Although only recently having reached the age of just 40, I remember well the last years of the Conservative Government, leading up to Labour's election victory in 1997. Far more damaging to the Tories - and much more deadly than anything Tony Blair did - was TV satire. Over the years of Government, House of Cards, Alan B'stard and Harry Enfield's Tory Boy, all gave the impression - however unjust and unfair - to the watching millions, that Conservatives were heartless, thoughtless and cruel. This image lingered long into the dark years of opposition, and it is to David Cameron's credit, that he has done so much to change this.
I thought of these characters as I watched In the Loop, this weekend. Instead of Tories being at the butt end of satire, it was Labour and the spin machine. A hapless Minister, a scheming Special Adviser, and two spin doctors, of the type that we knew about during the Blair years, and heard so much about over the past fortnight. In the Loop is all the more remarkable, because it achieves in mirror image what the programmes, I mentioned above, did to the Conservatives. The film, effectively destroys New Labour and exposes how the spin machine has corrupted government. It is so accurate, that, were it not for the black humour, you think you might be watching a documentary. Through entertainment and comic genius, In the Loop, does more to question the integrity of New Labour, than almost any other critique. Let us hope the DVD is out soon.
Rob Halfon ~ Working hard for Harlow, Hastingwood, Nazeing, Roydon & Sheering. http//roberthalfon.blogspot.com
I think Thatcher and her government invited the Spitting Image spoofs and the 'Nasty Party' image by becoming very arrogant and divisive. Ok, Spitting Image was over the top, but so was Margaret Thatcher.
ReplyDeleteNow, however, it's all reversed, the Labour party have made themselves the Nasty Party and oppressive Zanulabour, who have shamefully transformed our moderate, once free country into a quasi-authoritarian state where our people are the most surveillanced in the western world.
I've just seen the following from Gordon Brown:
ReplyDelete"The recession presents the UK with an "enormous opportunity" to reform its economy and become more competitive.
The prime minister said the country had to harness its "scientific, intellectual and cultural genius". " (BBC News online)
Such claims could only be made by someone who is totally naive and clueless about the real nature of UK businesses and who has never had a productive job in the real world in their life.
Brown is basically regurgitating what our so called Trade Minister, Mandelson (another one who has never had a productive job and hasn't a clue about business) is saying, i.e:
The government intends to support and pump subsidies/ grants into:
1. Their pals in finance and the banks who have let UK down and failed so abysmally
2. Their subsidy dependent pals in the 'Luvvie' industries - the Arts
3. Medical research. Such as NTL and MSD? Harlow lost 600 jobs at MSD and around 1400 at NTL due to closure and redundancy. Ignore the 'Harlow Campus' sign at NTL, a friend of mine who used to work there before the last redundancies says there is and never was a campus there.
4. Airport expansion - hugely taxpayer subsidised and environmentally and balance of trade damaging. Costs UK around £40 billions a year in subsidies, aka tax exemptions.
5. Failing IT industries. How many of these are British any longer? Take QuinetiQ, over 38% owned by the US Carlyle Group since it was hived off from the MOD at the expense of the UK taxpayer, partly, I believe, in order to pay off the red tape and bureaucracy induced deficit of the MOD's DERA. Carlyle has a former UK Prime Minister and US President on its board and was part owned by the Bin Laden family.
Hardly a word from PM Brown or Mandelson about UK's 4.2 million hard working SMEs which form the real core of our economy, which employ around 60% of UK's workforce and which, as research shows, thanks to their smaller size and flexibility, are far better adapted to survive the recession than the dinosaur Giant Corporate (Labour party donors?) which Brown and Mandelson eulogise.
How can a government get it so very wrong?