Let’s see more of Punch and Judy politics

Time to fall in love with the Germans: Miroslav Klose celebrates scoring Germany’s fourth goal v Argentina
12 April 2012

When time is dragging, I look up parliamentary fights around the world on YouTube. There is something sublimely funny about sober men in suits hitting each other while trying to hang on to their dignity.

The East Europeans are particularly prone to inexplicable brawling in government chambers but Asia has its moments. The weapons are glasses of water and the fights are quickly broken up with participants left clearing their throats and straightening their ties.

So when the Speaker, John Bercow, trots out the familiar line that the British public does not want to see "Punch and Judy" politics, I question his evidence. Perhaps electoral apathy descends because politics is not adversarial enough.

I am enjoying coalition politics for its novelty but also because it has given Labour a sharper sense of purpose. Harriet Harman is working up a forensic wit in the House of Commons. David Cameron and Nick Clegg share an easeful plausibility which is why they need to be watched closely. The fault line, so far as the liberal Left is concerned, is the Vichy qualities of the Lib-Dem leadership. So that is where Harman is twisting her knife.

No doubt Bercow, who has just been called a "stupid, sanctimonious dwarf" by the health minister Simon Burns, would prefer a pleasanter style of discourse in the Commons. But this is for the benefit of politicians rather than the public.

A Euro-sceptic MEP once explained to me the strain of being a critical force in Brussels. He saw far more of his colleagues than his constituents and they had far more in common with each other. They went to the same restaurants, took the same trains, knew the names of each other's children. Why not drop the huffiness and sign up to friendly old federalism?

It is an understandable temptation to be polite to people's faces, which makes parliamentary jousting so important. A fabulous pieces of parliamentary theatre and a YouTube hit was Dan Hannan's attack on Gordon Brown in the European Parliament: "You are a devalued prime minister of a devalued government." Hannan may be a delightful political screwball but the public understood perfectly what he meant.

Debasement of Parliament has nothing to do with belligerence during Prime Minister's Question Time. When Parliament was at its strongest, the language was fruitiest. William Pitt the Younger, Disraeli and Winston Churchill were all talented at invective. Disraeli described the Earl of Aberdeen as possessing "the crabbed malice of a maundering witch".

David Cameron has a good record on insults ("You were the future once," to Tony Blair) and William Hague is a natural parliamentarian. Our most popular public figure, Boris Johnson, is exuberant with insults. The Lib-Dems he once called "a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition". Robust Johnsonian parliamentary language must not be replaced by the forked tongue.

Learn to love the Germans

Isn't it time to start loving Germany? The team has been praised in stereotypical and subliminally negative terms. They are" "marching" to the semi-finals. Their qualities are discipline, efficiency and planning. They'd rather attack (uh-oh) than defend.

The operatic agony of Argentina's Maradona had a romantic quality to it and I could hardly bear Ghana's disappointment (why, why didn't God answer the team's pre- penalties prayers? Africa is His most loyal constituency).

But the sang-froid of the German team is admirable. They shouldered the absence of their most famous player, Michael Ballack, and just got on with it. The players look happy when they win but not ecstatic. It is rather pleasing and manly.

My brother-in-law, unusually, chooses to take his holidays in Germany and reports back that there was only moderate celebration after Germany beat England.

I wonder if this sense of proportion is aided by having Angela Merkel in charge of the country (just). Her characteristics — sense, intelligence, steadiness, lack of charisma — seem embodied in the German team. They are just what we need.

You're young, stop whingeing

Despite the dictum that the young should be seen and not heard, there is no end to their complaining at the moment. A publishing brochure arrives advertising yet another book about the unfairness of it all called Welcome to the Jilted Generation. The premise is familiar. The baby boomers have taken the money, the jobs, the housing. What is left?

Well, youth, beauty and fun, for a start. The freedom of having nothing to lose. The ability to wear what you like and behave as you choose and still look wonderful in the mornings. Everything else is poor compensation.

Keeping the umbrella close by

Interviewed about this week's fashionable Serpentine Party, the gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones said that most of the conversations centred on the "rain plan". The sunny weather of the past few weeks has given us all hope, which is a dangerous thing. We speak in trembling voices about the chances of a dry holiday in Cornwall. My son and his fiancée get married on Saturday and we dare to think of photographs on the lawn. Everything is perfect — an adorable and devoted couple, a country setting, jolly guests. But what about the rain plan?

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