foot in mouth is nothing new
Front bench, back bench or House of Lords. Prime Ministers through the ages have long dreaded the vacuous, infantile, ridiculous, outrageous, offensive and often just downright plain silly outbursts from so-called colleagues, friends and supporters. If ever a gagging order is warranted it surely belongs to those of your own persuasion and party. Lord Young of Graffham is just the latest in a long line of illustrious contributors to the embarrassing ‘foot in mouth’ gaffe. With a runaway mouth at the best of times he was just the kind of accident waiting to happen and undoubtedly his recent ‘they’ve never had it so good’ will have gone some way to upsetting the calm of Cameron and Clegg’s weekend. Joy of joys.
Yet gaffes are woven into the very fabric of politics and appear to cause particular offence when they contain enough of a sliver of truth that it would have been better left unsaid.
Cherie Blair surely had a point when she blurted out ‘that’s a lie’ on hearing Gordon Brown’s praise of her husband. Neville Chamberlain’s ‘peace in our time’ promise was believed by millions but not for long. Harold Wilson’s believe that, following the devaluation of sterling in 1967, the ‘pound in your pocket’ would be worth the same was perhaps technically correct but who wanted to hear it?
Combine this with the context of the statement and we’re headed for choppy waters. To the sound of cutlery and clinking cut glass in an obviously expensive West End restaurant, millionaire Lord Young of Gaffe-Ham (sic) can be heard ruminating on the fact that people “will wonder what all the fuss was about” when they look back on the “so-called recession” and cuts. Er, I beg to differ, m’lud.
Contrast Young with the original author of the sentiment, Harold Macmillan, financially astute Tory PM politically and emotionally shaped by the trenches of WW1 and the subsequent Great Depression. When he said that millions of us had “never had it so good” he spoke (broadly) the truth about a society enjoying the new consumerism after decades of hardship, privation and rationing. So much so that ‘SuperMac’ went on to win the next election comfortably, only to see his most famous phrase adapted to ‘never had it so often’ during the Profumo sex scandal which later brought him down!
With his shrewd talent for saloon-bar populism the most famous Chingford Skinhead is guilty of stating many provocative things but, surprisingly he can’t actually claim ownership of his most famous attributed piece of advice to the jobless during Maggie’s first recession, to get ‘on yer bike’ as he didn’t actually say it. He merely noted that in the 1930s his father hadn’t rioted or caused a furore of any sort but had simply gotten on his and sought work. Iain Duncan Smith came dangerously close to saying ‘on yer bus’ to the residents of South Wales only this month and commented upon in the earlier ‘gis a job’ posting.
The founder of our Welfare State, Aneurin Bevan really did call the Tories “lower than vermin” in the 40s, just as Churchill suggested in the 1945 election campaign that a Labour government would need a “Gestapo to enforce its policies”. Both were perhaps a tad uncalled for but remained largely not forgotten and unforgiven. True, false or somewhere in between, an ill-judged phrase or indiscretion can be fatal. Lord Young advises his young pretender no longer.
