What is true is that, instead of watching Corbyn drip-feed my party into a quagmire, I chose to watch gorgeous creatures triple-somersault off a high board into unnaturally green water. While Corbyn himself, divorced from his former cabinet ministers, supported by the sinister John McDonnell and the schoolgirl debater Diane Abbott, remained firmly clinging on to his new cut-price membership — thanks for that one, Ed — I punched the air when a chunky Brit threw a hammer into the air for 70 metres and a horse crossed its legs daintily and salsa’d across a sandy ring.
In Olympic terms, Corbyn is the “Eddie the Eagle” of Team GB. Except I rather liked Eddie. I stopped believing Corbyn was decent when a Momentum bully accosted MP Ruth Smeeth at the press call for the Shami Chakrabarti report on anti-Semitism.
A decent man would have stood up and said: “That, mate, is precisely the kind of behaviour I want out of the Labour Party. Leave the room; leave the party.” On the contrary, Corbyn was seen later sharing a joke with the man. A “kinder, gentler” politics does not seem to me to include elevating the author of that blind report to the House of Lords. Rather it is the same sort of provocative mischief which Harold Wilson employed over the then Marcia Williams.
I can’t take it. So I sit and watch Ms Balding simultaneously hold 2,000 facts about 2,000 sports in her head instead. I am no sports fiend. I married into Manchester United and watched Jack growing grimmer about his team match by match, until finally he could only bear to watch them on Teletext. But since the glory that was London 2012 I’ve been hooked on the politics of sport as opposed to vice versa. Both disciplines, of course, require years of grinding preparation for one four-year selection/election. Then what? What do you do with your muscles, your motivation and your life afterwards?
David Cameron’s tragi-comic, post-resignation walk back into Number 10, humming a little cheer-up song (as he probably did when he didn’t make the cricket eleven at Eton) really moved me. I found him oddly honourable in a fairly nobility-free zone. Chris Hoy or Steve Redgrave-like, perhaps now he could train others in sportsmanship?
William Hague, that most ambitious of men, the Olga Korbut of politicians, after one meeting with dream coach Angelina Jolie has vanished from the House he dreamed of owning, apparently to do good works in the third world. He might rank as an Eric Liddell figure, off to China to take a missionary position for the rest of his life.
Gove and Boris, with their excellence at back-stabbing, might show form at archery and javelin, while George Osborne is only fit for the high jump. Farage will be happy vaulting Poles and I quite fancy a velodrome line-up of Michael Portillo, Alan Johnson, Vince Cable and Nick Clegg, cycling endlessly in circles giving TV interviews to anyone who’ll listen about how they feel now it’s all over. The Olympics made me foolishly proud and emotional even though I knew the whole thing was (gluten-free) bread and (toothless) circuses. I watched it and choked up a bit as our anthem thudded out thinly on maracas and pan pipes. Meanwhile, back in the political arena, I shed saltier and sadder tears. As Lesley Gore sang: “It’s my Party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
In Olympic terms, Corbyn is the “Eddie the Eagle” of Team GB. Except I rather liked Eddie. I stopped believing Corbyn was decent when a Momentum bully accosted MP Ruth Smeeth at the press call for the Shami Chakrabarti report on anti-Semitism.
A decent man would have stood up and said: “That, mate, is precisely the kind of behaviour I want out of the Labour Party. Leave the room; leave the party.” On the contrary, Corbyn was seen later sharing a joke with the man. A “kinder, gentler” politics does not seem to me to include elevating the author of that blind report to the House of Lords. Rather it is the same sort of provocative mischief which Harold Wilson employed over the then Marcia Williams.
I can’t take it. So I sit and watch Ms Balding simultaneously hold 2,000 facts about 2,000 sports in her head instead. I am no sports fiend. I married into Manchester United and watched Jack growing grimmer about his team match by match, until finally he could only bear to watch them on Teletext. But since the glory that was London 2012 I’ve been hooked on the politics of sport as opposed to vice versa. Both disciplines, of course, require years of grinding preparation for one four-year selection/election. Then what? What do you do with your muscles, your motivation and your life afterwards?
David Cameron’s tragi-comic, post-resignation walk back into Number 10, humming a little cheer-up song (as he probably did when he didn’t make the cricket eleven at Eton) really moved me. I found him oddly honourable in a fairly nobility-free zone. Chris Hoy or Steve Redgrave-like, perhaps now he could train others in sportsmanship?
William Hague, that most ambitious of men, the Olga Korbut of politicians, after one meeting with dream coach Angelina Jolie has vanished from the House he dreamed of owning, apparently to do good works in the third world. He might rank as an Eric Liddell figure, off to China to take a missionary position for the rest of his life.
Gove and Boris, with their excellence at back-stabbing, might show form at archery and javelin, while George Osborne is only fit for the high jump. Farage will be happy vaulting Poles and I quite fancy a velodrome line-up of Michael Portillo, Alan Johnson, Vince Cable and Nick Clegg, cycling endlessly in circles giving TV interviews to anyone who’ll listen about how they feel now it’s all over. The Olympics made me foolishly proud and emotional even though I knew the whole thing was (gluten-free) bread and (toothless) circuses. I watched it and choked up a bit as our anthem thudded out thinly on maracas and pan pipes. Meanwhile, back in the political arena, I shed saltier and sadder tears. As Lesley Gore sang: “It’s my Party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
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10:09 AM