ANOTHER VOICE
I suspect that the Foreign Secretary has been warned off the turf
PETRONELLA WYATT
There may have been a few dukes and earls and peers, but for what was probably the first time there were no ministers at Royal Ascot. Not because the new govern- ment lacks aficionados of the turf; Robin Cook in particular is an eager race-goer. In March he attended the Cheltenham Gold Cup which falls, like Ascot, mid-week.
No. Labour's failure to 'show' at our biggest and richest racing festival was not because of any lack of enthusiasm for the sport. It was, rather, a lack of enthusiasm for the people.
New Labour has a policy vacuum left by its abandonment of socialism. Politics abhors a vacuum, but not, it would seem, a vacuum cleaner. The new government wants to Hoover anything that suggests social privilege.
This is where Ascot comes in, or rather, doesn't. According to friends of mine in the racing world, friends of theirs in the senior Labour world were warned away from the festival. This was more than a matter of New Labour dressing down (no morning suits allowed — only mourning suits). It was advisable, apparently, for ministers not to be seen at Ascot even outside the Royal Enclosure — the part of the course that does not stipulate formal clothes — for fear of being seen to collude in the preservation of the class system.
This is not New Labour. This is old Labour. This is Labour so old as to be pre- Attlee. It presumes a society whose streets are peopled with urchins on the one hand and men in Eton collars and top hats on the other. Even austere Clem once went to Ascot. (When my father was a Labour MP he attended frequently. In the 1960s he bought a racehorse which he wanted to call Vote Labour for the fun of hearing the commentator shout it out as the horse passed the royal box. He was prevented from doing so by the Jockey Club.) In short, this is a return to the politics of `them' and 'us'. Party politics — the social kind, that is — has always been divisive. Now, however, there is a further problem with this approach, which is less political than practical. It is simply, who precisely constitutes 'them' and who is `us'?
For New Labour, 'them' presumably means the idle rich who have inherited their money. If there is one thing New Labour cannot bear it is idle hands. But the colour-coded symbols which once cate- gorised the gradations of British society in the way that football strips identify oppos- ing teams are no longer a reliable guide.
Thus Gordon Brown's choice of dress for the Mansion House showed social igno- rance. These days dinner-jackets are less of a levelling up than a levelling down. The man who dons one most eagerly is the advertising salesman or the Rotary Club member, who is as far removed from the idle classes as Bradford is from Blenheim. The son of a hereditary peer is more likely to turn up looking like, well, Gordon Brown.
The confusion that this causes is illustrat- ed by a new Carlton television series enti- tled Class. The first episode featured video film of the 'upper class' at play, pho- tographed in the illusory settings of the `season', Ascot, Henley, etc. Five or six people were thus categorised as posh gits by such expert sociologists as Mr Melvyn Bragg and Mr David Puttnam. It turned out that the first posh git was an aeroplane salesman, the second a property salesman, the third a stockbroker and the fourth a former tailor.
This is the problem with any reference to the 'season'. The hereditary rich just don't . . . do it, I mean. Henley, for instance, is very much a Middle England affair. Despite the myths that continue to sur- round Ascot it is perhaps even less 'posh'. According to on-course surveys, nearly two- thirds of race-goers would be best classified as C2s. That so-called toff in the gold waist- coat and matching bow-tie is less likely to be related to Harold Acton than Harry from Acton. The government's anti-Ascot directive is not an attack on a privileged elite but an insult to the aspirations of hard-working men and women with lower- middle-class backgrounds, most of whom probably voted Labour.
In a sense there has been a reversal of the `thems' and 'uses'. New Labour is behaving with a snobbery as unerring as any titled Tory grandee who would rather be seen dead than appear at Henley with advertising salesmen who wear borrowed boaters, refer to napkins as 'serviettes' and eat cake with a fork. This is reminiscent of nothing so much as the sort of superior atti- tude taken by people like the late Ran- dolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's noto- riously ill-mannered Tory MP son.
Once, Churchill was informed that one of my father's female constituents wanted to meet him. 'Oh God,' he replied, 'bring her to tea if you must.' A few days later my father arrived with the woman who was wearing a feather hat. On being offered cake she immediately asked for a fork and a serviette. Churchill, almost as immediate- ly, rose to his feet and roared, 'For Christ's sake get this bitch out of here. She's the most common woman I have ever met in my life.' Politicians who make an issue of class only illustrate their lack of it.
Music is less the food of love these days than the food of a cheap sexual thrill, or, rather, the authentic music movement has taken on a whole new meaning. The newspapers display a 27-year-old violin player called Miss Linda Lempenis. When I first read about Miss Lempenis I thought someone was joking. Then I discovered that I had misread the article and her name was actually spelt Lempenius. Thank heav- en. In that case she must be '1J', as Nancy Mitford used to say, or at least she had a `u'. The photographs of the young lady, however, confirmed my first thoughts. Miss Lempenius was an air on a G-string, all right — only she was wearing it. The article went on to say that she had, been offered a part in Baywatch. All this follows on from the popular, if not critical, hysteria over a young violinist called Vanessa-Mae. Vannessa-Mae seems to spend most of her time at modish hair- dressers. Indeed one might say that she fid- dled with Ricci Burns (Mr Burns being one of those modish hairdressers). Now it would seem obligatory for all female violin- ists to look less as if they were sliding down a scale than sliding down a male. Might I suggest Tiir Elise' performed by a Page Three girl in a mink bikini? I do not see why female pianists should have to keep their clothes on.
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