Euro-pop for the Euro-phobes
BREATHTAKINGLY naff though it was, there was still a kind of patriotism in Theresa May’s dance to the podium at the Tory Conference. If she will agree to do such things for her country, there is still hope.
Indeed looking around that hall, she would know that it’s all down to her now, that every other potential candidate for her job is so much worse than she could ever be.
So the “advisors” and the “strategists” tell her that the silly dance is the only way to get through this without being sunk by all the other silliness? Clearly she would prefer not to do it, but looking at “Boris” and Rees-Mogg? She’ll do it.
I mean, we are all aware that she didn’t break into that little bit of dancing because she just loves to dance. We know that this was not a spontaneous thing, that she wasn’t just carried away by Dancing Queen playing as she arrived on stage, lost in the moment.
And she knows that we know, but she did it anyway, for Britain. Because she’s all they’ve got.
Yes we are wise in the ways of the political world, we know that these displays of “humanity” are carefully planned. But it is still quite moving to think of the feverish preparations which must have gone into this thing, the meetings at which supposedly serious people would have planned it, the rehearsals — dear God, the rehearsals.
Did they do a dry run on the actual stage of the conference, or did they just do it in a hotel room, with the music playing, again and again? It is quite a scene to contemplate, these top advisors and strategists deciding that this was the way to go, and then trying to get Theresa to do it, knowing that she probably would do it in the end because the alternatives are all too terrible to contemplate.
There was a “positive” in the fact that the now-famous dance that she originally did in South Africa, is clearly embarrassing in itself — but in a good way. It’s embarrassing in the way that all bad dancing is somewhat embarrassing, but in the case of Theresa May, it supposedly reveals that she is big enough to take a joke — like, she knows she can’t dance, but she’s a good enough sport to have a crack at it anyway.
And the advisors and the strategists would know how important it was for this to work, on its own terms at least. Because if it worked, it would make the political correspondents so giddy, it would distract from all the really, really, really embarrassing stuff.
So this was the challenge that the finest minds in the May team had set themselves — Theresa would have to embarrass herself, in a way that wasn’t embarrassing. Though, of course, there would be some in the hall who wouldn’t find any of it remotely embarrassing, or strange in any way. The Conservative Party has always been a natural home for such people, the sort who wouldn’t be torn by the irony of a Euro-pop classic delighting a room full of Euro-phobes.
And here was the strangest thing of all — whatever she was doing up there, pretending that she was enjoying the music of Abba, and whatever she went on to say after that, she would still be the best of them.
It wasn’t the greatest week all round for the Euro-phobes, what with the Europe team containing five English players winning the Ryder Cup. Time was, the Tories used to know their golf, and they would know that Great Britain & Ireland always used to get slaughtered in the Ryder Cup until someone had this idea of bringing the “continentals” into it as well — as a result of this great pooling of talents, Europe have become the slaughterers. But even after three full days on Sky Sports, the Brexiteers draw no lessons from that.
And would they perhaps have noted how well this European thing works in the Champions League, as they selected from eight matches being played on their TV screens simultaneously?
No, that is not their game either. Not their continent. Not their planet.