The Three Blind Mice

Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are lost side-kicks in search of missing leaders.
British politics has become a battle between three blind leaders and their short sighted parties.

Tony Blair was to New Labour what Captain Kirk was to Star Trek, which makes Gordon Brown rather like Scotty. Kirk, like Blair, had a dashing yet casual style of government, and a perfect haircut. Either by charming the pants off foreigners or bravely leading boarding parties in reckless planetary invasions Blair and Kirk were brothers from another mother. Scotty meanwhile would answer every request from his Captain with an obstructing negative; ‘she won’t hold.’ You can picture him, or Brown, skulking around the dark engine room muttering to himself in the third person about how ‘it should have been Scotty.’ Without Blair New labour appears to have no bold plans to go anywhere. Not so much a sinking ship as a kind of reverse Marie Celeste; the mystery being why they’re all still on board. Their last claim to cult status left the big tent he created saying he was going for a walk and might be some time. Of course back then the political weather was only slightly overcast. Blair wasn’t doing a Captain Oates but Labour is now left freezing in what looks to be a long winter of discontent.
So enter the Tories right on cue. Like the sympathetic face of a sinister repo firm David Cameron intends to re-claim on a government that over-borrowed. In fact he’s already wearing Blair’s clothes, copying his shallow style while retaining none of his depth. Every time you see Cameron you half expect the writing underneath to simply detail the price of every item he’s wearing. When under any pressure Cameron cracks, reverting to the old political hacks trick of telling you not to trust the other side. Every time Cameron attempts to address the problems in his own party he seems to annoy everyone, just take a look at the old grammar school row or their relationships on Europe. Half the party want into Europe and half will sleep with semi-fascists to get out. His job is to be more bandage than man. A walking haircut sent in to hold the wounds of the Tory body politic together and in shot, long enough for their moment in history to be taken. His best comparison is with Poirot’s side-kick Captain Hastings. In looks and manner Cameron is reminiscent of that good-natured buffoon in the ITV series. The best you can say of Captain Hastings is that you don’t actually suspect him of committing the murder. This modest but no doubt important quality in a leader is an improvement on previous Tory offerings. But where is the moderniser with the iron and passion of Thatcher. Of course there isn’t one because for that you need to hold the project closer to your heart than your career prospects. It will be awhile before a young Tory cares as much about libertarianism and liberalism as Thatcher did about breaking the unions. For all the mistakes she made, they were her mistakes, not the result of incanting a shibboleth to get into power.
Then we have Nick Clegg trailing behind in every poll that remembered to put him in. He is really a side-kick to the other two. Clegg is a geography teacher that would under-whelm a class of year nines. As a national leader he seems faintly delusional. At his party conference he said he wanted to be Prime Minister. His party were so shocked he had to say it again. Like Robin in Batman films, he’s never missed when absent.