I loved his style of writing and his Channel 4 programme on the monarchy excited the geek inside me.
As I heard more of his political and moral views, however, I began to like him less and less. It started with his appearances on Question Time and the lazy, stereotypical Daily Mail-esque attacks on New Labour.
It then got worse when he made an appearance on Jamie Oliver’s ‘Dream School’ and bullied a kid about his weight in order to get kudos from the other schoolchildren. He ultimately failed to understand the troubled kids on the programme and appeared out of touch and erratic.
So maybe I should not have been surprised by his comments on Newsnight last night. Maybe I should have expected it. For those that missed it, here is a selection:
David Starkey – “I have just been re-reading Enoch Powell, The Rivers of Blood Speech, his prophesy was absolutely right in one sense. The Tiber did not foam with blood but flames lambent, they wrapped around Tottenham and wrapped around Clapham. But it wasn’t inter-communal violence. This is where he was completely wrong. What’s happened is that a substantial section of chavs…have become black. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together. This language, which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has been intruded in England. And this is why so many of us have this sense of literally, a foreign country”.
