The last week has been a rare cheery one for the Left; not only did Elon Musk and Donald Trump fall out and part ways with all the vim and venom of two teenage sweethearts, but Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf also split briefly – at least until the Reform chairman had second thoughts and returned in a DOGE incarnation.
Friend-shedding applies to most of us, unless we’re very dull or saintlike
The girl at the Guardian could barely contain herself, writing about the former; ‘Watching two of the very worst people in the world direct their nastiness at each other is extremely cathartic,’ said Arwa Mahdawi. But, this being the Guardian, Mahdawi couldn’t stay upbeat for long:
‘So is this the end of a big, beautiful friendship? Is it, as conspiracy theorist and Trump ally Laura Loomer put ‘a big beautiful breakup’? While it feels like it, we should remember that Trump has kissed and made up with his haters before. While the president has very thin skin (all that bronzer can wreak havoc on the epidermis), he’s also a pragmatist.’
So what? Who cares? Who hasn’t? It’s often pointed out snarkily of Princess Diana that she fell out with lots of her friends; my favourite example was when she refused to talk to the ghastly Fergie after the red-head claimed she got a verruca from a pair of Diana’s shoes.
But friend-shedding applies to most of us, unless we’re very dull or saintlike. I agree with the late Peter Ustinov: ‘I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.’
This being so, one needs to be flexible in case a potential new platonic hottie comes along; as Marie Kondo asks of household objects, does this spark joy? If it does, shunt an old one along and go for it. Only self-righteous bores will have un-blotted copybooks when it comes to falling out with friends; why, I’d wager that even Guardian writers do it! The electorate being human beings with the usual attribution of human traits, I’d bet that a lot of them have squabbled with and even dumped mates too.
Maybe it’s because I’m a natural-born scrapper, but I don’t believe that the electorate care about politicians on the same side holding different opinions, often quite loudly: it’s what real people do.
There’s a weird and very unhealthy mode of thinking on the Left right now (exemplified by the phrase ‘the grown-ups are back in the room’. How’s that worked out with your precious Sir Keir?) which, probably inspired by the Brexit result and the Big Sulk on the part of the Establishment ever since, is deeply suspicious of democracy and its inherent rambunctiousness.
To hear them, you’d think that it was desirable for politicians to rub along as smoothly and seamlessly as sharks approaching their prey – and for the electorate to leave the serious business of politics up to those who went to a decent university.
We were meant to find the 2017 reaction of ‘Brenda from Bristol’ to the calling of an election hilarious – ‘You’re joking. Not another one!’ – but at the risk of appearing po-faced, I don’t find the dissing of democracy in any way funny in a world where countless millions of people have been persecuted, tortured and killed for wanting it.
Furthermore, it’s quite alarming to find oneself in a po-faced position when the notoriously humourless Guardian are having a right old laugh: ‘Does Brenda from Bristol have the best reaction to the election news?’ their headline chuckled benignly. Very different from their reaction to that other famously plain-speaking older, ordinary lady, Gillian Duffy, when she made clear her contempt for politicians after her run-in with Gordon Brown in 2010.
But then, I’m unable to even glimpse a Guardian headline about anything from politics to pulse-eating these days without thinking of the Bertolt Brecht lines: ‘Some party hack decreed that the people had lost the government’s confidence and could only regain it with redoubled effort. If that is the case, would it not be be simpler if the government simply dissolved the people – and elected another?’
Through the prism of this elitist establishment worldview, politicians on the same side who have open differences of opinion are seen to be letting the greater side down; pas devant les enfants! But beyond the rarified air of the Guardian, people are actually – naturally – far more contemptuous of politicians who can’t stand each other, insisting that everything is dandy when we all know that they’re tearing strips off each other behind closed doors (Gordon Brown and Tony Blair) or keeping schtum like Starmer’s bot brigade, while all the time ‘notable by her absence was the Deputy Prime Minister: those windows of Downing Street won’t measure themselves,’ as Madeline Grant so beautifully framed the Angela Rayner situation.
Yet again, there is a slight possibility – just a tiny one! – that the Guardian fail to understand the interests and attitudes of the man/woman/them/they in the street. When I was in hospital last winter/spring, the nurses were generally young and woke. Yet on hearing that I was a journalist, they often asked me what I thought of American politics, and admitted that, while not liking Trump, they found him interesting because he was so ‘outspoken’.
The Guardian prefer to pretend that no difference of opinion exists; nothing to see, move along
This was often followed by asking what I thought of GB News and Talk TV which quite a few mentioned they watched (on their phones, of course), in preference to the BBC. Although they didn’t care for the presenters’ politics, there was the feeling that they spoke ‘honestly.’ What characterises populism – makes it popular, in fact – is that if politicians have something to say, they’ll come right out and say it, as oppose to pussyfooting around issues till – they hope – the citizen in the street forgets about them.
‘Divisive’ is the big bad buzz-word among those who lost the Brexit vote for what happened back in 2016. But anyone with any sense understands that if Remain had won, they’d have talked of the referendum as a wonderful act of unity. If we’re going to point the finger about the healthiness of organisations where everyone has to tow the line and pretend to be bezzie mates, we might look at the Guardian itself.
It would be good to see open debate in its pages, whether over the difference in opinion by journalists towards whether transvestite men should be allowed in women’s spaces, or perhaps the recent sale of the Observer to Tortoise Media, both of which have allegedly led to many a sad and sulky face around Kings Place.
But no, the Guardian prefer to pretend that no difference of opinion exists; nothing to see, move along. Personally, as one who likes to have a good old public slanging match, and would often choose to have them in the Guardian when I worked for them in their glory days, I can’t help thinking that its current smug consensus is one of the reasons why it seems rather shy about its circulation. Because no one likes a holier-than-thou pass-agg finger-pointer; I have an inkling that the barneys (and making-ups) taking place in both the Trump and Reform camps will only serve to make them more human, more relatable – and, vitally, more vote-catching.
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