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After the doom loop of Labour’s first year, and the tears that ended it, can the Conservatives please rediscover fun | Conservative Home

    I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory” Hamlet, William Shakespeare.

    Of many masterfully melancholic recitations of these famous lines, my favourite is Richard E Grant, in ‘Withnail and I’ swigging wine from a bottle in the pouring rain and looking at the wolves in London zoo. It’s quite the cinematic image.

    In a past week that will be marked for years by an image, that of the UK’s Chancellor in tears behind a Prime Minister seemingly unaware of her distress and failing to back her in his Parliamentary exchanges, I longed for a Pythonesque dose of something completely different, now.

    The Prime Minister as it has turned out is not just hopeless but humourless. He hates being laughed at, and doesn’t always realise why people are. His navel -or should that be nasal – gazing annoyance that people sneered at his tool maker father, was a good example, since nobody was laughing at his poor old dad, just him for wanging on about it so much.

    It’s like when he accuses Kemi Badenoch most weeks of “talking the country down”, he doesn’t seem to register – she isn’t, she’s talking you down!

    But it is to Kemi, and her promises I want to turn to this weekend.

    They said she was lazy; she isn’t. They said she couldn’t charm the donors; she has. They said she’d lost the verve of her Commons performances of the past; well she herself said she keeps getting better – and last week she did. Last week I asked for blood, and to misquote AC/DC – I got it.

    However, there’s something she talked about during the leadership that I haven’t yet seen enough of, something we could all do with and something that would counter the wearisome dour Brownesque demeanour and intensity of the left. As one sharp Tory talent said to me at the Spectator party, speaking of Education Secretary Bridget Philipson:

    She is almost East German in her joylessness”.

    Kemi wanted being a Conservative to be fun again.

    Not frivolous.

    Politics that is frivolous or unserious doesn’t convince people, but it doesn’t have to be, as my 6 year old says of any activity he’s not keen on, “no fun”.

    Kemi can be serious, or come across as too serious, and tackling the problems Britain faces is a serious business, but for someone who told the ConservativeHome audience back in September of last year that she can  “chew gum and walk at the same time”…I for one would like to remind you all of what she went on to say:

    The bit of myself that people probably don’t see is the fun side. I’m all about having fun, and I think our party stopped being fun. Keir Starmer is no fun, and he’s gonna… the rest of this decade is going to be absolutely miserable. I mean, look at that speech he gave. It was the most depressing thing. And I’m actually a very optimistic fun person

    There it is.

    The speech she mentioned was from Starmer’s “blue period” remember? Before the Budget that was going to fix the foundations of the economy and ended with Rachel’s tears. It was back when both Starmer and Reeves spun a £22bn black hole of doom from their imaginations and made it feel like the country was dying. It wasn’t dying but this was politics written as “misery memoir”

    There’s a few serious points tabout bringing back an element of fun to being a Conservative again.

    For a serious business it’s been fun at periods in the past. When current average aged Tory voters were born, the party was as much a social organisation as political. Tony Hancock jokes about not joining “because I wasn’t looking for a wife” in an early 60’s episode. The Conservatives are a party who do a good party.

    It would fit also more with James Cleverly’s conference speech suggestion that Tories should just be a bit more “normal”. Door to door, face to face, oddly positive trumps positively odd. Normal people have a sense of fun.

    Consistently intense, serious, and obsessed is not normal. You know the type the left seems to cultivate, you say you had a great meal and they want to remind you some people can’t afford nice food. Every. Single. Time. Labour long ago outsourced completely humour to all those comedians beloved by BBCRadio4.

    So finding the fun again, draws a distinction with the left.

    Just as Reform think they have sorted the Tories and seen them off and are now focussed on attacking Labour, given where Starmer is after a year, where some of the things Rishi Sunak predicted have come true, I think the Tories hammer Labour, and work out what to do about Reform when, and if, they can get back out from third or fourth in the polls.

    The Conservatives now ‘under new leadership’, have said they’ll tell the truth (the harder course set against snake-oil populism) and that some really tough choices that their opponents will duck or be forced to duck are coming in the future. Rewiring the state, and “gripping the third rail” difficult and challenging as it will be, needs to be offset by hope.

    Sell hope and positive vibes.

    Because it is, even if you dislike the fact, all about vibes. The success of Reform UK in the polls is because Nigel Farage and his team are good at creating and fostering vibes. Clever deliverable policy still remains to be seen, but vibes they do well.

    I haven’t actually asked him during our many conversations, and I should have, but I’ll bet Robert Jenrick, is not just pleased with his opposition hit-job videos but he has fun making them.

    I think Mel Stride is enjoying himself when he’s at the dispatch box chucking political grenades over the aisle, and Kemi herself is never better than when she’s either genuinely angry or having fun taking her opponent on.

    Away from political performances, and at a door to door level the fun I’m talking about rediscovering is not about clowning or trying to entertain, though getting people to laugh at Starmer is a powerful kryptonite, it is that sense of positive purpose that makes you feel good to be part of something.

    Tories, politics, the public could do with that.

    I’d love it if voters mirrored my son when they looked at Labour’s last year, and turned away with the same added deficit “they’re no fun”.

    .A menu of serious but necessary misery won’t attract anyone.

    The public don’t want tears, or change you can’t believe in.

    While the Tories try to find answers to serious questions, they should also find the fun that should go with selling it.

    conservativehome.com (Article Sourced Website)

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