ANOTHER VOICE

0 Rose thou art sick! The invisible worm in Labour's election plans

AUBERON WAUGH

As one of its most enthusiastic spon- sors, I must admit that the dirtiest election campaign on record has got off to a disappointing start. Only one insult seems to have drawn blood, and that is the suggestion that Mrs Kinnock wears the trousers in the Labour leadership — that Labour is in the position of Antony's army before the Battle of Actium. Neil Kinnock, by this account, is 'the triple pillar of the world transformed into a strumpet's fool', although it seems curious that Conserva- tives, of all people, can get away with the smear: 'So our leader's led and we are women's men.' Perhaps it says something about the traditional Labour vote that the suggestion should cause such resentment.

But on the same principle which I advanced in the matter of Star Wars — that if Mr Gorbachev is prepared to pull out every stop to discredit the programme, even inviting Gregory Peck to Moscow, releasing political prisoners and declaring himself converted to the SDP, then Star Wars must be a good idea — we should plainly examine Labour's over-reaction to this disgraceful smear more closely.

Susan Crosland, in an eloquent and moving defence of Mrs Kinnock's role, agreed that 'she is animated by politics in a way that other political wives are not'. Her conclusion was that

neither dominates the other. But he puts a top value on her advice. What's more, she's fun. . . . Would it be wiser for Glenys to stick at home in Ealing, except when doing the sort of things that earn the seal of approval of Tory wives — like cutting ribbons at fetes and standing staunchly be- hind husbands involved in yet another sex scandal?

Needless to say, there is not the faintest suggestion that Neil Kinnock may be in- volved in 'yet another' sex scandal. I keep my ear to the ground in these matters, and I am pretty sure I would know. Indeed, this may be part of the trouble, where accusa- tions. of excessive feminine influence are concerned. Let us examine the sequence of events.

It all started with a speech by Mrs Edwina Currie, the bossy and half-witted but not entirely unattractive junior Health Minister:

The Labour Party's being led by a woman, but she has not been elected to anything. She is the lady who makes the breakfast in the Kin nock household. That is who is leading the Labour party, and she is leading it by the nose.

Mrs Kinnock's response to this was dignified enough, in so far as any modern teacher can express herself with dignity:

It is concerning that an MP and a Minister could suggest that you actually have to be a Member of Parliament in order to have an opninion or to campaign for issues that concern you.

My own response was that I hoped Mrs Currie had done her homework. Was she absolutely sure that Glenys Kinnock makes the breakfast in the Kinnock household? I would not be at all surprised to learn that Mr Kinnock prepares the breakfast. If so Mrs Currie laid herself open to all the usual accusations of having published a farrago of lies in her ruthless and malicious attack, that her smears were without a scintilla of truth, etc etc.

But Mr Kinnock's response was more interesting than that. After an initial reac- tion, de haut en bas, that such contemptible suggestions were far beneath contempt as to be unworthy of response, and a desper- ate attempt at an aphorism about 'the slippage from the gutter to the sewer', Mr Kinnock turned on his male persecutors at the Greenwich by-election: 'They travel best in gangs, hanging around like clumps of bananas, thick-skinned and yellow.'

As insults go, this is not particularly impressive. Bananas, after all, are rather delicious things. One would have to be a greater demagogue than Kinnock to whip up the crowd's hatred against a bunch of bananas. But I find his imagery significant, for all that. Bananas are not only rather delicious things, they have also long been accepted as symbols for the male genera- tive organ. This symbolism found its crudest expression during the advertisers' `Unzip a Banana' campaign of a few years ago, but it was around long before that, I fancy, in musical hall and domestic com- 'Andy Warhol's surgeon was amous for 15 minutes.' edy. Is Kinnock, in describing his political opponents as bananas, perhaps uncon- sciously striking out against the entire male presence in politics? For those whose natural reaction is to dismiss this entire field of speculation as sub-Freudian taradiddle, I would draw attention to a different piece of evidence: the new Labour Party symbol of a red rose, introduced by the Kinnocks — Mr and Ms — as their own response to all the fiendish- ly clever devilments of Saatchi and Saatchi. When I first saw these red roses being waved around I thought of flower-power and all those sweet, dead echoes of the 1960s, when Kinnock and I (and Ms Kinnock) were young. Then I thought of the Wars of the Roses, one of the few conflicts of English history in which I have never really bothered to take sides. As Somerset remarks, in Henry VI, Part One:

Let him that is no coward nor flatterer But dares maintain the party of the truth Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

A suitable enough slogan, I thought, for any reconstructed, Gorbachevised Labour party under the Kinnocks' exciting new leadership. Then a lady friend told me that the ancient badge of the House of Lancas- ter has long since been usurped by a firm making women's sanitary towels. The ex- act symbol used by the candidate at the Greenwich by-election, and by the Labour Party on most of its advertisements, is to be seen on the packets of their products, and on the advertisements for it.

I was unable to confirm this information on a hasty and rather furtive visit to the local chemist, but if my friend is right then the Labour Party may be in worse trouble than it realises. As Blake wrote in one of his most beautiful poems:

O Rose thou art sick! The invisible worm That flies in the night In the howling storm Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

If the Kinnocks propose to ride into the next election with a sanitary towel as their talisman and a bunch of bananas as their hated foe, then that is their affair, but I cannot help feeling that the rest of the Labour Party should be warned exactly where the battle lines are being drawn.