Andy Burnham’s bid to stand as an MP – and Keir Starmer’s decision to block him from doing just that, means this has been an exciting weekend for news about blokes in glasses. Only yesterday, one bloke in glasses (Starmer) stood accused of doing the dirty on another bloke in glasses (Burnham), because he suspected the second bloke in glasses of planning to do the dirty on him. On the face of it, though, these blokes in glasses are both very much on the same team, and want only the best for one another.
As well as the glasses and the nondescript air, both these blokes in glasses have the same selling point
Let me explain. The first bloke in glasses is extremely unpopular, because of the job he has been doing, and he is increasingly paranoid that the second bloke in glasses wants to do this job that has made him extremely unpopular. He may not be wrong. At the moment, the second bloke in glasses is rather popular. He imagines, perhaps, that if he had the job of the first bloke in glasses, he would continue to be popular. (Some of us are giving plenty good odds against this proposition.)
The second bloke in glasses, because they are both very much on the same team and want only the best for one another, cannot say out loud that the first bloke in glasses is useless and that he’d make a much better fist of doing his job. He says, rather, that he would like to do a new job in which he’d be better able to help the first bloke in glasses, them both being very much on the same team, after all, and wanting only the best for one another. It is, he adds, the merest coincidence that the new job he wants puts him in a position to dethrone the first bloke in glasses. He adds: ‘Scout’s honour!’
The first bloke in glasses, not in any way gnashing his teeth, has to find a gracious way of resisting this offer of help, because he thinks it is the phonus bolonus and that the first bloke in glasses is absolutely 100 per cent after his job, the bastard. He says he has decided, therefore, that though he does not suspect the second bloke in glasses of even a whiff of disloyalty, that nevertheless he had better stay in the job he already has.
There’s something in this: he and his allies make the reasonable point that if the second bloke in glasses leaves his existing job, it will be very difficult and very expensive to fill that job with the right person – above all (he tends not to say), because of the aforementioned extreme unpopularity of the first bloke in glasses. Therefore – as Dame Edna would say – in a loving way, he has absolutely refused to let the second bloke in glasses get even a sniff of this new job. He has, in a loving way, slashed his tyres.
Friends and allies of the first bloke in glasses, meanwhile, are free to say privately – and not shy of using that freedom – that they consider the second bloke in glasses to be hiding the truth about his personal ambitions. Friends and allies of the second bloke in glasses, meanwhile, are free to say privately that the first bloke in glasses is a control-freak and a coward and, what’s more, useless at his job, and that the second bloke in glasses would undoubtedly make a better fist of it – not that such a thought has crossed his mind. They are, after all, both very much on the same team, and want only the best for one another.
There is a narcissism of small differences thing going on here. As well as the glasses and the nondescript air, both these blokes in glasses have the same selling point. That is that neither of them is the bloke with the beard – and that, what’s more, both aspire to resemble a bloke without glasses who was very popular in 1997. Many members of the public, especially the sort with some sort of sense of perspective, look on this knife-fight-masquerading-as-a-cuddle with utter bemusement.
The question is, now, whether thwarting the second bloke in glasses will have helped or harmed the position of the first bloke in glasses. People without a sense of perspective are speculating on this matter furiously. Has he, as some contend, traded short-term pain for long-term gain – ensuring that a flurry of conversation about which bloke in glasses should have his job will get it out of everyone’s system now, so that we do not find ourselves asking which bloke with glasses should have his job twice a day and three times on Sunday until the second bloke in glasses eventually gets it? Or has he, rather, done the opposite – ensuring that the allies of the second bloke in glasses will be so cross that they put someone, anyone, glasses or no glasses, in his job anyway?
These are weighty matters. My view on the subject is that only time will tell, but that since they are both very much on the same team and want only the best for one another it will all probably work out for the best. Next week: bald men and combs.
