Thursday 7 May 2009

The AJ songbook

One final thought on Alan Johnson's casting of David Cameron as the Phantom of the Opera in his Fabian speech today on the important theme of health inequalities.


"But now, just as people have started to move towards him, he has switched from Let The Sun Shine In to Don't They Know It's The End Of The World, as the hideous reality of austerity Conservatism materialises


What shall we read into Johnson re-mixing the musical songbook to cast the happy-clappy early Cameron singing Hair the Musical, offering the hope and optimism of the '68 generation, before austerity Cameron's switch to the country pop crossover hit from Skeeter Davis, much covered since.

I imagine AJ probably retains his jealously protected reputation for unrivalled musical credibility around the Cabinet table - an issue on which Johnson was something of a Blair-sceptic about "three-chord Tony".

Perhaps he dodged a bullet today by avoiding REM's It's the end of the world as we know it

Whether he is best placed to unite the broadest possible coalition of eclectic musical tastes in party and country is of course another question entirely.

3 comments:

Calix said...

I've heard some more gossip about current musical tastes in Westminster.

David Cameron is obsessed by thoughts of the election and now prefers thirties jazz to the Smiths on his I-Pod. Ken Clarke has converted him. Cameron is particularly fond of Duke Ellington and his favourite track is 'It don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing'.

However, as we all know the Conservatives don't have many ideas so have banned Talking Heads and their 'Road to Nowhere'.

Across the road in Labour ranks some are secretly listening to Ronnie Scott's 'I'm Sick and Tired of Waking Up Tired And Sick'.

MiniMises said...

The idiocy of these posts shows why Labour can never run a successful, modern, enterprise based economy. Do you understand international debt markets?

All of this borrowing to pay for Labour's grandiose spending plans has to be paid back. Standard and Poor's have already discussed downgrading our sovereign debt from its triple A status. There has already been a small gilt strike. If anymore of these happen, our credit rating will fall, and the next gilt strike will be massive and sustained. The government won't be able to sell its gilts and will be forced to up the interest rate on gilts so investors receive a higher yield. This will push up long term interests rates for us debtors. Creditors won't lend to us anymore.

The government needs to be careful about this spending. The markets were spooked by the government announcing its plan to offload £185 billion pounds worth of gilts. The long term interest rate has already gone up, so it will cost even more for us to borrow. When that happens, it won't be a budget deficit of 13%. It will go to 20%. Then our country will be finished. So when Labour keeps carrying on about Tory cuts, they should realise those Tory cuts will save the country.

Calix said...

MiniMises

I admit that these posts are juvenile fun but please have a sense of humour and recognize them as such!

If you look at the majority of posts on Next Left these include serious content whether you agree with them or not, but, as with most blogs, some of the posts are jokes and light relief.

P.S. Our site is obviously biased for the Left (hence our name) but my song titles did include one against Labour MPs!