My heart bleeds for poor David Cameron who, it is said, was up until 4.30 this morning, tinkering with the EU negotiations in the hope that he can come back to the country waving a piece of paper saying, “Didn’t I do well?” The poor man must be absolutely knackered, although not as knackered as our doctors and nurses, many of whom have also been up all night, trying to make us better and putting us back together again.
Dave must be as knackered as our paramedics (or ambulance drivers, as Jeremy Hunt calls them), our firefighters and beleaguered police officers, who also work late into the night.
Oh, and supermarket workers working for barely more than the national minimum wage, bus drivers, refuse disposal teams (dustmen to you and me), postal workers and just about everyone else who works through the night in order to earn a crust.
It really was put to us that Dave was doing something incredibly important and even unique in working though the night, dealing with the complex detail, negotiating with leaders from throughout the EU. Poor bugger.
I might have some sympathy for the PM if the truth wasn’t rather different.
The minutiae of the detail, even the broad brushes, are worked out by civil servants, not politicians and quite right too. Dave, lest we forget, has only had one job outside of politics and that was as a TV executive for a company that went bust. He has no more expertise in the art of EU negotiations than me.
If we really left the country in the hands of politicians, can you imagine the bigger mess we would be in? When they were in charge of their own expenses, it turned out that many of them were a bunch of thieves, some of whom ended up in prison, others become cabinet ministers. Quite a contrast, you might say but in terms of popularity politicians and prisoners are regarded as equals my many of us.
And before you feel too sorry for Dave, just remember that he’ll be retiring soon, certainly within four years, perhaps as soon as this year if he manages to lose the in/out EU referendum. And if he goes this year, already a multimillionaire on a handsome prime minister’s pension and with the prospect of numerous lucrative directorships and advisory roles to come, he will soon be able to catch up on that lost sleep and some.
My bullshit detector has been on high alert this week as Dave bangs on about ‘fighting hard for Britain’ when his demands are so minimal he might as well just move straight to a referendum on what we have already. Anyway, when someone feels the need to tell you just how hard they are working, you know they probably aren’t doing very much at all. Especially not this prime minister who has brought the term chillaxing to new levels (or depths, I should say).
Ordinary people – you should meet one before you retire, Dave – already work long, awkward and unpleasant hours, usually for far less than you get paid. I have friends who start work at 5.00 am for the princely rate of £7.00 an hour. Try that one.
You don’t fool me, Dave. You’re in a cushy job where other people do the tricky bits and you wave around a bit of paper at the end. If you really were up for most of the night, you weren’t really working. You wouldn’t have a clue what that’s like.
