The film-maker Michael Cockerell has a priceless ability to persuade politicians to make fools of themselves. His chosen technique is flattery. Cockerell manages to convince them that his gentle fly-on-the-wall documentaries will reveal the human being behind the public image. Once voters see politicians up close and personal, selflessly burning the midnight oil in the national interest, their natural cynicism will melt like a Mivvi in a Miami heatwave. Cockerell’s latest offering, shown on BBC2 last weekend, centred on Britain’s shambolic six-month presidency of the European Union and the horse-trading over Turkey’s application to join the club. Our chief negotiator was Jack Straw, a man whose tiny feet may stride the international stage but whose tiny mind is never far away from his dwindling majority in Blackburn, where Muslims have deserted Labour in droves over the Iraq war. In the early hours of one summit, Cockerell collared Straw in the corridor and asked him if he was confident of clinching a deal over the Turkish accession. ‘God willing,’ said Jack, hastily adding, ‘Inshallah.’ I wasn’t aware our Foreign Secretary had converted to Islam, but it wouldn’t surprise me, given his craven, increasingly desperate efforts to ingratiate himself with his more devout constituents in the mosques and madrasas of the former Lancashire mill town. You can take the boy out of Blackburn....
Cheerful Charlie Clarke thinks the Labour succession should be a contest, not a coronation. It’s a view shared by Cabinet colleagues and backbenchers alike. Jaq al-Straw is among those deluding themselves that Gordon Brown isn’t a shoo-in and they are still in with a shout. In the event of a full-on leadership election, Straw would probably throw his dish-dash into the ring. There’s talk of a Stop Gordon stalking-horse, with John Reid rumoured to be prepared to strap on the suicide belt in the absence of anyone else. That would be worth watching — two Scottish bruisers scrapping it out with all the dignity of two redneck women in a Mississippi mud-wrestling competition. None of this fevered speculation seems to bother Brown, who this week has been behaving as if he’s got the job already by divine right. No need to trouble the voters, either in the party or in the country. About a year after the 1997 election, someone close to the Blair inner circle told me that the problem with New Labour was they thought they owned the system and could do what they damned well pleased. They didn’t get the concept of temporary custodian. They still don’t. Gordon clearly thinks New Labour is a dynasty, in government in perpetuity. That’s how it’s always been in Scotland, until now. The Dunfermline by-election should remind him that hubris has a nasty habit of coming back to haunt you. If that result is anything to go by, a real horse could beat Gordon next time, let alone a stalking-horse.
Come to think of it, not long after Black Wednesday and the collapse of confidence in the last Tory government, there was a suggestion of Johnny Major being challenged by a stalking-horse. I was writing for the Sun at the time and Kelvin MacKenzie and I decided to test my theory that a real horse could beat the Prime Minister. We ran a You The Jury poll, pitting Major against Red Rum, inviting readers to vote by phone. Red Rum romped home by a margin of nine-to-one.
My daughter thinks I’m a recluse because I’d rather watch a DVD in the comfort of my own home than venture out to the local multiplex flea-pit, polluted with the stench of popcorn and the inane chatter of plankton who think it is their inalienable right to disturb everyone else with their witless conversation and novelty ringtones. It’s at times like this I come over all Lynne Truss, whose latest book, Talk to The Hand, rails against the increase in public rudeness. In any event, the ordeal of going to the movies is easily surpassed by the convenience of being able to pause a DVD to answer the call of nature or open another bottle of Pinot Noir. Most films are available on video within a couple of months of their release, so unless you are desperate to be at the cutting-edge of the culture, it’s no great hardship. But when it comes to the theatre or live music, the only thing for it is to grit your teeth and go along. By and large, theatre audiences and concert-goers are more civilised and drawn from a more grown-up demographic than the Little Britain stereotypes cluttering up your unfriendly neighbourhood Odeon. Or so I thought. On Saturday night I ventured to Shepherd’s Bush Empire for the launch of a new tour by Ray Davies, the former Kinks frontman, who is the nearest thing English pop has to a Poet Laureate. Raymondo was on sparkling form, not that it seemed to matter to the moron who paraded up and down the aisle of the dress circle talking into a mobile phone during ‘Days’. Then a couple of halfwits who probably weren’t even born when ‘Waterloo Sunset’ came out decided that what people had really come to appreciate was not Ray Davies but their own noisy jabbering and guffawing. When I asked them to keep it down I was subjected to a lager-fuelled tirade of abuse along the lines of, ‘You fucking old twat, haven’t you ever been to a concert before? I didn’t realise this was the Royal Opera House. Why don’t you just fuck off home and listen to the record?’ Chinning them wasn’t an option, sadly. There’s a lot to be said for being a recluse.
I’m always amused by the quaint expressions used to excuse criminality in certain communities. For instance, the Scousers have the term ‘scally’ to describe someone who makes a career out of petty theft. ‘He’s a scally, our kid is. Nothing serious, just a bit of robbin’.’ This week I stumbled across a new one, from south Wales. ‘Hobbling’ is the word they use to describe the practice of working for cash while simultaneously claiming unemployment or incapacity benefit. To hobble (v); a colloquialism meaning to commit fraud. Sounds like one for Call My Bluff.