Fretting over the cost of Gordon Brown's free breakfasts rather misses the bigger picture of why Britain is in such a mess
When men say: "I really couldn't have done it without my wife", they usually intend it as a compliment. Which doesn't mean that's how it'll be interpreted. If Gordon Brown said it ? I imagine he has at some point ? would New Labour stalwarts infer that Sarah should share the blame for the disintegration of their political force? Would opponents of his policies consider her complicit in the damage they say he's done?
"That's a low blow!" they might think. "She seems like a perfectly nice lady."
Maybe people assume that he doesn't really mean it? Or do they think he means it but he's mistaken? While it may be that behind every great man is a great woman, it doesn't necessarily follow that capable men who get promoted beyond their skill set can't also have great women behind them ? or rubbish women or normal women. It may be that you can't tell much about a man from the level of greatness of the woman behind him. They could just be two people in a queue.
The Daily Mail's friendly attitude to Sarah Brown certainly implies that it doesn't think she's been much help to her husband. It's doing a serialisation of her diaries from Gordon's premiership, packed with boring encounters with interesting people, and printed a big, sympathetic interview to launch it.
She comes across as an intelligent person pottering along reasonably in a shitstorm. I'm sure she was and I hope she makes a fortune out of the diaries, I really do. She deserves to. The amount of crap we expect prime ministers' wives to endure, unpaid, for having the temerity to be married to the country's most successful politician is a national disgrace.
As soon as their spouses take office, they have to start masterminding a whirl of charity events and worthy dinners like self-important 1920s countesses. They're accorded prominence but no status. Their clothes are criticised, their remarks scrutinised, but they're not allowed a low profile. It's not a role that anyone nice would like.
The oddness of Sarah Brown's situation was summed up by what the interviewer called "the battle of the breakfasts". She was telephoned by a civil servant an hour after Gordon had left the flat to start his working day and asked whether she'd got his breakfast ready. "I said no, I certainly had not. He was at work! If he was up here, fine, he could have breakfast; but when he was at work, he was on his own."
I'm surprised she gave such a measured response. She was right to refuse to bring her husband his breakfast but how weird to be asked by a stranger about the feeding of another adult human. She might have replied: "I'm sorry but has my husband requested that you make this call? Did he say, 'I'm hungry! Ring my wife and find out where my bloody breakfast is!'? If not, why are you calling? Has he complained of hunger? Have you just noticed that he seems hungry and you don't know what to do? Has he been rubbing his tummy distractedly and wondering what it is? Or did he ask you to get him some breakfast and ringing me seemed like the simplest way? Will you be calling if you think he needs the loo?" Or indeed: "WHO ARE YOU TO ASSUME THIS IS ANY CONCERN OF MINE!?"
It's such an anachronism. It comes from an era when, apart from a few hobbyists and chefs, only women had mastered the food-preparing technologies, when, if men's wives or mothers repeatedly forgot to put their dinner on the table, malnutrition would set in. It was almost fair in those days because women didn't know how to make steel. But we don't have any manufacturing industry any more ? we just have Pret a Manger, and I'm pretty sure there's one on Trafalgar Square, round the corner from Downing Street. That's assuming the Cabinet Office hasn't got a toaster.
Sarah Brown may have won the battle of the breakfasts, but the civil service won the war, billing the Browns for 200 meals when they left office. In contrast to the official's Edwardian question, this sounds much more 2010. Only in the midst of our current hysterical, tokenistic, politician-centred, parsimony drive could the state begrudge the prime minister a free snack at the start of the day. The cost to the Treasury is negligible. To bother billing him is a waste of resources, of the time it took someone to prepare the invoice. And it's not a matter of principle, just a kick in the teeth for a man who, even most of his enemies concede, is a dedicated public servant.
But it's the inevitable consequence of anecdote-based media scrutiny. At this time of economic crisis, of shortage, of instability, it's still easier for journalists to focus on tiny annoyances that can satisfy readers' urge to be irked than to draw attention to injustices that matter. People are more likely to think: "I don't get free breakfasts! Why should he?" than: "Barclays paid less than 1% of its �11.6bn 2009 profit in corporation tax so who cares about 200 breakfasts? I'm never buying this newspaper again."
Similarly, it's ridiculous that, when Downing Street adopted a cat to control rat numbers, David Cameron felt the need to clarify that the animal won't be fed at the taxpayer's expense. Who would care if it were? It's perfectly fair that the state should pay to control pests in public buildings. And, on a national scale, it would cost so close to no money, you'd need an electron microscope to tell the difference.
It's our fault that politicians are so timorous about trivial things. Under the online Independent article about the cat, which didn't mention who would pay for its upkeep, the first commenter, "olympic", wrote: "so the british taxpayer is having to pay for this cat, and pay for it's food, vet bills etc? At what cost?? who exactly at number 10 decided a rat doesn't have the right to live?? Typical tory policy ? get rid of 'vermin'."
No, olympic, it is not typical Tory policy. It doesn't involve beggaring public services, abdicating responsibility to the voluntary sector, assuring us that big business will self-regulate itself into smaller profits or foisting the acquisitive private sector on treasured national institutions. David Cameron is doing these things while you rail against irrelevancies. Tory-hater though you are, he really couldn't do it without you. And his wife's money.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/27/david-mitchell-sarah-brown-barclays
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