The absence of war

Continuing the election theme, off to the Rose Theatre at Kingston (upon Thames) last week to see 'The absence of war', a comedy based on Neil Kinnock's failure to win his general election, a comedy with claims to making serious points. I have a feeling that I once went to see one of the companion pieces, 'Murmuring Judges', but I can remember nothing about it. Maybe it would come back if I went again - which on the outing reported here, I probably would if it came on again.

An ensemble piece, which I like. Reece Dinsdale as George Jones might have got the most lines, but everybody else got a turn too. And no complaints about the casting.

Clever staging. We were presented with a blank screen on entry which was slickly converted into the various places the play visited by wheeling office furniture in and out, plus helpful hints on a couple of TV monitors and projection onto the blank screen.

I liked the first half better than the second, the low point of this last being for me the keynote speech in which Jones lost his way. The point of which could have been made a bit less painfully. Jones also seemed oddly reluctant to use his on-stage smoking privileges; he had a lighted fag in his hand from time to time, but he never took a puff. BH thinks that that was the point but I am not so sure.

Framing the piece with two successive parliamentary visits to the Cenotaph for Remembrance Sunday seemed a little forced to me - plus none of them seemed to know how to execute the required slight bow of respect after placing their wreath. While it may be true that we need a good war to get us to pull together - certainly true enough that many people of my parents' age were nostalgic about that pulling together after the event - I don't see the relevance of that truth here, and younger people for whom both wars are more or less ancient history, the Cenotaph will not carry much charge at all.

I liked the people who minded Jones & Pryce. The policy wonks, the diary secretary, the squabbling strategists and the people who have clean shirts, deodorant and hankies on hand in case of need by their principals. As someone who was once faintly associated with private offices and special advisers, I found all that part of the play good fun.

But I also thought that they were unfairly knocked. Politics is like that and political leaders are packaged products. It is no good trying to do it from the heart, to wing it from the heart, because it will not convince, it will not win hearts and minds. And anyway, we don't want passion and we don't want people who can't remember their briefs. We want wheelers and dealers in charge, people who may not be very attractive at close quarters but who can work the system and get things done, at least so long as they don't stray too far off the beaten track.

I associate to a report from a mining town in Siberia in the seventies of the last century. At that time the workforce was a mixture of middle class idealists doing it for love and working class miners doing it for the special bonuses paid for working in such a dump. And according to the report, the idealists were a pain. Give me the people doing it for the money any time.

But I do allow that the packaging does seem to have resulted in a brand of politics in which real issues hardly get a look in as far as the public and the voters are concerned; it is all 'sound and fury, signifying nothing'. Which is part of why we have representative democracy: we don't need voters to choose the policies, that is best left to the professionals. But we do need them to chose the team - and we just hope that the qualities needed to be the winning team have something to do with the qualities needed to be a good government.