The Spectator's Notes

24 October 2009

When I was asked to write the foreword for the document which launched the Nothing British campaign this week, I hesitated.

Although it is fun deploring modern trends in the entertainment of children, the last 20 years have been far more creative than when I was growing up. Nothing much new happened with any medium between about 1955 and 1990. The Jungle Book seemed the same sort of thing as Pinocchio, but worse. Cinemas closed down; little got started. Our children, born in 1990, have had the opportunity of computer games, email, Facebook, Photoshop, Wii etc. All offer new imaginative possibilities. For me, the outstanding addition has been the computer-generated cartoon. Toy Story is lovely, full of the excitement which comes when a new art-form emerges: it could not have happened any other way. Now Up, which I attended on Saturday night, wearing 3D spectacles, competes with Toy Story for the top slot. Because its heroes are human, rather than toys, Up makes slightly less perfect use of the possibilities of the genre: it has no single character to rival Buzz Lightyear. On the other hand, its choice of theme is bolder and deeper. The hero is old and he and his wife tried and failed to have children and now she is dead, and nothing in the film reverses this sadness. This makes the inevitable happy ending much more truly happy than it would otherwise be. In fact, the film is so much better than almost anything with real actors that you wonder why Hollywood bothers any more with all their tantrums, lawyers and fees. You also wonder why computer-generated cartoons for grown-ups cannot take off too. They could be the beginning of the end for celebrity culture.

As people agonise over the failings of Parliament, they often lament the power of the whips. They are right that control by the executive is too great, but one of the odd features of the Blair/Brown cultural revolution has been a downgrading of the whips. The Chief Whip has been moved out of No. 12 Downing Street, to be replaced by spin doctors, and is now a figure of little account in the corridors of power. It is easy to forget that whips are not there only to suppress dissent, but also to listen to what MPs are saying. Rather like prefects in a well-run school, or serjeant-majors in the army, they find out what the masters/officers cannot. Good whips empower backbenchers, passing worries up the line. As the expenses crisis staggers on, you can see again and again that Gordon Brown simply does not know what his MPs are thinking, and so he cannot get a grip on the situation. Whips take their name from whippers-in on the hunting field. The analogy is exact: it is moderately rare for the whipper-in to whip a hound. His main duty is the welfare of the pack. Without him, the pack will riot.