Inside every Tory Brexiteer is a parent who can’t say no
Every weekend it’s the same. Theresa May is on the brink. Tory Brexiteers are poised to strike. They’re just two letters away from a vote of no confidence. The end is only days away. Mrs May is doomed. And then… nothing happens. Every weekend. Every single weekend. Honestly. The Prime Minister’s backbench critics like to call her “weak”. Perhaps they could tell us: what word should we use to describe people who endlessly declare they’re about to depose her, but never go through with it?
They sound so brave and bold when they’re briefing the press (anonymously, of course) about what they’re going to do to her. “She’ll be dead soon”, “Assassination is in the air”, “She should bring her own noose”. But when encountering Mrs May in person, these ruthless hitmen become oddly diffident. A meeting she held with her MPS this week was described by one attendee as “a petting zoo”.
I know what these backbenchers remind me of. They remind me of useless parents. I feel qualified to say this, because I’m a useless parent myself. Whenever I’m struggling to get my four-yearold to do what I tell him, I issue him with dark and terrifying threats (“Right! That’s it! No ipad! No TV! No bedtime stories!”).
I know it’s not going to achieve anything: he worked out ages ago that the threats were hollow. But I still go through the motions of issuing them, all the same – so that any onlookers (fellow diners in the restaurant, fellow passengers on the train) will assume that I’ve got the situation in hand.
It’s entirely for show. A sham. But necessary.
After all, one has to be seen to be doing something. Especially if, in reality, one is doing nothing.
Almost 100 years exactly since the end of the First World War. Naturally we’ll remember the fallen. But there are others to remember, too. The children of the fallen. On Wednesday, since it was half-term, I took my son to the Museum of Brands, in west London. It’s a fascinating place. The story of the past two centuries, told through cultural detritus: contemporary toys, gadgets, magazines, adverts. Tins of tea leaves, boxes of soap powder. It’s like a giant version of one of those time capsules Blue Peter encouraged children to bury in the Seventies.
One section is devoted to items from the time of the First World War. And what it made me think about, above all else, was the gaping chasm between the reality of life at the Front, and the way it was depicted to families back home. Among the artefacts on display was the Christmas 1916 issue of a boys’ comic called The Scout (price: 1d). Below an exuberant coverline (“Full of Fine Yarns!”) was a drawing of something that, to boys of the time, must have been a thrilling novelty: a tank, crushing its way unstoppably across the field of battle.
The fathers of The Scout’s readers were, at that very moment, in a living hell. The mud, the rats, the guns, the gas. The bodies. The stench. To little boys back home, however, the cover of a comic portrayed the war as a Fine Yarn. A rip-roaring thriller. A belting romp.
But then, it had to. Imagine being one of those little boys. Imagine their anxiety and confusion. Not knowing how Daddy is. Not knowing where Daddy is. Not even knowing whether Daddy is alive or dead. So, to them, it must have been comforting to think of Daddy as the swaggering, squarejawed hero of a Fine Yarn. The kind of adventure that always had a happy ending.
Also on display in the museum was an excitinglooking board game, called The Great European War Game (“The race to Berlin”). Then there was a jigsaw puzzle of a map of Germany, its box emblazoned with the stirring legend “Germany Cut to Bits”. And then the tins of chocolates (Bourneville, Cadbury’s, Rowntree’s) – each decorated with a portrait of a Field Marshal, or the King, or scenes of military glory.
Not all the exhibits, though, present a romanticised vision of the war. There’s also a collection tin. On the front is a drawing of three British soldiers, returned from the Front in bandages – and written alongside the drawing, a stern demand. “They gave their sight,” it reads. “What will YOU give?”
The Museum of Brands has so many other wonderful exhibits. The posters promoting cigarettes as a health cure (“For Your Throat’s Sake – Smoke Craven ‘A’”). The Edwardian ladies’ magazines whose covers promise “Boudoir Gossip”, “Social Confidences”, “Fashions for Matrons” and “Little Points of Etiquette”. The curious Thirties advertising slogans (“Get Amovon Foot Paste – and enjoy having feet!”). The Forties dartboard with Hitler’s bottom as the bullseye.
As a matter of fact, I’m more or less an exhibit myself. In the section devoted to the first decade of this century is an issue of Zoo: the now-defunct lads’ mag I worked for in my early 20s. Disappointingly, it’s not the issue in which I was photographed riding a rollercoaster, naked. Our circulation never recovered.
An exhibit I especially want to pick out, though, is a leaflet from the UK’S first referendum on Europe, in 1975. Produced by the Liberals in support of the Common Market, the front page features a caricature of a sad and frightened British lion. Tied to the lion’s tail is a label. It reads: “Lost. Please return to Europe.”
Looking at that, it’s amazing to think they won.
Divorce is no laughing matter. Well, usually. Down the road from us in Gravesend is a hairdressing salon, which is shortly to become the office of a firm of solicitors. Tied to the railings in front of the salon is the following sign: “Coming soon: Stantons Divorce Solicitors. Professional treatment for split ends.”