I’M A celebrity, get me in there! Vanity has again got the better of Esther Rantzen, with the publicity-mad television “personality” heading for Luton South. It’s not as if the locals haven’t suffered enough already, enduring the dry rot that is Margaret Moran. Now they’ve got the Rantzen circus coming to town.
The older among us will remember Rantzen with penis-shaped potatoes and assorted knobbly vegetables on That’s Life! The younger will recall her grubbing around with insects in the jungle. The worthy may praise her work for the Childline helpline.
I hear her name and think of those tedious why-oh-why columns in the Daily Mail. Her whines included a ridiculous piece complaining that a police officer had the temerity to pull her over when she failed to stop at a zebra crossing, forcing a couple of pedestrians already on the black and white stripes to slow down. I mean, what’s Britain coming to when a telly veteran has to step on the brakes for a couple of licence payers?
I trust Rantzen records the £60 fine plus £280 costs on her manifesto, if she finds her way from Hampstead to Luton. This is, after all, the era of full disclosure by MPs, so wannabe MPs should be open and transparent. Rantzen may therefore care to publish her tax returns at the same time, so voters tempted to support her would know what they’re buying.
I don’t know Rantzen’s party affiliation or where she’s put her cross in the past but I’d put my quid on her being on the right of the scale, the preoccupations of Middle England grabbing her attention in the past.
The funniest sideshow in the great parliamentary expenses scandal is the crocodile tears of self-serving and deluded luvvies who pose as the clean-up brigade. Doubtless, egos and publicity advisors are spurring them on, a bit of publicity helping to secure another five minutes on daytime one wet Thursday in November.
Rantzen is a stateswoman next to fellow I’m a Celebrity flop David Van Day, a chap who used to be one half of the not-very-successful pop duo Dollar. Declared bankrupt in 2002, he was dubbed Burger Van Day when discovered running a burger van in Brighton. He failed to get elected to Brighton and Hove council as a Conservative, but Van Day’s clearly got an eye for the main chance.
Alas, we may now be spared the fun of the Daily Telegraph’s Simon Heffer standing against Sir Alan Haselhurst in Saffron Walden. Heffalump loftily declared he would be forced to challenge the Tory MP unless Haselhurst repaid £12,000 worth of gardening work claimed at his country pile. I admire a journalist prepared to jump aboard a bandwagon. Unfortunately for Heffalump, this train had already left the station, Haselhurst announcing earlier this month he’d repay the money. Still, I’m sure Heffalump can find somewhere else to make a fool of himself.
Rantzen et al will be in for a shock if they turn talk into action and don’t bottle it, because few – if any – will be elected. The public mood is currently that of a lynch mob, but I detect no appetite for these chancers.
The example of the white man in a suit, Martin Bell, is repeatedly hailed as a trail for others to follow. Bell’s ousting in Tatton of Neil “Cash-for-questions” Hamilton was extraordinary, indeed inspirational. Yet it would never have happened if Labour and the Liberal Democrats had not withdrawn candidates (assisting Bell’s campaign, including hipping in £10,000 to cover his legal costs).
Bell wasn’t much of a MP, but Rantzen is unlikely to get the chance to show what she can’t do.
The independents in with a chance will be strong local campaigners – people such as Richard Taylor, who won Kidderminster on an anti-hospital closure ticket, and Dai Davies in Blaenau Gwent, who I wish was fighting from the left within Labour.
The rootlessness of mainstream political parties, chasing a few voters in marginal seats and directed by focus groups, is eroding community backing in all except a few areas.
Rantzen has flirted with the “Jury Team”, which will fund individuals to, in its own words, break the traditional parties’ control of the political process. Taylor has signed up for support. However, scratch the surface and the Jury Team smacks of another right-wing grouping. The founder is Sir Paul Judge, worth £30 million and a hedge fund manager. Judge ran Tory Central Office when John Major was Prime Minister, so I think we can see where he’s coming from politically, and I suspect it isn’t for fairer taxation and social justice.
Gordon Brown must politically shoot the rule-breakers and the more grotesque of the rule-benders in the Parliamentary Labour Party. Unless confidence is restored in the party’s MPs, Labour won’t have a cat in hell’s chance at the next general election.
Esther Rantzen winning on a law and order platform, serving as Home Secretary in a Government of all the egos, could be hilarious. Thankfully, it is one laugh we’re unlikely to enjoy. Mind you, a Thatcherite government headed by Tory toff David Cameron will be no bundle of fun.
