I’m all for big personalities, but this lot give me a headache
An opera singer, an ex-lads’ magazine editor and Ann Widdecombe walk into a parliamentary chamber: not the beginning of a joke – or a game of kiss, marry, kill – but some of the candidates for Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party. Which is very different from Ukip, obviously, as it has the word “Brexit” in the title.
Anyhow, this is what our political future looks like – or might, come the European elections on May 23. Others in the running include a former Communist, a toboganning-obsessed businessman and Jacob Rees-mogg’s sister.
Some colour from our leaders – beyond a lacklustre leopard-print kitten heel – might well lift our crumpled collective spirit. But let us not mistake a “spark” for what is really the dawn of the fruitcakes 2.0, where anyone with a backstory befitting reality television is considered suitable for political office.
David Cameron’s 2006 description of Ukip voters as “fruitcakes and loonies” seems fitting for the Brexit Party’s cast of unlikely characters. They are the natural response, perhaps, to the bland party leaders we are currently saddled with – and in a world where Donald Trump sits in the driving seat of the free world, it’s a
tactic that has proven successful.
But having a personality bigger than your principles is a dangerous trait for a politician: one that belies a desire for attention, rather than intention. Yes, they might be a touch more entertaining. Once you have stripped away a few amusing gaffes and PMQ put-downs, though, the laughs rarely feel worthwhile.
Joe Biden this week announced that he will run for US president, making him the 21st Democrat to set his sights on the White House. The party’s roster seems rather different to the one we are looking at: instead of candidates who have spent their professional careers conducting “nipple counts” of bare breasts in the magazine they edit (as per Brexit Party hopeful Martin Daubney), or those who have spent more time in public view in the past 15 years on shows like Celebrity Fit Club, Celebrity Big Brother and Celebrity Antiques Roadshow than in the chamber (as is the case for Daubney’s colleague Ann Widdecombe), their contenders seem, well, normal.
Which is presumably a reaction to Trump, just as our reaction to Theresa May has been to swing towards the-mosteccentric-possible end of the spectrum. Yet it is hard not to feel wistful when looking at the crop from which the US electorate will get to choose.
Take Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old Afghanistan veteran and mayor of the Indiana town in which he was born, who speaks seven languages. Seven! One of which is Maltese! Or former district attorney Kamala Harris, a prosecutor of 20 years’ standing; or Beto O’rourke, the Texan punk rocker-turned-politician who is roundly agreed to be one of the Democrats’ rising stars.
Really, we’ll take any of them. Any at all. I’m a fully paid up member of the “big personality” club, having always looked on with amazement at those who gravitate towards the back of the room.
I am also of the view, however, that work, particularly the kind required by the Government, requires the sort of discipline and diligence many – usually the loudest among us – are naturally without.
What other kind of person could put up with the bureaucracy and red tape, the poor pay and aggrieved constituents in a permanent state of apoplexy over their bins? A deeply patient one, for whom being front and centre is rightly regarded as extraneous to the job at hand.
Fruitcakes are nice, now and then. Any more is only ever a headache.
Put down the poutine. Step away from your life-sized cut-out of Justin Trudeau. Wrinkle your nose at the sight of every maple leaf from now until the end of time, because it’s all been a lie.
Canadians are not, as per their global reputation, a cuddly, dogooding bunch, but a nation of bull-----ers. Or so says a new report titled (as if there were any doubt) Bull-----ers. Who Are They And What Do We Know About Their Lives? To which the answer is broadly: Canadians – specifically, young, privileged, male ones.
The research, conducted by University College London, surveyed 40,000 teenagers from nine Anglophone countries, finding that those from America’s Hat were most likely to feign knowledge of “facts” that did not actually exist. America came second – something I can only imagine is skewed by West Coast sensibilities.
No such bluff extends east, as I was reminded last weekend when exercising in earnest at a New York gym. A woman who “didn’t want to overstep” also didn’t want to miss an opportunity to point out that I was doing my squats “all wrong”, waiting behind at the end of the class to tell me so.
Which seemed to me a suitable mixture of the harsh and the practical. An underrated combination – and a far better one than BS.
The past: yours for the bargain price of £7.50! In Japan, that is, where cans of “air from an outgoing era” are on sale to mark the current imperial transition.
Emperor Akihito’s abdication next week will be the first time in centuries that a monarch has stepped down: as a tribute, a range of products have been introduced to afford royalists a little piece of history.
Which is surely ingenious because now, instead of banging on about how brilliant days gone by were, this theory can actually be put to the test. Will peeling back the lid on a tin of stale oxygen really summon our rose-tinted visions? Or will we open it to find that, like most things, they were better off where we left them?
Time will tell. Perhaps a commemorative plate would be a safer bet.