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Saturday 26 May 2012

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Labour thinks that we are sheep that need to be driven, not goats who need to be led

The idea of setting up an anti-establishment, irreverent gossip blog from the heart of government, anyway, is not just moronic but also oxymoronic. This is precisely what McBride and Draper wanted to do. And not, I think, because they are usually sinister or evil people. There are scores of blogs out there that do the same or worse, including the one that brought them down. If they’d emailed their made-up stories directly to Staines six months ago, I reckon they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble.

No, where McBride went wrong was in considering all this to be the business of government. And he did that because the current government can barely conceive of things that aren’t. That’s why it is exhausted and bloated and coming apart. For New Labour believes we are all sheep, who need to be driven. As opposed to goats, who need to be led.

Yeah, that worked out OK, analogy-wise. I think.

I’m deeply torn about The Boat That Rocked, Richard Curtis’s new film about Radio Caroline, which pretends to be about a station called Radio Rock, presumably in case Americans don’t understand the word ‘Caroline’. I don’t know whether to see it. I just can’t decide.

Obviously, it’s not any good. Deborah Ross eviscerated it beautifully in these pages, and Kevin Maher did the same in the Times, and even if they hadn’t, well, I’d have had my doubts. He’s a mystery, that Curtis. There’s such a wonderful talent there (has anything ever been better than Blackadder?) but it plainly went badly awry some years ago. I once interviewed Mrs Curtis (Emma Freud) and she told me that her husband had told her that he didn’t really laugh any more — he just recognised humour when it came along. ‘Richard reckons that he hasn’t laughed properly since 1982,’ were her exact words, and I thought of Love, Actually and I said, ‘Hmmm’.

And yet, I’m very glad I saw Love, Actually. I wouldn’t see it again, not at gunpoint, but it has become one of those landmarks by which I now navigate personalities. I remember a friend who split up with a boyfriend, nice chap, whom we all liked. ‘But why?’ I said. ‘His favourite film was Love, Actually,’ she said. ‘Oh,’ I said, understanding everything.

Without Love, Actually she would have been at a loss. Without Love, Actually it would be so hard to say what is so terribly wrong with the souls of most idiots, some women and many Americans. Because you can always just ask them, ‘what did you think of Love, Actually?’ And then you know.

According to some, The Boat That Rocked is even worse. It could be an essential life tool. Again, hmmm.

More articles from: Hugo Rifkind | this section

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