The other day I went to see Tony Blair leave Downing Street for the last time. I work on Whitehall, and it’s about a ten second walk. However, it appears some other people had the same idea. The crowd packed outside Downing Street, flanked by the majestic stone testaments to empire and sacrifice, was a curious mix. You had anti-war protesters, wearing their slogans and monosyllabic chants. You had unofficial photographers, with their weary backpacks and weathered lenses. You had the die-hard political fans, jostling aggressively for the best possible view, cursed by their diminutive frames. You had the more casual crowd, who worked nearby, knew what it was about, and thought seeing the PM off was a decent way to waste a lunch break.
Then you had the tourists, helpless as they desperately struggled through crowd; no one listened to their pleas of “Excuse me,” “Could I get past,” and “Move out the bloody way you damn poms. Jesus Christ Edith, this is the last time we ever come to this awful city.”
Together we stood against a barrier as policemen in their day-glow hi-visibility bibs shouted us back. Their intense florescence was overpowering and we staggered back, shielding our eyes desperately with our palms. Next to me, a photographer and anti-war chap got into a shouting match as the former refused to move his stepladder. A few middle aged ladies of sub-continental extraction began hysterically shouting that they are being crushed.
Oh dear.
Blair hadn’t even got to Buckingham Palace to formally resign leaving a leaderless Britain for 20 minutes, and decorum was already melting away. As the crowd angrily surged and seethed, it seemed anarchy wouldn’t be much further off. No doubt, commodity prices were tumbling and the stock exchange plunged. It would only be a matter of time before the symbols of authority would be toppled. Apocalyptic scenes flashed through my head. Chavs wandering the streets armed with Kalashnikovs; Radio Four pillaged and burnt down to the ground in an orgy of lumpen-proletariat looting; traffic wardens violently mutinying; queues at the tube station for Oyster Card renewal becoming disorganized scrums; youth refusing to give up seats for elderly ladies on the bus; Britain becoming Sierra Leone.
In hindsight, my fears may perhaps have been a touch overwrought.
Suddenly, a clamour as the gates of Downing Street swung open. Like a class of eager schoolchildren, a forest of hands sprouted up, brandishing cameras and phones. Almost immediately the Prime Ministerial Jaguar –Pegasus, as it is named –shot through the gate and hurtled round the corner. Bugger, damn and blast! I fumbled my camera phone and managed only to photograph an overcast sky, Pegasus absent from the frame.
In the flash of a misdirected photo, Blair was gone. That was it. There was no sight of the man; no open topped Cadillac with a smiling and waving Blair. I’d half expected the Grenadier Guards Band to march past playing The World Turned Upside Down, but was left with nothing but a considerably shortened lunch break and a nagging feeling… sic transit gloria.
Some days later, it all seems to have gone awry under Gordon Brown. I really, really wanted to give the man a chance. But let’s consider the unvarnished facts. First of all, the rain has not let up since he’s come to office. We’ve been promptly informed by smug meteorologists that this weather will persist over the entire summer. Secondly, there were two unexploded bombs found in London, indicating that Brown’s new security appointments haven’t defeated the threats we face. It seems Glasgow Airport suffered a most bizarre firebomb attack, also the work of terrorists. If Brown can’t even keep Scotland safe – an unimportant backwater of no international significance – then how can we trust him to keep those of us in the heart of London secure?
I say: what is such a man doing as our leader? If Brown cannot control the Jet Stream, the position of which is causing the low pressure front while instantly penetrating every clandestine terrorist plot, how will he be able to cope with more daunting challenges that British leaders inevitably face? Past leaders like Churchill single-handedly defeated totalitarian dictatorships: am I the only one who remembers that bulldoggish figure wading ashore at Sword Beach on June 6 1944, cigar in mouth, Sten gun in hand, a stout lonesome figure irresistibly pushing back the hitherto unmovable Third Reich? Do the children of the world not learn of the Iron Duke, who fought the might of France to a standstill on the Iberian Peninsula before scything down the Old Guard at Waterloo with nothing more than a dashing uniform, a pinch of snuff, and a stiff upper lip?
Once, this island nation was ruled by gods. Now, it is ruled by timidity.
The only conclusion to draw is that this society and others like it lacks the appropriate procedures for selecting its leaders. In this era of “representative democracy” and “constitutionalism” we look to the writings of enlightened philosophes – the foppish buffoons they were. I ask: would Achilles have wasted time at the UN for a second resolution, or simply defeated Hussein in epic combat? Would Gilgamesh have sullenly fretted over the state of public services, or single-handedly erected great monuments as lasting testaments to early western civilization?
Thus I say we should look to classical – nay, pre-classical antiquity – for the basis of our leadership selection process.
Our future leaders must fast for forty nights in the desert without complaint, the relentless stare of the sun and alternately the merciless pounding of the desert sand storms tormenting them in every waking hour; they must break the backs of the mightiest mountain ranges with their bare hands; they must walk across the most searing lava flows with but a simple palm frond to shield their soles; they must master the sword, bow and flintlock; their roar must cause even the mighty king of the jungle, the noble lion, to cower and flee in ignominy.
Then, and only then, will we have chosen a leader capable of besting the challenges of the modern world. But I fear that as a society, we are simply too decadent, too slovenly to appreciate such qualities. We are instead a society that verges on collapse when asked to take several steps back behind the barrier.
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