Did you know George Osborne was in Vanity Fair? Okay, Thackeray’s immortal literary ne’er-do-well wasn’t actually the oleaginous former Conservative Chancellor from 2010-2016, but, just like his later namesake, Thackery’s own Boy George was certainly very good at spending other people’s money.
William Makepeace Thackeray was not the only 19th Century novelist to have produced an eerily accurate political anticipation of The Way We Live Now. In 1817, the now long-forgotten satirist Thomas Love Peacock published Melincourt (full text online here), which tells the strange tale of a crooked plot to instal a trained orangutan dressed in human clothing into the House of Commons to act as an MP under the puppet-like control of sinister outside forces – or, in other words, the life-story of Angela Rayner 200 years too early.
Primate Minister
The red-haired and pendulous "Ginger Growler” Rayner really does look like the proverbial orangutan in a dress, and often acts like one too; in the immediate aftermath of the Labour Party’s disastrous local election results, she was pictured working out her frustrations by energetically rampaging through mud and chimping out all over.
Angela is not quite as simian as the hero of Love Peacock’s Melincourt, however, this figure being a literal orangutan, captured in a jungle by a grog-loving British sailor who lends him a taste for drunken dancing, just like Angela. Brought back to England, the orangutan finds himself adopted by an elite moral philosopher named Sylvan Forrester (a
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Don’t forget that Hove MP Peter Kyle has offered to give up his seat to Rayner. With a 52% vote support in 2024, he would appear to be safe. However, with many students now spilling into Hove from next-door Brighton, the Greens could well turn the tables.
For those, perhaps, more curious than Mr Tucker..
“Sir Oran Haut-ton continued to reside with Mr. Forester and Anthelia… His greatest happiness was in listening to the music of her harp and voice: in the absence of which he solaced himself, as usual, with his flute and French horn. He became likewise a proficient in drawing; but what progress he made in the art of speech we have not been able to ascertain”
Brilliant article as usual from Steven Tucker. I especially like his imaginative section headings.
Brilliant piece of writing, and so true, only problem, all I’ll see when I see the slapper, is an orang a tang🤣🤣
Labour – the party of the non-working class.
Great column.
Rayner is a parody of an uneducated, chavvy “northern woman.” If the North-London Fabian-Marxists running Labour couldn’t have done a better job of demonstrating their arrogant, sneering, contempt for the northern working class….. except, possibly, by recruiting Lily Savage.
I do admire though the total dedication to the grift that makes the most of her meagre intellectual talents for her personal enrichment.
At least you know exactly what you are getting with Rayner – she doesn’t try to hide anything, what you see is what you get (and its pretty bad) – which is more than you can say for the expertly cultivated deception and treachery of all establishment party leaders over the last 30 years.
there was a commentator on Mike Graham show on friday who said ” enoch powell could speak 14 languages & Angela Rayner can barely speak English” – the standard of MP has fallen so far & now labour are unable to find a single person with popularity ( within their own group ) & leadership qualities from 400 odd MPs
Looking at the Labour Party, I can see largely two groups of people:
1.) Shameless political careerists: people who would otherwise be unsuitable for any real job, talentless grey mass of non-entities, whose only function is to be a voting machine. These people don’t have any convictions beyond feeling attracted to some vague ideas of student politics / political activist nonsense.
2.) The ideological fanatics: the likes of Milliband (marxo-fascists) and the Muslim islamo-fascists.
The crossover on the Venn diagram of these two groups is almost complete…
Bearing in mind, those 400 MPs are drawn from a population of around 75 million… there’s surely somebody better in the remaining 99.9995%?
Yes in deed. Farage and the rest of the Reform party.
To me nothing illustrates the decline of Britain more succinctly than the fact that the idea of Angela Rayner becoming prime minister can even emerge as a possibility.
From Winston Churchill to Keir Starmer in 80 years, with the distinct possibility of Angela Rayner.
Look around all of the major political parties, and you will see very few of them with any air or authority of statesmanship.
Very noticeably, all of the ones that stand out the most have zero air or authority of statesmanship.
I remember seeing a clip of a Question Time audience member referring to the whole panel, asking if they, in a country of 60-odd million, really were the very best calibre of politician this country can produce. I vaguely remember him asking “How did we get here?” I can’t find the clip, unfortunately, but I think it’s from around 18 months ago.
As the country has shifted to the Left, the standard and calibre of politicians has gone downhill. Blair started statesman-like, but ended up despotic, showing his true colours. There has not been a single high-quality, honourable PM since Thatcher. Even she bucked the trend.
In short, we are run by amateurs who have control over our lives.