After that speech, don’t bet against President Oprah
Say what you like about Oprah Winfrey, if she ever had a Cabinet reshuffle like the one Theresa May just tried to have, then the people she told to go would stay fired.
It wouldn’t be like this: “Jeremy, I’m terribly sorry, I have to move you from Health.”
“Frightfully, sorry, Prime Minister, but I’m staying put.”
“Oh, all right then, but I’m going to have to make an example of you. By giving you another important job as well.”
Since the US chat-show host gave a rousing speech at the Golden Globes on Sunday evening, speculation has grown about a possible run for the White House. According to the bookies, the 63-year-old is now the favourite to replace Donald Trump as US president in 2020.
Cue foaming diatribes about her unsuitability to hold such an exalted position. “Who’s next for president? Oprah Winfrey or Homer Simpson?” chortled one headline.
They still don’t get it, do they? Be honest, looking at the photocall for new Cabinet ministers outside No10, how many great leaders of men (and women) did you spot? What Disraelian purveyors of matchless eloquence, what Attlee-esque moral visionaries, what Churchillian titans? I mean, no offence to the recent appointees, who all have their virtues, but to claim that they are obviously superior to a woman who took herself from a childhood of dire poverty in Mississippi to a net worth of $2.8billion just because they’ve leafleted in Dorking is simply ludicrous.
Oprah is one of the few people in history to have achieved global recognition with her Christian name alone. It used to be said, rather unkindly, that politics was showbusiness for ugly people. Suddenly, showbusiness is politics for good-looking (or wealthy) people and this is supposed to signal the end of Western civilisation. Sorry, I don’t buy it.
Voters are no longer impressed by politicians who can’t seem to make anything move forward except their own careers. The annual winter crisis in the NHS, which you can set your watch by yet always takes everyone by surprise, is proof that we are not governed by risk-takers prepared to make bold changes or confront the nation with tough choices. Increasingly, a cynical public is prepared to give mavericks and outsiders a try. What have we got to lose?
During a jittery Golden Globes event, haunted by the ghosts of sexual predators, Oprah managed to both unify and electrify the room with remarkable oratory that called to mind Martin Luther King. She praised the power of the press “to navigate these complicated times” and recalled Recy Taylor, a black woman raped by six white men in Jim Crow-era Alabama, who died aged 97 just over a week ago. “She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men,” Winfrey said. “For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But THEIR TIME IS UP.”
It was a statesmanlike speech, notably more optimistic, inclusive and sane than anything to fall from the lips of the current president. Unlike Trump, she is shrewd enough to listen to advisers better informed than she is. No wonder everyone on Twitter immediately posted: “Oprah 2020”. Winfrey is not a politician. The awe she inspires, which I witnessed firsthand when I appeared on her show, more properly belongs to a queen.
President Oprah? I wouldn’t bet against it.