the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Perhaps it’s only me, but whenever I think of party leaders, I think of someone who you’d want to be responsible for others having the best possible time at a party. Someone who would lead the party, who not only exuded fun, but also reveled in others having fun. Someone who knew what constituted a party and made it happen. Ideally, someone who would anticipate every conceivable want and provide it. Someone who leads the party by example by not just going for it but getting there as well.

Not the austere ‘fun’ of a dinner party where everybody is on their best behaviour, makes polite comments about the food, doesn’t drink too much or monopolise the conversation or shares opinions that are met with a stony silences and heated arguments on the way home.

Or the ‘frugal’ fun of a party that is a party in name only, one where the ambient police have strictly enforced their own laws and turned the music right down or worse still, put on something that doesn’t encourage horizontal gymnastics, and turned up all the lights and left monitors to ensure that things don’t do back to how they were before they arrived.

But parties where as soon as you get there you regret not having arrived earlier.

Does anyone think that Teresa May fits that description of a cheeky funster; one full of mirth and good-natured japes to amuse and entertain? And not like the person who imagines themselves to be the life and soul of the party and yet are anything but, either? How many of us think that a party hosted by Jeremy Corbyn would consist of a lentil and mung bean stew, and a discussion about how we should all be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves for having the audacity to enjoy ourselves while people in Syria were not.

And not that drugs are essential pre-requisites for having a good time at a party, I mean we all know that the best parties are the ones without any alcohol. But I bet you that if you handed Tim Farron an empty glass bong, he’d think it was a musical instrument and try to play it.