In German they have a concept whose equivalent is sorely needed in discussion of British politics: ‘anti-talent’. It means exactly what it sounds like – the opposite of talent, something any given person is uniquely ill-suited to doing.
The Chancellor criticised ‘the nagging voices of decline’, which, when you’re standing a matter of inches away from Sir Keir Starmer, is either very brave or very stupid
Labour has an innate ability to recognise and reward anti-talent, by putting the very people least suited to run departments in charge of them. While Yvette Cooper is in charge of charming our foreign allies, Rachel Reeves, who is increasingly becoming the Florence Foster Jenkins of gilt yields, runs the Treasury. Today both spoke at the Labour conference, an anti-talent double header in Liverpool. Cilla and Charybdis.
As almost all Labour foreign policy is toxic to both the electorate and common sense, Cooper’s speech majored on ‘patriotism’. She has clearly decided that a convenient attack line against Reform is to suggest that ‘real’ patriotism is about Labour’s values. Again and again we are given haunting visions of what members of the cabinet love about Britain. I can imagine the sort of things which make these people proud: ‘real’ patriotism is not assuming your pet’s gender, ‘real patriotism’ is clapping for our brave Covid marshals on the anniversary of lockdown, ‘real patriotism’ is thanking the person who stabs you on the tube for being part of what makes Britain strong.
Cooper feels particularly unqualified to the task of sounding authentically patriotic. She recently told the BBC that she owns and displays in her home ‘Union Jack bunting, St George’s flags, St George’s bunting, Yorkshire rose bunting, Union Jack flags and tablecloths’, which made it sound like she lived in one of those souvenir shops near Buckingham Palace called something like Ye Olde English, while Ed Balls no doubt sleeps in a Big Ben snow globe.
Today, in the midst of her cod-Churchillian codswallop, the anti-talent struck once again, and Cooper mangled her attempt to call Reform ‘plastic patriots’, making it sound like she’d used a slur for disabled people. Sometimes it’s best just to give government ministers endless supplies of rope.
‘We know what our flag really means’ Cooper continued, scarcely making more sense than when she was accidentally using the old name for the charity Scope. Well, what the flag has come to mean internationally is inexplicable handouts of cash and sovereign territory for Chinese puppet states and a foreign policy seemingly designed to cause maximum damage to British interests.
The second part of this amphisbaena of incompetence was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. She gave what she doubtless thought was an inspiring sermon, urging delegates to ‘have faith’. She reminded me of a Deep South preacher having to explain two days after the announced date why the Rapture they’d promised hadn’t happened. Though, looking at some of the delegates who watched her describing a fantasy economy on the uppers, you got the impression that some wished it would.
There were rumours that the Labour whips had manipulated the seating ballot so that the MPs with the least backbone ended up closest to the stage to indulge in a bit of North Korean-style emotional support for our previously teary Chancellor. The rest of the MPs were relegated to some terrible seats at the back, where they sat alongside the press pack. Many looked unenthused; however, a few had clearly surmised that the best way to escape this Whip-induced purgatory was to abandon what shreds of dignity they had left. Consequently, at random intervals during Reeves’s speech, members of this unhappy band would stand up and scream and shout, like teenage Beatles fans circa 1964. It was odd seeing the Chancellor receiving repeated, Pavarotti-esque standing ovations shortly after saying blobular soundbites like ‘a renewed economy for a renewed Britain’ and ‘I call this approach “securonomics”’.
The Chancellor criticised ‘the nagging voices of decline’, which, when you’re standing a matter of inches away from Sir Keir Starmer, is either very brave or very stupid. Indeed, it was fairly rich from Ms Reeves herself. I suspect if you picked 100 members of the public at random and asked them to draw whatever came into their head when they heard the phrase ‘nagging voice of decline,’ the distinct Playmobil-headed visage of our dear Chancellor would emerge in a majority of sketches.
‘I’ll tell you about my patriotism’, she said, adopting a chummy tone. ‘It’s not just about flags.’ Apparently, it was also about ‘the security of our borders’. Ah yes, borders, that infamous Labour success story.
At one point Reeves’s voice suddenly took upon the texture of gravel and she growled, triumphantly, ‘never let anyone tell you that there is no difference between a Labour government and a Conservative government.’ The fact that the latter almost looks like a period of competence and stability for the economy shows that Reeves is right, just not in the way she imagines.
Inevitably, a man who looked like a testicle with a goatee stood up and began ranting about that favourite topic of Labour conference – Palestine. One thing that can be said for Reeves is that, never having had a thread to her speech, it was impossible for her to be thrown off it. Instead, she repeated the ‘sensibilist’ mantra which Labour have been using to justify their leader to the public for years: ‘We are now a party in government, not a party of protest.’ The preposition was an interesting one. Doubtless they are in government, but of all the things one can sling at Labour after a year and a bit, few could accuse them of actually governing.
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