I NEVER LIED TO YOU, I’VE ALWAYS BEEN COOL [196]

It is Friday 6^th September, and Sky News is handed a leaked Government memo. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister since Wednesday 24^th July, is “proroguing” Parliament (discontinuing the session without dissolving it) for five weeks, and is seen as a move to disrupt efforts to ensure the United Kingdom leaves the European Union with a deal on trade and other matters. 

The memo, in Johnson’s handwriting, had been presented the day before, in redacted form, during a court case aimed at stopping the prorogation, and stated that, “the whole September session is a rigmarole [REDATCTED] to show the public that MPs were earning that crust.” 

Just as Donald Trump had been defending the use of a Sharpie pen to draw around the state of Alabama on a map indicating the path of a hurricane, indicating it had been forecast to hit it, but won’t anymore – breathe in, breath out – the redaction was to hide something embarrassing, rather than sensitive: “girly swot Cameron,” referring to the Prime Minister before the last one. David Cameron, Boris Johnson, and Johnson’s brother Jo, all attended Oxford University, and because Boris Johnson “only” achieved a 2:1, while the other two have firsts, they are “girly swots,” a remark made in 2013, while Johnson was mayor of London.

Two days earlier, on Wednesday 4^th September, Johnson shouted across the floor of the House of Commons, at Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Opposition, “call an election, you great big girl’s blouse.” Corbyn was among those calling for one previously, as one way of resolving the deadlock in Parliament over Brexit, but when it became clear that Johnson could call one for after the current Friday 31^st October date for exiting the EU, the withdrawal of that support became a further way to frustrate the Prime Minister...

...not that Boris Johnson couldn’t do that by himself. On Tuesday 3^rd September, the first day Johnson spoke in Parliament as Prime Minister, twenty-one Conservative MPs were effectively kicked out of the party for voting against the Government for a bill aimed at preventing the UK leaving the EU without a deal - these included Sir Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill’s grandson, and former Chancellors of the Exchequer Philip Hammond and Kenneth Clarke. Earlier the same day, another Tory MP, Phillip Lee, walked across the Commons floor to join another party, wiping out the Government’s one-seat majority before the vote even happened. On Thursday 5^thSeptember, the aforementioned Jo Johnson, also an MP, resigned from the Cabinet, writing on Twitter that, “in recent weeks I’ve been torn between family loyalty and the national interest – it’s an unresolvable tension and time for others to take on my roles as MP & minister.” On Saturday 7^th September, the Work and Pensions Secretary resigns as both a Cabinet member and a Conservative - Amber Rudd described what happened to her colleagues as an act of political vandalism.

Along with other defenestrated MPs like Justine Greening, Dominic Grieve and Rory Stewart, Johnson had effectively removed the more moderate voices from his Parliamentary party, pushing the Conservatives further to the right. Perhaps it will render Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party obsolete, but it could make the Conservatives obsolete before then – on Thursday 5^thSeptember, Johnson made a speech stating he would “rather be dead in a ditch” than delay Brexit, leading to questions about why officers from West Yorkshire Police were being used as a backdrop, especially when one stood behind the Prime Minister needed to sit down.

As a girly swot, a big girl’s blouse, and someone politically slightly left of centre, who doesn’t consider themselves a Leaver or Remainer because they didn’t want the entire poorly-executed mess of Brexit in the first place, mainly because it served to answer existential questions within the Conservative Party rather than in the wider United Kingdom, this last week has been especially hard. I can’t be as laid back as Jacob Rees-Mogg about it – in the moment that picture was captured of him slouching across the Commons front bench, he looked like he was waiting to be painted, but only as a fool. The only reason I have felt the need to recount the last week is to make it clear to myself that it happened. Future school children will be taught Brexit in history class, by which time more sense will have been made about what happened, due to the one thing I currently cannot have: hindsight.

The last week in British politics will ultimately prove that Boris Johnson’s most satisfying performance will have been as a guest presenter of “Have I Got News for You” – he was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance in 2004, alongside Stephen Fry and Paul Merton, ultimately losing out to Jonathan Ross.

WE HAVE THE CHANCE TO TURN THE PAGES OVER [100]

This is my one hundredth article for “Leigh Spence is Dancing with the Gatekeepers,” probably the best blog title in the world, and I thank you all for reading what began as a weekly writing exercise in May 2016. I must have written at least sixty thousand words since then but, perhaps more importantly, sales of the “Daily Mail” newspaper fell by over two hundred thousand copies in that time. I know these figures are not related, but I have more to say about this later.

What I love about writing is the process, the build-up, the formation of an idea. This usually culminates in a frenzy of typing at the last possible moment, like this one has, especially if the ideas came later. For months, I assumed trying to equate the outlandish nature of the current political climate with Dadaist performance art did not work out, leaving me with lessons for next time, but that article, using a quote from Alfred Jarry’s absurdist play “Ubu Roi” – “That’s a beautiful speech, but nobody’s listening” – has become the most popular article so far.

Other moments of apparent madness included making blue pyramids of Quorn, making the food more attractive to children’ the assertion that “ain’t” is a proper word that adds punch to song lyrics; that our old family car, an Austin Ambassador with a brown interior, is now one of the rarest production cars in Britain; that people build super-basements so they no longer have to go out; that there are many types of Range Rover to help those that identify as Range Rover drivers, so they can live their life the way they feel; and that Donald Trump is the first world leader to restrict his own ability to speak, rather than restrict his own people. When there is always a next time, ideas come freely.

But what if time is running out? With endless space online, and a curious brain that won’t shut up, my writing has no reason to cease, but what if I was a newspaper, speaking with a one-track mind, in a country where newspaper sell fewer copies than ever?

The world knows “Daily Mail” as the most-read news website in the English, with a very showbiz-led mix on its brightly coloured front page, but UK residents also know it as a very conservative, populist newspaper that makes many people want to spit – you can buy t-shirts and badges saying, “I’m the one the Daily Mail warned you about”. It began in 1896, but its current form evolved in 1971, when the seriously-minded broadsheet “Mail” was merged with a more populist tabloid paper, the “Daily Sketch,” with “Sketch” staff effectively taking over the new compact “Mail,” building a fiercely confident, conservative voice that, within a few years, overturned fifty years of the “Daily Express” beating it at its own game – the “Mail” now sells as much as the “Express,” “Daily Mirror” and “Daily Star” put together.

So why did I mention the “Mail’s” sales had fallen? Looking at figures quoted by the “Press Gazette” website, its circulation peaked at 2.59 million copies in September 2001. By February 2018, that figure halved to 1.34 million, down eleven percent on the previous year. The global shift to online put printed newspapers into decline, and when Mail Online effectively gives you the same content for free, why bother with the “Daily Mail” at all?

After reading it for the last month, I wish I knew. I consider myself to be politically in the centre, but I am definitely to the left of the “Mail.” It reads like a magazine, using many double-page spreads of stories and opinion pieces in high-contrast black on white type, bellowing its points down to the reader in length and in depth. Using these pages to brand Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn an informant to a Communist spy, and ex-Formula One boss Max Mosley as much of a racist as his father, everyone with connections to them are also scrutinised and judged for their reactions, and the BBC is criticised for not covering either of the stories at the same length – when Mosley didn’t reply  how the “Mail” wanted, the next day’s headline was “STILL HE WON’T APOLOGISE.” Based on what was printed, both Corbyn and Mosley have some questions to answer, but the “Mail” has already found them guilty as hell, let alone guilty as charged, and any raising of their voices is a threat to a free press.

There has also been the A-Z of Millennial speak, the A-Z of Baby Boomer speak, the “witch hunt” against men by “Hollywood feminists,” how political correctness causes sense of humour failure, stories about the pro-EU bias by inbred left-wing taxpayer-funded BBC, and the usual stuff about politicians, tax avoiders, judges and investment bankers trying to thwart Brexit, preventing the will of the British people. The last of these included a page-length editorial comment with the headline, “They just don’t get it, do they? This elitist class imposing THEIR views on ordinary people…”

I think the “Mail” gets off on hearing itself rage. If the “Mail” were a person, I would run away.

The last months of screaming words has been overwhelming, the spectacle of the Metropolitan liberal elite being lambasted by the Metropolitan conservative elite seemed like an ironic and pointless bonfire, as the “Mail’s” sales continue to fall – Mail Online hides many of the double-page spreads under a link to “Columnists,” leaving the bigger stories to generate views and revenue. For all the outrage over the content of the “Daily Mail” as a newspaper, for how it currently uses acres of paper to tell us to stop using plastic, and for all the advertising boycotts by Lego, Paperchase and Center Parcs, there remains one thing: the figures show the newspaper is dying anyway. Unless the website can support it when printing on paper is too unprofitable to continue, we will live to see the end of the “Daily Mail” – it will happen, it will absolutely happen.

One day, just as in the dream that gave me the name for this blog, I may turn “Leigh Spence is Dancing with the Gatekeepers” into an album, where I will yell at those that tell you what to think, singing “all they have are words” until fadeout. I don’t know if that will be in the next hundred articles, but I will see where my mind takes me.

YOU AND ME TOGETHER, YOUNG AND STRONG [59]

Well, that wasn’t meant to happen, apparently.

I had intended to write about the general election results, particularly about attempting to sit through the overnight coverage. For those non-football fans, with no cup finals or play-offs to pore over, the general election is my equivalent of the World Cup Final, or the Super Bowl, and the results programmes have developed to match that – the exit poll, battles in key marginals, the swingometer, and so on. Grace Wyndham Goldie, the BBC producer that created the first TV election results programme, in 1950, really was on to something, even if she had to fight engineers believing that broadcasting beyond midnight could damage the BBC’s electrical equipment.

So, um, yeah, my original idea was going to be something a bit light-hearted, talking about how we have a major TV event built around our democracy, mixed in with detail on how I tried to stay awake to watch it all… then the result of the exit poll came in, claiming a hung parliament, with the Conservatives as the largest party, but falling short of a majority of seats. Because the poll was wrong in 2015, predicting another hung parliament instead of a small Tory majority, the immediate reaction was to say that all options are still open, because it contradicted everything said in the campaign up to now.

From the moment the election was called by Theresa May, the belief was the Conservative Party would have an increased majority in the House of Commons – because the Labour Party, under Jeremy Corbyn, was always seen as divided between its party’s supporters and the leader’s supporters, the Conservatives may even cause a landslide. Many right-wing-leaning newspapers called the election a Tory win, which was to be expected, but because that included the “Daily Mail” and “The Sun,” this dictated the direction, and the noise, of the narrative.

The reason for calling the election has now also been called into question. Despite fixed-term parliaments having been introduced in 2010, it is the Prime Minister’s prerogative to call a general election whenever they like, but they should only do that if they are definitely sure they are going to win. The resulting vote in the Commons to have an election now could have resulted in an election not happening, but everyone else was sure they should have an election now, because they all had their own reasons – calling an election over Brexit alone, as Theresa May had done, was never a realistic possibility.

So, now what? Which party can form a government? What solidity of Brexit – hard or soft – will we get now? Could Jeremy Corbyn be the next Prime Minister? Could Boris Johnson be the next Prime Minister? Well, what we do know is this – turnout among 18-24 year-olds could be as high as 72%, up from 43% in 2015, and 38% in 2005, so whoever does wind up in government really will have to govern for everyone.