Kezia will end up with egg on her face
As former Labour leader faces storm over I’m a Celebrity..., a stark warning from ex-MP and contestant Edwina Currie:
KEZIA Dugdale’s decision to sign up as a participant in ITV’s I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! has, predictably, sparked an almighty row. I say the same thing about Miss Dugdale as I did when Conservative MP Nadine Dorries did the programme – if you are a serving politician, you should not be doing this. Mainly because you already have a job – and it is looking after your constituents.
No one else can do it for you and certainly not for three weeks. It isn’t recess, so Holyrood is sitting. Your colleagues are slaving away, voting and legislating, and you’ve gone AWOL. You only have one job and you’re failing to do it.
Donating your salary to charity is irrelevant. In a world in which politicians are regarded as breaking their word at every turn and widely held to be untrustworthy, your decision and your absence can only help to confirm that view.
It’s not a problem if you’ve left office. Then, what you do with your time is your own business and I’d say go ahead, have some fun.
Ed Balls had a great time on Strictly Come Dancing, as did Ann Widdecombe. But that’s also a different kind of programme, in which effort and skill are rewarded, and nobody is attempting to make a fool of contestants.
Having appeared on both programmes, however, I can see that Kezia might not have realised exactly what she’s let herself in for.
For a start, she is 10,000 miles away from her Lothian constituents; it’s not quite the same as going hiking in the Cairngorms.
And the rules are strict. The moment she arrived in Australia (after a 30-hour flight, which is no joke) the editors would have taken away her phone and iPad, sent her into lockdown in a swish hotel and assigned someone to watch her all her waking hours.
Communication with the outside world is virtually impossible. She will not even be allowed to see transmissions of the programme, so when she gets in there she won’t know what has already taken place.
ICONFESS I did escape – knowing that my minder was glued to the TV set at 7.30am local time, when the programme is being broadcast in the UK, I slipped away and went walking on the beach nearby. That was blissful. But without a phone, I couldn’t call home.
Politicians go into the jungle for a variety of reasons and only Kezia knows what has motivated her.
It’s probably a mixture of wanting to put across her points of view, with the aim of reaching a younger audience – many of the millions watching are under 25 – and wanting to be seen as a real human being, showing up well under the stress of Bushtucker and other trials. That’s a politician’s vanity, of course.
But I’m a Celebrity is an entertainment show and it is heavily edited to be entertaining. Barely any of it is live, unlike Strictly. Short of jumping up and making a speech as Ant and Dec enter the camp, there’s no chance any of her political statements will be broadcast.
She may not realise this while she is inside, as hours of earnest chat between campmates is never used. ITV and the regulators will be very careful about that.
The fascination for viewers will be to see if she makes a fool of herself.
Let me guess that many committed SNP voters might be voting to ensure the former Labour leader stays put long enough to be humiliated, though they’d deny it. Politics can be a very cruel game. If she cares about her image, she might have thought about that first.
People on the fringes of politics often do well, partly through the fascination of seeing what somebody’s relative is really like. So the doughty Carol Thatcher became Queen of the Jungle in 2005, and said she doubted her mother Lady Thatcher was tuning in to watch her chewing kangaroo testicles.
This year, I’d put my money on Stanley Johnson, father of Boris (and of Jo Johnson, also an MP and minister) though he was crestfallen to fail at the first Bushtucker trial.
Stanley’s old-fashioned courtesy will make him quite a star, and I’ve every expectation that he and Miss Dugdale will get along famously.
That might not improve her reputation with her colleagues or voters, either.
Former Conservative MP Edwina Currie appeared on I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! in 2014.