Westminster needs a Mary Poppins to apply smack of firm government
AQUIET week. Just the one leadership election, a fall in the pound, and a parliamentary crisis or two. The UK is increasingly living up to the title David Cameron once gave it, that of “Broken Britain”.
What the former PM and EU referendum pusher failed to mention was that he was the chap who was going to break it. But let us not dig over old grievances, particularly since there are so many new ones available. There is only one way out of this mess now, and that is to call for nanny.
You may have noticed there is a lot of them around at the moment. Mary Poppins Returns, a sequel to the 1964 original starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, flies into cinemas next Friday. Emma Thompson is putting together a Nanny Mcphee musical, and Mrs Doubtfire is reportedly heading for Broadway.
As everyone who has seen the first Mary Poppins knows, the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Miss P turns up at a time of crisis. She is the spoonful of sugar who can transform a sour situation, the dab of Savlon on a skinned knee, the cool kiss on a fevered forehead. Nanny not only knows best, she also makes everything better.
Ask Jacob Rees-mogg. He is so fond of his nanny, Veronica Crook, he asked her to stay on and look after his children. Besides caring for the now six-strong Rees-mogg brood, including standing up for them when a Class War activist hectored the children over what he saw as the political sins of their father, she has helped the Tory MP in his political career. It was to nanny that Rees-mogg turned when he wanted someone to go campaigning with him in Central Fife in 1997. To no-one’s surprise, he lost. Doubtless nanny had some soothing words for that occasion, something along the lines of “Get yourself down south asap, you silly clot.”
Who knows, it might have been nanny Crook who was the driving force behind the Brexiters’ effort to oust Theresa May. One can see her now, moving pieces around the kitchen table like a general plotting a military offensive. Telling Boris where to go, in every sense. Urging her old charge Jacob to pull his socks up and stop looking so petulant. Reading Dominic Raab the riot act.
For Rees-mogg, nanny is