Luck

There’s a guy called Wilson somewhere in the CLP. And he keeps winning the monthly draw. I’m not often lucky myself - I even performed the draw last month. There are around 50 tiny yellow balls with numbers on. Six of them are drawn every month – one big prize and five consolations. I was convinced they had lost my ball but it was there. And last month as a further demonstration of ‘bona fides’ I was asked to do the deed. Didn’t do any good. Mr Wilson came out of the bag again.

It’s dispiriting for a political party to be brought up against the vicissitudes of simple fortune. The world, for us pols, is capable of being sorted out. The bad guys are supposed to get theirs, the good guys should inherit the power to meet out justice and fairness all round the shop. That’s the point.

So we ought, in our hearts, to find it within ourselves to sympathise with poor old Gordon. He wanted to be Prime Minister from the age of fourteen. Clever man, prodigiously hard working, honest as the day is long, possessed of a mighty brain, articulate, well educated, comes from a good family. Maybe even a Good Family. He was a fundamental part of New Labour yet could credibly claim an Old Labour following as well. Waited patiently for his moment. Well, waited impatiently for his moment. Well, I supposed he simmered furiously for his moment while Tony ran the show.

His moment came.

And then his luck turned.

Some of this was self induced. Absolutely no doubt that mistakes were made. Gordon was unwise in places it would have been better not to have been unwise in.

But the real difference was fortune, or the lack of it. I am drifting unhappily to the conclusion that there are indeed ‘more things in heavan and earth….’ And possibly Hamlet was a bit misunderstood. Politicians, some politicians, are lucky. The list does not include Jim Callaghan, Edward Heath, Hugh Gaitskell, John Major and now….Gordon Brown.

It does include the dreadful Margaret Thatcher who, at the very nadir of her popularity, took us halfway across the world to fight for a barren lump of rock known as the Falklands. She won.

I’m afraid it does include Tony Blair, who turned his back on Europe at an absolutely pivotal moment in world history and plunged into two wars shoulder to shoulder with the limited Mr Bush. His very long goodbye coincided with the first stirrings of the worst economic depression the world has seen in seventy years.

Yes, politicians can make their own luck. Thatcher did win it in the South Atlantic, yes Tony did build New Labour into a formidable vote winning machine.

But noone could have avoided the credit crunch or the hike in oil prices, or the complications brought by the leap forward in Asia.

Where misfortune bites so painfully is in the treasured legacy. Tony and Margaret served up the shining illusion that little old UK were masters of our own fate. I’m afraid Gordon went along with it too. The electorate are not keen to hear the absolute truth here. But Tony and Margaret trotted off before reality kicked in.

So …. When the Sutton Coldfield EC reaches Treasurer’s Report and Mr Wilson’s yellow ball emerges once again from Johns little green bag, a small comfort might be derived from a mature reflection on our ability to shape the things completely beyond our control.

And make do with the bits we can affect.


Nightwatchman