Much better to drown, Theresa, than try to ride a Mexican wave
When – when, oh when – will they stop doing it? To themselves and to us. When will politicians stop striving to be seen as normal? Or, even worse, even more painfully, cool? The latest casualty of this most misbegotten of modern urges is of course Theresa May. Footage has emerged of her attempting to join in a Mexican wave at Tuesday’s France v England match at the Stade de France. She jumped up late and threw her arms in the air with all the spontaneity, grace and joie de vivre of… well, a recently humiliated prime minister who would rather be anywhere else.
She joins a long and awful list of attempts by politicians to show they are at one with The People, despite the known fact that politicians are all weird, broken individuals. Scientific opinion is divided as to whether their pathological ambition, power-hunger or toxic ideology-absorption is a result of unfortunate life experiences or if they are malformed in the womb. But all observers believe that the best way for them to deal with this is not to try to ape those whose synapses are all joined up in the ordinary way that does not drive them to do anything so absurd as lead a country.
Look what happens when they pretend. Even if we discount the probably – alas – apocryphal story of Peter Mandelson asking for some of the guacamole (mushy peas) in a fish and chip shop, there is unassailable evidence of William Hague in a baseball cap and claiming to have drunk 14 pints of beer a day as a teenager. And The People said with tender pity: “No, you didn’t, William. You gave speeches at Tory party conferences. We have it on tape – look.” Gordon Brown – I assume looking like he’s extracting the words from between his teeth with an ice pick – claimed in a magazine interview that he liked the Arctic Monkeys and then couldn’t name a single song from that popular beat combo’s oeuvre. David Cameron assured the populace that he had recently eaten a pasty from the West Cornwall Pasty Company at Leeds station and the populace sighed and said “You absolutely didn’t, Dave. You absolutely didn’t” even before the West Cornwall Pasty Company piped up with the news that their Leeds station branch closed five years before.
Others prefer to prove their standard-human bona fides by essaying some Estuary vowels (awroit, Tone?), and yet more fail to guess the
‘[She] joins a long and awful list of attempts by politicians to show they are at one with The People’
price of a pint of milk. Some try to sing national anthems without knowing the words and some reckon eating bacon sandwiches in public will end well.
This must stop. Watch the clip of Michael Gove applauding at the 2013 party conference. It looks as though his human skin suit has momentarily slipped, revealing the alien beneath. We are dealing with people who can’t even clap normally.
Tell voters it doesn’t matter that you don’t know the price of milk – you have an expert grasp of macroeconomics to make up for it – and embrace what you are. Follow Jacob Rees-mogg’s lead. “Here I stand,” says the three piece suit his nanny dresses him in every morning. “I can do no other.” And he will still be doing so long after lesser men have crumbled to dust under the pressure of maintaining the lie. Better to drown, Theresa, than Mexican wave.
It was unfortunate timing on the Prime Minister’s part; but her slightly delayed contribution to the Mexican wave that swept around the Stade de France during the Franceengland football international on Tuesday night was almost a metaphor for her Government. Theresa May was left in a no-man’s-land of indecision, a follower of events rather than a leader. A week after the general election that cost her Government its Commons majority and diminished her personal authority, the signs of a loss of control are evident.
Within hours of it becoming clear that she would need help from other parties to survive in Parliament, Downing Street gave the clear impression that a deal had been agreed with the Democratic Unionist Party. But this was not the case. The DUP’S leaders have been in discussions with the Government Chief Whip in Belfast and with the Prime Minister in Downing Street and no pact has yet been reached. The upshot is that the Queen’s Speech has been postponed and the DUP talks are not set to resume until next week.
The waters have been further muddied by an invitation to Sinn Fein for discussions in Number 10 today about how to revive the province’s power-sharing executive. There are also indications that the Treasury is unhappy with the cost of buying the DUP’S 10 votes. Mrs May needs to consider whether a deal with the DUP is worth pursuing if it is going to delay yet further the governance of the nation. If she puts a Queen’s Speech to the Commons, the Unionists would have to support it or risk a Corbyn government. Mrs May needs to start making waves, not misjudging them.