Here’s how to make Mrs May’s British dream come to life
Theresa May, God bless her, keeps being told that she’s got no “vision”. So, in her usual dogged, long-suffering way, she’s been rummaging around for one. She’s come up with something called… “the British dream”. As a matter of fact, she’s talked about “the British dream” once before, during her speech to Tory conference last autumn, but unfortunately no one remembers, because a comedian gave her a P45 and she started coughing like a Victorian orphan and half the set fell on her head. So this week she tried talking about “the British dream” again. The only trouble is: her definition of “the British dream” sounds a bit woolly. According to her, “the British dream” is about “each generation doing better than the last”, and “restoring hope”.
Never mind, Prime Minister. Let me help. Because I genuinely think there is such a thing as “the British dream”. But it’s got nothing to do with grand, high-flown ideas about aspiration and destiny. It’s about little things. Little, mildly annoying, slightly obscure, frankly banal things.
The British dream, Prime Minister, is for delivery people to deliver the parcel we’ve stayed in for at any point other than the single 10-minute window in which we raced to the corner shop for some milk. The British dream is for each workplace to boast at least one printer that, every now and again, maybe once a week, can be relied on to actually print. The British dream is for usable Wi-fi to become available on trains, not necessarily within our own lifetime, that would be too much to ask, but perhaps within the lifetime of our grandchildren.
That’s the British dream.
That, and for self-service checkouts to understand that no, there is not an unidentified item in the bagging area, it’s just our bag, the bag that’s been there the whole time, and got weighed before we put any items into it. Also: no one to ring our landline phone, ban cyclists from bringing their bikes on trains, and imprison waiters who ask “How’s the food?” when we’re in the middle of chewing it.
There you are, Prime Minister. That’s the real British dream. Deliver that, and you’ll be in power for the next 50 years. Certain Tory ministers and MPS have spent the week rubbishing economic forecasts. They’ve got to stop doing that. If they don’t, they’ll regret it.
The Government needs voters to retain a basic faith in economic forecasts. Because when the next election comes around, the Tories will have to persuade voters that a Labour government would damage the economy. Growth would fall, the pound would plummet, wages would be hit. But why should voters believe it? After all, Tory ministers and MPS keep telling them that no one ever really knows what the economy will do, forecasts are always wrong, and all warnings of economic disaster should be dismissed as politically motivated scaremongering. And even if a gloomy economic forecast turns out to be right, didn’t Nick Boles – a senior Tory MP – tell us that “there’s more to life than GDP”? Don’t worry about growth, everyone. It’s just some numbers on a screen. They don’t really mean anything. If the numbers fall a little bit, big deal, it won’t hurt you.
This isn’t the only Tory message that could end up backfiring. If the Tories warn voters that, under Jeremy Corbyn, major employers would move abroad, the City would be destroyed and unemployment would rocket, voters may well snort and say, “Pah! Project Fear!” And who could blame them? Many leading Tories have spent the past two years telling voters to ignore any politician who issues exactly those warnings. Don’t listen to the so-called experts! It’s all just Project Fear! Everything will be fine!
Traditionally, the Tories’ greatest electoral selling-point has been the economy. They’ll boost it; Labour will ruin it. By promoting a breezy contempt for economic forecasts, the Tories are playing right into Jeremy Corbyn’s hands.
This year, Sooty turns 70 years old. And yet even today, remarkably, children still adore him. None more than my three-year-old son. It’s shown on ITV every Saturday and Sunday morning, and he can’t get enough of it. As far he’s concerned, it’s entirely fresh and new. He has no idea that Sooty is in fact older than his grandparents.
I love watching it with him. Actually, no, that’s not it. What I mean is: I love watching him watch it. No matter how terrible the jokes – the ancient puns, the creaky slapstick – he just laughs and laughs. It’s that special kind of laughter you only hear from very young children: all bubbly and squeaky and hysterical, as if they’re being tickled under the arms by both Mummy and Daddy at once. Sooty leaves him helpless, incapacitated by nonsense. He can watch the same episode any number of times, and, somehow, still find it just as funny.
To be fair, I can see the appeal, from a child’s point of view. The show almost entirely consists of an adult being physically humiliated, usually without the faintest provocation. That, above all else, is what makes Sooty so timeless. There will be never be a generation of children who do not thrill to the spectacle of a grown-up being comprehensively demeaned for no good reason while everyone else on screen guffaws.
I liked Sooty as a child myself, but as an adult I do find the premise slightly disconcerting. I mean, it’s about a 40-something man who lives alone in a caravan, talking to puppets on his hands. He’s got no wife, no family, no friends: just his puppets. Surely this is the kind of man we warn children to keep away from. But perhaps I’m overthinking it.
Apparently a Sooty film is in the works. An episode of the TV show only lasts 10 minutes; I can barely imagine how my son, or for that matter I, will cope with 90 minutes. But I look forward to watching him watch it.