We’re finally approaching the end of the party conference season and this week has seen the Conservative party conference in full flow. It made news when some young conservatives apparently did a white power hand signal (possibly maybe) in a photo where another had ‘Fuck the NHS’ written on their t-shirt and a third had a drawn-on Hitler moustache. At the same conference, Boris Johnson also made headlines with a bombastic speech, in which he not-so-subtly positioned himself as a challenger to the leadership of the party.
Then it was time for the leader’s speech. Do you remember, a few weeks ago, when videos of Theresa May dancing at gatherings in Africa made the news because she was terrible at it? Well, as a ‘hilarious’ reference to that, she walked onto stage to the Abba anthem Dancing Queen, while boogieing badly on her way to the podium, where she stood for a few seemingly endless more seconds with her arms flailing in a right-angle position, jiggling her body around.
This was followed by some jokes referencing her disastrous speech of last year’s conference, when she coughed a lot and the display gradually fell down behind her.
Just watch.
We were supposed to view this spectacle as Theresa May making herself human. Because we’re British, and we love some self-deprecating humour, right? We love somebody who’s quirky and self-aware and willing to laugh at themselves. What a woman! What a laugh! What a Prime Minister!
That’s how the script is supposed to go. The reaction that we were meant to have when we watched the most powerful woman in the country make a fool of herself, adding this to all the other times she’s made a fool of herself, and we are supposed to relate to her, like her, and forgive her for the complete and utter disaster after complete and utter disaster that she and her party have presided over for the last few years.
What May dancing onto stage was, in actual fact, was offensive. Outside the conference as she spoke were disability activists protesting the number of deaths that have occurred of people on benefits. But everything’s ok as long as May is cracking a smile. The NHS is being systemically underfunded to the point of catastrophe, but isn’t that that tune that gets everybody out onto the dancefloor? Food banks are creaking under the pressure but OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS SONG.
You know what? I want a Prime Minister with a sense of humour. I relate better to funny people. But Theresa May is a woman who can’t even answer the question “As it’s International Women’s Day, if you could have an evening with your girlfriends, what would you do?”. Instead of saying “I’m the Prime Minister so I’m supremely busy but a Chinese followed by a glass of wine is always nice, isn’t it?” she just fell to pieces. Completely crumbled.
She can’t be spontaneous. She can’t say anything that isn’t meticulously prepared. I remember Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon saying about May, “This is a woman who turns up to a one-on-one private meeting and reads off a piece of paper”.
So we can feel confident that the Dancing Queen stunt was planned and prepared by some kind of committee that assured her, and itself, that it was a good idea. That the headlines would be about her humour and her self-deprecation and not the austerity she has forced on vulnerable people that is taking their lives.
Austerity did come up in her speech and she promised that, after a “good Brexit” (the mind boggles), she would somehow cancel austerity – proving, as if it needed proving, that austerity is an ideological, political manoeuvre and not an economic requirement. She can switch it off as quickly as David Cameron switched it on. Austerity controls the poor and the vulnerable, and it has served that very purpose for years.
The defunding of disability benefits, of the NHS, of women’s refuges, of advice centres, of charities, of local councils, of housing, of public sector salaries, of libraries, and of every useful service that was not somehow nailed down, has been catastrophic for those who needed them and continue to need them. Each has a knock-on effect on the rest, too – when somebody can’t get adequate help from carers, their reliance on the NHS goes up. When the NHS then can’t provide what they need, they may need to claim benefits. Which they then get kicked off and sent to the food banks.
There is a spiral towards desperation when, for many people, sufficient provision in the first few stages of their journey could have prevented failures further down the line from occurring.
So sure, see that girl, and watch that scene, but I’m not diggin’ that Dancing Queen.
Photo: Annika Haas/EU2017EE