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Accent on the idiotic
The interview on TV showed that Blair is turning into Prince Charles.
Unaccustomed though I am to saying anything pleasant about the Prime Minister, I think everyone has been very unfair about his accent. He has been widely denounced for speaking Estuary English on the Des O'Connor Show on television last week, trying to ingratiate himself with the masses by talking a bit common. The moral is, the moralists say, that Blair is nothing but a chameleon, constantly adjusting his image to his company, talking Scotch in Scotland, and mandarin with his lawyer friends, and posh with Prince Charles, and trying to be all things to all people.
Well, of course he is. He's a politician. Considering the overwhelming temptation presented by the Des O'Connor Show to be indescribably vulgar in any way that springs to mind, I think the Prime Minister ought to be praised for his integrity in only giving in to a few glottal stops. For most of the time he spoke in perfectly reasonable, educated tones and said "kids" only five or six times.
It was odd, I admit, that he suddenly lapsed into the faintly demotic when telling an anecdote about a horse in France, and I find it ridiculous that he pronounces France to rhyme with manse; it doesn't go with the rest of the Standard Received pronunciation accent he was using at the time, and is obviously an affectation. But I don't think his performance really adds up to a useful stick to beat the man with; there is nothing new about being prolier-than-thou. Think of Douglas Hurd or Michael Meacher. And in the Sixties it was almost compulsory for anyone young and ambitious to talk like an East End hairdresser.
What I did find alarming about the interview was the confirmation of a suspicion I have had for some time: Tony Blair is turning into Prince Charles. The resemblance is growing stronger every day. Though no one seems to have commented on it, the similarity in their mannerisms - and in their archly self-deprecating humour - is becoming unmistakable. So far it is only intermittent and fleeting, but at moments Blair holds his hands in front of him exactly as Charles does, bending his upper body forward; and he constantly raises his eyebrows in the same half humorous and appeasing way, often above the same fixed grimace.
It may simply be something to do with spending time in Australia, as both have done, and finding ways of deflecting a hatred of privilege even more profound than ours in Britain. But I think it is that Blair has come to feel deep down that he is really royal. He even behaves royally at times, almost as if he were the heir apparent, mindful of the lese majesty to come; it may be that he is looking ahead to the People's Republic of Britain, when he might do just as well as Charles as the People's President, and some people might no longer know which is which, or indeed - by the time the spin doctors have finished with them - what all the changes mean.
If one is going to make the effort, yet again, to object to New Labour's clumsy attempts at image-making, one ought to complain not about the Prime Minister's self-presentation but about the ghastly new millennium symbol, "New Britannia", chosen by Peter Mandelson and unveiled last week. This hideous creation, a butch and beefy female with a pin head and no breasts, is going to straddle the Meridian, appear on anything that has anything to do with the "Millennium Experience" and present the image of our country to the world and to the new century. She is intended to represent "caring and confident aspirations of a multicultural society" - she certainly represents nothing at all of British traditions - and to become "one of the most recognised symbols in the world". One can only hope not.
The only consolation is that, despite her name, she doesn't in any way look British (such is the patriotic fervour of those concerned), and so with any luck people won't associate her with us. What she actually looks is Aztec, which is curious since among all the scores of ethnic groups in our caring, confident, multicultural society, it can safely be said that there isn't a single Aztec.
I suppose that does at least mean that nobody can say they have been discriminated against. As a role model for women and girls New Britannia leaves a lot to be desired, for though she is clearly extremely powerful, and looks rather like one of those girl athletes who abuse steroids, her head and brain are minuscule. Her legs are unnaturally long and slender, and her waist is tiny - the very features which, when seen on Barbie dolls and supermodels, are supposed to drive young things to eating disorders and self-loathing.
Sexually, New Britannia is without a doubt disturbing - dominant, or domineering even - and has an unmistakable air of triumphalism about her. While this may be some people's ideal of British womanhood, and of motherhood - she is supposed to represent motherhood too - I wonder whether it is really one we want to promote abroad. And at a time when we all bewail the marginalisation of boys and young men, and their resentment at the growing power of women, it is not very clever to produce an image which will remind them of their predicament on every hoarding, bus ticket and crisp packet. This time the spin doctors have been whirling around so fast that they have spun themselves right off message. I think the Prime Minister should tell us, in any accent he may choose, exactly where he stands.
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, June 07, 1998
