Westminster and the punditocracy is abuzz today about the delicious political gossip revealed in the Daily Mail. Excerpts from a new book on the Millibands by Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre include accounts of political fratricide, attempted palace coups and all around nastiness in the recent history of New Labour.
Given the talent of British journalists for phrase-making, it’s truly a distinction to come up on the spot with the best quip about all this. And the award goes to…Janet Daly of the Telegraph: “As so often in public affairs, a collection of essentially boring people has managed to produce a truly dramatic series of events.”
Not bad, but avowedly non-specific. It’s a facet of the universal paradox of politics, captured also in the aphorism “show business for ugly people”.
I don’t know that I’d believe all the stories. Perhaps a group of boring people produced boring events but dramatizing journalists retold them as a dramatic series of events.