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- Herausgeber: The Robson Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
n this uproarious collection, Ann Treneman, the caustic and witty parliamentary sketch-writer for The Times, tells the true, unvarnished story of Britain's first coalition government since the Second World War. As well as the headline acts - David Cameron and his Flashman alter ego, Nick Clegg's struggle to stop looking sad, Ed 'Two Kitchens' Miliband's heroic attempts to relaunch himself - she was there to see UKIP shed its fruitcakes, the Speaker be compared to a dwarf, and the Greens go surge-tastic. With an eye for the absurd, an ear always attuned to the jargon junkies of politics, and a nose for what's really going on underneath the talk, Ann Treneman chronicles the events that everyone in Parliament would much rather forget: the AV referendum; the chaos of the tuition-fee vote; the Omnishambles Budget; the train wreck that was Lords reform; the dramatic Syria vote; and, of course, the panic-stricken campaign over the Scottish Neverendum. Floods, horsemeat, badgers and bile, it's all here - a tragicomic coalition tale. 'Gorgeous George' Osborne may have said 'we're All in This Together', but now they really are - in this hilarious book.
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Contents
Introduction
‘We are all in this together’
George Osborne, Manchester, 6 October 2009
IT WAS GEORGE Osborne’s big moment, the speech at the 2009 pre-election Tory Party conference in which the shadow Chancellor, still podgy, voice too high, hair painfully untrendy, set out a package of carefully calculated spending cuts. ‘I want a prosperous Britain where my children can be everything they can be,’ he told us, on stage in Manchester in front of a giant photo of a suburb. He wanted an optimistic Britain, a Britain with fewer debts, a tolerant Britain. ‘And because I want it for my children, I want it for your children too. I want it for everyone’s children. Because we are all in this together. We changed the Conservative Party to be ready for this moment. So that when the moment came, people would see us as fit to govern.’
Of course it didn’t turn out like that. When George Osborne told the nation that we were all in this together, most people just laughed. And, come May 2010, the people decided the only people who were really all in this together would be, actually, the politicians. It was the first hung parliament since 1974 and the result, after a feverish week, the first coalition government since the Second World War.
It is impossible to be a sketch-writer and not, at times, feel like a stalker. I can remember in May 2010 running behind the Lib Dem coalition negotiating team as they walked down Whitehall and wondering who that tall guy with the red hair was. He was, of course, Danny Alexander, soon to be shortened to Danny A and dubbed the Ginger Rodent, previously the publicist for red squirrels in the Cairngorms, now destined to become part of the fabled Quad, the foursome (Dave and George, Nick and Danny) who ruled in coalition land. Quad was one of those words – like Brokeback Coalition, pleb, Leveson, sluts, dwarf-gate, ’Ed Stone, Eton Mess – that have come to define the coalition years. No one says Quad now. No one talks about the Ginger Rodent. The Brokeback Coalition is, actually, broke.
As I stalk past the gargoyles (the stone ones) which adorn the mock gothic fun palace that is the Palace of Westminster, I often find myself recognising MPs from their backs. If necessary, I will slow down so I don’t have to pass them. But sometimes I do run into them, face to face. Some recoil. Others rush forward to take issue with whatever adjective I have used about them. ‘Eccentric?’ said one MP, looking puzzled. ‘What does that mean?’ In general, I find ‘eccentric’ is a nice way to say ‘bonkers’ although when asked directly I proffer the term ‘unique’ as a substitute synonym.
So what word would I use now for the coalition years? Well, unique is certainly true, as is eccentric, as is bonkers. But at first, there was no doubt that the word was ‘refreshing’. It’s important to remember just how different it felt then, after the thirteen years of Labour ended with the incredible hulking premiership of Gordon Brown, a man who often felt like a growl, angry that everyone else, the press, the voters, the country, was not living up to his expectations. The first sketch in this collection records the Downing Street rose garden press conference where David Cameron and Nick Clegg were full of sweetness and light, happy and wholesome, positively fragrant with possibilities. And that picture, afterwards, which would become famous, of Dave and Nick, each patting each other on the back, as they headed through the heavy black door at No. 10, made us all smile.
We know how the story ended – more Grimm than fairy tale. But as I write, just weeks into the 2015 Tory government, I find myself already nostalgic for those years of coalition. It seems another age, with everyone talking about ‘in the national interest’ and, at first at least, Dave and Nick treating each other with the care and attention of honeymooners. I had forgotten, for instance, that Dave came to listen to Nick as he told the Commons about his precious AV ballot. But what struck me, forcefully, as I looked back over the nearly 900 sketches during this time, whittling them down to a fifth of that to be included here, is how the seeds of destruction were sown from the very start. This wasn’t a relationship that went wrong. It was lop-sided from the start and it is because this was not acknowledged, especially by the Lib Dems, that it all became as sad as Nick Clegg’s face.
So here, then, is what I miss (and a bit of what I don’t) about the coalition years:
1. Marriage metaphors. Dave and Nick denied it was a wedding even as they threw confetti all over themselves. We, the press, were wedded to it. The coalition agreement was the pre-nup, the grooms of honour were the old versions of George Osborne and Danny Alexander, the marriage counsellor Nick Robinson of the BBC. They were the Brokeback cowboys, our two gay dads who just happened not, actually, to be gay. You can chart the demise of the coalition by the anniversaries: the first was in the handball arena of the then Olympic dirt pile, the second at a tractor factory. Halfway through, Dave likened their relationship to Ronseal. You know the magic is gone when you talk about DIY.
2. The Lib Dems. There, I’ve said it. I miss the Lib Dems, with their earnest crusades for doomed causes and their incredible ability to absorb abuse and still burble on about how they are carrying on the traditions of John Stuart Mill. I do think the coalition years would have been significantly different if the Lib Dems had decided not to campaign for the likes of the Alternative Vote or House of Lords reform, the latter an obvious red rag to the Tory bull. What if they had just stuck with their core issue of fairness and concentrated on favoured topics such as free school meals, taking the poorest out of tax, removing the stigma out of mental health? What if, I wondered, as I read through the sketches during that first turbulent coalition year, when students laid siege to Westminster and Nick was burnt in effigy, if they had argued against the tuition fee rise and taken the option, provided in the Coalition Agreement, to abstain as one from the vote? What if, indeed. They chose these battles, but it could have been different.
3. Nick Clegg. There, I’ve said it again! I miss Nick Clegg singing that he is sorry (I’m so so sorry) and looking sad for the last four years of government and his monthly press conferences that seemed entirely pointless except for the fact that he was the Deputy Prime Minister. I even miss the coalition version of Tory MP Peter Bone, for whom the word eccentric does not suffice, and his obsession with who would rule the country if David Cameron were to fall under a bus. I miss Call Clegg, the LBC programme from which we learnt way too much, including that he had worn a onesie.
4. Ed Miliband relaunches. The Labour leader was the rocket who never had enough boosters, the troublesome politician whom ground control could never fathom. ‘Houston, we have a problem’ could have been his catchphrase. Twice, three times, sometimes more, a year, we would gather for what became an almost ritualised event. The Tories never tired of mocking him even as they stole many of his moral capitalist ideas (electricity charges, scrapping non-doms). Even One Nation, now the Tory slogan, was once Ed’s, launched during one of his trademark memorised speeches. What was the real problem? Was it that he couldn’t eat a bacon sandwich? That his name wasn’t David? That his teeth were too big? That he forgot to mention the deficit in his last conference speech? But surely the truth is that he is an intellectual and just not much of a political street-fighter. The fact that it ended with him standing next to the 8 ft 6 in ’Ed Stone provided the perfect, weird and, indeed, perfectly weird end to it all…
5. I miss the man formerly known as George Osborne. When the coalition began, George was a slightly overweight wallpaper heir who was politically accident prone. Remember when President Obama called him Jeffrey? Or when he was booed by an entire stadium of people at the Olympics? The man who coined ‘all in this together’ and gave us the Omnishambles Budget was not, the country thought, together at all. Those were dark days for George, who became known as the Submarine Chancellor, as he dived deep, not surfacing for months. But then he had the best political make-over ever seen: becoming a champion of the unfashionable north, wearing hi-vis at every opportunity, losing weight and acquiring a new haircut that made him look like Caesar. I miss the old George, a bit pudgy, white-faced, weak-voiced and thin-skinned. The new one is much shinier and not nearly as much fun.
6. Ed Balls and his hand-signals. PMQs is not the same without the shadow Chancellor, who was thrilled to be christened the most annoying man in politics by the Prime Minister. There he sat, his hands constantly in motion. For years, every time Dave and George talked about the economy, Ed would make his ‘flat-line’ gesture. Any hint of excitement and he would pat the air in a ‘Calm down, dear’ hand signal. Then there was the shovel (‘quit digging!’) and, my personal favourite, the wine glass, in honour of the Prime Minister’s chillaxing ways. As much as I miss his hand gestures, though, I miss the way he riled the Tories more. They hated him the most. Surely there can be no greater accolade for a Labour politician.
7. The Leveson Inquiry. There will always be inquiries, but there will never be another one like Leveson, where Lord Leveson, or Brian as I like to call him, listened patiently to a stream of celebrities invade their own privacy, washing their own dirty linen themselves so that we, the press, didn’t have to. I learnt way too much about the private lives of Max Mosley and Hugh Grant. Surely there will never be a final press conference like Brian’s last great theatrical moment when he read out his conclusions, answered no questions and left for Australia. Could you make it up?
8. Britain before the Scottish revolution. It is an amazing fact that, for almost four years, the Scottish question never really bothered anyone very much. There was the occasional pesky midge moment but it wasn’t until the referendum was virtually upon us that Westminster realised that, oops, they may have a little problem with the clans up north. You can see how, by sheer neglect, the Westminster elite, as the SNP love to call them, created the situation that exists today. The SNP may have lost the referendum but they are winning the war. Politically, we are all still adjusting to it.
9. UKIP as the fruitcake party. The death of fruitcakery can be timed from the moment in September 2013 that Nigel Farage withdrew the party whip from Godfrey Bloom after his infamous ‘sluts’ comment. That is when I knew that Nigel was serious about winning the 2014 European elections (tick), encouraging Tory defectors (tick) and winning seats in the general election (er, only one tick). I’m still not sure that UKIP getting serious really worked for them as a party. Certainly they have not been nearly as successful as the Tory Euro-phobes who began the coalition years as irritants and ended them as triumphant with a firm commitment to a Euro-referendum.
10. Foreign policy, what foreign policy? In the beginning, there was Libya. Actually, maybe that’s enough about that (certainly the coalition thought so). Afghanistan was all about getting out. Then there was the Syria vote where the Prime Minister, reacting as if stung by a bee, never went again. So, instead of an actual foreign policy, we had William Hague and Angelina Jolie, or Wangalina as we liked to think of them, fighting the good fight for women victims of war. But I, for one, will miss William Vague, as I thought of him.
The coalition morphed seamlessly into the election which, looking back, was like taking part in a fantasy game, built as it was on the absolute conviction held by almost everybody that we were going to have another hung parliament. All those marginal polls! All those kitchens! All those MPs who never returned. And, yes, I will miss some, and none more than the magnificent stately home that is Sir Peter Tapsell, the perfectly cast Father of the House.
We may not be ‘All In This Together’ but at least here they are certainly ‘All In This Book Together’. RIP coalition years, we won’t see the likes of you again – thank goodness.
Ann Treneman
Westminster
July 2015
So Who Exactly Was All in This Together?
DAVID CAMERON: ‘Dave’, aka, the Prime Minister, leader of the Conservatives, the largest party in the Parliament with 306 seats out of 650, Old Etonian and alternatively known as ‘Mr Sunshine’, ‘Flashman’ and ‘Mr Angry’.
NICK CLEGG: ‘Cleggers’ or ‘Calamity Clegg’, the Deputy Prime Minister, leader of the Liberal Democrats, with fifty-seven seats, Europhile and speaker of five languages. Specialises in apologies and looking sad.
ED MILIBAND: ‘Red Ed’ or, sometimes, ‘Dead Ed’, leader of the Labour Party, the opposition with 258 seats. To become leader, in 2010, he beat his brother David, seen as fratricide. Best known for relaunches, moral capitalism, the ’Ed Stone and bacon sandwich difficulties.
GEORGE OSBORNE: The ‘Submarine Chancellor’ and Tory political strategist, wallpaper heir who found his political mojo by championing the Northern Powerhouse and getting a new hair-cut.
DANNY ALEXANDER: Also known as the ‘Ginger Rodent’, Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury and member of the Quad that ruled the coalition.
THERESA MAY: Home Secretary, surprise appointment who turned out to be rather good, becoming the longest-serving occupant since Rab Butler. Ice Queen and shoe fanatic.
ED BALLS: Shadow Chancellor, economist, Gordon Brown sidekick and all-round showman. Brilliant at hand signals and irritating the Tories. Also piano player, lasagne maker and football fan.
MR SPEAKER: John Bercow, famously pint-sized, hated by some Tories for being not as Tory as they are. Controversial, verbally flamboyant, crusader in the battle to update Parliament.
EUROSCEPTICS: Tory backbenchers, previously believed to be swivel eyed, who never tired in their quest to hold a referendum over leaving the EU. Star specimens are Bill Cash and Jacob Rees-Mogg, who I believe should wear a monocle.
ALEX SALMOND: SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland throughout most of the coalition years. Seen as a tartan Mickey Mouse and selfie-king of Scotland. Famously abrasive – and successful – politician.
The First Year
Confetti and Chaos
MAY 2010 – APRIL 2011
THE FIRST FULL coalition government in Britain since 1945 came into being after five long days of negotiations in May with a document immediately dubbed ‘the pre-nup’. They were calling it the ‘New Politics’. David Cameron, clearly enjoying the trappings of No. 10, displayed a talent for rising above it all. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg embarked on an ambitious programme of constitutional reform (the Alternative Vote and the House of Lords), not to mention keeping busy U-turning over tuition fees. What MPs were calling the Brokeback Coalition was already looking ropey. Meanwhile, for Labour, there was the small matter of fratricide. The Age of Austerity was all around us, but you have to throw some confetti for a year that began with a political wedding and ended with a royal one.
• • •
13 MAY 2010
Da dum dum dum … Dave and Nick get married
After a week of talks between the Lib Dems and the Tories, the press received a missive to go to Downing Street, but we had no idea why. If I had known, I’d have worn a hat.
FROM THE VERY first sight of the happy couple I knew that this was, actually, a wedding. Nick and Dave emerged from the back door at No. 10 onto a garden terrace dotted with bright green spirals of topiary. Deep in conversation, they processed by the cascading lavender wisteria (wisteria! Dave’s fave). Stride mirrored stride, smile begot smile.
We could see how well they chuckled together as they came down the garden path towards us. Yes, down the garden path. You could not make it up. We were gathered, dearly beloved, in the garden of No. 10. The hundred or so velvet chairs were arranged on the lawn – one side for the groom, the other for the other, slightly more boyish, groomette. The garden was a little bit of heaven with its beehive and wormery, dominated by a graceful majestic magnolia. Many of the flowers were yellow and blue, of course, perfectly co-ordinated for the politics. They even had matching his ’n’ his lecterns.
The grass really IS greener on this side, I can report. It almost glowed it was so lusciously alien green. The only thing missing was a small orchestra and a tremulous song by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
‘Today we are not just announcing a new government,’ beamed Dave as Nick beamed back, eyes steady, body turned towards him. ‘We are announcing a new politics.’
OMG, as they say, not just a wedding, but a birth too. ‘I came into politics to change it, to change Britain,’ beamed Nick as Dave beamed back. ‘Together – that job starts today.’
Together forever! I have to say they suit each other. Indeed, both looked more relaxed together (forever!) than they do with their own parties. They are both forty-three but Nick makes Dave look a bit older, which, as he is now Prime Minister, is good. I had never noticed his crow’s feet until yesterday, but then he laughed more than usual, occasionally throwing his head back. Everyone was talking about their hair (sorry, I wish I could say their policy on nuclear power but it wouldn’t be true). Dave’s miniquiff was more coiffed; Nick’s more natural.
We guests had brought only questions but, as it was a wedding, they were a bit soft. ‘If the phone rings at 3 a.m., do you both have to answer it?’ was one. Everyone giggled, especially Dave (or ‘David’, as Nick calls him). It seems not.
Where was Nick’s office? ‘He has the Deputy Prime Minister’s office in the Cabinet Office,’ explained Dave. ‘It is pretty close together. This is not going to be a partnership where we have to book meetings.’ Nick said that the Cabinet Office was like a warren. ‘I have no idea where I am!’ he cried giddily.
Birds were singing as they told us about their relationship. They’d set a fixed term of five years (and Parliament will follow suit), so will be renewing their vows at the election in 2015. Yes, Nick would be standing in for him at Prime Minister’s Questions. ‘I look forward to lots of foreign travel!’ gushed Dave.
It was all ridiculously chummy. Who knew that coalitions were this much of a love-in? If they keep this up, they’ll need a joint name (Clameron? Camelegg?). But they both did look transformed. At one point, Dave chortled: ‘This is what the new politics looks like!’
Happy days – at least for now.
20 MAY 2010
Nick picks up where 1832 left off…
In those heady first few days, anything seemed possible, especially for the Lib Dems, who hadn’t been in power since the 1920s. Nick couldn’t wait to change the world.
TO ISLINGTON, THEN, for the most important speech on political reform since 1832. Don’t take my word for it: this is what Nick Clegg, our new Deputy Prime Minister, says.
The location was the atrium of a sixth-form college just off Holloway Road in north London, which may be home to the most kebab shops in Britain. (What did they do in 1832 to get a kebab? Maybe Nick would tell us.) When we arrived, we were given yellow lanyards, a word beloved by Lib Dems for the bit of string that holds your ID card. But the college had run out of ID cards and so we were told to wear the lanyards with nothing in them. As we sat, waiting for Nick, our empty lanyards round our necks, I felt that I was living the Lib Dem dream.
Nick was late. Actually, Nick is always late. Apparently ‘Clegg Time’ runs about fifteen minutes behind BST. Sure enough, right on Clegg Time, he arrived, preceded by an entourage that already numbered twelve. Then he ducked into another room. How frustrating. It was only when I saw a Lib Dem press officer carry out the sacred (plastic) glass of water for him that I knew the Great Political Reform Speech of 2010 was nigh.
It was very ‘Power to the People’. I had hoped that Nick would just sing the John Lennon song, but instead he talked about a ‘programme of empowerment’. This is harder to sing. He told us this was ‘the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832’. He’s just lucky that the suffragettes aren’t around to chain themselves to the railings over that.
It is a bit of a tradition for Nick that, wherever he gives a speech, there is noise. The moment Nick announced ‘The Power Revolution’, behind me a dishwasher churned into life. I don’t think Nick meant that kind of power. Nick’s power revolution will ‘put you in charge’. Presumably of the switch.
‘Britain was once the cradle of modern democracy,’ said Nick. ‘We are now, on some measures, the most centralised country in Europe, bar Malta.’ Bar Malta? Only a former MEP who is also a Lib Dem would care. I can hear the Libs now: ‘My God, we can’t be as centralised as Malta – let’s have a power revolution.’
Nick told us that he was a liberal (lower case ‘l’, another example of coalition creep). ‘My starting point has always been optimism about people.’ Oh dear, this is pure Dave.
There are three steps to Nick’s power revolution. First, he’s ending the culture of spying. I glanced up at the sign that said we were all on CCTV. Second, he’s reforming politics. We’ve been talking about Lords reform for 150 years. ‘The time for talk is over!’ he said (talking).
He’s set up a committee that is not a ‘talking shop’. This seemed a tad unrealistic: is it even possible to mime Lords reform? Only Nick and Dave, being optimists, would know. The third step is about decentralising so we avoid the Malta nightmare.
Nick ended his Great Reform Speech by enthusing: ‘Power will be yours!’ It seems unlikely, but what do I know? I wasn’t there in 1832.
21 MAY 2010
I’d like to report a birth…
The first thing I noticed about the newborn coalition is that it was a very strange colour.
THERE WAS A gaping hole in the birth announcements in The Times yesterday, and this is what should have been in it: LIB-CON. On 20 May, in Whitehall, to Nick and Dave, a child, named Coalition Freedom Fairness Responsibility, thirty-six pages long. No brothers or sisters.
The first thing I noticed about the new infant was its colour. It would be at home on Mars. ‘Is it mushy pea or guacamole?’ asked a colleague. Actually, it’s lime green with a hint of asparagus. Apparently one colour chart calls it Tranquil. Basically, it’s a muddy version of what you get when you mix a lot of yellow with a bit of blue: page two is just a Rothko-esque block of this green that paint makers might think about calling Coalition.
The birth was at the Treasury. The NHS may be concerned by this. It took place in front of 100 civil servants and fifty press, plus innumerable politicos. Midwives (mid-husbands?) Oliver Letwin and Danny Alexander looked on proudly. It had been a nine-day labour (also called negotiations) and no drugs (only drugs policy) were involved.
‘In the end, in politics the right thing to do is the right thing to do is the right thing to do,’ said Dave as he welcomed baby Coalition. Nick looked on adoringly. They got married only last week. On that occasion, Dave said: ‘This will succeed through its success.’ I think these will be known as Dave-isms.
The birth was a drawn-out affair, with more speeches than a quadruple wedding. Nick spoke first: ‘Even if you’ve read 100 party manifestos,’ he said, revealing what Lib Dems do in their spare time, ‘you’ve never read a document like this.’
I looked through the thirty-six pages with thirty-one chapters (they went from B for Banking to U for Universities, so it’s not exactly A to Z). It was partly in Tranquil type and partly in black. To be honest, it DID look exactly like every other manifesto I’ve read. But Nick is not the first parent to think his child ultra-special. I’m beginning to forget that Nick and Dave are from separate parties. Yesterday they seemed one as they doted on Little Coalition Freedom Fairness Responsibility Lib-Con (how that child is going to hate the name; maybe they’ll use Co or Free for short).
Now it was Theresa May’s turn to speak. She was wearing her Star Trek top, perhaps in sympathy with the little greenie. It’s all so male-dominated that if Theresa didn’t exist they would have to invent her. She warbled on about freedom: ‘Liberty builds bigger people.’
Then it was Vince’s turn, but he was entangled with his mike, so she offered to fill in: ‘I was going to suggest ballroom dancing!’
Vince eventually got to the lectern. ‘As the new head of the department for technological innovation,’ he said, ‘we make it up as we go along.’
He speaks, of course, the truth.
22 JUNE 2010
Bulldog Dave has a ‘Oeuf, oeuf!’ moment
The parliament began, as it would carry on, obsessing about Europe. The Prime Minister was eager to explain his ingenious plan.
IT’S AMAZING WHAT the great British breakfast can do. As you may remember, the EU served one up to David Cameron last week in the hopes of getting off to a good start with him. Yesterday, Dave told the Commons that the jambon-et-oeufs strategy had been a total success in that, now, incredibly, he is leading Europe when it comes to thinking on deficits.
‘The summit was rightly focused on securing the economic recovery. It was unanimous that this required early action on budget deficits!’ cried Dave. I got the impression that his new best friends, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, would, if their diaries allowed, be over here beside him for the Budget, scythes over shoulders.
Tory backbenchers, most of whom have been unremittingly negative about every Europe statement for the past thirteen years, came in droves to sing Dave’s praises. He was their hero. Europe was now following Dave. Wasn’t it marvellous? ‘We now have a British bulldog representing the interests of Britain rather than a former Prime Minister who was like a French poodle!’ cried Peter Bone, a right-winger who looks like Sven-Göran Eriksson, which makes him seem very dated. (Gordon Brown as a poodle? I don’t think so but, then, we are in a brave new world.)
Dave said that it was the crisis in Greece (not to mention the oeufs) that had convinced Europe that he was right on budget deficits. ‘The one group of people who seem to be completely outside this consensus is the British Labour Party! It’s very short-sighted. It’s very wrong. They’ll come to regret it.’
Acting Labour leader Harriet Harman, spluttering, was a lone voice in the face of Dave-mania. Her line, badly delivered, was that it was the Tories who were isolated in Europe. Britain mustn’t let cuts hurt growth. We mustn’t fall behind South Korea. At this, Dave pounced: ‘If we followed her advice, I think we would be falling behind North Korea!’ The chamber hooted, for North Korea, as Sven would know, had just lost 7–0 in the World Cup.
Harriet blinked. Now Dave chortled again about how all of Europe was backing him: ‘The Labour Party are completely isolated!’ His message was relentless, his argument crude, his attack total. It was exactly the sort of dog’s breakfast argument, though in reverse, that Gordon Brown used to deploy. Woof, woof (or perhaps ‘oeuf, oeuf’), as bulldogs say.
23 JUNE 2010
George arrives, axe at the ready
It was hard to see what George Osborne was hiding behind that giant implement, but then we saw it was a VAT rise.
THE GOOD NEWS is that, with his first Budget, Boy George has become a man. The bad news is that it’s the axeman. It’s hardly an aspirational job. No one says: ‘When I grow up, I want to be an axeman!’ And yet, that is exactly what Boy George is and, perhaps more worrying, I think he is loving it.
So cometh the hour, cometh the axeman. George certainly looks like a natural villain. It’s that pasty skin and black hair. It’s perfect for Hammer Horror. Or, The Addams Family (a male Morticia). Surely the way he popped up at the dispatch box to chortle, ‘Here’s Georgie! It’s worse than we thought!’ owed something to Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Has he been watching The Texas ChainsawMassacre for tips? But his horror movie had a twist: George’s character was the hero. So it’s not The Axeman Goes on a Rampage, it’s The Axeman Rescues the Nation. George has his chainsaw and he’s going around SAVING people with it. He’s scaring us to death FOR OUR OWN GOOD.
George never named the true villain. He just kept referring to his ‘predecessor’. It was nicely icy. His predecessor had left a nightmare. He referred, with sadness, to poor Prudence. Like a Victorian maiden, her reputation has been ruined by you know who. ‘Past Prudence was the excuse for future irresponsibility,’ tsked-tsked the axeman. George mentioned the Civil List. Oh my God, I thought, he’s going to chainsaw the Queen. But then he told us the Queen had agreed to chainsaw herself. He mentioned child benefit, praising it so much that I just knew, like lions hunting wildebeest, it would end in tears.
I had the same feeling when, on page thirty-two of a 41-page speech, he began to tell us, yet again, how awful it all is. It was like that music from Jaws. It tells you disaster looms. Then he struck, raising VAT in a single sentence. This brought screams from Labour. ‘The years of debt and spending make this UNAVOIDABLE!’ shouted the axeman, for that is his catchphrase.
He sat down to Tory adoration and Labour horror. The Lib Dems looked like they’d just been chainsawed. And the axeman? He was satisfied, for it had been almost an hour of pain. It’s what he does.
30 JUNE 2010
Health Minister has a (very) small moment of madness
No one could believe it when the swivel-headed Simon Burns lost it with Mr Speaker.
IFEAR FOR THE health, not to say career, of the new Health Minister Simon Burns. Yesterday Mr Burns went berserk – a technical term, but it was Health Questions so everyone understood – in the Commons, not against the opposition, but the Speaker. Why? Well, like all rage attacks, it was something that would seem tiny to you and me.
It had all begun when Mr Burns had turned round to answer a question from a Tory backbencher. ‘Patients are going to be at the heart of the NHS,’ said Mr Burns, his head rotating like an owl. At this, Mr Speaker interrupted: ‘Can I very gently say to the minister, can you face the House?’ Labour MPs cheered. But Mr Burns, who is fifty-seven with a florid beefy look and urbane manner, seemed perfectly normal (always a relative term in the chamber). But then, at the end of the session, Mr Burns was answering another question and this time with his whole body turned backwards.
Labour MPs complained that they couldn’t hear. ‘You must face the House,’ insisted Mr Speaker. ‘It’s a very simple point. I have made it to others and they have understood it.’
This brought a raucous laugh. Mr Burns plonked down and then, suddenly, exploded, his body contorting, rocking from buttock to buttock, his head bobbing like a cork. ‘Stupid,’ he said. ‘Stupid.’
It was a verbal Mr Creosote moment. Everyone was transfixed. Mr Burns was babbling, incandescent, apoplectic, splenetic. Among the words he fumed was ‘sanctimonious’. Mr Bercow ignored him, calling another MP who asked a question on something (though absolutely no one was listening). Then, Mr Burns made a diminutive gesture with his hands and said, clearly: ‘Dwarf’.
Mr Bercow, who admits to being vertically challenged, pretended not to hear. It was left to the excitable Tory MP Michael Fabricant, splendid in his buttercup-yellow summer wig, to lay a soothing hand on Mr Burns’s shoulder. You know things are out of control when Micky Fab, as my late sketch-writing colleague Simon Hoggart christened him, is a calming influence.
If a panic button had existed, they would have hit it. Many Tories believe Mr Bercow, a former right-wing Tory who drifted to the left and was now a reforming Speaker, if a bumptious and self-regarding one with a habit of making Tory enemies, betrayed their party, but it has never spilled so rawly into the open. Mr Burns left, still in a state.
Everyone was agog. During points of order, Ian Paisley arose, like the ghost of his father. ‘Is it in order,’ he asked, ‘for a member of the front bench to berate, scoff, scold and hiss at the chair whilst a member is trying to ask a question?’ Mr Bercow listened, head cocked, as if this was news to him. He then said the incident had not been ‘recorded’ as he had been focusing on the whole chamber. This seemed unlikely, as if he had somehow missed Vesuvius. But now Mr Speaker came over all, well, sanctimonious. ‘I hope that it will not be necessary in the course of the new parliament and the new politics, for that point to have to be made from the chair again,’ he said primly.
But no one in Westminster could talk of anything else and Mr Burns certainly did not deny that he’d called the Speaker a ‘stupid, sanctimonious dwarf’. Mr Bercow’s Labour wife, Sally, tweeted: ‘So much for the new politics, eh, Mr Burns.’ She referred to ‘nasty Tories’ and ‘low-grade abuse’. Her final response (she packs a lot into one tweet): ‘Mr B is Speaker so get over it!’ To which I can add only: ‘Stretcher!’
6 JULY 2010
Lesson in how to influence no one
Nick makes the wrong friends – and enemies – as he announces the referendum on the Alternative Vote, a system in which voters rank candidates by numerical preference.
IT WAS NICK Clegg’s moment in the limelight. Dave slipped in early, next to him. The two men – still on honeymoon, incredibly, after seven weeks – smiled at each other in their special way. At first it went fine. Dave glowed with pride and, at one point, even poured a glass of water for him.
Nick wants to ‘empower’ (ghastly word) the people by giving them a vote on the Alternative Vote and new constituency boundaries. It may sound laudable but, in the chamber, there was only carping. His reaction was a masterclass in how to lose friends and influence no one.
Labour began by having a bit of fun. Jack Straw, who is having a whale of a time in opposition, said that before the election Nick had called AV ‘a miserable little compromise’. What, Jack wondered, had changed his mind? ‘POWER!’ cried MPs. Nick pretended not to hear, but it must hurt. Over the next hour, he attacked Labour MPs with a viciousness that made me wonder if the Dangerous Dogs Act should be extended. Among his kinder descriptions were ‘paranoid’, ‘churlish’, ‘patronising’ and ‘stagnating’.
It was all very entertaining, except for one tiny detail. Nick needs these people.
It is the paranoid, churlish Labour MPs who are going to back him on AV – not Dave, who, no matter how many glasses of water he pours for Nick, is against it.
Austin Mitchell said it was a shame that Nick didn’t have the ‘guts’ to fight for proportional representation. The new constituencies would only hurt Labour. It was, he said, ‘the biggest gerrymander in British history’.
Nick stung back, saying that only in the ‘weird and wonderful’ introverted world of Labour would this be seen as gerrymandering. Gerrymander was the word of the day. By the way, it comes from Elbridge Gerry, an American who presided over bizarre changes to legislative districts (one looked like a salamander). So what does Nick have in common with that lizard? Labour thinks it knows.
9 JULY 2010
John Prescott embraces too much flunkery
I never thought I’d see the Labour heavyweight wearing ermine. How wrong I was.
HE IS ALREADY being called The Erminator. Others had less kind words to describe the newly ennobled Lord Prescott of Kingston upon Hull. ‘Isn’t he calling everyone else in Labour a hypocrite these days?’ huffed an MP. A peer, rushing in to see the great event, said: ‘It’s a laugh, isn’t it?’ Actually, it’s more than that. I bet the little ermines of the world never thought that they would be troubled by the likes of Prezza. Yes, he likes croquet. Yes, he likes a Jag (or two). Yes, he thinks he’s middle class, but only two years ago, when asked about the Lords, he reportedly said: ‘I’m against too much flunkery and titles. But Pauline would like me to. I tell her, “What do you want to be Lady Prescott for? You’re a lady already.”’
The first person I saw, teetering on black peep-toes in the peers’ lobby, was Our Pauline. She looked as if she had stepped out of Dynasty. Spotless white suit. Black hat like an awning. So big, in fact, that I could just see only the tips of her spidery eyelashes. Given the views of his lordship (as he now must be called), the hat was particularly impressive. ‘I can’t stand her big hats,’ he has said. ‘She has a bloody Berlin Wall of them. I used to get a member of my staff to walk beside her at the State Opening because I was embarrassed by her hats, which you can shelter under if it’s raining.’
The only thing it was raining yesterday was flunkeys. The party faithful were being paid back for years of slavish loyalty. Prezza was the third peer to be introduced. Blairites and Brownites filled the benches. I saw Dennis Turner, now Lord Bilston,1 who as an MP was in charge of the catering committee. New Labour, new toffocracy.
Forget the flunkery, feel the flummery and the frou-frou. The Yeoman Usher led the procession, patent leather slippers gleaming. He was followed by a man dressed as a playing card. Then came the heavy uneven walk of Prezza, his robe just about hiding that chip on his shoulder. The reading clerk, who often flips the tiny pigtails attached to his periwig, looked as if he was struggling to keep a straight face.
Mr Pigtail read out the scroll from the Queen. ‘Greeting!’ His voice, so mellifluous, seemed to be speaking a different language, though, for Prezza, that is normal. The clerk welcomed ‘our right trusty and wellbeloved John Leslie Prescott’. I couldn’t help but think that, in different times, Prezza might have punched a man in pigtails who called him beloved. Prezza must ‘sit among the barons’. He must ‘enjoy and use all the rights, privileges, pre-eminences, immunities and advantages’ of being among the barons. Somehow I don’t think that is going to be a problem for the king of Dorneywood.
The moment was approaching when he had to open his mouth. A nation tensed. ‘I, John, Lord Prescott,’ he said, lisp banished. He’d been practising in front of the mirror. It worked. He swore allegiance to the Queen and kept God out of it. He was word-perfect. When it was done, peers gave him a hearty cheer and two claps. Prezza, toff-hater, is one of them now. Up in the gallery, Lady Prescott looked thrilled.
27 JULY 2010
Antisocial behaviour in the House? Time to call 101
The new Home Secretary, whose appointment was a surprise, not least because she was entirely the wrong sex for some, begins to show us what she’s made of.
THERESA MAY WANTS us to have a new national crime-fighting number – 101. It’s for antisocial behaviour and non-emergency crime. In other words, exactly what went on in the House of Commons yesterday. I fear it will be inundated, not least by me.
Mrs May, dressed in her high-collared Star Trek outfit, is bringing power to the people. Police commissioners are going to be elected. She’s empowering (the language alone is worth a 101 call) frontline staff. ‘They will no longer be form-writers but crime fighters.’ Oh no, it rhymed. I don’t think I can make another call to 101 so soon.
Labour’s Alan Johnson began to foam. ‘The statement should be entitled Policing in the Twenty-First Century – How to Make The Job Harder,’ he sneered. ‘You as usual, trot out the infantile drivel about the last Labour government, probably written by some pimply nerd foisted upon your office by No. 10.’
What’s happened to Alan Johnson? Everyone used to say that the former Home Secretary was far too nice to be leader of the Labour Party. The apple cheeks glowed, the banter flowed, he was the ex-postie with the mostie. Now it’s no more Mr Nice Guy. Does 101 know? He explained that Mrs May had inherited a land of peace and harmony from him; crime had been slashed. She should be grateful, but instead she had unleashed a triple whammy. First came the cuts, then the restrictions on CCTV. And now she had the audacity to try to impose democracy on the police. Wham, wham, wham! Mrs May was a serial offender, a whamaholic.
AJ, spluttering, cheeks on fire, said that Mrs May was driven by dogma and that she was going to drive a coach and horses through police accountability. Is it even possible to do both of those things at the same time? If so, I fear it’s another 101 call.
Mrs May hit back – hard. She was rather good. She even clubbed Caroline Lucas, the Green MP who is generally treated as some sort of cuddly mascot. Ms Lucas criticised the idea of elected commissioners, saying that they would be picked for their party. Mrs May snapped that police were not allowed to join any party. WHAM. She accused Ms Lucas of having a ‘jaundiced view’ of the British people. WHAM. It was like watching a baby-seal-clubbing.
Hello, is that 101?
28 JULY 2010
Showdown for Calamity Clegg
Everyone was thrilled to discover that Tory backbenchers were calling Dave and Nick’s government the Brokeback Coalition, after the film about two gay cowboys.
THE COMMONSWAS in a ‘yee-haw!’ mood. Rowdy doesn’t even begin to cover it. The last day of the parliamentary term began with Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions starring Nick Clegg, and there was no escaping the Brokeback Mountain theme, the movie metaphor obsessing Westminster. ‘On the assumption that the Prime Minister and you aren’t holidaying together in Montana,’ began Jack Straw, with one of his irritating little smirks.
Wyoming, I thought, not Montana. The two gay cowboys were in Wyoming (well, they were fictional, but you know what I mean). But MPs were too busy yee-hawing to care about geography. Ever since it got out that senior Tories refer to the government as the Brokeback Coalition, no one has stopped giggling. I find the comparison odd. Brokeback Mountain is a sad film with a tragic ending. Surely Nick and Dave’s happy, smiling coalition is more a rom-com, pol-com, sitcom-type thing (provisionally entitled Our Two Gay Dads). But there is no getting away from the fact that MPs love the idea of Nick and Dave as gay cowboys. And Nick, accident prone in every way, has been Calamity Clegg for some time.
Mr Straw did get around to asking if and when Calamity would be in charge of the country. ‘The Prime Minister will be taking his vacation in the second half of August,’ said Nick. ‘He remains Prime Minister. He remains overall in charge of this government. But I will be available to hold the fort.’
Hold the fort! MPs whooped even more. I felt we were, almost, home on the range. Or, as the song goes, ‘Yippy-yi-o, yippy-yi-a!’ Still, Calamity made a pretty strange cowboy in his beautifully cut Paul Smith suit, the only metrosexual in the O. K. Corral who could, if he had to, take his question time in Dutch, French, Spanish or German. It just wasn’t very John Wayne.
And I don’t think Big John cared all that much about the Alternative Vote either. Calamity does little else. Yesterday he came under fire from all sides, notably from Edward Leigh, the perpetually outraged Tory backbencher. He began by calling Calamity his ‘new and best Right Honourable Friend’. More giggles at that. Mr Leigh noted that, under the AV system, the Tories in 1997 would have been reduced to a ‘pathetic rump’ of sixty-five MPs. Mr Leigh is against AV. He wants a separate referendum date and a ‘proper debate’.
The Western theme continued. Calamity used the word ‘bonanza’. Bonanza! This was the second-longest American Western television series next to Gunsmoke. I began to see that Calamity was not afraid of a fight. As he talked of voter registration pitfalls, the Labour stalwart Fiona Mactaggart shrieked: ‘What are you doing about it?’ Calamity looked miffed. ‘You scream from a sedentary position,’ he said, before screaming right back, ‘but what did you do about it for thirteen years?’
The noise level kept going up, as they shouted about the Iraq War, cuts, the size of constituencies etc.
Calamity strode through it all, as bow-legged as Big John, pistols at his side, his faithful horse (Chris Huhne?) tethered nearby. Well, I guess, in the immortal words of Big John: a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. And this man’s fighting.
14 SEPTEMBER 2010
Dinosaurs say we are not all in this together
For more than a decade, during the Labour governments, the trade union leaders had some sort of power and influence. But now all that had changed.
WE ARE WATCHING prehistory being made in Manchester. The dinosaurs are back, roaming if not yet the Earth then certainly the salmon-pink carpet at the TUC conference centre. We watched yesterday as they emerged from the primordial gloop, very much alive and bellowing their hatred of the bankers and the coalition. The scariest dino of them all, Bob Crow (aka B-Rex), watched, eyes flashing, right at home.
What a difference an election makes. For years it has seemed as if the TUC was meeting for its own purposes, not so much a conference as a historical reenactment society. But now, back in opposition, that has changed – and how.
Political palaeontologists will be fascinated. Take Brendan Barbersaurus, their leader, previously thought to be mild-mannered, a vegetarian who lost his teeth many ages ago. Now, amazingly, he has gone carnivorous. ‘What we’ve got is not a coalition government, but a demolition government!’ he roared to applause. The coalition’s catchphrase ‘We are all in this together’ was ‘insulting claptrap’ (more applause).
He wants to tax the super-rich, mobilise every community, co-ordinate strikes. Then there is Dave Prentisraptur, of UNISON, mainstream, not known for being aggressive. Until now. ‘Today we face the greatest test for a generation,’ he cried, letting rip at the government, the bankers, the speculators, the profiteers. The new enemy was Barclays’s Bob Diamond, on £11 million a year, a man who says he wakes up with a smile on his face.
It is, brothers and sisters, class war. One beast after another castigated our government of millionaires, our Cabinet of the super-rich who wanted to spare the bankers (Bob Diamond smiles! It’s an outrage!) and lay the blame on public-sector workers.
‘That is a complete lie, a distortion, and we reject it right away!’ bellowed Matt Wrack (T-Rex-Rack?) of the Fire Brigades Union. ‘The idea of 25 per cent or 40 per cent cuts is complete and utter lunacy. We will stop them in their tracks. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN!’
All this made B-Rex, in the past the most frightening of all, seem rather tame. He warned that all trade union members would, at some point, have to decide if they were going to lie down or fight. ‘If the top bankers don’t get up in the morning, with the smile that Bob Diamond has on his face, the economy will run as normal,’ he shouted. ‘But if workers don’t get out of bed in the morning, the economy will shut down. We’ve got to recognise the strengths that we’ve got!’
Then, finally, into this macho jungle, came Labour’s Harriet Harman, Harperson to some, sister dino, the first feminist of the gloop, in one of her last appearances as acting leader. The beasts gave her a warm welcome and she fluttered her support. She received polite applause, nothing more, for she is part of the past now. They believe that they are the future; no longer fossils, reborn to roam anew.
20 SEPTEMBER 2010
Liberal Democrats have a collective identity crisis
The party faithful, meeting at their convention in Liverpool, couldn’t decide if they loved or hated power and so they decided to do both at the same time. It was so Lib Dem.
THERE IS A Liberal Democrat sign tacked to the door of the ludicrously large auditorium in Liverpool: ‘Please be aware that special effects will be in use during this session – including loud noises, explosions and flashing lights.’
That is no way to talk about Danny Alexander, I thought, as I watched the Giant Carrot try to explain to his party faithful why he’s cutting us, them, everyone to the bone. ‘We are all in this together,’ he said. (Oh George, have you actually brainwashed him?) He told them to be proud of the cuts because they are guided by Lib Dem values. Oh dear.
When it was over, I saw one person stand and, seconds later, another. It was a crouching, hesitant ovation of a political party that is, quite clearly, having a massive identity crisis. I can see why. For years, they have been having their days at the seaside (last year the big story was a beached whale). It was all rather gentle and likeable. Now, suddenly, as if they had been kidnapped by Alice in Wonderland, they have become very large and very important.
Loud noises and flashing lights are the least of it. Before, security consisted of a hairy man looking in my handbag: now the entrance looks like departures at Heathrow. There are men with squiggly earpieces, 60 per cent more media and 30 per cent more delegates. At one point, I was caught in a mini-stampede. It’s so very un-Lib Dem (it’s hard to stampede in sandals).
It’s power that’s done it, of course. The party faithful are both thrilled and appalled with it. You see it in the way they say the ‘p’ word – rolling it round as if it were a foreign body in their mouths. And you could see, during the big event of the day, the Nick Clegg question-and-answer session, that they both hate and love it – at exactly the same time.
Nick sauntered onto the stage, Euro chic in open-necked shirt and metrosexual suit. He looked about twelve, as usual, and even more Tory than usual. The tone was set by the first question from a party activist named Linda Jack. She had been a fervent supporter of Nick for the leadership.
‘I said then that I would trust you with my life so I could trust you with my party. I still think I can trust you with my life. Can I trust you with my party?’ This brought a ripple of laughter and applause. Nick took a deep breath.
‘Of course you can, Linda,’ he said, sounding forced.
No one agreed with Nick. ‘Why are we being blamed for the cuts,’ asked one woman plaintively, ‘while the Conservatives are being praised for policies we brought to the coalition?’ Nick blamed growing pains, the press, political language, machismo and the Labour Party (in that order).
Then came this plea: ‘It would be really great to hear occasionally from you and some of the other ministers that you actually don’t like a policy that you are announcing.’ This received sustained applause.
Nick said that was nuts (I paraphrase). ‘My view – and it’s my view generally in life – is that if you are going to do something, either do it properly or not at all. If you are part of a coalition government, you OWN that coalition government!’ The delegates clapped at that too.
As I said, identity crisis.
26 SEPTEMBER 2010
The shock, the hug and the ‘I love you, bro’
Everyone thought they knew which Miliband brother was going to win the Labour leadership election. But then, after an evening of endless bar charts, came the surprise.
THE MOMENT THAT his victory was announced, Ed Miliband had eyes for only one person – his brother. They locked each other into a hug of hugs, the older brother pounding his brother’s back a little too hard, at least eight times.
The rictus grin on David’s usually mobile face said it all. At one point, he ruffled his younger brother’s bog-brush hair, something he must have done hundreds of times before in their lives.
From that moment, their lives would never be the same again – a genuinely dramatic ending to a contest that has gone on for four long months. Even the last hour had been particularly painful, a political version of water torture as we had to endure self-congratulatory videos and a snail’s trail of speeches, including one by Gordon Brown (he lives!). The soundtrack was excruciating – Gordo came out to ‘I’m a Soul Man’ (I rest my case) – and, when we finally got down to the business of counting the votes, so were the bar charts.
Bar charts. Oh yes, Labour really does know how to throw a party. It was really a very strange event – thousands of people gathered in a dark hall watching a screen with giant bar charts. Surely David Attenborough should be there, whispering, trying to explain to real people about this strange mating ritual.
The numbers were announced by a woman named Ann Black, NEC chairwoman, charisma count of zero. The five candidates had just been clapped into the hall from the pen where they had been held, human rights infringed and, more importantly, mobile phones removed, not allowed to phone a friend or, even more important in politics, an enemy.
From the start, I had been seeking signs of who won, which is a bit like trying to see a black cat on a moonless night. No one even knew who knew. When Harriet Harman came out and greeted Neil Kinnock, a Mili-E man, with double kisses, I thought – ah, there’s a sign! But then, did Harriet even know? No one even knew that.
Except, of course, Ann Black, who has, I can tell you, no future as a bingo caller. She recited the numbers, endless lists of percentiles. After the first round (David with 37.78 and Ed with 34.33), she said: ‘There are quite a few more rounds to go!’ The room was on the edge of its seat. As one bar chart gave way to another, there were ‘oooohhhs’ and ‘ahhhhs’. Then, finally, on the last number, whoops erupted.
After The Hug, The Speech, which was, sadly (because I don’t like to spoil the party), just a little bit terrible. Ed stood looking like a thin and tall panda, dark-circled eyes staring out at the hall. His first word as Labour leader was ‘conference’. Not a great start.
He praised each of the candidates as if he were an X Factor judge. But when he spoke of his brother, it was as if they were in the room alone. ‘David, I love you so much as a brother,’ he said. ‘I have such extraordinary respect for the campaign that you ran, the strength and eloquence that you showed.’
Everyone in the hall was aware of David sitting there, smiling through the pain. Up there on the blood-red podium set, Ed kept saying, ‘I get it.’ Well, he has got it now. He seemed to be in shock. Afterwards, he stood there gangly, awkward, not knowing what to do, his brother watching.
5 OCTOBER 2010
Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore. We’re in power
The Tories met for their conference in Birmingham, the first time they’d held one in power since 1996. George Osborne seized the chance to release his inner Judy.
THE CHANCELLOR STRODE out on stage to an instant pre-ovation and told us how bad things were: Labour had left us on the brink; had crashed the car. It was terrible (and that was just the clichés). But he said that he had stopped the madness. ‘Vigilant at all times we remain,’ he cried. He praised himself (a trumpet being close to hand) about how he’d already stopped the rot. There was no panic, no danger of a ‘deathly spiral’ of higher interest rates. ‘Our victory is the very absence of war,’ he intoned. ‘Now, together, we must win the peace.’
What did it mean? Was it a haiku? The audience applauded it all: the war, the peace, the deathly spiral. I suspected that he could say anything – for instance, ‘sausages’ – and get a clap. He proved this by saying ‘Nick Clegg’ and, bolder still, ‘Danny Alexander’.
He told us hard truths, home truths, straight truths. He brought out the axe, chopping this and that, all for the greater good. ‘We are all in this together,’ he chanted, for that is his catchphrase.
The audience kept on clapping (were they hypnotised?) Then George, abruptly, left behind his land of pain and ushered us into the Utopia – let’s call it the Land of Oz-borne – just beyond reach. I could hear the swell of an entire orchestra. ‘Just over the horizon’, he cried, ‘lies the Britain we are trying to build.’
He was releasing his inner Judy now. Just over the rainbow was a hopeful country, a united country, a prosperous country. Just over the horizon was a land governed by Munchkins (he may not have said that) with imagination, fairness, courage. Somewhere over the horizon was a Britain that is a beacon for liberty. We were all with him now, holding our beacon, over the rainbow, way up high.
George, deficit diva, finished to tumultuous applause, his axe briefly idle.
19 OCTOBER 2010
Tiny biscuit offensive crumbles into the void
The debut speech by Labour’s new shadow Chancellor leaves us with an empty feeling.
IEMERGED FROM ALAN Johnson’s first speech as shadow Chancellor feeling short-changed and not a little annoyed. Almost exactly four years ago I went to the same location – the glass box that is the KPMG headquarters near Fleet Street in London – to hear another relatively new shadow Chancellor named George Osborne. I emerged annoyed from that also (well, it’s my job), but I can tell you that Mr Johnson was poorer by far.
This is why: Mr Osborne made a speech, took questions and then tried to wriggle out of answering them. He took some risks, put himself out there, had a go. But Mr Johnson hardly felt present as he read out what seemed to be someone else’s speech. He took no questions and so, obviously, had no answers. It was like touching a void.
The event had all the awkwardness of a first date. Do you remember Labour’s prawn cocktail offensive under Tony Blair to woo the world of business to their cause? I can report that, under Red Ed’s regime, it has become a tiny biscuit offensive. We had to negotiate a spiral staircase to get to the biscuits. Except that hardly anyone did. What if you gave a major policy speech and no one came? Exactly this.
We were ushered into a smallish room with sixty chairs and a bright blue backdrop. No Labour signs, no Labour rose. Just deep Tory blue. About half the chairs were full, but it was all media. I could not find one City person who was not from KPMG – and even they were few in number.
