Older Than The Prime Minister

This time tomorrow, anyway. My thoughts are with an even older man, who was supposed to have been Prime Minister by now, and apparently would have been, had it not been for little old me. In his honour, I may smoke a small cigar. Of course, he never stood a chance. No male product of a mixed secondary school has ever become Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister who had been a first term voter in 2001 will owe exactly as much to the Blair Government's messing about with the state education system as does his almost exact contemporary, Angela Rayner. In its own terms, New Labour has failed hilariously.

Speaking of education, which of the correct meanings of "coronated" may be applicable to Rishi Sunak? Has he a crest or a crownlike appendage? Is he girt about the spire with a row of tubercles or spines, as are certain spiral shells? Are his coronal feathers lengthened or otherwise distinguished? Of course, these possibilities are not mutually exclusive. In the course of this afternoon and evening, the news channels have stopped saying "coronated". Mass correction has spared them the consequences of any talk next year of "coronating the King".

Is this Britain's Obama moment? I fear so. Sunak's coronation has been planned for decades. Over the summer, the disappearance of Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl from BBC iPlayer was a track-covering confirmation that, since it was broadcast when he was not quite 21, Sunak must have been handpicked as the generational voice of the haute bourgeoisie when he was still in his teens. The tribal elders of the Tory Deep State had been out in force at his campaign launch. A few hours later, needing 20 votes to stay in the race, he had turned out to be 20 votes ahead of his nearest rival.

It has ever been thus. No one becomes Prime Minister in his early forties by any means than this. There are still those who keep up the pretence that Tony Blair was politically "a late developer", but it is quite some late developer who becomes an MP at 30 and Prime Minister at 43, the age at which David Cameron also attained the Premiership, in his case after a mere nine years in the House of Commons. Sunak has beaten all of that, though. An MP of only seven years' standing, he is all of 42 years old. So yes. Planned for decades. 

Sunak could pay for an entire General Election campaign out of his own pocket and not even notice. Regardless of the result, once he had done that, then he could be Leader for life. A daughter of provincial academia had to go all the way from London to Balmoral, but a Brahmin who is richer than the King cannot be expected to go from London to Sandringham. When you can become Prime Minister without saying anything at all, then the King must come to you.

Get used to this sort of thing. The multinational home and family life is also very Royal. Sunak is richer than anyone else in any room that does not contain his father-in-law. Head Boy of a major public school. Goldman Sachs. Born into the very top of the caste system. Picked out as a generational spokesman on television while he was still a teenager. Oh, yes. Get used to this sort of thing.

Keir Starmer versus Liz Truss could have resulted in a Labour overall majority, but Starmer versus Sunak will result in a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Here at North West Durham, where Richard Holden seems destined for great things, the process of selecting a Labour parliamentary candidate has still not begun. The Constituency Labour Party posts Facebook photographs of its "campaigning", but that campaigning is on behalf of no one. It is purely performative, and for the sake of the pub afterwards, like an historical reenactment society.

I am quoting from memory, but his sympathetic biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, said something to the effect that JRR Tolkien's writing did not belong to the world of literature and the arts, but to the world of people who did things with model railways in their sheds. Make of that what you will, but dear though some of the stalwarts have been to me for 30 years, North West Durham Constituency Labour Party no longer belongs to the world of politics, but to the world of people who do things with model railways in their sheds.