Yes, yes, hardly the most sophisticated of political analysis, I realise. About as in-depth and adult as probably my last party leader-related 'Eureka' moment - that is, realising Charles Kennedy was none other than poor young Bobby from King Of The Hill. Nick Robinson and Tom Bradby must be feeling uneasy already...
Yet what struck me most from this week's entertaining-as-ever Prime Minister's Questions were not Tony Blair's dismissive, dead-eyed responses. Nor even the hefty bags under those eyes, which would surely attract a swingeing surcharge were he to attempt to take them along on a transatlantic flight.
No, the most intriguing elements of the encounter were Dave Cameron's full-throated, and repeated, barks of 'I love it!' and, simply, 'Yeeaaarhh!', as he tried to rise the rapidly-rising tumult of just another Wednesday lunchtime in the Commons.
Which made him resemble nothing so much as a Muppet. Honestly. Well, my instincts, at the very least, could not help but imagine him as standing alongside Kermit, Rowlf and Fozzie, with a host of less-important Muppets congregating behind, as they drop their jaws agape, nod their heads and rock their bodies up and down and back and forth, flutter the upturned palms of their hands to suggest optimistic inclusiveness, and just generally holler their enthusiasm to the world in an attempt to lead, or at least ride, the all-surrounding mayhem.
Had he managed to get a more cutting dig in at the Prime Minister, I swear he may just have thrown his flailing arms up and around his upturned head while shrilly shrieking: 'Yaaaaaay!'
As it is, it seems this little match-up has been scored pretty decisively in Mr Blair's favour by the Waldorf and Stadtlers in the gallery, sorry, lobby. The Standard this afternoon even marked it 5-0 in the Prime Minister's favour, which seemed a little generous, but it was rather amusing to see tonight's Sky News coverage desperately hyping up this first 'serious setback' for the boy wonder, after an admittedly-grudgingly-impressive first few months of agenda-setting, momentum-surging success for him.
Even more amusing to see a sort-of-dapperly-dressed Soames Monster of old Mid Sussex being dragged away from a buffet somewhere this evening for just long enough to insist his leader had achieved 'absolute domination of the Prime Minister', before decisively darting away, gimlet-eyed, to wreak revenge for those precious wasted seconds on some poor platter or several somewhere...
Anyway, back to that rather dubious Muppet analogy.
Well, my techy and Photoshoppery skills clearly don't exist, and rather hopeful searches on Google failed to bring up any appropriate Cameron/Muppet images so far. Only a rather fun little Times piece applying the Jim Henson treatment to the Lib Dem leadership contenders instead.
So, perhaps all that remains is to no-doubt-futilely hope the brave new Tory leadership ultimately follows a similar trajectory to a classic little Waldorf and Stadtler about-turn.
Although I believe the technical term of choice for it these days is 'flip-flop'...
That was wonderful!
- Bravo!
I loved that!
- It was great!
Well, it was pretty good...
- Well, it wasn't bad...
There were parts of it that weren't very good, though...
- It could've been a lot better...
I didn't really like it...
- It was pretty terrible...
It was bad!
- It was awful!
It was terrible!
- Get it away!
Yeeaaarhh...!
0 comments:
Post a Comment