For the good name of our fair land, we must immediately ban holidays for the English. This temporary emigration does immense harm to our standing in the world. When we depart our shores, we become the reverse of goodwill ambassadors. We arrive in distant parts and antagonise the locals. I am observing this phenomenon as I write this column marooned on a Canary Island.
I had intended to spend this week cycling the circumference of Lanzarote, but I have now retired to my room in shock and disillusion, having lost all taste for the project only two miles out of the capital of Arrecife. My tour began – and ended – by circling the perimeter of the airport.
At the sea end, I beheld a sight so pathetic yet instructive that it laid me low. There I discovered a score of my compatriots standing in groups looking at departing aeroplanes. What were they doing? I didn’t need to ask. This is how they spend their days, staring wistfully at airborn escapees, nostalgic for their homeland before adjourning to an Irish bar. Behind them, beaches stretched, sunshine glistened and pleasures beckoned, but they stood reconstructing Gatwick in their collective imagination. My life as a tourist and cyclist lost their charm in that single vision.
The fact is that we’re not a nation of travellers. We don’t visit foreign shores. We occupy them. We set off organised into regiments rather than package tours. After a few days of indolent resignation, I emerged from the shadows of my room in search of food and encountered an Essex couple who owned a boat called ASDIP. The morose male explained it stood for “Another Sodding Day in Paradise’. It appeared he had renamed it after owning it for six months. It used to be called The Spirit of Elizabeth. “And how did you feel about the change of name?” I asked his companion in all innocence. Bad move. It appeared that this was Cindy. Elizabeth had baled out in Gibraltar.
Escaping the company of these unfortunate outcasts, I sought a meal of traditional Canary fare, which proved to be no easy task. Along the reaches of the street of Singing Shamrocks, Biddy’s Bars, Stage Doors, Berts and Costa Narmanalegs (“The taste of home on the beach. Fish and chips, eat in or take away”), I finally discovered an eating establishment with an authentic Spanish menu.
Revelling in my own sense of adventure, I smugly sat myself at a table and issued a waiter with a vigorous “Ola”. He, in turn, fetched me a menu. Only at this stage did I remember I don’t speak Spanish. I pointed at various unintelligible dishes and shortly afterwards discovered myself facing a starter of fried banana. It was a small price to pay. As I ate, I pondered how much my relationship with this waiter resembled the one I have always had with Blairite politicians. In both cases, language has been a barrier to understanding, and I have been served something I wasn’t expecting.
It began with Tony Blair’s Third Way. I puzzled over this 13 years ago when it was on offer and I suppose I must have endured it in the intervening time, but I have never discovered what it was and in particular
how it might have differed from free-market liberalism. Then, just before I left home, I was at a meeting where David Miliband declared that we – Labour – should stand for “authenticity not triangulation”. He may be right, of course. I don’t deny it. But I still fear I may be buying a fried banana.
Perhaps it’s just me, but it doesn’t instinctively seem the sort of slogan appropriate to the left. I can’t see myself chanting it. ”What do we want?” “Authenticity not triangulation!” ”When do we want it?” “Now!”
It doesn’t roll off the tongue. And there is the fact that I don’t know what he’s on about. Perhaps this is no bad thing, if you’re selling Blairism. Certainly, if you’re flogging something no one wants, it’s best to disguise the product on offer. But it does mean it’s becoming increasingly challenging to be an unequivocal Labour Party member.
It used to be so easy. It meant that we were in favour of equality, opposed to prejudice and committed to socialism. Now I find I have to be opposed to triangulation when I’m not sure what it is. I can’t see myself getting as het up about it as I am about racism or obscene wealth. It’s not something I desperately want to abolish from the world any more than I wanted to thrust the Third Way
upon it. Sometimes I feel like one of the end of the airport collective, a nostalgic tear in my eye as I look fondly into the distance at the plane of Labour soaring off into the sky. “See that? It used to be about socialism. It used to be somewhere I thought of as home.”
But perhaps I am being unfair to David. Maybe it’s because he used to be the Foreign Secretary and he’s picked up overseas habits, like not speaking English. Banning holidays may not be enough. A total ban on travel and the abolition of the Foreign Office may be the answer. l
