A few years ago, the New Statesman carried an article by Professor Robert Service of Oxford University which compared then Prime Minister Tony Blair to Stalin, a comparison which Gordon Brown has also invited, albeit that he has more recently been compared to Mr Bean. One highly-respected journalist, and former New Statesman editor, described the comparison of Blair to Stalin as “ludicrous”, which on one level it clearly was. However, when I canvassed opinion at the time amongst dog-walkers in Tiddesley Wood, near Pershore in Worcestershire, the reaction was quite different.
Seeking shade on a particularly hot day, I fell into a “Big Conversation” with a mature whiskered man who hailed from from The North – although he lived locally – with 2 dogs of similar ilke. As chance would have it, this gentleman soon volunteered the information that he subscribed to the New Statesman – a journal which I biasedly associated with Metropolitan Lefties – and that he had been a strong Labour supporter. I was, therefore, naturally led to ask him about the comparison of Tony Blair to Stalin.
“Isn’t it obvious ?” was the reply, and the large whiskered man (who in person and manner bore some resemblance to the character of Badger in The Wind in the Willows) went on to explain why this “ludicrous” comparison was “obvious” to him. He saw the New Labour Administration as packed with people who “had never had a proper job” : ie Apparats who inhabited an administrative reality several times removed from that of most hard working families like his own.
However, with the benefit of reflection, I now wonder whether it is Mr Toad, rather than Mr Stalin or even Mr Bean, whose archetype is most pertinent to the leading politicians of our time. I’m thinking, of course, of the likes of Ken Livingstone and Gordon Brown. Like Toad Hall, the offices of these people have become packed with fellow “toadies”, stoats and weasels. Although the Financial Secretary to the Treasury reminds me more of a ferret, whom the Prime Minister has foolishly placed down his trousers, metaphorically speaking. Well, she did once work for Bill Clinton !
Ps Congratulations to the new occupant of London’s “Toad (sometimes know as City) Hall”, and let him please take note of the above comments.
The Witch of Worcester 