Any ideas?
Let’s look at the runners…
Harman. No. Deputy Leader sounds good but it is not worth a pitcher of warm piss when all is said and done. Indeed it is exactly the sort of sinecure presented to those who have scaled the greasy pole as far as everyone else can stomach. Oh and she pathologically hates men who make up roughly half the electorate.
Balls. Now Balls is a truly repugnant piece of shit. He is, along with Harman, the most obnoxious of them by a country mile but he shares something else with Harman too. Just as Harriet got Deputy Leader Balls got “Children, Families and Schools” when he really wanted Number 11. Basically, like Harman, his political star was stetted. And he’s remarkably ugly and looks like he’s on cocaine.
Darling. Not a chance. I mean he just looks funny.
Johnson. Possible but what would he give the party? Up against young bucks like Clegg and Cameron. Nah. Not a hope in hell. Anyway, since I wrote that Johnson has ruled himself out.
Mandelson. Now we’re talking! No. He doesn’t want it. Mandelson is a power behind the throne. And of course he can’t lead from the Lords.
Which leaves us with the Millipedes. Davepede is the most likely but Edpede is the one, if I were a gambling man, I’d reckon I had the best chance of a decent return on. Seriously. When the runes are read and the goat dissected Labour will conclude, “If only we’d had a younger, better looking chap”. You think I’m making this up? After Billy Hague and IDS I bet Tory Central Office erected a sign saying, “No Baldies”. Seriously. And look at something else. there is a de-facto age limit. The last two PMs and the new one all have school-age children and this is for some reason desirable in a PM. I guess it enables them to busk along about, “How I as a father really care about education…” And another factor comes in with that… Do you think his missus is hot?
Don’t get me wrong here. I am not deliberately trivialising politics because politics has done that to itself. We only need to look across the Atlantic. Obama with his two cute little daughters and a wife who had more column inches written on her fashion sense during the campaign than were written about her husband’s foreign policy.
We hear a lot these days about “equality” and “new politics” and even the bizarre delusion so many seemed to have that a black man landing the US presidency was something they never expected to see in their lifetimes. We are conning ourselves. On the later point there had been much discussion previously about the likes of Colin Powell and Condi Rice (a black woman!) and more generally it would appear that the Anglosphere wants blokes married to women considered attractive with full heads of hair and in their forties with a horde of brats.
Well… I’m not bad looking, not bald, my wife is photogenic and I’m 36. Now Dave Cameron is mid forties but only entered Parliament 9 years ago. I may have a cunning plan. I just can’t be doing with the kids but I suppose I could rent them for photo-ops. Works for Madonna.
If I had a vote, I’d vote for Darling. I think he was surprisingly statesmanlike considering he was stuck under Brown. Economically and socially incompetent, but that’s the definition of the Labour Party. Of the Millipedes, Ed I guess. Gurning David has no leadership potential whatsoever. He just looks like a twat, sounds like a twat, grins like a twat and acts like a twat. Because he’s a twat.
Seriously, they won’t choose Darling but I think they should. My guess is they’ll pick the Gurning One.
Not a bad choice Ian, but I have never known how much of Darlings policies have been his own, seeing as Gordon used to micromanage everything.
He was forced to give a pledge of 8 billion to the EU fund to bail out Greece last week because there was no way we could wriggle out, having lost our veto in that area to the lisbon Treaty. But he did say a firm no to hundreds of billions in guarantees to another contingency fund to bail out any of the other PIGS who went belly up.
Typical of EU solidarity, the rest turned on us and said, well dont come to us for help when your economy crashes then. Lovely Britain friendly Europe at its best.They have been trying to destroy us since Bony, and now they are finally succeeding.
Besides, does anyone remember Buck Rogers in the 21st Century? Darling always reminded me of Bucks mate, The Hawk, half bird half man. We are talking purely image now arn’t we? and Darling looks too weird to succeed.
Harridan would be brilliant, but she knows that she would make Labour totally unelectable, as even women hate her.
Balls would be good too, cos it would be like getting Ray Winstone or Ross Kemp, with the brains, charm and attitude to boot. But no chance there.
So yes it will be a Millipede. Bland, young vacuous and unprincipled, no old baldies need apply, just like Clegg and Cameron.
The story goes that Darling rang Osborne during the EU negotiations to make sure they would all agree. Rather correct, in my opinion. I had a good impression of him as chancellor, but as you say, how much was really him and how much Brown I don’t know.
I’ve given up worrying about the EU. I really did care once, but now that the euro-zone is comprehensively wrecked, I think we need only wait on the wings and see it unravel. Oh, there’ll be an attempt at economic dictatorship and panic over future welfare bills, and a banking crisis. But eventually the bloc will split up.
But we don’t want to be the one that triggers the final collapse by rocking the boat. Otherwise we’ll be blamed, shoot the messenger and all that, whereas it’s their own stupid arrogance that has caused the problem.
[...] Counting Cats can’t decide between becoming Madonna or the leader of the Labour [...]
What we’re really asking here is who’s going to be Labour’s Hague, aren’t we? Who’s going to be the youthful, energetic new leader doomed to utter, catastrophic, humiliating failure? Damn, I hope it’s Balls.
With you totally on the EU, El D. It’s why I’m fairly relaxed about the LibCon coalition. The whole teetering edifice just looks absurd now, like the British Empire in the early ’60s. Like the Empire, it may stumble on in some watered-down form (not least because the Monnet-ite True Believers will never admit failure), but once the Euro goes it’s finished.
I’m still keeping an eye on it in case I’m wrong, mind you. I never thought it would get as far as it did.
Excellent post. Funny too. I’m obviously praying to gentle Jesus for it to be Harriet Hateman. Please let it be Harridan Harperson!
Sam,
The words “youthful, energetic new leader” do not belong in the same Universe as Ed Balls.
Travelgall,
Thanks. Part of my point really was the trivialisation of politics. Vote Obama - he’s a black fella! Vote Cameron, he got his wife pregnant! On that basis I revise my judgement on Harman. Wise Heads of the Labour party may quite well conclude Ms Harman has something none of the rest can offer - a womb. One might imagine after a stonking defeat thoughts would turn to issues of policy, personality, leadership and getting the party out of a hole but it could well be as trivial as that. Hey, let’s have a woman. Worked for the Tories in ‘79. Fatal flaw of course here is that Maggie didn’t say, “Vote for me, I’m a girl!” but “Vote for me because…”. Anyway I seriously think one of the most bizarre results of the rise of identity politics is the entrenchment of middle-aged white heterosexual men into power.
A related point. I wish the blogosphere would lay off Mandelson over his homosexuality. “Lord Mandelson of Bumfondle and Boys” and all that. Mandy has given us so many vastly better reasons to kick him than his personal sexual preferences. Oh so many! I will not even begin to enumerate because I’d be here all day.
ED,
My feelings about the EU. I hope the end point is that the nations of Europe keep close but in a Norwegian manner if you know what I mean. I mean that would work. My wife translates a lot of Norwegian for a living. She also does Swedish, Danish and Russian. Is it easier to do business with the EU members… No. That’s the whole point of the EU - it has an importance that is all it’s own invention. When I can source components from Hong Kong and have ‘em air-freighted via Californian websites, when my wife can work translating Danish into English for a company in Taiwan that’s acting for one in New York, when… fill in the blanks here. The world becomes a small place without it having to be imposed by Brussels. The EU is essentially anachronistic. It is a C19th dream that shall increasingly look as out of place in the C21st as having a valet.
Frankly I find it personally offensive that we have been conned into the idea that we need a tranzi organisation to enable us to all get on together. It’s preposterous. I have shared flats with Europeans and indeed done business with them and all I needed was a telephone line. To pretend that unless there is an EU directive on the matter I can’t share a joke with a Frenchman is ludicrous. The whole idea that it’s kept the peace in Europe is equally ludicrous. The simple fact that the last time we went for a barney big time about 30 million died. Now we may be stupid but we are not that stupid to try that hilarity again.
The original point of the EU was to emasculate Germany to the point that it would be impossible for it to start a Third World War. The founding fathers seem to believe that because Germany hasn’t started another war, that the EU is a success and was the right idea.
Bollocks! It was NATO and the USA that saw to that, plus the fact that the fight has just plain gone out of the German people. They are now just about the most pacifist in the world.
But the ultimate hidden agenda by its founders, people like Mossat that Sam mentioned, was exactly the same as Hitlers Reich, a United States of Europe, but this time under French control, and they will not give up on the, as Nick said, 19th Century idea unfit for a 21st Century world of globalisation and flexibility without one hell of a fight.
Dont ever be complacent, these fuckers know no reason, they are shiny eyed zealots for the destuction of nation states, whether they wish to be destroyed or not. Stark reality, Political or economic, will not stop them. The EU will not be allowed to collapse anytime soon.