Will Celebrity Big Brother Finally End Katie Hopkins as a Benefit Commentator?

The line up of this year's Celebrity Big Brother has been announced, and it shows a familiar bunch of has-beens, never-weres, side-show freaks and fake controversialists. Into that last category falls Katie Hopkins, newspaper columnist and scourge of the unemployed and benefit claimants...

The line up of this year's Celebrity Big Brother has been announced, and it shows a familiar bunch of has-beens, never-weres, side-show freaks and fake controversialists.

Into that last category falls Katie Hopkins, newspaper columnist and scourge of the unemployed and benefit claimants.

Hopkins has form as a reality show monster, with stints as the baddie on both The Apprentice and I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, but she has so far managed to intersperse these shows with being taken semi-seriously as a poverty commentator.

When Channel 5 wanted someone to stir up anti-claimant feeling on their debate programme The Big Benefits Row, it was Hopkins they called.

She responded exactly as expected, calling Benefit Street's White Dee the "patron saint of drug users and dropouts" and tweeting that "benefit types expect everything for free".

Only she and Edwina Currie, a disgraced former politician, could be found to argue the anti-welfare case with no serving government minister in evidence, perhaps mindful that a lack of facts to support their assertions could lead to their exposure when opposed by those who know the truth.

The CBB launch show provided a taste of things to come, casting Hopkins as a kind of controlling witch who launched her campaign by saying:

"I don't care if you love me or hate me. I don't like fat people, I'm not a fan of gingers and I don't like unemployed people."

These kinds of views, which see the workless as a single immoral lump rather than individuals united only by the unfortunate loss of their jobs, fit with the desire of the Tory and UKIP parties and many newspapers, all of which are joined in using benefit claimants as scapegoats for the actions of bankers in bringing the world to its knees and bringing the UK to financial ruin.

One thing The Big Benefits Row, CBB and the Express - one of the most anti-benefits of all national newspapers - have in common is that all are owned by Richard Desmond.

As we wrote this week, he has made clear which part of the political spectrum he belongs to through his recent £300,000 donation to Ukip, and this makes it highly likely that the Express will become the first national newspaper to endorse the party at the 2015 election.

TV stations are governed by different rules on political independence, but it looks like Desmond is trying to erode these by putting well-known welfare bashers into a range of programmes as a way of propogating his odious anti-poor-people views.

If he manages to unite the paper and Channel 5 in reinforcing the right-wing ideology of UKIP in advance of the election, then yet again regular benefit claimants will be made to suffer as a result.

The hope must be that at least one career is ended by the abomination that is CBB, and history suggests this is likely. Katie Hopkins is a rent-a-mouth with nothing to contribute to the national debate on anything except why posturing weirdos should be kept away from the limelight, and our world would be a better place if we never heard from her again.

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