DAVID CAMPBELL ‘Yah-boo’ will be back before long

NOT even a dedicated socialite such as I can fill every night of the week with . . . well, socialising. So occasionally I do have an evening in front of the telly.

But the summer months are a graveyard for entertainment, as the TV schedules go on holiday.

Which is why, as autumn creeps on apace, I’m half-way through the box set of Borgen.

This is the tale of a nice Danish woman who gets herself elected prime minister of the nice country of Denmark then finds she can’t be as nice as she’d like and has to be nasty to other politicians, even quite nice ones, and even to some people who aren’t politicians and are also quite nice, because that’s just what politics is like.

And now, proving that truth is what fiction is based on, along comes Jeremy Corbyn with his straight talking and honest politics. Let’s see how long that lasts. Remember what happened after Labour leader John Smith died? In the immediate mournful aftermath, politicians on all sides promised to honour the memory of a decent man by practising a new kind of politics, less “yah-boo” and more “kind”.

I think that made it through the week before daggers were drawn.

Look at oor ain Scottish

I suppose they might all live happily ever after

Parliament chamber, deliberately designed to be nonconfrontational. Are the debates any less vicious? Do the parties love each other more? No, the insults are just hurled from a different angle.

The sad fact is it’s impossible to get anything done by being nice, and not just in politics. Business isn’t nice. No large organisation is nice, not even the church. The meek might inherit the earth, but they rarely get a promotion.

Oh yes, you can be nice on a personal level – people generally want to be kind and thoughtful as individuals. Look at Margaret Thatcher.

That doesn’t stop them believing other people, however nice they might be, are a danger to the greater good.

So if anyone thinks they can run a Sunday School, never mind a country, and emerge with clean hands, whistling “Je ne regrette rien,” then I’ve some disappointing news for them about Santa Claus.

Of course, I’ve not reached the end of Borgen yet, so I suppose they might all live happily ever after.

But I don’t think it was written by Hans Christian Andersen.