It appears that Treasury spinners may have told BBC producers that Danny Alexander would not debate with Ed Balls on Newsnight. With his department stewarding the economy back into recession, Alexander did not engage directly with the shadow chancellor late yesterday — despite being one of the most senior figures in the government with an annual salary of £134,565.
In bizarre scenes, Balls and Alexander were sat opposite each other but never exchanged blows, with the segment split into two seperate interviews with Kirsty Wark.
Danny: if you can’t stand the heat then get back to the Cairngorms National Park press office.
David Cameron is presumably now regretting telling Angela Eagle “Calm down, dear” during heated exchanges on the NHS. Her shadow treasury team colleague Ed Balls was certainly not impressed, repeatedly calling upon the prime minister to apologise.
In a transparent attempt to “win back the wimmin”, Cameron then claimed that Tory MP Sarah Wollaston was a future Commons speaker.
“I have to say to the honourable lady she is a lot better at getting them to shut up than I am. A future speaker in the making.”
Number 10 are attempting to spin this as a ”humorous remark”.
Scrapbook is always hearing how the music and comedy scenes in Britain are so much better when the Tories are in power. Despite this, the current number one single in Britain is Simon Cowell’s newest characterless throwaway singing doll and the current biggest selling stand up DVD is, er, John Bishop. Whether this bucking of the trend is down to the New Politics of Coalition™ is hard to say.
We at Scrapbook Towers have, however, noticed a strange occurrence: a coalition of political music and comedy – reflecting circumstance perhaps? Here are ten that caught our eye this year, chronologically:
The Hayek vs Keynes rap: An epic seven and a half minute rap battle between the two economist heraldeds most by the left and right respectively. The longest and most well-produced of all the list, and a sure contender for the best.
Lord Ashcroft, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz? A rare musical effort from the internet satirist Beau Bo D’Or, whose works usually comes in poster form. This song tackles the subject of Lord Ashcroft’s funding of the Tories election campaign. Beau Bo Dor sadly stopped blogging this year.
The Ed Balls Rap: There aren’t all that many political funk songs flying around (‘Funky President’ by James Brown being an exception) but that’s exactly what The Solar Dogs went for when they wrote this stirring endorsement for the Ed Balls leadership campaign. If you know who the people are who refer to Balls as “sex on legs”, please do get in touch.
I Read Some Marx (And I Liked It): Seemingly filmed in an American college dorm (British translation: student accommodation), with little more than a handheld camera, a Katy Perry CD and a copy of Das Kapital, this is probably the most lo-fi song to make our list. It also has, in the form of that bloke in the cap who can’t rap, the most punchable person on our list.
How To Pick Between Milibands: The debate may still rage on as to whether this song swung it for Ed, but this reworking of Rage Against The Machine’s reworking of Cypress Hill’s ‘How I Could Just Kill A Man’ is fondly remembered by Scrapbook for the hours spent trying to think of Miliband related hip-hop puns. A must listen.
Liar Liar: Now that the Christmas number one has been decided (and with ‘Liar Liar’ coming an admirable 81 places off top spot), let’s be frank about this song. It was crap. Like, properly rubbish. It felt contrived, like the songwriters had gathered together a focus group of Guardian readers and asked what they would like from a charity single. Now, feel free to guilt people into buying charity singles because the charities deserve it, but please don’t pretend the song is any good. Take note of Bob Geldof’s focus on the “Give us yer fuckin’ money” hard sell and “Look at all these celebrities we’ve got” soft sell rather than producing anything of artistic worth.
U Can’t Cut This: Another parody, this time of MC Hammer’s ‘U Can’t Touch This’, was the work of students from University of the Arts, protesting against the Government’s cuts to higher education. Worth watching alone for the rapper’s wonderful “Hammer Dance”.
The Ground Zero Mosque Songs: This entry is actually two songs, arguing whether a Muslim cultural centre should be built in Manhattan or not. They manage to epitomise both sides of the argument through cringey American earnestness. The first is a foot-stompin’, hair-rasin’, darn-tootin’ conservative country song which accuses them Muslims of “thumbing their noses” at 9/11 victims while the second is an angry liberal, eloquent white boy putting the world to rights through his webcam. Verdict: White boy wins. But he looks like a dull, humourless man.
The Wikileaks Rap: Another brash, well-produced geek rap (political hack-rap?) in a similar vein to Keynes vs Hayek. This is well worth the six-minute length for the satirical imitations of Rumsfeld, O’Reilly and Julian Assange before an actual real cameo appearance by Assange himself!
Cameron’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Very funny in parts, and the animation is pleasing, but the singing is like listening to a dying kitten wail as it realises the Government has cut all funding to the industry that produces balls of twine.
It’s been doing the rounds for 24 hours now but this video of Ed Balls on the drums with guitarist David Evans makes for strangely compelling viewing. Growing in confidence throughout the rendition of “A Thing Called Love” by The Darkness, after the minute mark Balls starts showing off with drum rolls and a switch to the ride cymbal:
Following on from Scrapbook’s earlier post about the runners and riders for the post of Shadow Scottish Secretary we thought we’d take a look at the contenders for the Wales job.
Its widely thought that of the three Peter Hain will be the one who struggles to get elected to the ShadCab, with the prevailing sentiment amongst the PLP being that he’s part of a generation whose time is up. But Scrapbook has it on good authority that Bryant and Brennan are both desperate to see Hain elected to the Shadow Cabinet so that neither of them are stuck with the Wales job.
Of course political favours will be doled out by the victorious leadership candidate: with Bryant backing David Miliband; Hain backing Ed Miliband; and Brennan backing Ed Balls.
More than likely for whomever gets the Wales job it’ll be a punishment.
Former Home Secretary Alan Johnson has declared he is to run for the Shadow Cabinet in the forthcoming elections. It had previously been thought that Mr. Johnson would follow top-cabinet colleagues like Alastair Darling and Jack Straw in stepping back from the political front line.
Johnson’s decision could potentially scupper the Shadow Cabinet plans of leadership contenders as it would be hard to sideline such a high profile and popular figure. Since Scrapbooklast covered the Shadow Cabinet elections it has become increasingly clear who the major players are and what jobs they fancy.
In the event of a Miliband (D) victory Douglas Alexander is being lined up as a potential Shadow Foreign Secretary, with fellow Scot (and campaign organiser) Jim Murphy being considered for either Defence or Work and Pensions.Harriet Harman is rumoured to be getting the Justice brief regardless of who wins, and though he fancies the Shadow Chancellorship speculation is rife that Ed balls is being lined up as a Shadow Home Secretary – a prospect that may have been scuppered by Johnson’s announcement.
Top posts are filling up fast.
And this is before trying to squeeze in whichever of the Milibrothers comes second.
Those that haven’t signed up to party emails and/or checked LabourList may have missed the belated arrival of Ed Balls’ leadership campaign website, edballs4labour.org. It’s Corrie-esque masthead gives a less corporate feel than the Milibands’ offerings and there is plenty of issues/policy content. But you needn’t discriminate – pay the competition a visit here:
With silly season looming on the horizon and the emergence of a spoof candidate, commentary on the Labour leadership contest had already begun to take a turn for the surreal before the release of a funk-rock track in support of Ed Balls. No, seriously.
Falkirk-based group The Solar Dogs started to write the song with the intention that “the lyrics were going to be lines taken from Ed Balls’ Wikipedia page”. Frontrunner David Miliband is looking to secure a similar musical endorsement.
