1 October 2020
View from the Cotswolds
Big Beasts in short supply: Send in the clowns
By Paul Branch
Circuses ain’t what they used to be. Time was they had real, live, roaring wild animals doing their stuff – lions, tigers, elephants, the whole works, with horses and performing dogs and seals, plus all the trimmings of trapeze artists, jugglers, fire eaters and clowns. My first attempt at visiting a circus was in the early 1950s as a very small, timid lad – one look at the entry poster featuring savage lions bearing their uncaged fangs was enough for me to dig my heels in and refuse to go any further. The bus ride back along Lea Bridge Road in Leyton in the company of totally miffed parents was a quiet one.
But no more, and for good solid reasons of wildlife protection. Even from as far back as the mid-1980s I can still picture an alleged circus in Clonakilty, County Cork one soggy August afternoon, with four children to entertain out of the rain with the allure of Duffy’s Family Circus in the local village hall. A loutish looking yob of about 12 took our money on entry, an even younger pig-tailed dark lass showed us to our seats on benches, a middle-aged couple went round selling dodgy confectionery, the doors were then bolted on the outside (no health & safety announcement that I can recall) and the entertainment began. On came the ring master, looking suspiciously like the confectionery seller only with a faded red jacket and muddy wellingtons. The first couple of acts seemed to involve the young yob with face paint and then the dark lass with a mangy mongrel, followed by some inauspicious juggling by the middle-aged man and the yob, incompetent gymnastics by the woman, and so it went on and on from the same quartet without respite. Oh for a grazing sheep or a nuzzling pig. More recently there has been Gifford’s Circus in the Cotswolds, featuring Tweedy the Clown pulling along his hilarious steam iron on a piece of string where once there might have been a cheeky dancing chimpanzee – somehow the magic just isn’t there anymore.
Without the wildlife savagery today’s circus depends even more on the talents of the ring master, preferably gloriously moustachioed and bedecked in glistening red jacket, black riding breeches and gleaming boots, and optionally whip in hand. His (or even her) job is to muster the various exotic acts and exhort them to strain every sinew in providing first class (nay, world beating) edge of your pants thrills and spills entertainment, to the thrall of the expectant and adoring audience, and to bathe in the roars and applause at the conclusion of a great job brilliantly done. To paraphrase Rolf Harris, can you see where this is all going yet ….?
Very few of the political ring masters we have elevated to stardom over the years seem to have come anywhere close to achieving our ambition for them – to inspire their colleagues in government to deliver on the issues of the day, and to inspire and to reassure us that they really know what they’re doing. Of those I’ve lived through, Attlee did deliver on our first social agenda, Churchill re-elected started to inject financial stability after the ravages of war, Macmillan was possibly the first to appreciate the value of a good sound bite (“You’ve never had it so good”), Wilson promoted Gannex raincoats and pipe smoking although his main claim to fame first time around was to win the World Cup, Thatcher crippled the unions and our manufacturing base but set us on the bicycle path to Financial Services glory, and Blair seemed to be destined for greatness until the 45 minutes warning ran out. Probably all a bit trite and less than totally politically or factually correct, but there you go.
Of our latter day leaders of the 21st century, what can one say? Brown, Cameron (with and without Clegg), May and now Johnson – all breathtakingly forgettable …if only. We could of course have a quiz – name all our PMs, in order, from 1945 (answers below) – but perhaps more apposite would be to recall the advice given to Neville Chamberlain back in 1940 by one of his own party: “In the name of God, go!” Not dissimilar to Oliver Cromwell’s address to the Rump Parliament some years earlier, and maybe a message that will soon be delivered to our current incumbent.
A sure sign that a Conservative prime minister is approaching his last legs is when the Telegraph turns from Head Sycophant to Slagger-Off-in-Chief, quite extraordinary but I have to say without a trace of smugness that the performance to date by Boris has been, if anything, even worse than expected. So, assuming hypothetically that the party grandees and the 1922 Committee agree that enough is enough and exert their not insignificant influence to do the country as well as their party a favour, who could we expect in his place?
Two luminaries loom large: Rishi Sunak who thus far has looked the part of a Chancellor in charge of a ministerial department he knows something about, and Michael Gove who appears not to. Of the other prominent cabinet members, I suppose Dominic Raab could try his luck again having done very little thus far to offend, Priti Patel seems to have done nothing but rant about protestors, Gavin Williamson and Matt Hancock look and sound like tarnished goods, and the rest come across as camp followers rather than leaders. And there you have it. Not a great selection to choose from, but then the cupboard was pretty bare of political heavyweights when Theresa May shot to stardom.
I suppose there could be an opportunity to notionally promote Dominic Cummings into his real job, from “Special Adviser to the Prime Minister”, just by dropping the first bit of his current title, but one would hope that the Tory powers that be would also have tired of him and his dictatorial little ways. It would be nice instead to return to a semblance of democracy, attempt leadership with consultation, preferably without the shambolic clowning and buffoonery, and anyway, is there a convenient by-election due near Durham any time soon?
Quiz answers: Winston Churchill (1940-45), Clement Attlee (45-51), Winston Churchill (51-55), Anthony Eden (55-57), Harold Macmillan (57-63), Alec Douglas-Home (63-64), Harold Wilson (64-70), Edward Heath (70-74), Harold Wilson (74-76), James Callaghan (76-79), Margaret Thatcher (79-90), John Major (90-97), Tony Blair (1997-2007), Gordon Brown (07-10), David Cameron (10-16), Theresa May (16-19), Boris Johnson (19-??).
