Singular life
Give him some jokes
Petronelia Wyatt
I have been clearing away branches for the past few days, Or rather me and the latest addition to our Hungarian colony, Petra. Petra arrived a few weeks ago and is horrified by the English weather. The galeforce winds last weekend nearly had her scampering back to Budapest in terror. I, however, was rather pleased. I was hoping that the wind would blow away the evergreen oak that our local council refuses to chop down. The tree was the cause of our house subsiding and my three-month stay in a hotel last year. Not that I disliked the hotel but I thought it a little undignified to be ejected from my home by some old oak.
The winds also blew two busts off their plinths. One was of Pitt the Younger and the other of Perceval. Was this an omen for the Conservative party? I wondered. My brother, who is over from South Africa this week, has been asking me about English politics and, in particular, our Tory leader and his prospects. Apparently, the quietman line didn't reach as far as Jo'burg. Perhaps because it was too quiet.
It has occurred to me, however, that, though comparisons have been made with Mr Duncan Smith's conference speech and the film The Quiet Man with John Wayne, his peculiar stance belongs to quite another genre, Mr Duncan Smith is less the John Wayne of British politics than the Gary Cooper, or James Stewart in one of his more serious non-Hitchcock roles. I believe that 'the determination of the quiet man' comes from a Frank Capra film made in the Depression called Meet John Doe which starred Cooper as the honest, ordinary man, fighting spin in politics and the press. Then, of course, there is that other Capra classic, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, this time with Jimmy Stewart. In a similar role to Cooper's, Stewart plays a congressman who is forced to confound the machinations of other politicians and their vested interests led by Claude Rains.
We then move on to the political westerns, such as Carl Foreman's High Noon which is no less than a blunt statement about the politics of his own day. Cooper's standing alone against a gang of hoodlums summed up what Foreman felt was the bullying atmosphere enveloping American politics in the 1950s. Mr Duncan Smith is obviously trying to set himself up as the simple guy who asks for a glass of milk in the saloon, eschews bullying and vulgar show, but will, in the end, fight the villains and win (see also Destry Rides Again with James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich which was made earlier, by Frank Capra again, the keeper of America's celluloid conscience).
I don't know if anyone in the Duncan Smith camp has seen these films but if they haven't they ought to. They constituted powerful pieces of propaganda in their day and contained many more lines than blah, blah, quiet man, blah, blah to be paraphrased to good effect. Cooper was balding by the time he played in High Noon so Mr Duncan Smith ought not to worry about the allegedly diminished appeal of the tonsorially-challenged to the general public. But he ought to remember one thing: that quiet, honourable and serious as these characters were, they also made jokes.
These might have been mild and ironic ones, but they were jokes nonetheless. And there is nothing like a joke to wrong-foot an opponent in politics, especially a man like Mr Blair who is not exactly Sydney Smith when it comes to light repartee. The Prime Minister looks sick and livid when anyone makes a joke at his expense because he has no sense of humour about himself. This is a weakness the Tories should play on mercilessly.
The Capra characters proved adept at leaving their enemies in confusion by making good-natured jests that hit home. Mr Blair is fine at set speeches but not so good when he is forced to extemporise at the despatch box. Mr Duncan Smith should aim to put him in that position every week. He could try speaking out of the side of his mouth now and then, too, and maybe, long after he has finished with politics, Hollywood might give him a job. There is always room for a new Coop.
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