Great political myths of our time

1. “The chief problem with MPs today, is that too few of them have held a job outside politics”.

Saying this sort of thing is an easy way to get a big applause on BBC’s ‘Question Time’. But is it really such a problem? Anyone who wants to get on in politics is surely well-advised to start pursuing their ambitions early. Even in the past, many of those who did pursue other careers first (Margaret Thatcher was briefly a chemist, Tony Benn was a pilot and worked for the BBC) ultimately seem to have been biding their time until they got into parliament anyway, just like David “PR exec” Cameron and Tony “lawyer” Blair. But why is it assumed that MPs who have done other jobs first are necessarily of better quality? Remember: for every Winston Churchill or Paddy Ashdown, there’s a Jeffery Archer, Robert Kilroy-Silk, Neil Hamilton (an ex-teacher), a Robert Maxwell or an Iain Duncan Smith. All of these last five had other careers before politics. None seem to have been better MPs as a result.

2. “The Labour Party today has been taken over by the middle classes who have moved it to the right.”

Again, this isn’t the problem. Labour has always had lots of poshos in it from Clement Attlee to Hugh Gaitskell to Shirley Williams. It’s wrong to assume people from wealthier backgrounds are necessarily more conservative anyway. Anthony Wedegwood Benn and Michael Foot, after all came from better off families and they were hardly pseudo-Tories. Nor were James Callaghan or David Blunkett, exactly rampant lefties despite being of working class stock.

3. “Labour is obsessed with class”.

Actually, if you look at the tabloid press, it is clear the Right are far more intent on class war, attacking anyone on benefits as a “scroungers” and anyone not to their political liking with money as “hypocrites” or “champagne socialists”. Ignore them!

4. “Rupert Murdoch is nor right wing: he just likes to back a winner.”

Wrong! Murdoch will only back those who share his own right wing outlook. Hence why he backed losers like John McCain and Mitt Romney in the US and still backed the Tories even as they appeared to be heading for defeat in May 2015. Remember this, next time you pick up The Times!

General Election memories 2: 1983

Peterborough, June 9^th 1983

I was six by the time of Margaret Thatcher’s second election victory in 1983.  I certainly remember the year, if not the election itself.

I remember going to the Isle of Wight on holiday and falling over outside the saloon area of the Wild West Zone of Blackgang Chine (all now, apparently, under the sea). I remember my older brother (then 17) dragging me to see Return of the Jedi. I remember Bananaman, Danger Mouse and my teachers at Queens Drive Infants’ School. I actually remember being conscious that it was the year 1983, the first year I think where this ever happened, even though my memory banks seem to start in 1980. But other than noting that Labour leader Michael Foot’s surname was “Foot” and that this was, of course, funny, I don’t remember anything political at all.

This is perhaps a good thing.

Conditions were ripe for a landslide Labour victory. The Thatcherite monetarist experiment had failed dramatically. 1981 had been a good year for my family: my father got a new job, we moved from the then modern and acceptable area of Longthorpe to a big house in a more central and very nice part of Peterborough (no, this last bit isn’t an oxymoron). My younger brother was born and I started school, both developments that doubtless delighted me at the time. Helped by the Trotskyite adventurer known as “Roger Redhat”, I soon learned to read.

But aside from the distraction of Charles and Diana’s wedding, 1981, seems to have marked a major low point in the fortunes of the country as a whole. Margaret Thatcher became one of the most unpopular leaders on record, as a major recession kicked in. Unemployment surged to a post-war high, inflation also went nearly as high as it had in 1974. Callaghan’s predictions of rioting on the streets if Thatcher won, were soon proven right in both Brixton and Toxteth. Alan Moore predicted a Labour victory (as well as a second Kennedy presidency) in V For Vendetta. Chris Mullin predicted a Tory-SDP Coalition in A Very British Coup.

Two years later, Margaret Thatcher led the Tories to their largest ever post-war election win. Labour were smashed. The Tory majority of 144 was smaller than Attlee’s in 1945 and Blair’s in 1997 and 2001, but was basically huge. What on Earth happened?

Basically, the Falklands War happened. As Andrew Rawnsley has pointed out, Thatcher would definitely have had to resign had she not re-invaded the South Atlantic islands. But her strong war leadership gave a boost which effectively kept her in power for the rest of the decade.

But it wasn’t just that. The economy was starting to recover. And crucially 1981 was also the year Her Majesty’s Opposition pretty much collapsed completely.

Put simply: Roger Redhat proved too “red” for some, so Jonathan and Jennifer Yellow Hat broke away and formed their own group. But this weakened both, enabling Billy Bluehat to win.

Or put a bit more plainly: Labour coped very badly after their 1979 defeat. Labour has a tendency to go into a state of civil war after leaving government (and to Ed Miliband’s credit this didn’t happen at all in 2010. 2017 update: Ahem…) and in the Eighties this happened worse than ever. With the increasingly troublesome left-winger Tony Benn opting out, the 1980 party leadership election was between two men Michael Foot and Denis Healey. Both were sixty-something intellectuals first elected in the Attlee years. Both would live into their late nineties (Healey is still alive. 2017 update: he died in 2015 age 98). But the left-winger Foot won unexpectedly, beating the more populist Healey. Many on the Right (some of whom may have sneakily voted for Foot to strengthen their own argument that Labour had slid towards the “loony Left”) jumped ship forming a new centrist party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP). By the end of 1981, they were more popular than the “evil” Thatcherites on one side and the “Loony lefties” of Labour on the other. The SDP’s allure quickly faded, however, after they unwisely allied with the Liberals.

The practical upshot of this was that three parties went into the 1983 election.

Mrs Thatcher’s Tories were actually less popular than in 1979 (their share of the vote fell). But boosted by the jingoistic fervour of the post-Falklands War mood, a slick campaign and the keen support of the Murdoch press, they won handsomely. The only awkward moment of the campaign for the Tories was the public grilling the Prime Minister received during a TV phone-in over the sinking of the General Belgrano. But this was not from Labour but from a member of the public, the late Diana Gould.

Labour’s campaign, in contrast, was a gaffe-prone shambles. Michael Foot was a thoroughly decent man, intellectual and ultimately less of a “loony” than Thatcher would prove to be. But he looked terrible and scruffy on TV. Labour were furthermore undisciplined and all over the place. It is obligatory to repeat Gerald Kaufman’s remark that the manifesto represented “the longest suicide note in history” at this point and I will happily do so as it is very clever. The manifesto was indeed unusually long and supported unilateral disarmament. The world has only occasionally been closer to nuclear war than it was in 1983, but only a fifth of the UK saw full nuclear disarmament as a solution. Labour came close to coming third behind the SDP vote-wise but the unfair electoral system ensured the SDP barely won any seats.

Would Thatcher have been re-elected without the Falklands War? I actually suspect she would have been, though the margin would have been narrower. Did the SDP deny Labour victory? Again, I suspect the answer is “no”. Labour were heading for defeat anyway. Had Healey been elected leader, Labour wouldn’t have split and the defeat would have been smaller. Labour may have recovered earlier, perhaps returning to power in 1992.

As it was, the election was a disaster. New Labour MP Anthony Blair surely observed that Labour had a long way to go policy and presentation-wise but to his credit never seems to have considered joining the SDP. Tony Benn lost his seat.

And for me this is the most recent General Election I have no memory of.

And frankly, I think I was lucky to miss it.

 

Six reasons why the Eighties were crap

The past may well be a different country. But is it one which you would necessarily want to visit? In the case of the Eighties, here are six reasons why the decade as a whole is best avoided…

 Movies were bad

Okay, clearly not ALL Eighties movies were bad but there was a hell of a lot of crap around ranging from Flashdance, Red Dawn, Mannequin to the Police Academy films. The British film industry was in an especially dire state with virtually one Cannon and Ball film or Merchant Ivory period piece being released a year. Animated films such as The Fox and the Hound and Basil The Great Mouse Detective were a million miles away from the sophisticated standard set by the likes of Frozen and the Toy Story films today. Even at the higher end, supposedly great Oscar winning fare like Driving Miss Daisy, Ordinary People and Terms of Endearment are watched by virtually NO ONE today.

Computers were rubbish

Got  a spare two hours? Then try loading even the most basic blocky bitty computer game in 1984. Even then, it probably won’t work and will come back with a message saying “Boot error”.

Mobile phones were huge

Some people, of course, had mobile phones in the Eighties but they were huge brick-like things which required you to shout down them so loudly you may as well just have shouted anyway. There was also no internet so you needed to visit the library to find out even the slightest bit of trivia about anything. Also, are you late for a meeting with someone? Tough! You can’t text “15 MINS L8 SORRY”. You’ll just have to miss them! You could try calling them from a phone box (although many were vandalised even then) but unless they’re at home or in the office, that won’t work as chances are they don’t have a mobile either!

Everything closed on Sunday

And TV stopped at about one o clock in the morning (after a quick play of the National Anthem). What a bore!

TV was often rubbish

Not only did you have to get both the Radio Times AND the TV Times to see what was on all four channels, we had to put up with the likes of Duty Free, No Place Like Home and sitcoms starring Jim Davidson. The most watched comedy show of the entire decade? An episode of Carla Lane’s Bread. Rubbish.

The country was in a bad way

Britain boomed in the Eighties? Well, yes, for about five minutes towards the end before overheating and descending into recession again. For most of the decade, unemployment was well over three million (much higher than during the recent recession) while the country quaked amidst rioting, IRA bomb explosions while teetering on the brink of extinction from the threat of nuclear war. Nostalgia? Some things are best left in the past.

Margaret Thatcher 1925 -2013

Everything I’ve written about Margaret Thatcher…

1979: a big turning poiint.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/01/margaretthatcher

Comedy during the Thatcher years.

http://www.comedy.co.uk/features/the_comedy_of_margaret_thatcher/

Recent piece about popular feeling towards her

https://chrishallamworldview.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/reasons-why-the-left-still-hate-lady-thatcher/

A poem about her

https://chrishallamworldview.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/margaret-thatcher-a-love-poem/

A book review 

https://chrishallamworldview.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/book-review-bang-a-history-of-britain-in-the-1980s-by-graham-stewart/

The Iron Lady film review

http://www.moviemuser.co.uk/Reviews/8151/The-Iron-Lady.aspx

News of her death

https://chrishallamworldview.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/perspective-please-thatcher-was-neither-churchill-or-hitler/

Boris Johnson: the man who won’t be King

Don’t get me wrong. There is undoubtedly much to like about Boris Johnson.

He is, after all, by some way, the most colourful and popular figure in early 21^st century British politics.  He is undeniably highly intelligent, his buffoonish to some extent a façade presented to entertain the electorate. He has been generally successful as Mayor of London.

But the recent speculation that Boris might one day succeed his fellow old Etonian David Cameron as Tory Prime Minster should be a cause for concern.

Currently, this prospect seems some way off. Johnson’s second term as mayor – assuming he sticks to his word and serves it out in full – will end in 2016, soon after the next General Election. Returning to parliament in a by-election after that, should be easy enough. The next step would be to unseat whoever is party leader by then (it might, of course, still be Cameron). I am assuming the Tories will be in Opposition by then. It is then not hard to envisage a scenario in which Boris Johnson, by then in his late fifties (a similar age to Gordon Brown when he came to power) could be leading the Tories back into power circa 2020.

For all his charm, however, there is a cloud over Johnson’s character. At the risk of seeming po-faced, he has behaved badly in his private life in the past. His stance on the Leveson Report suggests he is more compromised even than Cameron by his close ties to the sometimes dubious forces which run the British press. His buffoonish is not entirely an act either. He is genuinely gaffe-prone.

Most worrying is the sense that many people want Boris to get into power because “it’ll be a laugh”. At the risk of sounding boorish, that is not a reason to elect a Prime Minister. This isn’t The X Factor. It’s a serious job. It matters. And the fact is: Boris Johnson is not a serious enough figure to occupy Number 10.

House of Cards Revisited

“Nothing lasts forever,” muses Francis Urquhart as he looks at a picture of Margaret Thatcher. ”Even the longest, the most glittering reign must come to an end someday”. 

So begins House of Cards, one of the finest political dramas in British TV history. It has recently been remade for the US by Netflix.

Based on a book by Tory insider Michael Dobbs and brought to the screen by the more left wing British dramatist Andrew Davies in 1990, House of Cards centres on Francis Urquhart, the Tory Party Chef Whip superbly played by the late Ian Richardson. Taking the audience into his full confidence – Urquhart has a disarming and involving tendency to talk directly to the audience, often offering nothing more than a wry smile or a raised eyebrow in response to events – we become fully involved and even complicit in Urquhart’s activities as he skilfully manoeuvres his way to the top of the Tory tree an into Downing Street.

The action opens in the aftermath of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s apparent retirement (at that point, an event still in the future). Indeed, Thatcher is the only real life figure (other than the Queen) referred to at any point. Urquhart assesses the likely candidates for the succession:

“Plenty of contenders. Old warriors, young pretenders. Lord Bilsborough, say — party chairman, too old and too familiar, tainted by a thousand shabby deals. Michael Samuels — too young and too clever. Patrick Woolton — bit of a lout, bit of a bully-boy. Yes, it could well be Woolton. Henry Collingridge — the people’s favourite, a well-meaning fool, no background and no bottom.”

Urquhart with splendid false modesty rules himself out:

“What, me? Oh, no no no. I’m the Chief Whip, merely a functionary. I keep the troops in line. I put a bit of stick around. I make them jump. And I shall, of course, give my absolute loyalty to whoever emerges as my leader.”

In fact, when the new leader Henry “Hal” Collingridge reneges on a promise to appoint Urquhart to the Cabinet, Francis turns against him, constructing a bogus scandal involving the Prime Minister’s wayward brother and demolishing all other rivals to not only bring down Collingridge but to ensure that he, Francis Urquhart, shall succeed him.

In this the role of young journalist Mattie Storin (Susannah Harker) proves crucial. It is to her that he leaks information answering her questions not n the affirmative but couched in the coded evasive standard political answer: “You might very well think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.”

 

Timing

The series was blessed by remarkable good timing. In real life, Michael Heseltine announced his intention to stand against Margaret Thatcher, just five days before the first episode went on on November 18^th 1990. By the time of the fourth and final episode, Thatcher had been toppled and John Major had beaten both Heseltine and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd to become Prime Minister. House of Cards thus became very topical indeed. The series had the good fortune to go out during the first change of Tory leadership in fifteen years and one of the most dramatic ends to a Prime Ministerial reign ever.

 

Real life parallels?

House of Cards is obviously fiction but some have suggested similarities to real life figures. Make of them what you will. I couldn’t possibly comment.

Francis Urquhart: Urquhart does not obviously resemble any one real life person strongly. He is nothing like Edward Heath, another Chief Whip who went onto Downing Street. Urquhart’s upper class background was also distinctly unfashionable by 1990. Douglas Hurd, would in fact be embarrassed by his posh background in the leadership contest that took place while House of Cards went out and no Tory leaders emerged from upper class background between 1965 and 2005 (between Alec Douglas Home and David Cameron). Urquhart’s ideological position seems to be closest to Thatcher. Yet unlike any of these figures, he is a murderer and probably closer to Shakespeare’s Richard III than anyone in real life.

Henry Collingridge: Both Dobbs and Davies were right to predict domineering figure like Thatcher would be succeeded by a moderate more conciliatory figure. A harsh critic might say Urquhart’s summary of Collingridge: “a well-meaning fool, no background and no bottom,” applied equally well to Thatcher’s actual successor John Major (or indeed, David Cameron). Major also won the 1992 election with a majority of 21 (Collingridge manages about 30). Unlike in the series, there are few immediate problems resulting from the Tory majority dropping so dramatically. John Major’s Tories had anticipated defeat in 1992 and were happy just to win at all. Major’s premiership would prove similarly troubled although more enduring than Collingridge’s. If anyone fatally undermined Major’s leadership, other than Major himself, it was his predecessor Lady Thatcher.

Bob Landless: A crude American media magnate. Clearly a composite of and Robert Maxwell, then still alive (although unlike Landless, a Labour supporter) and Rupert Murdoch.

Lord Bilsborough: Seems similar to William Whitelaw, who ran against Thatcher in 1975 but ultimately became her most loyal servant. But Whitelaw was much nicer than Bilsborough and much less tainted by “shabby deals”.

Michael Samuels: In some ways similar to Michael Portillo, then a dashing rising star in the party and with a history of left wing support and some homosexuality (then not known about) in his past. Portillo, although half-Spanish, isn’t Jewish as Samuels is though. In this respect, Samuels is more like another rising Tory Michael of the time and future leader, Michael Howard.

Peter Mackenzie: Health Minister. Physically very like John Major (he is played by Christopher Owen) although unlike Major seems to be racist and accidentally runs over a disabled protester.

Afterwards

(SPOILER ALERT) Two TV sequels To Play The King and The Final Cut are worth seeing although neither quite scaled the heights of the original. Dobbs wrote two books which followed the first series. The first book ends differently with Urquhart, consumed by shame choosing to hurl himself to death rather than Mattie.

Michael Dobbs served as Deputy Tory Chairman under John Major and is now Baron Dobbs in the House of Lords. He has written many novels.

Already a prolific author Andrew Davies (A Very Peculiar Practice), Davies has become something of an adaptation-writing machine since the huge success of 1995’s Pride and Prejudice (which featured Mattie Storin from House of Cards as Jane). Incredibly, Davies has written over twenty series since including Mr Selfridge, Bleak House and Middlemarch.

Ian Richardson died in 2007.

A new US series of House of Cards (much altered) starring Kevin Spacey as House Majority Whip Frank Underwood is is available on Netflix.  

Reasons why the Left still hate Lady Thatcher

It’s a fact: Lady Margaret Thatcher remains one of the most reviled – as well as the most revered figures – in British politics today. That this is still the case, a full twenty-three years after she left office and when she has long since retired and is reported to be in a state of frail poor health, does in some perverse way mark something of an achievement. Did anyone hate Clement Attlee with any ferocity twenty-three years after he ceased to be PM after all (this would be in 1974)? Will anyone still be cursing David Cameron’s name in the late 2030s? It would seem unlikely.

Cristina Odone writing in the Daily Telegraph this week suggests two reasons why those on the Left might still hate Lady Thatcher, a figure the  late Tory MP Julian Critchley used to refer to as “the Great She Elephant.” http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/cristinaodone/100203198/two-reasons-why-the-left-hates-lady-thatcher/

Unfortunately, neither of her explanations really cut the mustard.

“First, she disproved Labour’s favourite myth: Tories appeal only to toffs,” Odone writes. “She led her party to win three general elections on the trot, and she didn’t need a military coup to do so.”

This would be convincing only if Thatcher had been the first Tory leader to command widespread working class support. In fact, to have been as successful as they had been the Tories must have been garnering the support of the lower orders since the age of Disraeli. Leaders as diverse as Lord Salisbury, Stanley Baldwin, Sir Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan were winning substantial Tory election victories with substantial working class support long before Thatcher first came on the scene.

Electoral envy might explain some of the hostility to Thatcher at the time, true. She won parliamentary majorities of 43, 144 (a post-war Tory peak) and 102 in the 1979, 1983 and 1987 elections, after all. But left-wing anger over this would have been partly eased simply by the fact Labour have done so much better since. Blair won Labour majorities of 179 (a post-war peak for any party), 169 and 66 in 1997, 2001 and 2005 respectively.

Cristina Odone’s second explanation is even less credible:

“Secondly, she’s a woman. The party that pays lip service to equality and feminism is, behind the scenes, deeply misogynist.”

This seems pretty rich when you compare the Tory record to the Labour one. Labour today has far more women MPs than all the other parties put together. Even during Thatcher’s time in office, the ambitions of other women politicians were kept firmly in check. Even today, with the notable exception of Theresa May, the Tories – unlike the party of Deputy Leader Harriet Harman, Yvette Cooper, the Eagles and Diane Abbott – remain firmly a party of men. Margaret Thatcher remains the exception that proves the Tory rule.

There is nothing outlandish about the hostility many on the Left and Right feel towards Lady Thatcher. Her regime arrogantly destroyed a fifth of the nation’s industrial base in her first three years in office. Elected off the back of a poster campaign attacking Labour’s record on unemployment, she proceeded to increase the levels of unemployment threefold. She brought the NHS to the brink of destruction. Crime more than doubled under her watch while Rupert Murdoch was allowed to gain a fatal toehold in British society. Homelessness and rioting, for so long distant memories, made a major return under Thatcher. The Poll Tax, the horrendously jingoistic aftermath of the Falklands bloodshed, the brutal suppression of the Miner’s Strike, the culture of greed and selfishness perpetuated by the government and the pre-eminence of the stock markets which would prove so fatal in 2008.

These are just some of the reasons, Lady Thatcher will never be forgiven by a significant portion of the UK population.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/01/margaretthatcherM

Book review: Bang! A History of Britain in the 1980s by Graham Stewart

Make no mistake: 1979 was a very long time ago. Let’s not have any of this “it seems like yesterday” nonsense. If 1979 really does seem like yesterday, there is something seriously wrong with you.

Despite its name, this book actually begins in 1979. It is now 2013. The same amount of time has passed since 1979 as had passed between it and the end of the Second World War in 1945. When the same amount of time has passed again, it will be 2047. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find things have changed a fair bit. In 1979, you wouldn’t have been reading a blog on your phone, a laptop or anywhere else,

Consider:  in 1979, the Labour Prime Minister (a man born before the First World War) was still at ease sitting round the Downing Street table with leading trade union figures. This was a time when some such union leaders spoke openly of Marxist revolution in Britain and believed this was apparently a realistic prospect. Leading Labour figures like Tony Benn spoke of nationalising almost all of British industry to enthusiastic, mostly male, smoke-filled Labour conferences.

Flash forward to 1990 when this book ends and things start to seem a lot more familiar. Not the same but a lot more like now. Seventies fashions had lost their grip.  Nobody had iPods yet but they had Walkmans at least and CDs were already replacing vinyl.  Mobile phones were still rare and huge, but they did at least exist. Channel 4 was now on air and a small minority could now watch BSkyB (although a common joke of the time was that the average person was more likely to get BSE – the human form of mad cow disease- than BSkyB). EastEnders was on.

Meanwhile, strikes were a rarity. The SDP had been and gone. The Labour Party, although still firmly out of power were also a lot more recognisable. Behind the scenes, Peter Mandelson was hard at work. The smoke-filled conference halls were gone. Neil Kinnock, although never a popular figure with the public, was smartly dressed and in command, a far cry from the decent but scruffy Michael Foot. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, then in their late thirties were advancing fast up the Labour ranks. New Labour was on its way.

In my view, the 1980s transformed Britain more than any other peacetime decade in the last 150 years, except perhaps for the 1960s.

Much of this is doubtless due in no small measure to the personality and politics of Margaret Thatcher, who Stewart seems rather a fan of. I am rather less keen. The Lady was undeniably a fine war leader and by the Eighties, union power clearly needed curtailing.

But this was a bad decade for the British economy. Before the ‘Winter of Discontent’ wrecked Labour for more than a decade, the Callaghan Government had been doing a fine job of pulling the UK back from the oil shock, the ‘Barber Boom’ and the errors of Wilson’s final two years. But Callaghan’s gains and those made by the discovery of North Sea oil were squandered by Thatcher’s Monetarist experiment. Soon more than a fifth of the nation’s industrial base had been wiped out forever and high unemployment hung over the rest of the decade like a curse.

This was also the decade where the unrestrained power of the markets took hold and Rupert Murdoch was permitted unprecedented media power by the Thatcher Government. Both of these problems should have been addressed later by Major, Blair or Brown. But the Lady (as the late Alan Clark would lovingly refer to her) is the original source of responsibility here. Crime soared, the health service suffered and homeless levels rose unforgivably under Thatcher. A simple comparison of how the UK fared under her watch and that during Tony Blair’s decade (1997-2007) is damning.

By 1990, she had grown tremendously in confidence to the point of mental instability. Having seen off the ‘Argies’, the miners and Labour (three times: under Callaghan, Foot and Kinnock), she seemed convinced of her own infallibility. She even began speaking about herself using the royal “we” (famously: “we are a grandmother”).

But when she linked her destiny to that of the hated and ultimately unfair Community Charge (or “Poll Tax”) even the Tories recognised she had to go. John Major secured one more win for the Tories in 1992. But twenty-three years on, the Tories have not recovered from her fall. No Tory leader since Major has won a General Election.

This is a slightly badly structured book with hard going chapters about monetarism rubbing shoulders with those about pop music and the singles of Madness. But it’s a story worth retelling especially if you want to terrify your left-leaning children before they go to sleep.

Just remember: don’t have nightmares.

The trouble with satire

It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that political satire only tends to truly thrive under Tory Governments.

This has been true ever since the birth of the first modern satire boom of the early Sixties. Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Beyond the Fringe, Private Eye and That Was The Week That Was all prospered during the dying days of the Tory regime of Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas Home. Likewise, although rarely overtly political, Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-74) enjoyed its true heyday under the government of Ted Heath (1970-1974). Then came Thatcher and Major. Margaret Thatcher’s election in May 1979 coincided almost exactly with the birth of alternative comedy. But it wasn’t just that. Not The Nine O Clock News, Spitting Image, Have I Got News For You, Bremner, Bird and Fortune, If…, Dear Bill, The New Statesman, The Friday Night Armistice and Drop the Dead Donkey undeniably got a boost from their being a Tory Government in power.

Why should this be the case? Partly, it’s because true satire rails against the Establishment and the Tories embody the Establishment better than Labour ever can.

It’s also because, in general, right wing people tend not to be very funny. Lady Thatcher, despite inspiring great satire herself, famously had virtually no sense of humour. Boris Johnson’s buffoonery amuses but he rarely says or writes anything which is deliberately funny. Jeremy Clarkson, meanwhile, is quickly out of his depth in the world of politics (as opposed to motoring) and rarely gets beyond saying anything shocking or childish when he venture into the political arena.

The myth that the politically correct Left lack a sense of humour is ill founded. It’s actually hard to think of anyone funny who isn’t on the Left. Ask anyone for a list of funny right wingers, meanwhile, and most likely their list will solely consist of the obscure, the racist or the dead.

After the 2010 General Election something clearly went wrong, however. We now have a Tory Prime Minister again. So why are we not enjoying a new satire boom?

Part of the problem might be that because New Labour were arguably almost as conservative as the Tories, satire never really went away under Blair and Brown. The Thick of It owes its origin to these times and in fairness, is still great. But Have I Got News For You and Mock The Week are clearly past their best and 10 O’Clock Live has never really got off the ground.

I blame the politicians. Whereas in the Eighties, politics was filled with colourful characters ranging from the Bennite ultra-Left to the uncaring Thatcherite Right, the Blairisation of British politics has been fatal to satire. Blair was the most successful politician of recent times: little wonder everyone wants to be like him, elect a party leader like him and fight for the centre ground like him. Cameron, Miliband and Clegg are all essentially Blair wannabes: posh, PR friendly men in suits. Miliband would never wear a donkey jacket, Cameron would never drive in a tank. From a comedic point of view, this is bad news.

The Coalition confuses things further. Try as we might to pretend Cameron’s lot are the new Thatcherites, this is only partly true. They are occasionally uncaring, more often incompetent, sometimes liberal and, yes, sometimes actually Liberal as in Democrat.

The global scene doesn’t help. The idiotic George W Bush was satirical gold, just as President Reagan had been two decades before. But Barack Obama, an intelligent, moderate, slightly disappointing but well meaning black president is hardly the stuff great satires are made of as the failure of the novel O demonstrates. In this respect alone, perhaps Governor Mitt Romney would be better.

British politics seems to lack the colour of the past too. But perhaps I am wrong to blame the political set up. Take the former Tory Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. He is a decent man, yes. An exciting man? No. Trust me: I have seen him speak. And yet in the hands of Spitting Image, voiced by Harry Enfield, with his hairstyle strangely coiled, his puppet was frequently hilarious.

There is surely enough material in the current political class – Michael Gove, Boris Johnson’s eternal rivalry with David Cameron, Ed Balls, the never ending evil that is Rupert Murdoch – to inspire great satire? Perhaps it’s simply a case of “could do better, must try harder.”

The Tory Olympics

The London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony was a huge success. With normal people, that is. Tories, by and large, don’t seem to have liked it.

For despite the fact, Danny Boyle’s ceremony had presumably been formally approved both by Tory Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson, many on the Right still found much to complain about. Tycoon Rupert Murdoch tweeted that the ceremony was “politically correct” while the Tory MP Aiden Burley whinged that it was “leftie multiculturalist crap”.

So what would they have done instead? Well, here if you can think of a single right wing British film director at all (does Michael Winner still count?) here are some ideas on how it could have been done Right…

1) Forget all that Mary Poppins stuff! Instead have an army of Lady Thatcher lookalikes march into the arena, each armed only with a handbag and a magic wand.

2) In a symbolic recreation of 1979, one Margaret could walk past a version of the famous Saatchi and Saatchi Labour Isn’t Working poster depicting a huge queue of unemployed. One wave of her wand from Maggie and the unemployed people could magically come to life and climb out of the poster! They would then clamber onto a bike each and cycle off looking for work as Norman Tebbit’s famous words echo around the stadium: “when my dad was unemployed he didn’t riot. He got on his bike and he looked for work!” Quite right Norman!

3) The Maggies proceed into a hospital packed with children. The children remain but after the Maggies wave their wands, the hospital beds magically disappear.

4) A huge replica of Enoch Powell’s head could roll onto the stage. In a horrific scene, a river of blood could symbolically pour out of it onto the stage in a scene reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Just as Powell predicted would happen in the aftermath of mass Commonwealth immigration. And nothing like what actually happened in real life.

5) The Maggies could be joined on stage by an army of David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Rupert Murdoch lookalikes who parachute in. The quartets could then all dance a merry jig on stage while images from The Sun’s glorious past (“Gotcha!” “Stick it up your Junta!” “Freddie Starr ate my hamster” “It was The Sun Wot Won It!”) flash up behind them.

6) Note: On no account should any non-white or gay people appear on stage at all. We wouldn’t want anyone thinking we are a tolerant multicultural nation after all would we?

Being boring

By any standard, the new Socialist President of France Francois Hollande has done extraordinarily well. In addition to his recent presidential win over Nicolas Sarkozy, the socialists have now won an absolute majority in parliamentary elections.

Equally gratifying is the fact that Far Right party leader Marine Le Pen managed to lose her seat.