It’s a worry, isn’t it? You thought you had a lovely pet labrador and then some government minister comes out and informs you that your soppy old softie is nothing more or less than a far-right trope, the kind of dog that dons shorts and balaclava and goes off to terrorise immigrants.
Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, the current nature minister — no, I had no idea there was such a thing either — made the mistake of blurting out her view that there was a nostalgic far-right fantasy of “warm ale, a black labrador by your feet, in a pub that doesn’t exist”.
There is a lot to unpack here. Why would you want to drink in a pub that doesn’t exist? Wouldn’t it take a long time to get served at the bar? Does this imaginary pub still serve pork scratchings? And then there is the labrador itself. Would it be less of a far-right image if the dog were a different colour?
This was, incidentally, a surprising comment for an MP from the bucolic constituency of Suffolk Coastal, but fair play to her for not bowing down to her racist labrador-owning pub-going constituents. And who can quarrel? Taking your labrador to the pub that doesn’t exist is basically the same as donning jackboots and goose-stepping down to the post office.
Of course any dog can be racist if its owner is. They are extremely sensitive to the emotions and fears of their humans. But it does seem harsh to single out the labrador, when she could have gone for say, an XL bully or a German shepherd. To be fair, I’m not sure German shepherds do actually lean far right. I’ve known a few that were terribly progressive. But Hitler had several and I hear he liked nothing more than popping down to the Red Lion for a pint of mild.
I could spend the rest of this column mocking these remarks — and don’t worry, I will — but if we focused entirely on every bone-headed line from a minister we’ve never heard of, there would never be space for real issues like, how cold does my beer have to be before it is reassuringly centrist? The odd thing, though, is that Ms Riddell-Carpenter both means and doesn’t mean it. Presumably she does not actually think owning black labs or going to pubs is intrinsically far right. On the other hand, she does seem to see what most of us would regard as a rather reassuring image as being somehow transgressive.
But to answer the question, and move on from the dog-whistle politics (see what I did there?), is there a hierarchy of dogs that are less likely to be racist? This is the kind of thing that matters to liberal-minded types. No one wants to come home and find their puppy flicking through The Bell Curve.
Clearly any dog you might have in the country, border collies, beagles, setters, anything involved in hunting sports is suspect. This is harsh since many field dogs famously stood against Mosley’s Blackshirts in the Battle of Cable Street, but you can’t be too careful. What’s more, these dogs also feel a bit macho and are probably committed to maintaining the patriarchy.
Cockapoos don’t feel like a major risk, not least since they are a nicely multicultural mixed breed, but they do seem over-represented in well-heeled households. I have no actual evidence for this assertion except that I’ve never seen one on EastEnders. And they are a bit of a eugenic breed.
A bichon frisé might seem safe but I’ve always thought them a bit snotty and suspect they are more than capable of voting Reform.
To be really confident, you will need the kind of dog that will not embarrass you in a cramped artisan café while you sip an oat latte and read a Fitzcarraldo novella. A rescue greyhound might be a decent bet, but the risk with shelter dogs is you don’t know what political parties they might have joined in the past. You might think it looks friendly only to discover it had joined the Greens and barked at anyone who goes to a synagogue.
While I may mock, I do admit to being worried. No one wants a far-right dog. I have naturally signed up our own small terrier for DEI training to ensure there will be no issues. We have long been concerned by her extreme views on squirrels. If she ever accompanies us to the pub, I make sure to go for an ice-cold lager to be certain she does not get any bad ideas.
She’s quite an old dog now, so new tricks could be a challenge. But then you can’t take any risks, can you?
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