The only decent Tory is a lavatory

Gordon Brown looks to me like the kind of bloke whose stress is most manifest in issues of the bowel. He is like the personification of trapped wind. He is, in both literal and literary terms, the opposite of a dynamic character. He has the physical panache of a jacket potato. This is a man so dry and overdone he’s completely fucking finished.

David Cameron, on the other hand, has got the complexion of a waxed apple, and consequently a longer shelf life. He embodies a kind of gung-ho, William Tell-ish quality. I was watching him in Prime Minister’s Questions on the iPlayer recently - he is uncannily like Tony Blair, right down to the contrived but confident use of gesture. He even has the occasional flourish. He almost vogues.

In contrast, Gordon Brown has the paralinguistic range of a cloven hoof - he fully depends on the sole ‘expressive’ technique of hands-as-snow-plough. The fact that he has the collapsible slack-jawed look of a stroke victim doesn’t help matters.

David Cameron is going to win the next election, even though we all know that, deep down, he’s a rancid maggot.

Gordon Brown’s crucial flaw is his Stalinistic stoicism. This is the end of Labour. He should have given up the ghost months ago and made way for someone younger and better looking. We were over the idea of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister way before Tony stepped down because of the relentless repetition of the open secret that they’d made ‘the deal’. It’s akin to fixing the outcome of X-Factor - it doesn’t seem right.

Rallying the wrinklies around him now is only making matters worse. For Margaret Beckett to say that “the British people will neither understand nor forgive a party that appears to be more concerned with its own internal disputes than with their very real problems” is a valiant attempt to nip a rebellion in the bud but comes a bit too late ‘cos the momentum seems already to have gathered. So, actually, this kind of statement foreshadows, even encourages, continued collapse. A decent shot but an own goal.

The very idea that the timing is inappropriate because the government needs to concentrate on minimizing the repurcussions of economic crisis doesn’t wash when they’ve all just been on summer holiday. Plus, politics isn’t about politics, it’s about drama! It’s the perfect fucking time for a rebellion. And most MPs are subconsciously tuned into this so Labour rebels won’t be able to resist the pull of a revolutionary stand-off especially because of the current climate. The argument will also stir up resentment because the feeling is that the current economic climate is being used as a shield, which seems weak.

I’ve got to confess that I’m interested in seeing what happens after the Tory government comes in. Historically, artistic communities are injected with a certain kind of verve under right-wing regimes. We might not benefit in terms of funding. If the economy is poor, fewer people might venture out to see us perform. But my own internal rebel is waking up and feeling the flush of inspiration. Some good work could come out of this.

And political activism at grass roots might also benefit. Government is currently a closed shop. Once there was the idea that a local MP served his/her constituents as a primary purpose, with loyalty to their party a context for this service - of secondary significance - and a broad loyalty to the chosen leader taking third place. Then Tony Blair came along and reversed it. Some would say Maggie Thatcher started it off. But the upshot was that the leader ended up coming first. Now that order sits badly, because no one likes the current leader, or at least no one thinks he’s any good.

No one really likes David Cameron, either. But he’s more polished. The net generation, though, are questioning why any of these gimps are in positions of power in the first place. And the public rage at being ignored in mass protests over Iraq hasn’t yet had an opportunity to fully vent itself. What could be more ironic than a completely undemocratic decision to declare war on a country in order that we might liberate it by making it ‘democratic’? We can all see this. And now we have the means with which to stand up and say it. Globally.

Governments and corporations are “locked in twentieth century thinking”, say Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams in Wikinomics (read it). The online masses are engaging in self-organization and reshaping the cultural landscape - look at how the music industry is in crisis; in twenty years, there probably won’t be any such thing as A & R - the big labels will just be licensing facilitators. Unless the bigwigs work out how to adapt to the technology that means the originators of content can increasingly be their own enablers and distributors. Creative people are starting to come together in groups and collectives. Why shouldn’t we also get creative with politics?

One-way monologues of duplicitous and manipulative construction are starting to struggle to be heard among increasing numbers of articulate voices in dialogue. If we suspect that a voice is out to dissemble us, we can reach out and share our critique with larger numbers of enquiring minds who are prepared to stand up and say, ‘Hang on a minute, Dave, you’re full of shit’. We’ve got an opportunity to redemocratize political discourse. In time, we could even reshape the foundations of government so that they become increasingly ‘open-sourced’. Willingness and participation are the first steps.

Lecture over. Everyone back to the dancefloor.