It’s strange what DNA throws up. I’m, apparently, one quarter Scottish. There’s a smidgen of Scandinavian ancestry too. I never would have thought that at all. Just about everything I’ve ever done in looking at family history points to one place and that’s the West Country. There are Dorset graveyards where the Vincent name is sprinkled around liberally. How we see ourselves, and others can shape our thinking more than the objective facts. It maybe stories that we’ve been told. It maybe dramatic events that left an indelible mark.
Popular culture plays a big part in shaping our impressions. Images stick. They can be a good shorthand for the recollection of past happenings. It’s General Election time. If you are of my age, who can forget the Spitting Image portrayal of David Steel and David Owen as leaders of the SDP/Alliance in the 1980s[1]. It was devastating.
The red and evil eyes of Tony Blair staring out of a newspaper page are difficult to forget. Even if using them as a campaign tactic proved futile. More recently Boris Johnson hanging from a zipwire[2] is difficult to erase from the mind, however hard one might try.
Social media has changed the landscape of image making and breaking. Video is cheap. Simple and freely available software tools make anything possible. What’s different is that proliferation of comic images means there are fewer that really hit home and become memorable.
I think the current Prime Minister (PM) getting completely soaked in the pouring rain, as he announced a snap election, is probably going to stick. Like London Mayor Johnson on the zipwire, he was stuck in a silly situation of his own making. A situation that slowly became more and more ridiculous.
What images do the current candidates for UK PM conjure up? Here’s my offering.
Sunak is half Mr Bean and half a sort of slippery eel like wideboy[3] who’d sell you any pig in a poke. An undertone of a late-night shopping channel star fizzed around him.
Starmer has a hint of Mr Mainwaring[4] about him. Resolutely stoic, he’s making an art of being dull. It’s as if his only colour is a grey shade of marron. A practically lifeless monotone.
Davey, standing in front of one of his colourful and much-liked gimmicks, is more circus master. On other occasions he’s inclined to light-hearted sermons akin to Father Mulcahy in M.A.S.H.
Tice exudes a pre-INTERNET age pinstriped city trader who echoes the movie Wall Steet[5]. It’s the “greed is good” clip that most comes to my mind.
These are purely off-the-wall personal thoughts. No doubt more imaginative public images will come to the fore in the next 6-weeks.
POST: No Green party candidate comes to mind. The SNP are following the Labour party line in curated drabness.
[1] https://thecritic.co.uk/what-spitting-image-did-to-british-politics/
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19079733
[3] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%5BWide%5D%20Boy
[4] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062552/
[5] https://youtu.be/VVxYOQS6ggk
John Vincent 