BEYOND PARODY..

Over two months to go before the General Election and already the build up to it is becoming tiresome.  Now I`ve long thought that events in the Westminster Village are almost indistinguishable from the soap operas we see on television. The essential difference, of course, is that Westminster is supposed to be serious but in many way it mirrors events in Albert Square, Coronation Street or Emmerdale.

In Westminster there are plots and counter plots, intrigue, crimes and misdemeanours and a cast of characters that might come straight out of Llaregub - the fishers, the farmers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives. 

And the Pantomime villain, the court jester and the serial buffoon. And like Bobby Ewing coming back from the dead and right on cue we now have the return of John, aka Lord, Prescott, one time Deputy Prime Minister, ship`s steward and erstwhile Police and Crime Commissioner, who will act in an unpaid capacity as adviser to Labour Leader Ed Milliband on climate change.  The unpaid bit is interesting, as being Lord Prescott all he has to do is nip next door into the House of Lords, sign the book and pick up his £300 a day attendance allowance.

Now things don`t look good for Ed Milliband at the moment, so in a move that is beyond parody they dust Prescott off and bring him back out of the shadows once more to punch below his weight and confound us with his mangled syntax. What is revealing about this is the notion that bringing this boorish oaf back into mainstream politics will enthuse disillusioned Labour voters on the basis that Prescott is one of the old school grass roots dinosaurs - one of their own - and awfully keen on climate change which is, of course, one of their prime electoral concerns.  Well, it is, isn`t it?    There`s more than a hint of desperation about it.

I confess that I don`t watch soap operas - and I have genuinely never seen an episode of Coronation Street in all the years it`s been going - but there`s no need to really when there`s Westminster to keep us guessing as to what might happen next in the latest unscripted story line.  I`ll be looking out for developments in the Straw/Rifkind `cash for access` allegations, which will be every bit as entertaining as the intrigue surrounding Lucy Beale`s demise.