The best of both worlds
Friday, October 07, 2005

To those who don't, blogging must seem such a glamourous and racey occupation. No doubt you non-blogging readers picture me dressed in a beautifully cut Italian suit and hand-stitched Gucci loafers, sitting with my laptop at a wi-fi point in one of Brighton's many vapid and over-designed bars, sipping expensive continental lager, waiting for inspiration to strike.

The reality is somewhat different. Instead, picture me in a greying vest and shattered underpants, sitting at an unkempt desk in a badly lit and untidy bedroom, slurping milky tea, waiting for something interesting to happen. Like Alan Milburn but with better hair and without the sneering, punchable arrogance. A spectator sport, it ain't.

My "something interesting", the bread and butter to this blogger, is the Google News Alert. The service emails you links to news stories containing given key words.

I haven't had any good, inspiring ones of late. And I haven't had any time to read the news properly, hence the thin soup being served round here right now.

Like Gordon Brown, I enjoy a laugh. (On second thoughts, scratch that. Who in their right mind would want to hang out with someone who feels they have to go out of their way to say, "I enjoy a laugh as much as the next man"?) So imagine my glee when my "Alan Milburn" alert sent me this:

The Telegraph: Milburn to challenge Brown when Blair goes
Alan Milburn has emerged as a likely challenger to Gordon Brown in a move that threatens to plunge the Labour Party into a divisive leadership contest in the run-up to the next general election.

Isn't that fantastic? An Icarus with wings made from drool and pages torn from the last election manifesto. It's like me declaring I want to be the first man on Mars.

But imagine how things would look if Milburn was Prime Minister and Liam Fox or David Davis or Malcom Rifkind got the Tory gig. Imagine them facing each other in the House of Commons firing beams of pure anti-charisma at each other. That'd inspire more political engagement, wouldn't it? The political vacuum in which these people operate becoming ever tighter, what if they held an election and nobody came?

Under the preening, principle-free, no-bridge-too-far Milburn, New Labour could shed it's remaining dispirited members and finally be what it's been threatening to become all these years - a pure concept, a nebulous brand, like an Arthur C. Clarke sci-fi alien shedding the trappings of mortal flesh and becoming a being of intangible spirit. And with no limbs, the creature that has hacked and thrashed at so many lives would finally be impotent: a brain in a jar.

"Inspired" by a political black-hole, sucking at morale and happiness, like Fox or Davis, the Tories can accelerate like a death cult towards their longed-for oblivion. Their own private Jonestown. Dinosaurs, plodding on past their time, should welcome the big grey meteorite trundling towards them; their limping coup de grace.

It'd be beautiful. Like a political Year Zero. The old, knackered parties, their reasons for existence muddied and confused and irrelevant, can sit in a corner and babble sadly to themselves about former glories. "I was the man who tried to destroy a hundred years of Labour heritage," Milburn would bubble, touching himself fondly. "I could read a James Bond novel aloud and make it sound like the telephone directory," Davis would whisper, his eyes shining with nostalgic tears. The rest of us, stepping out into the fresh, green spring morning would be free at last to shape our own destinies; lords and ladies of all we survey.

In Philip K. Dick's mighty The Man in the High Castle, Germany and Japan have won the second world war. By use of the I-Ching, some of the main characters realise they are living in a parallel universe where reality has gone wrong. They begin to realise they are living in a fiction.

Dick's characters were, of course, trapped in their book. The fiction created by our betters that binds us is (hopefully) of a different kind and (more importantly) escapable.

So. Labour activists: Get behind Milburn! Tories: Vote Davis or Fox or Rifkind! Darwinism, our crumbling reality, compassion, plain common sense and future generations demand it.


9 Comments:

On October 07, 2005 10:41 AM, Anonymous Paul Davies said...

Su-perb. :)

Chances of an anarchic revolt if Milburn did become PM? I'd join in. Either that or I'd bugger off to Brazil.  


On October 07, 2005 11:03 AM, Blogger Justin said...

Nah, Paul. It'd be brilliant if Milburn was PM.

Just think of all the ideas that we have above our station that would be blown away. Our God-given right to the World Cup. The paternalism towards our former empire. The belief that we stride the world stage like a colossus.

Brought down a peg or two we could at last be comfortable with our mediocrity. Britain would become a laughing stock overnight. Imagine the relief at the final dawning realisation that we're a piss-poor little backwater led by people who couldn't run a cake shop. And while Milburn sets about casting New Labour into the outer darkness for a thousand years, and Fox/Rifkind/Davis do the same for the Tories, we could get on with the important stuff. Guerilla democracy.

I'm almost tempted to join Labour and campaign for him.  


On October 07, 2005 11:12 AM, Anonymous Katherine said...

If we didn't realise that we weren't striding the world stage like a colossus when we had John Major as Prime Minister then we're never going to realise it...  


On October 07, 2005 11:13 AM, Blogger Tim Worstall said...

"No doubt you non-blogging readers picture me dressed in a beautifully cut Italian suit and hand-stitched Gucci loafers, sitting with my laptop at a wi-fi point in one of Brighton's many vapid and over-designed bars, sipping expensive continental lager, waiting for inspiration to strike."

After Wed night, no, that wouldn’t be my impression.  


On October 07, 2005 11:45 AM, Blogger Justin said...

Katherine: Compared to Alan Milburn, John Major is like the groovy kid at school with the leather jacket who you really wanted to be your mate.

Tim: My suit was at the cleaners. Good to see you, BTW.

(And careful, rumours of real world meetings with other bloggers will shatter the carefully cultivated idea that we're all socially disfunctional savants with poor personal hygiene.)  


On October 07, 2005 11:53 AM, Anonymous Backword Dave said...

Tim, you're not a non-blogger.  


On October 07, 2005 10:22 PM, Anonymous Peter Spence said...

I really enjoyed that, but a brain in a jar??? You could keep Milburn's brain in a f*cking test tube.  


On October 10, 2005 10:05 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree. If Alan Milburn turned up on my doorstep, I would punch him. So would my wife, and our baby, and the dog too. But isn't he some pantomime New Labour baddie invented by the Brown camp to make their man seem less awful. When has Brown ever stood up to Blair? God forbid that his patronising brand of socialism for the deserving poor ever came to be.

We need better than that.  


On October 19, 2005 11:50 AM, Anonymous sarah said...

I love Alan Milburn. it'd be great if he were one day PM, i would certainly vote for him!!  


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