It’s time leaders seized initiative
NO doubt we’ll all get behind the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee next year marking the 70th year of her reign. These jubilees come round so fast though. It seems only yesterday I was dressed up like a cross between a Grimsby trawler-man and a high-class tart for the rain-sodden Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant in 2012. And there was Brian May serenading us from among the chimney pots at Buckingham Palace for the Golden Jubilee in 2002. And as for the Silver Jubilee in 1977 – I was in my punk phase so pretended not to be interested.
Nicholas Coleridge, chairman of the V&A, is in charge of the Platinum pageantry and promises a Trooping The Colour, “a great lunch” led by the Lord Mayor, and the Queen “lighting bonfires”. Sounds same-old-same-old to me. Back of the envelope stuff. Big lunches and Her Majesty on bonfire lighting duty yet again are par for the course. Anyone got any new ideas?
WILLIAM Shatner, aka Star Trek’s Captain James T Kirk, is to become the oldest person in space when he blasts off in Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket on Tuesday at the age of 90.
But why does he have to bother with a rocket? Whatever happened to “Beam me up Scottie”?
GRIMES, a Canadian pop star, was papped strolling through the streets of LA, her nose in a copy of The Communist Manifesto as if she simply couldn’t put it down. Apparently oblivious to traffic and an army of paparazzi she went on her way, gripped by Marx and Engels’s vision of class struggle and the victory of the proletariat. Hmm.
I mean, there are books that are pageturners butthe Communist Manifesto ain’t one of them. It’s not like the latest Lee Child. It’s not hard to put it down, after say… two pages… and never pick it up again. Put it this way: you wouldn’t walk haplessly into a bollard because you were so taken with the idea of the bourgeoisie revolutionising the instruments of production.
We’ve all done it of course. Left out album covers (in the days of vinyl) to impress someone you fancied. Scattered books such asa Brief History Oftime which nobody has ever read in the entire history of time. I love the picture of Marilyn Monroe reading James Joyce’s Ulysses – but she was so smart she probably did read it. Which is more than I have.
IT’S said that there are a lot of conkers around this year. It could be something to do with the summer weather (wet) or it could be because children no longer pick them up and have conker fights so more of them lie around on the ground unloved.
In past years – when my old-fashioned children were devoted to conkers – I know for a fact that my car boot contained at least half the available harvest in South London so there were none to be had for miles around.
AT THE cinema the projector broke down. So no film. Then all the trains home were cancelled because of an “incident” around Wimbledon. First-world problems I know, but it does feel as though everything is falling apart.and what about those rats scampering over the croissants in that supermarket? If that doesn’t say “end of days” I don’t know what does.
Better to stay home and watch TV. I’m enjoying Blair And Brown: The New Labour Revolution which began last week on BBC Two. For a start there’s the fascination of seeing how the main players have aged. And watching all those lady spads in their midcalf 1980s dresses sprinting loyally after Tony Blair as he marched into the future with his chest puffed out.
“The single most important thing in politics is to have the initiative,” he said in last week’s opener.and yes, you did feel that at the time Labour had the initiative, the wind in their sails. “We were like a trio of musketeers” purred Peter Mandelson talking about himself, Brown and Blair.though back then with his spivvy moustache and white suits, Mandy looked more like a holiday camp ents officer than D’artagnan.
Is having the initiative the “single most important thing in politics”? It could well be and it doesn’t feel as though any party in Britain has it now. We’re being buffeted about as though we’re in a game of pinball, pinging from one mishap to another.
Set out in the car and you’ll be trapped on a motorway waiting for the police to move the eco-warriors.tempting to send in the tanks to sort that out but the Army is too busy driving petrol around because there are no lorry drivers. Inflation is about to soar, the supermarket shelves are half empty and there will be no gadgets, turkeys or pigs-in-blankets for Christmas.
All the energy companies are going bust because of the price cap (embraced by both Labour and Conservatives) which is a prime example of a crowd-pleasing policy with unintended consequences.
The Home Secretary talked tough at the party conference about peoplesmugglers but does anyone believe that the inflatable dinghies are going to stop coming? When the current unpleasantness magically sorts itself out the Prime Minister is going to lead us into a high-wage, lowtax future. Though who will be able to pay these desirable wages for the newly skilled-up, home-grown workers?
Labour’s main policy is to call Tories “scum”, say that James Bond should be a
woman and argue about who has a cervix. Everyone talks about “levelling up” apart from ordinary voters who have no idea what it means.and there’s Covid waiting in the wings as winter descends.
All politicians always promise a new
start but nobody in today’s bunch truly has the initiative. Our leaders are reactive, bludgeoned by events over which they no longer have any agency, desperately trying to present disaster as “opportunity”. Blair was wrong about many things, but right about this.