Passing the parcel (1995)

TV Review from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Election nights are almost exciting, and Local Elections ‘95 on BBC 1 last month proved to be no exception. There was David Dimbleby with a twinkle in his eye and a Mars bar in his pocket. Peter Kellner looking studiously professorial next to a bank of computers. Anthony King thumbing through his mental book of historical precedents and the ubiquitous Peter Snow arms flailing like a whirling dervish in conversation with Magnus Pike. "Just a bit of fun” is Snow’s catchphrase. and of course it all is just that, at least for him.

For the politicians it is different—election night is akin to a life-or-death prognosis. John Selwyn Gummer had seldom looked glummer as the news trickled in of the most humiliating Conservative defeat in local elections on record. Frank Dobson chortled like a Father Christmas on Prozac and the Liberal Democrats' spokesman was there as well, popping up like Chad over a wall occasionally in the hope that nobody would forget he was there too. But it was Labour's night, and if all Frank Dobson's Christmases had come at once. John Prescott beamed as if his political marriage to Tony Blair had just been consummated in spectacular style. He opened a bottle of champagne at Labour Party headquarters and thrust the spray orgasmically at the cameras, adjectives tumbling over one another just as the Moet tumbled out of the bottle.

It was indeed touching that the working class could have had such an effect on their fellow human beings. Touching, though not altogether surprising, as it is the workers who put the politicians in their exalted position to start with.

If local election night demonstrated anything it was that the Labour Party . . . pardon me. New Labour, is on a roll of gigantic proportions and that the Tories are digging themselves further into a hole and not out of it. Labour, on this performance seems set to win a General Election and they will be aware at this time like at no other that dangerous talk costs political lives. During the election campaign itself they showed themselves cognisant of this fact, fighting the battle on presentation, managerial abilities, sharp suits and white teeth. "Policies" has become the most dangerous word in their vocabulary. When tackled about this by Dimbleby. Frank Dobson shrugged his shoulders and gave a "what can we do" look. Local government, he said, is hamstrung by government subsidies and capping, and so even if Labour wanted to spend more on education or local services, it couldn't.

At this point John Gummer intervened to claim that you could not blame the Conservative government for the belt-tightening consequences of the world recession and that in any case things were getting steadily better under the foresighted stewardship of John Major. But then came the pièce de résistance—Sir Teddy Taylor. Tory rebel, beamed in via satellite or some such device to tell the panel that they were all wrong as the real problem was Europe. "I know I'm being a bore . . ." he said, and of course he was right. And right about something else too. He went on to say that just as it didn't matter which of the parties controlled the councils, neither did it matter much which party controlled Westminster, as they were all prisoners of the system, the headquarters of which he identified as being somewhere in Belgium. Now he might have been misplaced about the importance of the last bit. but his substantive point, of course, has a lot going for it.

Travel with Teddy

Travel round Britain and can you tell where a Conservative council ends and a Labour one begins? Travel around Europe or any other part of the world and try doing the same with governments. It is very difficult indeed, and Sir Teddy has obviously noticed. Given all this, quite what his function is as a politician must be in some doubt, his obsession with Brussels notwithstanding. If he thinks politicians are as impotent as this (and they generally are) then it cannot be long before he packs it all in forever and takes to the stage.

But have some sympathy for him. Sir Teddy showed that he had grasped, in his own hamfisted way, a fundamental truth of capitalist politics, even if he lacks the full explanation for it. And this is that, in reality, election nights at present are momentary interludes in a mind-numbingly tedious and pointless exercise. They are the time when the two rival but otherwise identical brands of cola release their sales figures, when two bluebottles climb up a wall to see who can reach the ceiling first. Pointless, though at the same time mesmerising if your life is empty enough. And if the phrase "get a life" should be directed anywhere, the BBC studios on election nights are as good a place as any to aim. 

Dave Perrin