22
September 2001
There's
a sign on the wall of Broadmoor Prison workshop that says 'You don't have to be
mad to work here, but it helps'. So it is with membership of today's
Conservative Party. What the election of Iain Duncan Smith has proved is that
61 per cent of the Tory membership are completely insane. Ken Clarke knew he'd
lost when he saw that a majority of the envelopes to Central Office were
addressed in green ink. Suddenly it was official: three out of five Tory
members believe that the Earth is flat, that Elvis was abducted by aliens and
that Iain Duncan Smith has the best chance of leading them to victory.
Yet people were still surprised by the new
leader's choice of shadow cabinet. When lunatics take over the asylum, they
don't reassure everyone by announcing a bi-annual audit and getting the
photocopier serviced. They make the bloke who thinks he's Napoleon head of
carpet-chewing and abolish Tuesdays. So wearing his big badge that says 'Lose
Votes Now, Ask Me How', Iain Duncan Smith has appointed a shadow cabinet that
is the logical extension of the collective madness that has seized the Tory
Party Electoral appeal and political effectiveness do not matter - Europe is
the only issue. With the final rejection of Ken Clarke, the Tories have ceased
to be a political party and are now a single-issue pressure group. 'I'm going
to lobby my MP night and day. Now - who is my MP? Oh it's me, isn't it.' For
IDS, all roads lead to the Treaty of Rome. Expecting him to put Europhiles in
prominent positions would be like asking the RSPB to have a couple of cats on
the executive to even things up. 'Do we have to have Kitty on the committee?
She keeps dragging half-dead pigeons into meetings.'
Ken Clarke was always fighting an uphill
battle in a party whose average age was 117. Conservative organizers took this
into account and so the wording on the ballot paper said in extra large print:
'WHO DO YOU WANT AS TORY LEADER, DEAR? I SAID, WHO DO YOU WANT TO VOTE FOR AS
TORY LEADER? NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE WINSTON; HE'S DEAD, DEAR.' But amazingly,
Clarke still made it to the final two in what had become the most thrilling
political contest for days. For one of them it would mean a future in the
wilderness, disappearing from public life for ever. But for Ken, it would mean
going back to working for British American Tobacco. 'I look forward to working
with Ken,' said IDS in his victory speech, so I suppose we can expect to see
the new Tory leader flogging fags out in Vietnam as well. IDS is the first Tory
leader not to have served as a minister and looks set to keep it that way. The
result was only the second decision the Tory rank and file has ever had to
make, the first one being when they chose Jeffrey Archer as their candidate for
Mayor of London.
One
week later IDS has assembled a Tory front bench that perfectly reflects the
outdated reactionary views of the people who elected him. Normally we only get
to hear these sorts of opinion when the grandparents come to stay at
Christmas. 'I don't know why they have to have all these queers in showbusiness
nowadays. In my day we had proper gentlemen like Rock Hudson and Noel Coward.'
And you half choke on your turkey but stop yourself saying anything because
there's really no point. Now it'll be like that in the House of Commons -
everyone will sit there patiently, silently smiling to one another until the
shadow minister has finished his little rant about the foreigners and then
they'll just carry on as if they hadn't heard him. 'Well, it's not worth
getting into an argument - it's only the opposition.'
It
seems to be the received opinion that a weak Conservative Party is bad for
democracy, but excuse me if I don't shed too many tears. I agree that we have
to have an opposition, but the present government needs to be pulled to the
left, not the right. The Scottish Assembly's decisions on tuition fees and care
for the elderly offer a visible working alternative - that's a real
opposition. What is required is sustained pressure to push the Conservative
Party even further off the political map. So now it's competition time once
more. The challenge is to write a letter to a local or national paper saying
that you are resigning from the Conservative Party because Iain Duncan Smith is
proving to be insufficiently anti-European. The best letter published and forwarded
to me will win
£25
worth
of book vouchers. Your letter must contain a reference to the Second World War,
your made-up name should be double-barrelled and please include your former
military rank. Best of luck, although given the insanity of today's Tory Party,
I have this terrifying feeling that the funniest entry will be from Iain Duncan
Smith.
Rather gratifyingly, I did receive a
sack of brilliantly nutty letters that were published in local papers across
the country. The only problem was that lots of people sent me the entire
letters page and much of the other correspondence on other issues was no less
rabid than the parodies.
29
September 2001
The
media should leave Prince William alone. His arrival at university should
barely be reported. Obviously, intelligent critiques on media intrusion are
excepted; it's important for commentators such as myself to examine the
conflict between private life and public duty, but that is the only valid
reason for even mentioning Prince William in the newspapers right now. Anyway,
doesn't he look like his mum? Aaah bless him, I hope he settles in all right. I
wonder if he'll get a girlfriend? More pictures, pages 7, 8 and 9.
Prince
Edward's production company has managed the impossible: now we have the bizarre
reversal of Andrew Neil (the rector of St Andrews) lecturing a member of the
royal family about media intrusion. Edward has clearly forgotten the words of
Diana's brother at her funeral. Maybe this was because he was secretly filming
it for release on Ardent Royal Videos, a great Christmas gift at only £12.99.
It's one thing for the paparazzi to be caught trying to film Prince William,
but for a modern-day royal to attempt to cash in on his royal connections — it
would be like Vlad the Impaler buying shares in Stakes 'R' Us.
Apparently
Prince Charles is beside oneself with anger. Personally I don't think he should
attack members of the royal family because they can't answer back. It is in
fact possible that Prince Edward has
unwittingly ensured
that his nephew's university life will remain private for the time being. Which
if we're really honest is a bit of a shame because it would have been quite
entertaining to watch the everyday life of a royal undergraduate.
'Now
listen, young man, if you don't work hard and get a good degree, you'll never
get a decent job, will you?'
'Yes I will. I'm going to be king.'
'Er, well yes, but er, you'll still need to
earn a living before then.' 'No I won't.'
'Er, well no, but that aside, we're going to
treat you like any other student. So here's your first essay: two thousand
words, please, answering the question "So what do you really think of
Camilla?" '
William
is studying History of Art, but his comments in his first tutorial apparently
showed he was a little confused. 'It's amazing how Van Dyke managed to do that
picture of Charles I while balancing on a stepladder peering over the palace
wall. And Holbein's eyesight must have been fantastic - the picture of Anne of
Cleeves has amazing detail considering he didn't have a telephoto lens.'
If Ardent's cameras had never been spotted,
we could have seen William in the student production of
Waiting
for Godot,
with that memorable scene where the tramp
wanders out alone on to the bare stage followed by seven Special Branch
security officers. We could have watched him break the college record on the
rugby pitch as the opposing players decide against jumping on him whilst all
those police marksmen are taking aim up in the trees. We could have seen him get
up to all the usual undergraduate high jinks: sneaking into his friend's
bedroom and getting his equerry to make them an apple pie bed; the late nights
sitting on the floor and talking about life, as the butler brings in a silver
tray with mugs of blobby coffee; all of this will take place in private. Or
perhaps the real reason Charles doesn't want William filmed is that he doesn't
want everyone witnessing the embarrassing period when his undergraduate son
goes all left wing, arguing for the abolition of the monarchy and desperately
trying to play down his privileged background.
Actually my family aren't that well off - we
got Windsor Castle when property prices were much lower. And we had to do loads
of work to it, especially after the Wars of the Roses.'
And he'll cringe when
dad phones to say he's coming to visit. 'Well, don't all arrive in the big
ostentatious Sikorsky. Come in the little helicopter. And tell granny not to
wear her crown.'
Poor
William is as desperate to be a normal student as Edward is to run a normal
production company. In the old days there were pretenders to the throne. Now
the royals pretend to be commoners. But Uncle Edward can't remain a royal and
monopolize broadcast access to the royals. Since his company has always
struggled, Edward should now return to state duties. A new position in the
royal household needs to be created - Edward should be appointed the 'Stalker
Laureate', official harasser and invader of the royal family's privacy. 'The
strange man who got inside the royal apartments today turned out to be the
Queen's youngest son. Police found pictures of the Countess of Wessex in his
wallet and said he had regularly been filmed trying to get into royal
residences.' Edward might even find his celebrity status back up with the rest
of them. Then the only problem would be stopping him making a documentary about
himself.
6
October 2001
When
identity cards were brought in by the BBC, a comedy producer I knew decided to
test the system by making a few changes to his pass. For a while he was waved
through without question. Then one eagle-eyed security officer called him back.
The guard took a good look at the photo on the card, which featured a shady man
wearing sunglasses and a headscarf. He then checked the name on the pass which
read 'Abu Nidal'. Now completely satisfied, he said, 'All right, sir! In you go
. . .'
It still seems possible that compulsory
identity cards will be the response to the heightened state of world tension.
Because the great thing about ID cards is, of course, that they will prevent
terrorism. Yup, after years of plotting, encrypted messages, international coordination,
secret training and smuggling weapons, the terrorists will be asked for their
ID cards and they'll go 'Drat! Foiled at the last minute! All those years of
planning and I forgot to forge an identity card!'
ID cards would of course represent an
outrageous infringement of basic human rights. Because they'd mean regularly
presenting strangers with a deeply embarrassing photo of yourself. And to make
sure the authorities recognized you from the picture, you'd feel the need to
pull the same gawky expression that was momentarily caught in the photo booth
at the back of Woolworth's. Perhaps to set an example our politicians will
agree that their own identity cards should feature excruciating pictures of
themselves from their younger days. A long-haired Tony Blair with huge round
collars and sideburns; a young John Prescott with a big quiff in his Teddy boy
gear; Estelle Morris with a perm and huge Deirdre Barlow glasses; and then
Robin Cook - well, he's fine as he is.
Whether it means the end of historic freedoms
cherished since the Magna Carta I somehow doubt, but I'm against them for other
reasons. They've got all the information they want about us already; the
trouble is that most of it is wrong. There's probably a computer database
somewhere that thinks that 'Mr Duke Edinburgh of Buckingham Place, London'
might be interested in subscribing to
Reader's Digest
prize
draw. Because the real oppression of identity cards would not be some Big
Brother surveillance nightmare - it will be the more mundane tyranny of having
to endure yet another crappy-piece of technology that doesn't work properly.
Imagine
what fun students will have by drawing an extra couple of lines on each other's
bar codes. 'I'm afraid, young man, you are not entitled to a student discount
because according to this scanner you are a Muller twin-pot yoghurt.'
'No, I am a student,
really, ask my friend here.'