Norman Tebbit has an amusing piece in the Daily Mail today which tends to hit the nail on the head with regards to the emptiness of modern politicians. He is examining the new show, Headcases (a kind of revived Spitting Image), his view on his own character in Spitting Image and how the new show, Headcases, appears to be dry, dull and meaningless. Why does Tebbit think it is dull and PC? Because modern politics is dull and PC.
I would not like to upset the devout Cameronians on this site, but Tebbit appears to have hit the nail on the head:
“The truth is that no modern politicians want to talk about the great issues, confining themselves instead to generalities and banalities, management speak and bland calls or promises of improved administration. They simply end up looking a little empty. And that is bad news indeed for the political satirists. The fantastical and mind-blowingly meaningless burblings of today’s politically correct ministers doth not a caricature make. Without a clearly-defined Right and Left, the public are merely facing something rather insipid and middling.” Read here.
The animation is dull, he seems to be saying, because you cannot make puppets from puppets. The control of Party politics to the extent that no politicians actually speak their mind makes it very hard for the producers of Headcases to craft a personality of any minister, when the problem seems to be that there is no personality (or it is suppressed).
I often think that if Cameron himself had not come from such a media-heavy background, he would realise the value of charisma, political personality and convincing people that ‘he is one of them’. He would also see the obstacle of political puppetry. Instead, the voters have been presented with a smug Etonian who, like Brown, cannot relate to people and is prepared to be controlled in every manner and in every policy by the senior members of the Party machine. Nevertheless, voters will vote for Cameron, not because of his amazing wit, charm or policies for that matter, but because he surely could not be any worse than Gordon Brown’s failed 2007-2008 post-Blairite government.
