the mot juste

I said awhile back that it’s difficult to find the right word for Gordon Brown. Looking over at Justin’s latest notes on the atrocity, the right word suddenly struck me.

He’s a wanker. A 100%, solid gold, honest to goodness, 24 carat wanker. And that’s all there is to him. He’s nothing other than a wanker: and once you’ve called him a wanker there’s nothing left to say. He is, precisely, a wanker.

I don’t mean this just as vulgar abuse. After all, wanker has substantive meaning and descriptive value beyond its status as an insult. It describes a personality in a way that – say – nutter or dickhead doesn’t, a combination of self-obsession, minor-key malice and bedrock lack of empathy. It’s not just a general category for people you find offensive in some way.

But wanker is a direct insult as well as a precise description, so it’s easier for fellow politicians to hint at “psychological flaws” than just to come out and say it direct. But this, I now believe, is what they’re actually hinting at: not a personality disorder but a personality type. It’s really what the Tories mean when they talk about “dithering.” It was the force behind Vince Cable’s joke about Mr Bean.

I suppose the penny started to drop when Ajay commented in my post about the Chinese paramilitary cops the Trainspotting motif about being colonised by wankers. Now consider Brown’s response to the whole Torch kerfuffle. He doesn’t exactly support the Tibetans. What he does do is shy away from touching the torch when it’s presented at No 10 by a paralympic athlete, like it had dirty Chinese germs on it or something. What a wanker. Later on, he tells us he’s not going to the Olympic opening ceremony. In fact, he uses a bit of doublespeak that’s supposed to indicate that he never intended to go. Meanwhile, he wears a stupid “got you there” grin on his face. Wanker. He doubles the tax rate for the lowest paid because he thinks he can get away with it. Caught out, he tries to obfuscate the whole issue in a cloud of imaginary rebates and credits. Wanker. He ignores the best scientific advice available to him and regrades Cannabis possession because he wants to “send a message.” Wanker. He leaves 4000 troops stranded in Basra because he hasn’t got the nerve to either pull them out or have them fully participate in the occupation. Because he can’t make a decision. Because he’s a wanker.

This is, of course, the opposite of the way in which he presents himself and it must be difficult to get up in the morning, look in the mirror and see a wanker staring back. You throw your heart and soul into misdirection: make them think I’m a financial genius, please make them believe I’m a moral paradigm, let them think I’m mildly autistic and a big clunking fist, that I’m spiky and awkward and brooding…anything, but please, God, if you exist, don’t let them think I’m a wanker.

Well it worked for a good long while, at least for those of us not actually acquainted with the man. But what a tragedy. What must it be like to generate false flaws to conceal real ones, then to rise to a position where all the decisions have to be made in public, where the wanker within inexorably reveals himself to everyone. The Prime Ministerial wanker. The wanker at the top.

Comments

[Dan Hardie]

It's been staring us in the face, quite literally, since the day last spring when you could walk into a bookshop and see a volume whose cover bore the words, in large print, 'COURAGE' and 'GORDON BROWN'.

[Alex]

Hey, it was obscured all these years by the vast, masturbating shadow of Tony Blair's very different but equally intense wankerhood.

[ejh]

It's funny, but all the wankers who briefed against Brown on Blair's behalf, did, actually, know what they were on about. They were still wankers because of the way they did it (and because they were doing it on behalf of a wanker) but they did, after all, know what sort of a wanker Gordon Brown was.

[jamie]

"...but all the wankers who briefed against Brown on Blair's behalf, did, actually, know what they were on about."

Yes, but they never made it clear, the wankers.

"It's been staring us in the face, quite literally, since the day last spring when you could walk into a bookshop and see a volume whose cover bore the words, in large print, 'COURAGE' and 'GORDON BROWN'."

(slaps forehead). God, yeah. That COURAGE thing. Now I feel like a wanker.

"...the vast, masturbating shadow of Tony Blair's very different but equally intense wankerhood."

I suppose in fairness there are worse things than being a wanker, and Blair was an extensive collection of them.

[ajay]

But (Bill Hicks voice) "it seemed so plausible!" I mean, it fitted everyone's ideas of Dramatic Structure. You had Blair, right, the charismatic, morally flexible, intellectually shallow but articulate one? Therefore his rival/partner, Brown, simply had to be his opposite - the spiky, moral, withdrawn, intelligent one.
It's Holmes and Watson. Wimsey and Parker. Riggs and Murtaugh. Aubrey and Maturin. Hornblower and Bush. That's how we were sold Cheney and Bush, come to that.

[ajay]

But (Bill Hicks voice) "it seemed so plausible!" I mean, it fitted everyone's ideas of Dramatic Structure. You had Blair, right, the charismatic, morally flexible, intellectually shallow but articulate one? Therefore his rival/partner, Brown, simply had to be his opposite - the spiky, moral, withdrawn, intelligent one.
It's Holmes and Watson. Wimsey and Parker. Riggs and Murtaugh. Aubrey and Maturin. Hornblower and Bush. That's how we were sold Cheney and Bush, come to that.

Oh, and thanks for the credit.

[robr]

Apparently he puts milk into peoples coffee before meetings in no 10 so they don't waste time on small talk and stiring the brew.
That to me is an act of a wanker.

[Philip]

I think this is all very unjust. A wanker is, by definition, a man who has a grip on something. That doesn't sound like Gordon to me.

[A wonderer]

The big decision, about which I believe Brown got people to do research before he took over, is to smack heads together at the top of numerous govt depts and tell them to get themselves into the 21st Century or get out (but be very careful with Home Office and its agencies - its getting better by the minute). Then choose some MPs with ability for the Ministerial posts. We have had more than enough of govt wasting our money and, without understanding, telling us how to run our lives; instead they should be making it easier for us to do it our own way as long as its legal.

[Rev. Spooner]

Not so sure about the wanker thing.

A wanker would be a one-eyed cock WITH a grip, so he's only part way there...

[Darius Jedburgh]

It's been clear to me since Laura Spence.