The meme arrived on Saturday morning, sent from a concerned friend. It showed Jeremy Clarkson sitting in the interlocutor’s chair on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? He looked composed, concerned, and a little apprehensive. The picture was accompanied by a subtitle: “OK Keir, for one million pounds…” Underneath was displayed a question and the famous millionaire multiple choice answers: “Finish the song title ‘Blame it on the…’ a) Sunshine b) Moonlight c) Good Times d) Far-Right.”
Of course, we knew that Keir Starmer was always going to blame everything on the Tories (no way was he going to blame the Jacksons). If you remember it was the centrepiece of his election campaign. Fourteen years of chaos! Underfunding! Cronyism! Flagrant disregard for public services! We all know now that the Prime Minister is an incredibly sophisticated NW5 luvvie, and therefore obviously wouldn’t have sanctioned something so crass, but my abiding memory of his campaign is a phrase which could have been inserted into any pre-election soundbite: “It’s the Tories wot dun it!”
However, two months in, and the whining is starting to jar a little. Not a day goes by without Starmer or a Cabinet minister blaming some aspect of contemporary society on the previous administration. The economy. Immigration. The NHS. The railways. The inefficiencies of the civil service. The weather. I’m surprised they haven’t blamed the Gallagher brothers’ reluctance to reform on the Tories (although it’s worth remembering Oasis started their descent in the summer of 1997 with the release of Be Here Now, the great Britpop New Labour folly).
Seriously, Starmer even tried to blame the recent race riots on the Conservatives, which was an ideological attack instead of an operational one. “Fourteen years of failure and populism has let rot grow in the heart of our system,” came the bleat. “Those riots revealed a deep sickness at the heart of our society, stoked by a politics that chose division, oversaw decline, and relied on dishonesty.”
Which is simply a far more eloquent version of something Trump might say.
I can guarantee that Starmer is going to blame everything from falling living standards to poor football results on the Tories
I don’t imagine it’s going to get much better, either, and I can guarantee that between now and Christmas, Starmer is going to have blamed everything from inflation and falling living standards to poor football results and the alarming return of your dodgy meniscus on the Tories.
An additional flavoursome extra has been an insidious footnote that reinforces the idea that things were so bad under the previous administrations that it’s going to take Starmer at least two whole terms to sort out the mess. Having seen his recent attempts to curtail the working week by 20 per cent I can understand how he arrived at this mythical figure.
It’s a sham, of course it is, and it’s becoming quite wearing, a bit like a manager inheriting Manchester United and saying it’s going to take a decade to win the Premier League (although I certainly wouldn’t want Erik ten Hag running the country). But it’s the narrative that Starmer has chosen to adopt, and, again like Trump, it’s one he keeps repeating ad nauseum.
The fervour surrounding the Oasis reunion has sparked an interest in all things Nineties, with columnists and social media practitioners everywhere clamouring to suggest the return of everything from bucket hats to Tony Blair.
Beneath mythology and allegory is usually the shabby and sordid truth, but with Cool Britannia the opposite was true. If you lived through the decade and participated in its attractions then you probably remember it as the greatest period of your life, while those who weren’t born at the time look upon it as a golden period much like the Sixties.
There was great music (Blur, Radiohead, trip hop), great art (Damien Hirst, Marc Quinn, Tracey Emin and the rest of the YBAs), plus Danny Boyle, Nick Hornby and Alex Garland. There was also The Fast Show, the funniest comedy of the decade, a show fuelled by catchphrases. One character regularly delivered a monologue listing everyday things, all of which he declared to be “brilliant!” or “fantastic!”.
I can imagine his resurrection right now, reading a litany of tragedies, disasters and ailments — unemployment, a severe storm, cancer etc — before leaning into the camera, winking and whispering the punchline: “Tories.”
