Quango – Light Sport Relief

Up at the Labour Party conference, shadow chancellor Ed Balls found a lot of people laughing at him in a bad way on Sunday. He was playing football against a team of lobby journalists, when it became apparent that he was kind of tubby, not terribly co-ordinated, and extremely prepared to reveal both facts. This is him channelling Pele:

He joins a long and ignoble list of British politicians who, by attempting to release their inner jocks, have tried to convince us that they’re not just pasty people whose idea of a season ticket is Covent Garden. 

It all began in earnest 1969, when Ted Heath, until then the Ed Miliband of the Tory Party – a seemingly unelectable doozy whose own party was toying seriously with pulling the plug on him – took up sailing. A lifelong bachelor, he simply needed something to fill the long hours between dinner for one and tearful masturbation. He soon found out he was good at it. Very good in fact – he won the Sydney To Hobart Race that same year. Public perception instantly shifted. New dominant narrative: Heath not a loser, Heath = winner. His fortunes recovered, and he won the election in 1970. Incredibly, the next year, while Prime Minister, he took a few days off and won the Admiral’s Cup – sailing’s equivalent of The Open.

Mrs Thatcher was largely excused from sports because she suffered from the disability of being a lady, and had a note from her mum to prove it. She was, however, once required to kick a ball at Scunthorpe.

Shortly after this photo was taken, all of the children were gassed. The ball was never seen again.

Her successor, John Major, was attracted to cricket at an almost sexual level. After he retired, he spent much of his time flying round the world, turning up at test match private boxes on all continents. In 2007, he released a book about just how bloody much he bloody enjoyed bloody cricket. Called More Than A Game, it came complete with a lengthy catalogue of reminiscences about individual games he’d played as a teenager.

Of course, he was ultimately routed at the polls in 1997. Oh, Major liked cricket, sure, but there was one headline-hungry photo opp-machine who was about to go nuclear on sport.

Yup, Tony really was just like you and me; a rough handed menial thug who reads his paper backwards and is mesmerised by colourful balls.

Early on in his career, Tony nearly boiled himself by spreading lies about his sportslife. He announced to one interviewer that he had fond memories of watching Newcastle legend Jackie Milburn play at the Gallowgate End of the stadium. The problem was, honest Tony was four when Milburn retired. And living in Australia. And the Gallowgate End didn’t exist then. Sometimes, however, the ever-religious Blair would just pray next to footballs being headered by nearby legends.

Since then, many have tried to replicate his calm yet confident, open yet firm, tough yet orange game-face, with mixed results, ranging from the one-eyed Gordon Brown attempting to generate enough depth-of-field perception to hit a ping-pong ball (unsuccesfully).

To Southern softy Nick Clegg forgetting that in the North East they play rugby league when he went photo-opping with these youthoids.

To Ed Miliband, failing to impress a small boy on a bicycle.

To Boris having literally no idea what sport he is playing at any given time.

He seemed to get the hang of this one pretty quickly though:

But if you really want to see the political classes displaying BMT, killer instinct, and an extraordinary set of pins for a 47 year old, you have to go to America.

This is what Iranians look at when they want to cower in fear of the Great Satan USA.

Previously: Quango – Does Danny Alexander Have Severe Learning Difficulties