The moment a man conned the public: Blair appears after winning the election on the steps of No10 wearing a jumper and holding a mug of tea, projecting his ‘man of the people’ image and succeeding. At the time when I saw this it was noticeable that he never actually sipped from that mug, it was just a prop, but the public drank it in; a complete con man but much better at it than the amateur impersonators that followed.
The current debacle over Partygate has revealed two things, the great divide between the so called ruling elite and those who put them in that position, I have never really been interested in what someone wears or the way they speak as long as they show they are good at their job; sadly those afflicted with bad taste and bad prose have failed to prove that they can do the job well, so as far as I am concerned taking the Michael out of the whole population at exactly the same moment further restrictions were announced that put people in the position they could not visit a dying relative but they could knock back Prosecco in No 10's garden is a new low point in people v politicians.
I am not alone in wondering whether in this world of instant capture on mobile phones and social media they are actually that dim to have behaved that way and thinking they would not be found out, or they just don’t care and do it anyway especially as it was a regular occurrence, not a one off.
If it was the latter, they don’t care, then there is really no point to any of them and they all should go. It is the ‘would you buy a used car from this man’ syndrome, and we all know the answer to that one.
In the meantime Boris has had a mysterious relative go down with Covid which gives him a rather lame excuse to isolate at a very convenient time, and plenty of time to gather advisors on how to approach the public when he reappears. This was almost immediately followed by a series of government announcements on popular items in the vague hope all will be forgotten and Boris can rise from the ashes of his creation and lead us into a glorious green future.
The naval aid to stop Channel crossings is hilarious. Anyone believing it is a Dunkirk moment is going to be sadly disappointed as it transpires that the intention is to track boats that land on our beaches with occupants that disappear without trace, it has nothing to do with actually reversing the flow. Still with bigger boats they will be able to hoover up even more illegals to drop off at Dover; should have gone for the roll-on, roll-off ferry option and be done with it.
While on the subject of illegal immigrants arriving in dinghies, though few do as most are brought in on out own vessels, the government has decided not to give out daily figures on those landing here. They are going for a three monthly announcement in the hope all will forget about a problem they have totally failed to get to grips with for years; that is assuming they actually want to get to grips with it, which is hard to believe after years of promises which have resulted in nothing. It is the equivalent of bringing down the safety curtain in a theatre during a play as they discovered there is no ending.
Then the BBC is told its license fee is frozen for two years at least; depends if the Tories stay in power, and maybe, just maybe, the fee will be dropped in ‘27, cheers all round; but will it happen? Answers on a postcard. What will probably happen if the unforgivable act of axing the license fee happens is it will be added to the council tax which will mean a colossal rise for the few who actually pay the full council tax; or it will simply paid out of general taxation - they would like that as no one would be aware of what they actually contributing.
And now Covid plan B is scrapped; it may well have and should have gone anyway, but it's curious that it should happen at the same time as Boris tries to excuse himself in Parliament. Boris as we can see is ’taking responsibility’ for all that has been revealed, except he isn’t; he should understudy for the next version of Now You See Me, though as a magician he is in the Tommy Cooper category.
All this is pure theatre, and a very poor production. As with everything else, governments rarely have a clue as to how to present anything to the public; amateur slogans, amateur adverts, amateur politicians.
The shadow minister for pensions Jonathan Ashworth was being interviewed about the coming energy price rises. Sounding like a male version of ‘crayons’ with the same repeating limited vocabulary and the same lisping voice he had slogans galore: Labour is the party and always was of the working man, whatever the working man is, and we should cut this and that to help the ‘vulnerable’ etc. etc. When asked for a solution there was none, only a furrowed brow at being asked such an awkward question; amateurs, yet they crave power.
The health secretary launches his plan to improve NHS waiting times with some sort of concocted academy hospital that will improve patients' lot, again a timely bone thrown at a popular public groan. With the NHS it will take a nuclear option to change anything in a meaningful way, but this is amateur night, remember, and many will ‘see the light’ and vote Conservative at the next opportunity on the back of these surprising! announcements. There will undoubtedly be more to come. If people cannot see that a Conservative government with a decent majority has done virtually nothing Conservative since it was elected, yet swallow this guff when the PM is threatened with resignation letters from his back benchers, then they deserve all they get. The fact that probably the other lot are even more incompetent is not an excuse, it’s an admission of defeat at the hands of the political class, a political class that doesn’t care as long as those levers of power are in their hands, and while that situation remains they can get away with hamming it up, despite being amateurs.
PMQs is pure theatre, a poor man's City of Variety Leeds without a ringmaster. Leonard Sachs would have been in his element with his gavel and all those ooohs and aaahs. The main difference is that PMQs is for their own consumption, a bubble theatre. We look in, occasionally, to see how ridiculous the whole thing is, yet they persevere with it. The show last Wednesday was pure theatrics, from Boris pretending he was innocent of recent accusations seen on video to David Davis overacting his 'Boris, go' speech to the pointing and hand waving when a Conservative did a theatrical entrance and was shown to a Labour seat behind their leader when he should be seeking re-election.
If it had been an audition for House of Cards none would have been asked back.
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