the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Reflecting on Andy Capps victory in the Makerfield by election, I thought of ‘The Joker’ in ‘The Dark Knight. Specifically, the scene where he outlines to Harvey Dent his belief that as long as everything is going to plan, it matters not what that plan is. Just that everyone knows what the plan is and knows that its being its being followed  Its quite the observation, as simple as it is irrefutable. Humans love order, infer patterns where none exist, are hard-wired to find comfort in the predictable. Its known, its reassuring, its expected. 

This applies to Andy Capp insofar as his victory has essentially been wished into existence by fear. The fear in the ranks Labour Party that Emu is no longer the electoral certainty he was two years ago. That beset by scandals, gaffes, and the unfortunate headlines that they necessarily create, he has been forced into policy u-turns which have only highlighted his liability. MP’s have their jobs, their salaries and future career prospects – both in and out of politics – to consider. 

In this context, the plan holds true. We know politicians are ambitious. That their only true loyalty is to themselves. This isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve been here before. We know how it goes. First come the rumours about this, whispers about that and sources ‘close to’, ‘highly placed or ‘influential’ neither confirming or denying the other. Then it becomes an open secret, and soon it isn’t a secret anymore. Then the next thing we know, a Labour MP has stepped down and triggered a by election which could well propel Andy Capp into Downing Street. The names and the methods might change, but the plan, well, we all know the plan and everything’s going according to it.  

The plan is both reinforced by and co-written by the media elite. They choose who is to be the hero and who is to be the villain. Unfortunately for Emu, he was chosen to be both. The hero when the when one was needed,  before the last general election but the villain – or incompetent fool – quickly thereafter. Actually, I’ve no idea if he is incompetent, just unlucky or a combination of the two. I know as much as you do and what you do comes from the media and the media has a plan. And the beauty of the plan is that it has already done most of its work for it. That reinforcing I mentioned earlier? The scandals and the gaffes that lead to the headlines? There it is. 

So the plan nearly always works.And when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work spectacularly. Brexit was the only time that the plan failed, and the mask fell, all pretence abandoned. The outrage of the liberal media elite when confronted by the reality of a democracy out of their control was a thing to behold. Which is what happens when millions of people give the wrong answer given to a question that those same elites think should never have been asked in the first place. Remember ‘The Wizard of Oz’ when Dorothy pulls back the curtain and see’s that the great and powerful Oz isn’t so great and powerful after all. Or that bit at the end of ‘Singing in the Rain’, where once again a curtain is pulled back to reveal the truth. 

Ah, Brexit! It increasingly occurs to me that if Brexit had never happened, I mean if the referendum had never taken place, then something broadly similar to it would have been needed to have been invented to explain away working class disillusionment with the political process. It was easier, more comforting and smugly patronising to explain away the frustration that Brexit revealed as evidence of manipulation, of misinformation and symptomatic of the xenophobic and bigoted tendencies of the working class. As opposed to their realisation that the system was rigged against them; that regardless of the solemn promises that whatever political party made to them since they were old enough to vote, those promises were worthless. 

Ten years on from the Brexit vote and every elite one can think of – political, cultural, academic, media, – are just as angry as they were the day after it happened, only know their better at finessing it now.  But the plan is back in place. Andy Capp will return things to ‘normal’, which means before Brexit. He says he’s – finally – accepted Brexit, the democratic will of the people, but the only democratic will he’s willing to accept are the ones that further his ambitions.  We were promised that the grown-ups were back in the room – according to plan fluffer Andrew Marr after the last general election –  and lets hope that this time its true. Otherwise the plan will have to begin all over again.