Parliament sat again this week, and there was a real back-to-school feeling in Westminster. Private schools have much longer holidays, of course, which is why it was fine for Boris Johnson not to turn up to the Iran crisis till its first phase was basically over. I think Matron had given him a chit for a few more Caribbean cocktails.
So cometh the hour, cometh … hang on, let me get my reading glasses on … ah, cometh Ben Wallace, who’s apparently secretary of state for defence. Even at this early stage, you get the feeling that the Johnson premiership is going to offer so many understudies their chance to shine while the star is indisposed. In literally every respect bar all the obvious ones, the prime minister is like a sleek, very highly strung thoroughbred racehorse, who must be rested and pampered and indulged in order save his energy and nerves for the equivalent of the big races. Driving a digger through a polystyrene wall, for instance, or holding a big fish.
And so to Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s tracksuit grise. Just as José Mourinho is popularly held to keep the pressure off his players by acting like an arse and diverting attention to himself, so Cummings may be gouging eyes and threatening civil servants in order to spare Johnson. As for his attitude to scrutiny, the UK government will soon be making all briefing announcements direct and unmediated on Instagram stories, like a Kardashian.
It’s tough to pick a favourite part of Cummings’ recent call for weirdos to come and work with him in Downing Street, but let’s go for the bit where he said “frankly it will be hard” for his new assistant to have a girlfriend/boyfriend. To which the only possible reply is: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Don’t worry on that front, dear. Saying they can’t have a girlfriend is a bit like saying they have to masturbate to Game of Thrones, or self-ID as a black belt in Risk. Pretty sure these things already come as standard in all candidates.
Meanwhile, how are you enjoying Labour’s unsparing self-examination? With a couple of exceptions, it feels like the least convincing period of reflection since Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror. If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change. If, however, you want to stay in Neverland, then you should definitely do as sometime leadership frontrunner Rebecca Long Bailey did this week, and go on the telly and give Jeremy Corbyn “10 out of 10” as party leader.
Or do as Barry Gardiner did on Thursday, and dial in to the UK to announce: “I believe I would have the best chance of winning at a general election.” Like the old advert says: If … you’re drinking Bacardi. Which, I guess, Barry may well have been. He was speaking from a resort hotel room, having been flown all the way to Abu Dhabi for a climate change conference (I honestly just can’t). We’ve all done some mad things on holiday, but Barry’s nine-hour leadership bid is the new benchmark.
Of course, like the rest of the country, I am here for every breathlessly covered second of this three-month leadership contest, which in no way feels like tuning into the soap opera of a faraway ant colony. I was intrigued to learn during the election campaign that in many ways it wouldn’t matter whether Labour won or lost, because they’d redefined something or other. Hopefully you remembered this when you read this week’s abysmal A&E statistics, or heard the abject tales of youth mental health provision, or watched the Tory majority whisk through a vote denying unaccompanied child refugees the right to be reunited with their families after Brexit. Alternatively, you might conclude that there is a particular stripe of Labour self-indulgence that has simply redefined what it means to be an absolute shower of shits.
Against the backdrop of the election result, then, it is difficult for those leadership candidates who are closely associated with Corbyn to strike the right balance. Specifically, the right balance between wearing the mark of Cain and wearing an albatross round their neck. If you need any more detail on how leading Corbynites should be wearing dead seabirds this season, the creature should be putrefying to the point of driving all sensible voters away from their orbit, forcing the candidate to follow them apologetically while saying: “Please forgive me, but I am bound to tell you the story of how I shot the Labour party.”
Yes, the real shite starts now. However mirthlessly, you do have to laugh at the various Corbyn outriders who’ve now been wrong for two elections – in most cases for three – but have not even broken stride since the biggest defeat since 1935 before turning up with some more advice for what Labour should do next. What can you say? Other than: why are you still here? Did someone order some more wrong, with a side order of obnoxiously erroneous? Because I definitely didn’t. You’ve just spent four years plugging a political Fyre festival. On the matter of where Labour should go next, I would honestly rather hear what Ja Rule has to say from here on.
If he’s not available, the Labour party should take their lead from the classic Seinfeld episode The Opposite. Struck by the conviction that every decision he has ever made has been wrong, George decides to simply do the opposite of what he’d do normally. Seeing an attractive woman, he opts not to lie to her but to say: “My name is George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.” She immediately agrees to go on a date with him.
This, but for Labour. So instead of saying to potential voters “Hi, we won the argument and the voters loved our policies”, just say “Hello, we lost the argument and I’d hate to see what it looked like if they didn’t like our policies.” And then let them do the talking, because you might learn something. Guys, just give it a crack. You don’t even need to ask “What’s the worst that can happen?”, because really – it already did.
• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
