Everybody’s into politics these days. When Britain awoke from its slumbers a few weeks back to find all its Currys Digitals gently smouldering in the early morning mist, suddenly, it had the urge to engage in politics. Who, Britain finally wondered, is this Ed Miliband? Are The Cuts responsible for killing my child? What is Libya, and is it NSFW? With our fingers to the ground and our ear on the pulse, we at VICE have spotted this growing trend, and acted. Stepping into the gap in the market for seasoned, astute commentary from political insiders, QUANGO is the first and only weekly column about politics in Britain, if not the world. PS: QUANGO stands for Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation. Which sums up this column neatly.

Quango: The Ministry Of Silly Talks

September means party conference season. The UKIPsters kick things off in fine style in Eastbourne next week. Thereafter, Plaid, The Greens, and other small-fry propose meaningless motions and fill their bags with wind, before we finally arrive at the Big Three, climaxing with the Tory Party conference in early October.

Every year, they generate a brace of toe-curl moments as politicians attempt to convince us that they are fully humanoid. A year after menacing voters with a speech warning them to “beware the quiet man”, like a thug in the backroom of a pub who only talks in whispers, Iain Duncan Smith famously announced that “the quiet man is here to stay and he’s turning up the volume,” reportedly causing open laughter in the press gallery. In 1992, Peter Lilley regaled the Tory party by singing, to the tune of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta: “I’ve got a little list / Of benefit offenders who I’ll soon be rooting out / And who never would be missed / They never would be missed.” It says a lot about the wit levels on display at party conferences that Lilley is described on his Wikipedia page as a “satirist”.

But few stories better illustrate the gulf between leader, speechwriter, party and public better than Mrs Thatcher’s keynote speech to the Tory Party in 1990. That year, the recently-merged Liberal Democrats had just unveiled their new logo – a bird taking flight, symbolising freedom, and whatever else liberals were into standing for that week. In the mind of Thatcher conference speech-writer John O’Sullivan, it was instantly transformed into a Monty Python-esque ‘dead parrot’: an image he promptly included in her speech. Only a couple of small problems remained: Mrs Thatcher had never heard of a) the parrot sketch, and b) Monty Python, so she had no notion of why anyone would be amused by it. O’Sullivan had a big and bizarre task on his hands, trying to convince her that this was one of the most famous examples of comedy in the English language.

The farce climaxed when he and the rest of his communications team had to sit down with the Prime Minister, to watch the parrot sketch together, just to convince her that people would ‘get’ the reference. As the sketch rolled on, Thatcher sat stony-faced, while O’Sullivan, overcome at the surreality of the situation, had tears streaming down his cheeks as he choked back the belly-laughs.

A few days closer to the speech, a still-baffled Mrs T had a final flicker of doubt. “John,” she asked. “Monty Python – are you sure that he is one of us?” Rather than confuse her even more by explaining that Monty Python wasn’t actually a real person, let alone a Tory, O’Sullivan simply replied: “Absolutely, Prime Minister. He is a very good supporter.” She smiled. All was well.

Later that day, as Mrs T mouthed lines she did not understand, her cohorts rolled in the aisles. “It has run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible,” she announced, still not quite getting it. People wet themselves. “It has ceased to be.” People fell off their chairs. She ploughed on, smiling, uncomprehending…

GAVIN HAYNES

Previously in this series: Quango One