Now kids, we’re going to talk about politics today (come back Tim, now). This is the stuff they’re rabbitting on about in the news before the sport and that bit about the Chinese baby with 2 heads.
I know it’s boring, but you’re going to have your teachers banging on about it and you don’t want to just learn about it from the telly (especially not the BBC who think we live in London and discuss serious issues over dinner every night rather than row at tea time).
Ages ago it used to be much more straightforward. The king or queen could do pretty much anything they wanted and if they told you to do something you had to. And they didn’t need to have a reason. Like mum really. The trouble was they kept getting on peoples nerves (also a bit like mum) because they needed money from everyone, usually to go to war with Spain or France (no-one had holiday homes there then). That was usually because some Spanish king’s daughter wouldn’t marry them or sometimes the Pope just told them to (we’ll come back to this some other time). So, to get the money, they sent soldiers round to everyone’s house and charged you for how many windows you had or something (that’s called tax, which is the thing which makes dad grumpy all January).
Anyway, as you can imagine, everyone eventually got fed up with all this, so a guy called Oliver Cromwell (write this down Sarah) got a gang together and (you’ll like this bit Tim) chopped the king’s head off. They then set up this thing up called Parliament which was supposed to mean that everyone could have a say in what the rules were and how much money we had to give. But that was before Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Rupert Murdoch changed all that. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We still had kings and queens but all they had to do now was wave, go to horse races and have their picture taken.
So everyone had a say now. Well, not exactly everyone at first. For ages you could only have your say (that’s called a vote) if you had a lot of money and definitely not if you were a woman. At first there were just the two political parties The Whigs (who later became the Liberals and just recently have started changing their name every few years by swapping the order of the words social, democrat and liberal for some reason). They were rich, posh people who made up rules to suit other rich, posh people. But they realised that if they weren’t going to get their heads chopped of like the old king (Charles 1st Sarah, write that down), they’d better try and keep all the workers who they got the money off happy. So they gave them houses next to their factories so they could get to work on time and stuff like that. That’s why they changed their name to Liberals.
The other lot were called the Tories. They were also rich, posh people who made rules for other rich posh people. The difference was they didn’t pretend to care less about anyone else and just tried to make sure nothing ever changed (that’s why they eventually changed their name to Conservatives). Now since only rich people could vote then, as you can imagine they were very popular.
Now, that went along quite nicely for a while, but eventually working and poor people got to vote and even women. After a while they realised there were more of them than all the rest put together and they should have their own gang to make rules that they wanted, so they started the Labour party.
So that’s where we were, everyone knew where they stood: vote for the Tories if you want loads of money, pay no tax but have no hospitals, vote for Labour if you want to keep your job, be looked after if you can’t work but give most of your money away to the government. Vote Liberal if… well that’s a bit of a sad story really. Something went wrong somewhere (I think it started with their leader, another bloke called Norman Scott and there was a dog involved somehow but I forget) and everyone forgot why they should vote for them. Now the only people who vote for them are people who are fed up with the other two.
This went on for quite a while. They pretty much had tries and turns at who was in charge. One party promised to do a lot of good things so everyone voted for them. Then they didn’t do the good things so everyone voted for the other party next time because they really promised to do a lot of good things. Then they didn’t…and so on.
Strangely, everyone seemed quite happy with this. Then this person called Margaret Thatcher became in charge and changed everything. She was a very strict lady. You know when mum’s in one of those moods and then she finds out you haven’t tidied your rooms? Well Margaret Thatcher was like that every single day. Which was quite good in some ways because she got everything done she wanted. The problem was they weren’t all good things. She had this big fight with a man with funny hair who was in charge of the miners who dug up all our coal. She got really mad and sacked all of them which is why we have to get all our coal from Poland now. Mind you, it wasn’t all her fault. The man with the funny hair was bonkers and kept making everyone in the country stop working whenever he didn’t get his own way. Then she tried to take money off everyone by counting how many people lived in your house – whether you had any money or not.
Everyone got really angry again, almost as bad as in Oliver Cromwell days. They even had fights in the street like England away matches. Eventually, even her best mates got fed up and sacked her, but it was too late, she’d made everyone get mad with each other.
You see, before she was in charge most people really only pretended not to like each other (like WWF wrestlers Tim). But afterwards it was different. People showed off about how much money they had and everyone started to care about if they had a bigger telly than next door. The odd thing was that even though no-one liked the Conservatives much any more they didn’t like Labour either because they thought they’d make everyone stop working again like the man with the funny hair used to do. So they stayed in charge. But then they started doing stuff like in Eastenders – taking other peoples’ money, going out with their secretaries and things like that. So no-one knew who to vote for. Then a very clever man called Tony Blair got to be in charge of the Labour party. He realised that he was never going to get in charge of the whole country (which he really, really wanted) because not enough people would vote for them. So he got a gang of people together who do what dad does – find ways of getting people to change their minds about things – and asked them how he could win. They told him it was dead simple. First, promise to do the things that people liked about the Conservatives and never do the things people hated about the Labour party. Second, realise it was the telly and newspapers who told people who to vote for so make them like him. Then finally, give your gang a new name so they didn’t think they were voting for the gang that the man with the funny hair was in. So that’s what he did. Now some of his mates weren’t happy about this – they really didn’t like the things he’d made them promise. He just told them it didn’t matter, they weren’t in charge anyway and when they were he’d talk to them about it (he didn’t).
It was a big success – he won! And he kept winning and everyone loved him, even the Spice Girls (well, nearly everyone). He even did some very good things and all of us were having a really good time. But then he did a silly thing. The boss of America wanted to take over the country of a horrible man because he was worried that Americans wouldn’t have any petrol to put in their cars and the horrible man’s country had loads of it. So he bullied Tony Blair into telling us some lies that the horrible man was coming to get us so we would allow him to help the American. So we did and we beat the horrible man’s army and the Americans are in charge of his country now. But someone told on Tony, we found out about his lie and people didn’t like him as much any more. So he decided to get a different job before he got sacked.
So he let his best mate be in charge - Gordon. The trouble with him was that he wasn't as clever at making people like him as Tony Blair. And people weren't having such a good time anymore and having to cancel Sky Movies so they started to get a bit grumpy. Then we lent all our money we were going to spend on hospitals to people who stand outside the late shop drinking cider and they didn't give it back. So we were in even more trouble. Then everybody got so fed up that we decided to pick who was in charge again (write this down Sarah - a General Election)
So the Conservatives knew it would be easy to get a turn at being in charge. Their boss is Dave who loves Tony Blair and is trying to be like him. He seems a nice man and looks a bit like Gray on Emmerdale (remember him Sarah?). He’s rich and posh like they used to be in the old days but he wears jeans and trainers anyway.
But then it got a bit strange. The Liberals had swapped the words around in their name a few times and were now the Liberal Democrats. Their boss is called Nick who looks just like Dave and used to go to school just down the road from him. As usual, nobody was going to vote for Nick, but then they did a kind of X-Factor on Telly and Nick won it, because Gordon had gone completely bonkers by then and had started shouting at old ladies when they were out shopping and Dave kept saying he agreed with everything Nick said.
So, on the day everyone picked their favourite to be in charge, nobody won! Then Gordon and Dave tried to make Nick their best mate so they could gang-up on the other. Everybody knew that Gordon would get left out, so he sulked and wouldn't even go and see the Queen and say sorry like he was supposed to. But in the end I think his wife had a strict word with him,like Mum, and he agreed that Nick and Dave could have their turn,
And so they're in charge now. They're playing nicely together so far, but it is the Summer Holidays.
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