Let us talk about politicians dancing. Specifically, let us talk about Boris Johnson and David Cameron dancing to the Spice Girls at the Olympic closing ceremony. Graceful, elegant, debonair, all of these things it was not. Cameron clapped, strangled by his tie, like a man whose sober country church has been taken over for a week by some bastard with a guitar. Boris was more relaxed, swinging his belly to the beat as a bountiful chick might swing her boobs. Digging it, like Daddy Pig might dig the DJ at Peppa’s wedding. Did you see? The cameraman held them both for 20 seconds and then moved abruptly on. ‘This isn’t funny,’ a producer might have told him. ‘This is like watching them on the loo.’ And my response came in stages.
Stage 1: The comparative stage. Is there a politician in Britain who would have looked better up there? No. Osborne would have been still as a petrified tree. Hague, moving inadvisably. And I have a strong mental image, for some reason, of Ed Miliband dancing like a robot from 1984. Ed Balls would be Boris in a different head. His wife would not dance. Harriet Harman would convey a strong impression of the handbag she was almost dancing around, although not quite as strong as that conveyed by, say, Caroline Flint. I cannot imagine how Vince Cable would dance to the Spice Girls. I try, and the spots gather before my eyes.
Stage 2: Resentment. This sucks. It bloody sucks. What is it with these people? Why do they all have to be so weird? Who wears a suit and tie to a pop concert, anyway? I know it’s a trivial point but, Christ, people are alienated from politics enough already.
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