LIBERAL DEMOCRATS IN SEPPUKU MODE

The unpredictability of politics is part of its excitement and appeal as well as a source of pain (Cook, Mowlam et al). It is often claimed by the TWHATAADSA (pronounced twatadza) that nothing ever changes, that politics is a waste of spirit, that the human leopard will never change its spots and other such defeatist platitudes. Yet the reality that we experience is one of constant change and uncertainty. I do not usually like to see the Labour Party taken off the front pages; even if the coverage is negative, it is better to be in power under fire than in the wastelands of irrelevance. Yet I make an exception for these Liberal Democrats who, like dormant volcanoes, have suddenly erupted and discharged their lava into our living rooms. A leader with a drink-problem is callously shafted; an aspirant leader with a thoughtful approach to prostitution, family life and freedom is exposed, it would appear, as an aficionado of rent-boys and triangulated sex. Well, fine, we are all human and we must not be judgmental in this liberal age (yawn, yawn) but methinks the political map will be shaken like a kaleidoscope (to mix metaphors) in the months to come and a judgement will be made but to the Benefit of whom? Who does not fear the Tories bearing gifts?

OF THE DRAGON AND THE DORMOUSE

The Government’s curious White Paper on Education is certainly causing rumbles in the normally serried ranks of New Labour. Adonis and Tony not only face the ire of a significant corpus of Labour rebels, causing them to undergo the humiliation of Tory assistance in the House, but they have managed also to create a frightening alliance between the Fiery Red Dragon of Wales, Neil Kinnock, and the educationally well-informed but ministerially vapid Estelle Morris who sometimes seems to come out of a teapot. We should listen to both. Kinnock knows about education: remember that speech about the Welsh (those people who could sing and make beautiful things with their hands and why was he the first Kinnock in a generation etc.?). And Estelle has a deep knowledge of what really happens in schools, although regrettably she did not use it to any great effect in post. Tony and Adonis sense what they think is the dead weight of local government on educational advance, creativity and energy. They want to give schools greater freedom to become trusts, to promote choice and competition to drive up standards. What a good idea, you might think, so where is the problem? The problem is that these proposals will generate a general instability in schools and from the turmoil will emerge the bourgeois creamers and selection by any other name will be back to the disadvantage of students from less affluent backgrounds. The so-called Admissions Code, statutory but without legal backing for enforcement, offers no real protection against this return to a selective system which we are traditionally committed to eradicate. We need a secure comprehensive schooling policy, equalising and maximising possibility for all. We have never had this because of residual grammar schools and the poisonous private sector but we have made some strides towards it. The present proposals, for all their spin, take us in the opposite direction, and should be blocked.

THE TWHATAADSA

Just in case you have not come across this term, it refers to a genus of half-hardy perennial weeds that thrive in the vegetative state on old political ground. They lie upon the land and rarely climb. They require patience and attention and realists usually do not have time for them. They do not blossom and can be intrusive. It is they who have all the answers and do sod all. They can become pot-bound.

OF THONGS AND BLOOMERS

Within the range of political reporters on offer to provide us with their views, one Martha Kearney, of Newsnight and Radio 4, must be credited with a higher rating. She is pleasant, balanced and effective when interviewing. It thus came as something of a shock to my delicacy of soul when Martha, in the course of an interview with the two Davids for the binnable Women’s Hour programme, took a plunge into their under-wear proclivities and their taste in women. Plumbing the depths of triviality and indeed the nether world, she asked these so-called political eagles if they favoured boxer-shorts or Y-Fronts and probed even deeper to see if they preferred blondes to brunettes. The old Etonian opted for boxer shorts and declined to answer the second part. The single-mothered progeny from the council estate and bog standard comp opted for traditional Y-fronts and even more traditional blondes, forgetting, as no politician should, that he might thus lose the vote of a sizeable slice of the female electorate not to mention his brunette of a spouse. Neither candidate, in my view, should have answered either question but should have turned their guns or metaphorical contents of their underpants if you prefer, on Martha herself and demanded a less trivial question. You can just imagine what the public reaction would have been if a Paxman or a Humphrys had been in an equivalent situation. Just think of it: two women competing for leadership of a major party and they are asked whether they prefer thongs to bloomers or baldies to hirsutes or whatever. Imagine Thatcher against Heath and Maggie is asked whether she prefers front-opening bras to back-fastening ones or padded to steel-braced radials to make it easier for D after the final gin. Well, the handbag would have travelled with force and speed into the Y’s and boxers. Come on Martha, we expect and deserve better but you do have an ally. A Sunday Times female reporter, unworthy of a name, said that nothing activates a woman’s intuitive power more readily than underpants style. Well, now you know and, just for the record, I wear both interchangeably and none in Church or when eating curry. As for blondes or brunettes, my eyes are so challenged these days that I can hardly see the difference. As my mum would say you don’t look at the mantel-piece when poking the fire! Anyway, Boxer will win so Gordon better get it sorted beneath the Kilt in the lowlands.