For many years the late Michael Wharton wrote a column for The Daily Telegraph using the pseudonym Peter Simple. He created therein a Swiftian world populated by caricatured familiars. He was writing at a time when satire was possible, well before Starmer’s forced merger between the normal and the grotesque.
One such familiar is Mrs Dutt-Pauker, Hampstead resident, wealthy socialist snob, and arms-length sympathiser with any passing fashionable (which is to say Marxist) cause. Mrs Dutt-Pauker has passed on but it seems that perhaps via some Platonic “transmigration of the soul” she has been reiterated in the comely person of Lady Nugee aka Emily Thornberry MP DBE.
The universe, after all, has a sense of humour, even if Her Ladyship does not.
I don’t read the political columns, because I like to write about these things objectively. But I sometimes glance at them. Apparently Mrs Thornberry has decided to join in the dust-up over who will be the next “Deputy Leader” of the Labour party. To normal people it ought to be hilarious that there should even be a contest for such a questionable bauble – fighting over a fork in a world of soup, to adapt the ever-wonderful Noel Gallagher.
It’s important to make a distinction between the election to be Labour deputy leader and the office itself. If only so that we can then say that, comedy value notwithstanding, neither of them much matter at all.
True, the commentator people will drone on about the “balance of power” within the Labour government, between the “left” and the “right” of the party but they’re trolling. They know, as do we all, that personalities don’t really make any difference when the government as a whole has decided to vaporise the historical and cultural foundations of the nation state using the available weaponry of international law.
As I imply above, there is at least some humour to be mined from the election process itself, which will force the party to put its contradictions on national display. And these are legion, many having to do with how it is that a de facto all female shortlist will accommodate its reluctance to “go down below” when asked to define what a woman is. Perhaps an MP provisionally thought of as being a bloke will promise David Lammy that, if elected, he will incubate a cervix?
And what about the “diversity” question? Given the party is (nominally) led by a north London lawyer who is male, would a north London lawyer with XX qualifications offer balance enough to satisfy the HR goons?
These and other complexities will make for interesting hustings, if not uncomfortable ones. But Her Ladyship has a score to settle with Alli’s Android after she was passed over for a job in favour of Lord Hermer (and to be fair this would rankle, the best analogy I can come up with is losing out to India Willoughby at a beauty pageant), and has therefore launched her tiara into the ring.
If it hasn’t happened already it won’t be long before someone accuses Lady Nugee of “hypocrisy”. I hope they don’t. Because these people are worse than that. Jesus called out the Pharisees because they acted in public a life they didn’t live in private and because they stuck rigidly to the letter of a version of law which was in need of radical repurposing (sound familiar?).
Hypocrisy, properly understood, is a complex thing. It requires performance. The Pharisees’ dysfunction was at least partly a consequence of their competence as actors.
This government have moved away from hypocrisy in the direction of self-delusion. They’re not covering stuff up, because they lack the self-awareness that would motivate that. They are too morally unsophisticated to make for decent hypocrites.
I’m given to understand that Mrs Thornberry likes a cigarette and has been known to drink. But these virtues do not compensate for the snobbery. That said, and taking everything into consideration, she really must run and I wish her every success. Gareth Roberts, a worthy if less heterosexual successor to Michael Wharton, has written a brilliant piece for The Spectator, in which he makes the point that Reform’s success is partly down to its carefree gaiety and unapologetic campness.
We need more of this. The fact that Lady Nugee is only inadvertently funny is beside the point. We’ll take what we can get.
Sean Walsh is Associate Editor of Country Squire Magazine. You can follow him on Substack.
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A very interesting piece on Emily Thornberry who sticks in my memory because of her awkward appearances on Question Time – which I haven’t watched for a long time now – witnessing the confused audiences who applaud heartily for opposite opinions throughout the show was a reminder of the way the education system has failed in the “critical thinking” department. Dispiriting.
However, I’m surprised to read this about the Labour Government: “They’re not covering stuff up, because they lack the self-awareness that would motivate that. They are too morally unsophisticated to make for decent hypocrites.”
Perhaps, but my personal view is that they’re not covering stuff up because there is no need, they are brazen; things have gone so far that saying something which is indisputably true can get us arrested and jailed, and we are helpless to do anything about it. No other authoritarian Government across the world has bothered to try to cover up totalitarianism. Once the agencies, such as the police and courts are “on message”, there’s no need for cover-up.
One headline stands out, which references Canada but, as we now know, it applies much more widely and certainly applies to the UK today, so I’ll finish with this, for now: “Justin Trudeau Said He Admired China’s Dictatorship. Canadians Should Have Believed Him” with the subtitle: Justin Trudeau’s 2013 comment expressing his “level of admiration” for China’s dictatorial regime was a red flag on how he sees power.” (Foundation for Economic Education, February 15th, 2022).
The long-running ‘Peter Simple’ column by Michael Wharton – which I well remember with affection – was indeed a wonderful piece of traditional and gentle but highly effective satire. Its galaxy of fantastical but still faintly credible stock characters alone was clever and inventive, and the ready application of those to some then-current political deceit, humbug or farce was masterly.
A pale shadow of a successor appeared briefly some years later in the original host newspaper, the Daily Torygraph , but I have not seen anything of it since (and at the current exorbitant retail price I’m unlikely to!). Fortunately I still have a thin paperback of collected excerpts which I turn to for light mental relief from our present ghastly contemporary secular society and government.
Hopefully, for once, I’m just too young to properly appreciate your comment – or maybe just not well read enough! I do, however, love “the Daily Torygraph” – although the fact that the original no longer allows us to read a complete paragraph online without demanding payment keeps me surfing until I find the same information free gratis and for nothing.
Patricia,
A quick search on the internet will provide a few methods of circumventing their paywall. Not that I would encourage or condone such behaviour…
Well, this is interesting – usually when I post my opinion about anything, I get just about everybody on the internet disagreeing! And a million downward arrows, so it’s good not to have those to depress me! Still, I do love a discussion/debate, so I’ll to work out why I am usually so annoying and then, do it again!